UKRAINE WAR - 2024 thread

[EnterpriseSovereign]

https://apnews.com/article/state-depart ... e7520e3086

Victoria Nuland, third-highest ranking US diplomat and critic of Russia’s war in Ukraine, retiring

WASHINGTON (AP) — Victoria Nuland, the third-highest ranking U.S. diplomat and frequent target of criticism for her hawkish views on Russia and its actions in Ukraine, will retire and leave her post this month, the State Department said Tuesday.

Nuland, a career foreign service officer who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Europe during the Obama administration but retired after Donald Trump was elected president, returned to government as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Biden administration.

She had been a candidate to succeed Wendy Sherman as deputy Secretary of State and had served as acting deputy since Sherman’s retirement seven months ago but lost an internal administration personnel battle when President Joe Biden nominated Kurt Campbell to the no. 2 spot. Campbell took office last month.

Nuland had served at the U.S. embassy in Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s and was in the city during the attempted coup against former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

She then became U.S. ambassador to NATO before being tapped to serve as the State Department spokeswoman under former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton during President Barack Obama’s first term.

As the department spokeswoman and later as assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Nuland drew the ire of many Russian leaders for her outspoken defense of Ukraine, particularly after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry has recalled on numerous times that when Nuland left the spokeswoman’s job during his tenure to become the top diplomat for Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov congratulated him for “getting rid of that woman.” Kerry said he replied to Lavrov that he didn’t get rid of her, “I promoted her.”

Current Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised Nuland for her three and a half decades of public service and thanked her for her role in shaping U.S. policy around the world under six presidents and 10 secretaries of state.

“But it’s Toria’s leadership on Ukraine that diplomats and students of foreign policy will study for years to come,” Blinken said in a statement.

“Her efforts have been indispensable to confronting Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, marshaling a global coalition to ensure his strategic failure, and helping Ukraine work toward the day when it will be able to stand strongly on its own feet – democratically, economically, and militarily.”

The Russian foreign ministry immediately seized on the announcement, calling it an admission of failed U.S. policy toward Russia.

“They won’t tell you the reason,” spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “But it is simple - the failure of the anti-Russian course of the Biden administration. Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging the Democrats to the bottom like a stone.”

Nuland will be replaced temporarily as under secretary by another career diplomat, John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan who oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the country. He is currently the undersecretary of state for management.

U.S. officials said the favorite to succeed Nuland in a permanent capacity is the current U.S. ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, a one-time Pentagon official who also served as then-Vice President Biden’s deputy national security adviser.

The deranged psychopath who said, and I quote, "fuck the EU!" and played a huge part in getting us into this mess in the Ukraine is now gone. Good riddance to a piece of trash.

If anything we need more like her.
Russian oil depot hit by Ukraine as Kremlin bans fuel exports

Russians are feeling the effects of Ukrainian strikes on oil infrastructure “in their pockets” as a depot in the Kursk region became the latest site to be targeted.

Russian officials said that the depot in the region which borders Ukraine exploded after it was hit early on Sunday morning.

“Fire brigades and emergency services are working at the scene of the incident,” said Roman Starovoyt, the regional governor on Sunday morning.

He did not specify which oil depot was hit or its size.

The attack is part of a Ukrainian strategy to strike oil and gas facilities across Russia which the British Ministry of Defence said has forced the Kremlin to ban fuel exports for six months to try to dampen price rises.
“It is likely that Russia’s refining capacity had been temporarily reduced by multiple uncrewed aerial vehicle strikes against refineries across Russia,” it said.

Russia’s fuel export ban, introduced on March 1, follows a similar three-month ban that came into place in mid September. The ban last year was triggered by Russian farmers who threatened to protest unless the Kremlin brought fuel price rises under control.

Fuel prices in Russia have risen by around 10 per cent this year after several drone attacks on oil and gas facilities, including a strike on major chemical export infrastructure near St Petersburg and refineries on the Black Sea and central Russia.

The Kremlin has blamed fuel price rises on market fluctuations but commentators on Russian regional news websites have complained that people are “feeling it in their wallets’” and even Russian energy insiders have linked shortages to attacks on infrastructure and the effect of Western sanctions.

