First, I want to express how touched I am by the initiative taken by the Saker community to help my family in these difficult times.  Words cannot express how touched I am by this initiative and while I cannot thank each person involved individually (especially since I don’t know who they are!) I will thank you all here.

Second, we are still busy gutting the house which will take many months to repair.  Looks like we will be living out of a suitcase for a few months.  Since I literally had to run across a flooding house (in the dark) to save my hard drives and a laptop from the quickly rising waters most of my equipment is in boxes. but I do have one laptop which I will use to work as best I can.

Third, we now know that Hurricane Ian’s eye passed over our house with 96mph (155km/h) winds, which technically means that we had a CAT2 eyewall pass over our house while we had about 3 feet (1m) of water all around the house.  It is remarkable that the house and roof survived and we are most grateful that the house, while technically “totaled” still can be fixed even if this will take a rather long time (the entire state looks for contractors and construction materials).

Lastly,  it is my plan to finally write an analysis of Putin’s historical speech as soon as I can, but still not today (I simply am too exhausted and I need the day to further recharge my batteries).   God willing tomorrow.  My apologies about that.

So I now leave you with an open thread started, I hope, by a few interesting headlines to get the conversation going:

Next, here is an opinion poll about how the Russia public feels about the partial mobilization:

Question: do you personally believe that the reasons behind the the partial mobilization are valid?

60.9%: yes unconditionally
31.6% to some degree yes, but to some degree no
6.2% no, there are no reasons for this partial mobilization
1.3% I cannot answer that.

There are, however, many people who are not happy about the way this mobilization is being executed.  Truth be told, Russians like to complain and hate on any bureaucracy, so this is hardly surprising.  And, as with ANY large scale exercise, there are problems popping up here and there even if most of the mobilization is going smoothly.

The number of people who are fed up with the lack of modern communications from the Russian MoD is also rising (Konashenkov already became a meme).  Even high ranking members of the Duma, including Andrey Kartapolov, Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee are getting mighty fed up.  And please do check out Kartapolov’s biography to see for yourself that he is hardly a clueless civilian.

God willing, with time and people like Kadyrov and Kartapolov getting fed up with Konashenkov and his clueless team, some personnel changes will happen at the MoD public affairs department.  Hopefully before the next phase of the war (whatever it might be, that we will discuss in the near future).

Okay, that’s all I can write today.  Now I pass flag to you and leave you with an open thread.

Thank you all for your immense kindness, patience and support!

Hugs

Andrei

PS: and, no, forgive me, I will not answers any private emails until at least this week-end.  Sorry, but we are all exhausted.