RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 17:

Russian forces did not make any major advances and Ukrainian forces carried out several local counterattacks on March 17.[1] Russian forces made little territorial progress and continued to deploy reserve elements—including from the 1st Guards Tank Army and 810th Naval Infantry Brigade—in small force packets that are unlikely to prove decisive. Russian forces continue to suffer heavy casualties around Kharkiv, and Russian attempts to bypass the city of Izyum are unlikely to succeed. Russian forces continued assaults on Mariupol on March 17 but did not conduct any other successful advances from Crimea.

Key Takeaways

Russian forces continue to make steady territorial gains around Mariupol and are increasingly targeting residential areas of the city.

Ukrainian forces northwest of Kyiv launched several local counterattacks and inflicted heavy damage on Russian forces.

Ukrainian forces repelled Russian operations around Kharkiv and reported killing a regimental commander.

Ukrainian intelligence reports that Russia may have expended nearly its entire store of precision cruise missiles in the first twenty days of its invasion.

Russian forces deployed unspecified reserve elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army and Baltic Fleet Naval Infantry to northeastern Ukraine on March 17.

Russia may be parceling out elements of the reserve force that could conduct an amphibious operation along the Black Sea coast to support ongoing assaults on Mariupol, further reducing the likelihood of a Russian amphibious assault on Odesa.

Ukrainian forces shot down 10 Russian aircraft—including five jets, three helicopters, and two UAVs—on March 16, and Ukrainian forces continue to successfully contest Russian air operations.

That’s just yesterday evening’s executive summary from ISW. There’s much more at the link, daily.

JEFF REYNOLDS: Earth to Merrick Garland: U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Demand Action on Skyrocketing Crime Rates.

LIVE AT 4:00PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, VodkaPundit, Special Guest Megan Fox.

WELL, GOOD: Americans’ support for ‘no fly zone’ declines once they know what that is. “Supporters of the no-fly zone were at 40 percent of those polled, while opponents were at 25 percent. However, Yahoo! News reports, the numbers switched once respondents were told that a no-fly zone means that NATO would engage in war with Russia, shooting down their planes over Ukrainian air space.”

On the other hand: Washington Is Ramping Up Its Campaign To Draw NATO Into War With Russia.

In a letter sent Tuesday to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a half-dozen top Republican lawmakers called for the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with “Soviet- or Russian-made strategic and tactical air defense systems and associated radars to Ukraine.”

That means long-range surface-to-air missiles, like the Soviet-made S-300 system, which is designed to shoot down enemy aircraft and intercept ballistic missiles. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the United States to help Ukraine acquire S-300 air defense systems from countries that have them, like North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia, and he might do so again on Wednesday when he addresses Congress.

The provision of such heavy weaponry to Ukraine, whether by the United States or our NATO allies, would represent an unprecedented level of direct military support for Ukraine that would undoubtedly — and rightly — be interpreted by Moscow as a sharp escalation by the West.

The S-300 is not a “heavy” weapon. It’s purely defensive.

If Putin doesn’t want his missiles and aircraft shot down, he should stop targeting them at Ukraine.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: How Jane Campion Stepped into a Woke Trap of Her Own Making. “Jane Campion went from Oscar favorite to ‘insidious’ white feminist in record time.”

Wokism is the Left’s favorite tool for kneecapping lefty rivals.

LEARN TO BEND THE KNEE: Adam Carolla Reveals the Real Reason Kids Were Forced to Mask in Schools.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Another Day, Another BLM Leader Indicted For Fraud.

MATT MARGOLIS: The Disturbing Details About Biden’s SCOTUS Pick Just Keep on Coming.

Previously: McConnell Could Stop Biden From Replacing Justice Stephen Breyer Due To ‘Little-Noticed Backroom Deal.’

YOU CAN’T FOOL ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME: Joe Biden Goes 110 Days With Approval Index Under -24, Polling Worse Than Obama, Trump.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: We’re Close to a Majority of States Passing Constitutional Carry Laws.

“OVERSEE” IS PROBABLY TOO STRONG A WORD: Will Joe Biden Oversee The Collapse Of The U.S. Dollar? “Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell appears to think it’s a possibility, based on his recent quip: ‘It’s possible to have more than one reserve currency.’ This is a staggering admission from the one person who wields the most influence over the dollar.”

EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Criticism of Kamala’s Ill-Timed Cackle Is (What Else?) ‘Racism’ and ‘Misogyny.’

A TASTY NUISANCE: California city may declare Chick-fil-A a ‘public nuisance.’

In Santa Barbara, the city is close to dubbing its sole Chick-fil-A a “public nuisance” due to long drive-thru lines that often has cars filled with hungry customers backed into the street for hours at a time.