Anastasia Bunina, deputy director of the Gainful oil company, told the Irkutsk news website that the drone attacks were pressuring the industry just as it was trying to cope with the breakdown of an oil refinery at Nizhny Novgorod that usually refines 5 per cent of Russia’s fuel because of a lack of spare parts from the West.

“The second factor is the drone attacks on southern factories,” she said. “Their products were mainly exported, but nevertheless there are certain declines in production.”

[Elfdart]

https://apnews.com/article/state-depart ... e7520e3086


The deranged psychopath who said, and I quote, "fuck the EU!" and played a huge part in getting us into this mess in the Ukraine is now gone. Good riddance to a piece of trash.

She's out for three reasons:

1) She didn't get the #2 job at the State Department.

2) She knows that no matter who wins this November, her pet project in Ukraine will be swept under the rug.

3) Time to get out of Dodge.

If she writes a nasty Bob Evans-style tell-all about how Biden is a demented oaf, it's mostly #1.

[Ralin]

The deranged psychopath who said, and I quote, "fuck the EU!" and played a huge part in getting us into this mess in the Ukraine is now gone. Good riddance to a piece of trash.

Fuck that evil bitch for, uh. Saying bad things about Russia!

[Vympel]

David Axe is a strange one. He'll post about the Ukrainians losing a Patriot battery rather than cope about it being fake or whatever, I guess because the video was so noteworthy and unambiguous, but at the same time:

Ukrainian Patriot batteries in the last month have shot down as many as a dozen Russian air force fighter-bombers, blunting Russia’s aerial advantage as the wider war grinds into its third year.

There is literally not a shred of evidence that these very high kill claims are true. Like even the vociferously pro-Ukraine ISW is like "we have no verification for these claims" while pro-Ukraine OSINTers openly scoff that the claims are "totally ridiculous" - but David Axe just dutifully repeats it as fact with no caveats at all, all the same.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Russians sent ‘loyalty app’ to show they’ve voted in ‘task set by boss Vladimir Putin’

The Kremlin is rolling out a “loyalty app” for Russian state workers to prove they have voted in next weekend’s presidential election and help boost turnout.

Nurses, doctors, teachers, civil servants and other state workers have been sent a unique line of code via SMS that directs them to a website built by United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s political party, which essentially acts as a temporary smartphone app.

This United Russia website then prompts people to vote and finds the quickest way to their polling station when they open on March 15.

State workers who are registered with United Russia’s “Mobilisation” programme that aims to boost voter turnout can also scan a QR code at their station to download a personalised Geo-SMS link.
The state worker is then expected to tell the United Russia website when they have voted.

This would “reflect back that they had completed the task set by the boss”, said Golos, an independent Russian vote monitoring NGO.

The Kremlin wants to ensure Putin wins 80 per cent of the vote at the presidential election on a high turnout, which it can then use as a show of support for his war in Ukraine.

There is no doubt that Putin will win a fifth term as Russia’s president as there is no genuine opposition.

Russia’s state-controlled Central Election Commission has already disqualified two opposition candidates on technical grounds and other opponents of the Kremlin are in prison.

A video produced by United Russia, Putin’s political party, calls the app a “confirmation tool” designed to help people vote.

But Golos said its real objective was part of an underhand Kremlin operation to pressure people to vote for Putin.

“State institutions are all connected with United Russia’s new Geo-SMS app, which helps the authorities control voter turnout,” it said.

“If you are forced to install such an application, please tell us,” Golos said.

“You can also complain to the Central Election Commission, the prosecutor’s office and even the labour inspectorate for violation of your rights.”

The Geo-SMS app is not available publicly and can only be downloaded by registered state workers.

It has become normalised in Russia and in some other former Soviet countries for the state to mobilise state workers through threats and bribes to vote for a favoured candidate at elections.

It used regional elections last September to test some of the techniques it intends to deploy at the election, including the “loyalty app”.

The Kremlin has also ordered polling stations to open for three days, from Friday March 15 to Sunday March 17, and has rolled out electronic voting.

