Chief Accountant of a Palo Alto Company and Her Children Murdered by Russian Troops in Ukraine.

[NNadir]

This came up in Linkedin this afternoon.

From another source:

Chief accountant of SE ranking and her two children killed in Ukraine

Tatiana Perebeinis was among four people killed in a Russian attack at the weekend.

Tatiana Perebeinis, the chief accountant for SE Ranking, an SEO platform, died under Russian attack in Ukraine on Sunday. With her two children, Alise and Tatiana (nine and 13 years old respectively) and a man, she was attempting to leave Irpin, Ukraine, when Russian forces opened fire, according to reports.

The final moments

On Sunday, the New York Times documented the final moments of their lives. (Warning: the article contains a graphic image and video of the mortar attack and the aftermath):

“As the mortars got closer to the stream of civilians, people ran, pulling children, trying to find a safe spot. But there was nothing to hide behind. A shell landed in the street, sending up a cloud of concrete dust and leaving one family — a woman, her teenage son and a her daughter, who appeared to be about 8 years old; and a family friend — sprawled on the ground.

Soldiers rushed to help, but the woman and children were dead. A man traveling with them still had a pulse but was unconscious and severely wounded. He later died.

A statement from her company, SE Ranking:

“We are devastated to say that yesterday our dear colleague and friend Tatiana Perebeinis, the chief accountant of SE Ranking, was killed together with her two kids by russian mortar artillery.

The family was trying to evacuate from Irpin – a small city right near Kyiv that has been left without water supply, electricity, and heating.

There are no words to describe our grief or to mend our pain. But for us, it is crucial to not let Tania and her kids Alise and Nikita remain just statistics. Her family became the victim of the unprovoked fire on civilians, which under any law is a crime against humanity.

The russian army are criminals, and they should be stopped.

Our hearts are broken. Our prayers are for all Ukrainians, who are fighting for their right to exist.”

[PortTack]

1. RIP..God save Ukraine

[Cha]

2. Fujcking Monsers.. and who doesn't

want to ban Russian oil?

So sorry..

[DFW]

3. For a World War II baby boomer, Putin seems to have forgotten lessons of his immediate predecessors

I would have thought that as a ranking KGB officer--one who speaks fluent German and was stationed in East Germany, no less, would have tried a different tactic from bombing and terrorizing the civilian population.

The Nazis never managed to subjugate England that way. Even in the last 18 months of World War II in Germany, the carpet bombing of German cities never induced a German surrender. Only the ultimate decimation of their armed forced accomplished that. So Putin KNOWS that this is not a formula for victory. If it didn't work before, what makes him think that it will suddenly work now? Surely he knows the definition of insanity, right?

And now we have someone in Congress--a Democrat, no less--reminding us to consider the Russian people. BEFORE the Ukranians? Yes, we all know that they have virtually no access to a free press. So what? In the Soviet era, Russians had no access to free information, either. But they weren't so naïve as to believe everything the government told them. Indeed, many Soviet citizens figured, correctly, that a good portion of what they were fed consisted of lies. Sure, SOME believed it--that WAS, after all, the path of least resistance. In the States, too, there are people who choose to watch only Fox Noise, and actually BELIEVE what they hear. You can't force a lazy intellect to not be lazy any more. However, even a lazy intellect, one might hope, would have a hard time ignoring the story of the massacre of this family.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Putin is stunted because he was born late in lives of his parents, survivors of Siege of Leningrad

Putin's brother died before he was born, from the siege.

Viktor died of diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany's forces in World War II.[22]

Another brother died in infancy before the war.

[DFW]

9. My mom in law was born when her mother was 48, and her brothers were already almost grown

Three of them were killed in World War II, the last one while about 5 KM from his home on the way retreating to home. She was 17 when the war ended, "city folk" who had nothing to eat in 1945, but got some help from her future husband, who lived on a farm. He got a leg blown off at age 18 near Stalingrad, but still had access to food. He eventually studied banking and worked the rest of his life at a rural bank extending loans to other farmers. Despite their traumatic experiences, none of them had any ambition to invade a neighboring country, or seize for themselves five per cent of the wealth of their own country.

