Moscow sunk. No kidding. In the draft to this, the Writer’s Section used a sailor expression rather than the sanitized version. We held off in the account yesterday morning of shouting “Moskva Sunk!“ which was part of the narrative that was going around. It was such a dramatic story the group thought it was probably BS. Loma said it yesterday, about the effect of coming down from his stateroom above the Hangar Bay to the Dirty Shirt for eggs, bacon and bread baked on his own ship and hearing that the big roomy ship with the three-star onboard had been sunk overnight. By a country without a freakin’ Navy.
(A well written tome would have the footnotes up here that of course we know Ukraine had a Navy, and had shipbuilding ports that well-served the old USSR. And we appreciate the intricacies of politics and history of a mostly European state that welcomed an advancing Wehrmacht as ‘liberators,” while now fighting a Russia that isn’t Soviet, exactly, though there is a resemblance. But this is about a new world and a new variety of eternal human conflict).
The real story from the Black Sea, or at least a version we could trust to a degree, broke after lunch yesterday. The Kremlin put out the word that the Slava-class missile cruiser had sunk ‘while under tow in stormy seas’ after fires and “ammunition explosions.”
There are many threads we were tempted to follow on this one. But the now-confirmed news of the sinking of the Flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet by Ukraine naturally has the Old Salts aroused with the idea of what it would be like to hear the call on the ship’s 1MC loudspeakers to “Abandon Ship!” would feel like. Instead, we just want to mention one of the many other aspects to the story.
Our crowd has been in a few places where the actual facts of crisis are spun in a variety of ways. The concept of “truth” was secondary to other issues, like what recommendation of course of action to present for our bosses. Whether we “liked” the truth was irrelevant to the concept of responsive direct action. Next. In order to get to that point, there were layers of falsehood that had to be deconstructed, both ours and the opponents.
With that as a professional legacy, we always look at the “news” as a means to gain insight into what the various messages mean. There is some enormous stuff going on, and the sinking of Moskva now is part of it.
This morning was also a component, a sunny Spring day an ocean away from the event in question. Buck, our emeritus Economist follows the Daily Mail feed on his smart phone. Shortly after Splash began to look around for afternoon refreshment, he jumped up and shouted “The Mail got it- the straight story from a source that would know!”
He waved his phone around and a crowd quickly gathered at the Fire Ring. In tiny luminous letters were the following compressed words: “Russia’s Defence Ministry said the missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, sank as it was towed back to port in stormy weather following an explosion and fire,…”
This was billed as a remarkable event, and we acknowledge it is dramatic in the face of Mr. Putin’s desire for a military triumph before the annual Victory Day celebration on May 9th.
We thought that overcoming with brutal might the bitter defense of Mariupol in the bowels of a steel factory would suffice for that. But apparently the Ukrainians had that feeling as well and took advantage of a warship not prepared to fight. We don’t know the specifics beyond what the two parties have broadcast. We do know that the essence of the story- a modern big ship taken down by a state without an operating Navy- is huge.
Loma said it best, with the sudden realization that the myriad of recently-revealed problems in the Russian Ground Forces are also present in the Russian Navy. It was an organization for which we had long respect for competent operations. Now, it appeared it could actually be endemic in Putin’s larger society. We will avoid that, and try to piece other news into an accurate picture of what is really happening. One truth we believe (at the moment) is simple.
Mr. Putin is not happy. We are confident about that, while not equally sure of some of the other stories that reflect the messaging of what must be broadcast in the context of some message of accomplishment for Victory Day. We were all looking at our phones by then. Loma found something on another European news feed. It caused him to look up and wave his smart device normally filled with stupidity. “Check this one! “Putin’s Defense Minister- ‘Defense with an S-” Sergei Shoigu has had a ‘massive heart attack not from natural causes’ and TWENTY generals ‘have been arrested’ over bungled invasion.”
That provoked more discussion. Melissa tries to stay ahead of the social structure in Russia to avoid the military miasma so well reflected by the Old Salts. She said “Shoigu had NO military experience! He was some kind of engineer by training. A loyal Party apparatchik. He was a direct appointment as someone trustworthy to Vlad in 2012. Technical expert, probably took interest in continuing the R&D work to produce the new hyper-sonic weapons with no real utility in operations. But Reliable.”
“So who’s next? The Black Sea Fleet Commander has lost at least 2 ships to an enemy without an operating navy.”
“Yeah, and we almost lost USS Stark to the Iraqis the same way. Not ready. This is about messaging a major event.”
“Like heart attacks, falling from windows …what else…?”
“So there are at least two stories here. One is about a systemic problem in a military machine we have not viewed accurately. That view was apparently shared by the men who ran it, and convinced Mr. Putin they were.”
“True enough. But is has a larger context. The American side has not been through the same transformation that the Red Army endured as it was transformed. But what we left in Afghanistan- the better part of a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons and machines- is being harnessed to first cause trouble in Pakistan, and then to Kashmir. The Pakis and the Indians have fought three times over the former Jammu & Kashmir province with the Chinese a third party in all of them.”
“What was the Russian defense budget last year? $70 Billion in US dollar equivalent? That is less than a throw-away for the Americans. So what you are saying is that the loss of a single ship has implications in a new world order. One not teetering between two competing systems, but representing an emerging East, surrounding more rivalries no longer constrained in a bi-polar global system.”
“It is that New World Order we have heard about? It is not being viewed as what it is, but how we used to see things. We are only now seeing a Russian military that does not work the way it used to. And an American system that seems to be having problems with its rudder.”
DeMille sighed. “We have to put new eyes on all this. What will Russia do to remedy their immediate problems? What will China and India do in the face of emerging national interests, and the threats provided by a temporary military treasure larger than Russia’s entire establishment?”
He sat silent for a moment as his audience shuffled through old truths and assumptions that no longer reflect “truth” or the ways things might develop. “The messaging doesn’t reflect any of that. At the moment, anyway. Maybe we should watch the news?”
There was laughter on that, but with a certain irony, since the way things work in a new world are not the way we are used to. They are new. And the way they play are not going to be what we expect.
Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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