Observers have said that electronic voting can be easily manipulated to tweak turnout and results.

Putin became Russian president on New Year’s Eve 1999 and will be in power until at least 2030 once he has officially won next week’s election.

Protests against the Kremlin are banned in Russia but the beleaguered and exiled opposition has asked people who oppose the Kremlin to turn up en masse at their polling stations at midday next Sunday, an indirect form of protest that should avoid arrests.

“We need to use the election day to show that we exist and there are many of us,” said Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny who died in a Russian Arctic prison last month.

[Zwinmar]

Here you go: Russia using gas

Ukraine accuses Russia of intensifying chemical attacks on the battlefield
Reuters
February 9, 20248:57 AM CSTUpdated a month ago



Feb 9 (Reuters) - Ukraine accused Russia on Friday of using toxic chemicals in more than 200 attacks on the battlefield in January alone, a sharp increase in what it said were recorded instances of their use by Russian forces since they invaded two years ago.
Russia has denied allegations of using chemical weapons in Ukraine and has accused Ukrainian forces of their use, which Kyiv denies. Neither side has produced evidence and Reuters has not been able to verify any use by either side.
Ukraine has previously accused Moscow of using chloropicrin, which was used as poison gas in World War I. The latest statement by Ukraine's General Staff singled out CS, or tear gas, which it said Russia had used in various grenades.
CS gas, widely used by police forces, is banned on the battlefield by the international Chemical Weapons Convention, opens new tab, which states in Article 1: "Each State Party undertakes not to use riot control agents as a method of warfare."
The Ukrainian general staff said: "815 cases of the use of ammunition loaded with toxic chemicals by the Russian Federation were recorded. Of these, only in January 2024 – 229 cases." It did not name any other chemicals in its statement on the Telegram messenger app.
General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, commander of the "Tavria" operational grouping based in the south east, said separately on Telegram that enemy troops deliver chemical-loaded ammunition with drones. He mentioned chloropicrin in reference to chemicals he said had been used on Thursday.
A year ago, Russia accused Ukrainian forces of using unspecified chemical weapons in drones in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Exhaustion, dwindling reserves and a commander who disappeared: How Ukraine lost Avdiivka to Russia

One Ukrainian brigade had defended the same block of industrial buildings for months without a break. Another had been in Avdiivka for nearly the entire two years of the war, bone-tired but with no replacements to relieve them.

Ammunition was low, and the Russians conducted dozens of airstrikes every day, using “glide bombs” to obliterate even fortified positions.

Russian soldiers came in waves: First lightly armed grunts, to force the Ukrainian defenders to spend precious bullets, followed by well-trained soldiers. Sometimes groups of Russians popped out of tunnels in front of them and opened fire.

As morale plummeted, a battalion commander — in charge of hundreds of men — vanished under murky circumstances, according to law enforcement documents seen by The Associated Press. One of the soldiers with him was found dead. The commander and another soldier with them have not been seen since.

Within a week, Ukraine had lost Avdiivka, the city in the Donetsk region that it had been defending since long before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Nearly surrounded and vastly outnumbered, the Ukrainians made the decision to withdraw and avoid the same kind of deadly siege soldiers experienced in the port city of Mariupol's Azovstal steel mill, where thousands were taken captive or killed.

The Associated Press interviewed 10 Ukrainian soldiers to reconstruct how dwindling ammunition, overwhelming Russian numbers and military mismanagement led to the worst Ukrainian defeat in a year. The same problems pose risks for Ukraine's near future.

“We weren’t so much physically exhausted as psychologically, being chained to that place,” said Viktor Biliak, an infantryman with the 110th Brigade who had been in the area since March 2022.

His unit was on the southern outskirts of Avdiivka, in a position called Zenith. Normally the men would dig fortifications, but Biliak said there were constant Russian attacks, and no energy or equipment beyond hand shovels.

A soldier named Oleh arrived in mid-October with the 47th Brigade. Ill-trained Russian infantry, wearing new uniforms and marching in rows, made easy targets, he said. The Ukrainian equipment worked and ammunition supplies were enough to return fire.