Her mom survived, obviously, although she and her schoolmates had to regularly jump from the road to school into ditches on the sides, while planes regularly went on strafing runs from above. My wife and I are actually the first generation of our family since the 19th century that was not called into, or involved in an armed conflict of some kind.

[Irish_Dem]

6. I think he wants the world to know that he is now a dominant world power.

This is not just about Ukraine, but his desire to be in control of the West. He has damaged western democracies and now is his time to fulfill his life long goal of shifting world power. He and China wish to be the sole 21st century superpowers.

Putin could have bought off the Ukrainian government and installed puppets like here in the US. It took him decades to do this here in the US. Putin has control of half the US congress and US media. And owned a sitting US president.

But he wants the world to understand his power and goals. And terrorize the world into compliance. He will destroy Ukraine, kill or cause the people to flee. Then he can re-populate the country with Russians and maintain control.

Putin also has a very cruel and sadistic streak. He loves to use horrific poisons and throwing people out of windows. He torments and frightens people. He is a ruthless sociopath and will stop at nothing to achieve his goals, and the more sadistic the strategy the more he likes it.

[Meowmee]

7. This

“Putin has control of half the US congress and US media.“ the most frightening part maybe currently and during the dump reign of terror.

[DFW]

10. I saw where he worked while in the KGB in East Germany

His villa and office were in Potsdam, near Berlin. The wall where he and his pals used to have uncomfortable East Germans executed was still full of bullet holes. No one in Europe is under the impression that he is a reasonable pacifist.

[Irish_Dem]

11. He is a ruthless violent dictator, and will act accordingly, yes.

[NNadir]

12. I think what he thought he was doing was more akin to...

...the German attack on Poland in 1939.

A better lesson may have involved the situation the Germans faced in Yugoslavia in World War II, and more recently, Soviet and American experience in Afghanistan, or American experience in Vietnam.

[DFW]

13. The Ukrainian landscape is closer to that of Poland than that of the others, easier to roll over

But they have 40 million people, plenty of whom remember foreign domination, both German and Russian, and have now had a brief taste of independence. Some of their older men still of fighting age were young conscripts in the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Frightened young Russian conscripts are nothing compared to the hardened Afghans they faced 35 years ago. Most of them like their country's recently attained independence, and will fight for it. It is a foreign concept to Putin, and he doesn't seem to have considered it as a possible obstacle. No one conquers Russia. Russian conquers other places.

A place that doesn't want to be conquered by force--that is no surprise.
A place that won't LET themselves be conquered by force--now THAT is a foreign concept to someone like Putin.

[NNadir]

17. I suspect that the Germans of 1939 might have had a more difficult time if the Poles had...

...Stinger missiles.

They didn't; they had horse cavalry - something to which the Germans reverted to a surprising extent in Russia later in the war - and the Germans had tanks. The Germans were not fighting World War I in 1939 and for two years they "enjoyed" while the rest of the world bemoaned, remarkable "success."

The Poles also had to fight a two front war with an antiquated army; Stalin wanted (and got) the territory the Poles took in the 1920's.

Putin has nothing on Stalin. Interestingly though, Stalin's decision to remain in Moscow in 1941 is recalled by Zelensky's decision to stay in Kyiv.

If Putin has not learned anything from the German experience with bombing, I still think he didn't start from there, and if there is a model for what he's trying now, it's almost certainly the bombing of Warsaw in 1939 and the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940, and not the Battle of Britain.

But it is probably useless to look backwards too much to go forward.

Grant remarked that too many American Generals (on both sides) in the 1860s could tell you in great detail about what Napoleon would have done in a particular situation, with his dry wit implying that it was useless. Of course, Napoleon didn't lead armies possessing or facing rifled guns, and Grant did, so Grant thought "anew;" he was disinterested in what Napoleon would have done.