The eatery known for its waffle fries and chicken sandwiches has had a restaurant in Santa Barbara since 2013, drawing a steady flow of patrons whose vehicles block nearby driveways and sidewalks and make city buses and emergency vehicles find other routes, according to city officials.

Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru lane heightens the odds of traffic collisions and pedestrians getting injured. At peak-volume, the drive-through blocks one lane of traffic for as much as 90 minutes on weekdays and for as much as 155 minutes on Saturdays, according to a city traffic report.

“The city’s traffic engineer, police chief and community development director have evaluated the situation and believe that the persistent traffic back-up onto State Street is a public nuisance and that the nuisance is caused by the operation of a drive-through at the Chick-fil-A restaurant,” the document stated.

Or is the real nuisance… political?

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Biden’s Latest Pervy Comment May Be the Most Awkward Yet.

BIDEN BOMBS SUN TZU’S GOLDEN BRIDGE:

Biden knows how to talk tough and how to punch down, but he’s clueless, self-defeating, and dangerous when there are actual stakes involved.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Why Do Joe Biden’s Handlers Let the Idiot Speak? “It is no secret that Joe Biden isn’t really in control. Some ungodly cabal of puppetmasters is pulling the moron’s strings. From what we’ve seen so far, they aren’t brighter than their drooling charge. If they were, they wouldn’t let Ol’ Gropes speak in public. Ever.”

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Xi Jinping’s Faltering Foreign Policy.

To say that Xi has consolidated power in China is to state the obvious. Few dispute that Xi holds a singular position within China’s bureaucratic apparatus, and it is increasingly hard to deny that something akin to a personality cult is developing in state media and other propaganda channels. Yet the implications of this reality are insufficiently appreciated, especially its impact on the behavior of the Chinese party-state.

Consider a pattern that has emerged across authoritarian political systems in which leaders remain in office far longer than their democratic and term-limited counterparts. The longer a leader stays in power, the more state institutions lose their administrative competence and independence as they evolve to fit that leader’s personal preferences. Successive rounds of purges and promotions shape the character of the bureaucracy, moving it incrementally in the same direction as the leader’s grand vision. What might begin as formal punishment for explicit opposition to the leadership eventually becomes a climate of informal self-censorship as members of the bureaucracy come to understand the pointlessness of dissent and grow better attuned to unspoken expectations of compliance. The leader also becomes more distant and isolated, relying on a smaller and smaller group of trusted advisers to make decisions. Most of those individuals remain at the table because they display absolute loyalty.

This small circle, in turn, acts as the leader’s window to the world, leaving much dependent on how accurate a depiction of external reality its members choose to provide. Such an opaque decision-making process makes it difficult for external observers to interpret signals from the central leadership. But even more crucially, it makes it hard for actors within these autocratic systems to anticipate and interpret their leaders’ actions. The result is an increasingly unpredictable foreign policy, with the leader formulating snap decisions in secret and the rest of the bureaucracy racing to adapt and respond.

Putin is is a similar situation and started a war because, apparently, his generals told him he could win quickly and at a reasonably low cost. What he’s gotten is an expensive slog. Worse, it’s revealed serious weaknesses in the Russian military that a decade’s worth of reforms and modernization were supposed to have fixed.

Maybe Xi can learn from Putin’s bad example, or maybe he’s so cloistered that he can’t.

PUTTING OUT FIRE WITH GASOLINE: Pelosi and Buttigieg Want to Solve Inflation With — You Guessed It — More Spending.

ENDORSED: The Hater’s Guide to Woodrow Wilson. “I come now not to explain Wilson, but to hate him. A national consensus on hating Wilson is long overdue. It is the patriotic duty of every decent American. While conservatives have particular reasons to detest Wilson, and all his works, and all his empty promises, there is more than enough in his record for moderates, liberals, progressives, libertarians, and socialists to join us in this great and unifying cause.”

(Bumped.)

FINGER ON THE PULSE OF THE NATION: House Dems want Biden to declare national ‘climate emergency’ and ban oil drilling on federal lands.

MAKE AMERICA FLORIDA: DeSantis Rising in Previously Deep Blue Miami-Dade County. “Hillary Clinton carried the county by nearly 30 points in 2016. DeSantis’s Democrat opponent, Andrew Gillum, won it by almost 21% in 2018. Even President Biden won Miami-Dade by a little more than seven points. However, after a year of Democratic leadership at the national level, this Democrat stronghold could become a purple county. According to Breitbart, a new poll shows DeSantis with a +7 approval rating in Miami-Dade.”

HMM:

More to come, I’m sure.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Put a Fork in New York, Too. “Let’s take a look at the timeline of New York City’s demise.”

COVID IS OVER BUT THE GRAVY TRAIN ROLLS ON: White House Wants $22.5 Billion for More Covid Funding.

MATT MARGOLIS: Joe Biden Is Trash: Ignores Question About Deaths of Americans in Ukraine.