But by the end of November, during a major Russian assault, the Ukrainians realized something had changed: The skies filled with glide bombs, unguided Soviet-era weapons retrofitted with a navigational targeting system, as well as motion-sensing explosive drones that could enter buildings and hunt down personnel.

With ammunition stocks running low, the Ukrainians fought back with whatever caliber of ammunition was left in the warehouses. For every shell they fired, the Russians fired eight or nine, the men said.

“The longer it went, the more we got this stew of shells for all kinds of weapons,” Oleh said.

Among the Ukrainian soldiers, the idea of defeat took seed.

Hundreds of Ukrainian forces withdrew to Avdiivka’s coke plant after repeated Russian onslaughts last fall. The Soviet-era factory, a warren of alleys, railways and tunnels, was a near-perfect defensive position.

But as the new year began, even the coke plant felt vulnerable.

Ukrainian brigades try to rotate men out of direct front-line positions after a matter of days or a week at most. And brigades with long-term engagements are supposed to be pulled back and reinforced to allow them to replace people lost to death or injury, rest their nerves and resupply.

That didn’t happen in Avdiivka.

As officials in Kyiv argued over the delicate question of expanding the draft, many of the soldiers in the east felt abandoned by Western allies who no longer sent weapons, by their high command, and by fellow Ukrainians.

In addition to endless frontal assaults, Russian soldiers started popping up, opening fire on the Ukrainians before disappearing.

“They just kept throwing themselves at the coke plant, leaving piles of their corpses there. Mountains of bodies and heaps of smashed equipment,” said Maksym, a soldier in the Presidential Brigade.

But the Russians had a seemingly limitless supply of men and ammunition. The Ukrainian men saw their options narrowing.

With the constant pressure and the lack of foreign help, there was talk of retreat, Oleh said. “Their constant assaults exhausted us.”

The 3rd Assault Brigade arrived early in the second week of February, with orders to head to the coke plant. By the time the seasoned Ukrainian fighters got there, Russian troops had nearly closed a wide pincer around it.

On Feb. 8, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired Ukraine’s military chief, Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi. It was the biggest shake-up of the military since the start of the war.

The next day just outside Avdiivka, officers fighting to save the town gathered in a command post a few kilometers (miles) from the coke plant. There was a heated discussion and the commander and two soldiers got into a car. What happened next is unclear, at a time when emotions were running high and Russian saboteurs were appearing behind the Ukrainian lines.

Authorities don’t believe the missing officer had classified information or military hardware on him when he disappeared with the two others. One of the soldiers was found dead nearby of gunshot wounds. The commander and the other man vanished.

The AP is not naming the men to avoid endangering anyone who might be prisoner.

On Feb. 15, Biliak received the order for a nighttime retreat for the 110th Brigade from his point on the southern flank of Avdiivka. He had been at the same intersection for just under two years.

“It would have been joyful if it had happened earlier. We were always ready to drop everything and flee from there because we had known for a long time that the end was coming,” Biliak said. “But then we already knew it was too late, and it was out of desperation.”

The 3rd Assault Brigade received the command to retreat from the coke plant the next day.

On Feb. 17, Russia claimed control of Avdiivka and its coke plant.

Ukraine’s new military chief, Col. Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi released a statement Feb. 29 emphasizing the importance of experienced and decisive commanders and noting that an inspection of Donetsk had revealed “certain miscalculations in mastering the situation and assessing the enemy.”

[Solauren]

The deranged psychopath who said, and I quote, "fuck the EU!" and played a huge part in getting us into this mess in the Ukraine is now gone. Good riddance to a piece of trash.

Putin and the upper levels of the Russian government are gone now? Excellent news, thanks J!

[Solauren]

Russians sent ‘loyalty app’ to show they’ve voted in ‘task set by boss Vladimir Putin’

You know, this would be a useful type of App in most countries.

Polls open, you put in your postal code or whatever, and it goes 'you can vote at the following places....'

However, as it's being used by Russia, is somewhat horrifying. Because the implication is that if you don't vote, they'll know, and do something about it.

[Rogue 9]

Russians sent ‘loyalty app’ to show they’ve voted in ‘task set by boss Vladimir Putin’

You know, this would be a useful type of App in most countries.