On the other hand, famously von Moltke the Elder dismissed the American Civil War as a street fight held by mobs from which nothing could be learned. The German army in the period from 1914-1916 and even up to 1918, might have done better had von Moltke's lessons in strategy had not been so dismissive, or if his nephew had overruled the old man and looked into the matter. The siege of Petersburg/Richmond, as well as Vicksburg were both early examples of trench warfare.

If Putin, or really anyone, thinks that they are fighting World War II, or should fight like its World War II, it's a grave mistake.

My feeling is that terrain is no longer an issue as it was in 1939 so much as technology backed by will is the real issue. However technology alone cannot win a war, otherwise the US would have won in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, and the Soviets in the their Afghanistan war.

The Soviet era Taliban had US hand carried missiles, provided by Ronald Reagan and, irrespective of how much we now detest the Taliban, they had will as well. By the 21st century they knew how to defeat so called "superpowers."

The Ukrainians are not fighting a two front war; there's no Stalin to stick a knife in their backs, no Katyn forest in the opposite direction of the invaders. At the Ukrainians back is a whole world struggling to do better to help; awkwardly, perhaps, but inspiring the Ukrainians by applauding their magnificent courage in the face of what might have been overwhelming odds.

Last week I watched a lecture by Annapolis history professor emeritus, Craig Symonds, in which he remarked that there were only two wars that America had to fight, one being the US Civil War - without which slavery might never have ended - and the other being World War II, the latter because the enemy was really evil. We should argue that slave holders were really evil as well. (Symonds overall point was to compare Farragut to Nimitz.))

Morale of course is easier to generate when those involved feel that they are confronting real evil. I suspect that the Russian conscripts cannot feel that. Like American boys in Vietnam, they probably wonder why the hell they're there; probably they are dominated by frightened little boys, as you point out.

The Ukrainian people, who have endured so much in their history, are in a very different position. They know why they are there; it's their home.

I believe, for all the tragedy their civilized nation is experiencing at the hand of a barbarian psychopath who owned our American trash psychopath, Trump, they may well win. As the days pass, their case gets stronger and stronger.

I do hope the American military will see to them getting those planes to help, but quite possibly even without them, they will win. When they do, it is the responsibility of the world to help them recover from their tremendous losses.

Like everyone else, I cannot help to find Zelensky to be one of the most remarkable war time leaders we have ever seen. One hopes he survives.

Thanks for your comments. As always, it's a pleasure to talk with you.

[msfiddlestix]

14. Thank you, DFW for your most valued contributions and insights

in this and other posts... I enjoy reading and learn from the many times I have come across your postings over the past several years..

The current crises Ukraine and the West is dealing with (Ukraine is fighting and dying to survive and get through and win) is in so many ways incomprehensible, were it not for the all that preceded these events most recently in our own country with the installment of TFG and the proliferation of right wing extremism. Half of our Congress are seem to be Putin sympathizers if not in his pockets.

Well, I maybe exaggerating somewhat, but not by much it seems to me..

[DFW]

15. Thanks for the kind words!

Actually, I think the problem with Congress is worse than it seems.

I don't think they are all (or even a majority) true sympathizers. I don't think they have a depth of understanding necessary to be that. But I also somehow doubt that so many Republicans are THAT ignorant and THAT stupid. That is not reason for sighing with relief, because if that is the case, they are all acting like total idiots for the only reason left--your last alternative: that they have been bought off, and are in Putin's pockets, whether they know it or not. That means they owe their allegiance to the highest bidder. And these are the people who write our laws and vote on the president's nominees.

[msfiddlestix]

16. I agree completely, unfortunately. I think your analysis is as about 100% spot on...

Corrupt to the core whether any of them fully understand to the degree of which they are owned.

or for how long, they've been owned. I think it's been several decades under the radar. Now it seems exposure is nearly complete.

Just needs to be openly held to account for the full breadth and scope.

I won't be holding my breath though this very morning I spotted a report here on DU regarding an individual Russian "influencer" being charged with fraud I think it was. Now let's see if the judge who presides is a Russian Asset or not.

[sakabatou]

4. :(

[Meowmee]

8. Tragic and horrific