Polls open, you put in your postal code or whatever, and it goes 'you can vote at the following places....'

However, as it's being used by Russia, is somewhat horrifying. Because the implication is that if you don't vote, they'll know, and do something about it.

One would hope they already know whether or not someone has voted. We do here in the United States. If you don't know that, how do you keep people from voting twice? No, their election mechanisms already have that information, this is to do something else.

[Ralin]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

Why are people acting like being required to vote is some special Russian tyranny move instead of something also done by noted fascist dictatorships Australia, Singapore and Belgium?

[Rogue 9]

Do they make you install a black box app on your phone to ensure compliance?

[Ralin]

Do they make you install a black box app on your phone to ensure compliance?

I don't know. Why does that matter?

[Rogue 9]

Do they make you install a black box app on your phone to ensure compliance?

I don't know. Why does that matter?

So, background, I am an election worker in the United States. I know whereof I speak when I say that an election clerk can find out whether or not any given person in their jurisdiction has voted with a few keystrokes. This information is available to the state and in the case of primary elections can be and is made available to the parties, who use which party primary you voted in as a proxy for whether or not you qualify to run on their ballot should you seek candidacy. A measure such as a loyalty app on voters' phones is not necessary and reeks of some other purpose.

[Ralin]

Do they make you install a black box app on your phone to ensure compliance?

I don't know. Why does that matter?

So, background, I am an election worker in the United States. I know whereof I speak when I say that an election clerk can find out whether or not any given person in their jurisdiction has voted with a few keystrokes. This information is available to the state and in the case of primary elections can be and is made available to the parties, who use which party primary you voted in as a proxy for whether or not you qualify to run on their ballot should you seek candidacy. A measure such as a loyalty app on voters' phones is not necessary and reeks of some other purpose.

Well could you explain what that purpose is? Because all I'm seeing is a lot of innuendo about how it must somehow be intended to intimidate people into voting for Putin and not really any details beyond that, much less proof.

[Dominus Atheos]

I don't know. Why does that matter?

So, background, I am an election worker in the United States. I know whereof I speak when I say that an election clerk can find out whether or not any given person in their jurisdiction has voted with a few keystrokes. This information is available to the state and in the case of primary elections can be and is made available to the parties, who use which party primary you voted in as a proxy for whether or not you qualify to run on their ballot should you seek candidacy. A measure such as a loyalty app on voters' phones is not necessary and reeks of some other purpose.

Well could you explain what that purpose is? Because all I'm seeing is a lot of innuendo about how it must somehow be intended to intimidate people into voting for Putin and not really any details beyond that, much less proof.

When the political party in power and who expect to remain in power start strongly encouraging state employees specifically to vote, the implied threat is that state employees who do not vote (correctly) will be fired and their positions filled by said political party's supporters.

Also called the spoils system.

[Ralin]

When the political party in power and who expect to remain in power start strongly encouraging state employees specifically to vote, the implied threat is that state employees who do not vote (correctly) will be fired and their positions filled by said political party's supporters.

Also called the spoils system.

Hmm that not only seems to rely on a lot of assumptions (I don't think either of us follow Russian language media enough to know how much people there are being told to rock the vote) but also doesn't really explain what the app is supposed to be doing other than letting people self-report that they voted. It's not like they're being expected to take a snapshot of their ballots or something.

Has it occurred to you that they're encouraging state employees specifically to vote because there's no legal basis for requiring the population in general to vote so they're limited in who they can push to do so?

[wautd]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

Why are people acting like being required to vote is some special Russian tyranny move instead of something also done by noted fascist dictatorships Australia, Singapore and Belgium?

Here in Belgium there is compulsory voting, but voting is done anonymous. In Russia that doesn't seems to be the case.

And in a dictatorship where any serious democratic opposition is barred, jailed or murdered, and where Russian state Duma members of Putin's political party can say without repercussion on national TV that the 29 million Russians who don't like Putin should be exterminated*, NOT voting for Putin as dangerous as not voting for the Great Leader in North Korea.

("it was just his Andrey Gurulyov's personal opinion", while pro peace Russians have been jailed over extremist bogus charges for far less)

[Dominus Atheos]

When the political party in power and who expect to remain in power start strongly encouraging state employees specifically to vote, the implied threat is that state employees who do not vote (correctly) will be fired and their positions filled by said political party's supporters.

Also called the spoils system.

Hmm that not only seems to rely on a lot of assumptions (I don't think either of us follow Russian language media enough to know how much people there are being told to rock the vote) but also doesn't really explain what the app is supposed to be doing other than letting people self-report that they voted. It's not like they're being expected to take a snapshot of their ballots or something.

Has it occurred to you that they're encouraging state employees specifically to vote because there's no legal basis for requiring the population in general to vote so they're limited in who they can push to do so?

Absolutely they are trying to do that. It was stated in the article a few posts up:

The Kremlin wants to ensure Putin wins 80 per cent of the vote at the presidential election on a high turnout, which it can then use as a show of support for his war in Ukraine.

Since Putin has disqualified or allegedly murdered almost all his opponents in the race, it's a pretty good bet that a vote cast will be a vote for Putin.

I admit, it is true that this plan could be foiled by the state employees showing up to vote and reporting such in the app, but voting for a protest candidate and not Putin.

[Ralin]

Here in Belgium there is compulsory voting, but voting is done anonymous. In Russia that doesn't seems to be the case.

Wow I've never heard that. Do you have a source handy? It seems like a pretty big deal.

Since Putin has disqualified or allegedly murdered almost all his opponents in the race, it's a pretty good bet that a vote cast will be a vote for Putin.

I admit, it is true that this plan could be foiled by the state employees showing up to vote and reporting such in the app, but voting for a protest candidate and not Putin.

Or logging in as having voted and just not. Or write in Steven Seagal like people who don't like the choices in Australia do.

Seems like there's a fair amount of difference between the stated goal of boosting voter turnout out (most of which is expected to go to Putin) and the idea that this is somehow an attempt to strong-arm government workers into voting for Putin. And whatever other positions are also on the ballot, I would assume but don't actually know.

[wautd]

Here in Belgium there is compulsory voting, but voting is done anonymous. In Russia that doesn't seems to be the case.

Wow I've never heard that. Do you have a source handy? It seems like a pretty big deal.

I meant, that's just my how I perceived it with this 'loyalty app' but I could be wrong. Regardless, the Russian elections are a farce anyway when there is no real alternative to Putin. The handful of people that were allowed on the ballot are all pro war, and some literally said they don't want to win/want Putin to win. It's all a sad joke

[Ralin]

I meant, that's just my how I perceived it with this 'loyalty app' but I could be wrong.

That's one hell of a thing to toss out based on vibes.

[madd0c0t0r2]

I meant, that's just my how I perceived it with this 'loyalty app' but I could be wrong.

That's one hell of a thing to toss out based on vibes.

Do you want me to do the Bayesian calc for you? Or would you like a readong list on abusive power by state power holders?

[Gandalf]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_voting

Why are people acting like being required to vote is some special Russian tyranny move instead of something also done by noted fascist dictatorships Australia, Singapore and Belgium?

Here in Belgium there is compulsory voting, but voting is done anonymous. In Russia that doesn't seems to be the case.

Secret ballot is also the law of the land in Russia, if that helps.

[Rogue 9]

I don't know. Why does that matter?

So, background, I am an election worker in the United States. I know whereof I speak when I say that an election clerk can find out whether or not any given person in their jurisdiction has voted with a few keystrokes. This information is available to the state and in the case of primary elections can be and is made available to the parties, who use which party primary you voted in as a proxy for whether or not you qualify to run on their ballot should you seek candidacy. A measure such as a loyalty app on voters' phones is not necessary and reeks of some other purpose.

Well could you explain what that purpose is? Because all I'm seeing is a lot of innuendo about how it must somehow be intended to intimidate people into voting for Putin and not really any details beyond that, much less proof.

I don't know, I haven't seen the architecture of the app. But I do know that if it really does what it says on the tin, it's at best a redundant waste of the phone's resources.