Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Despite being outgunned and outmanned, Kiev troops sometimes fight like demons. I suspect Russia was counting on the Donetsk and Luhansk militias to do more of the fighting. Seems Russia is forming a Third Army (ThirdCorps) to reinforce the Donbas militias.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Friday, September 9, 2022 1:37 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

I suspect Russia was counting on the Donetsk and Luhansk militias to do more of the fighting.

I suspect you are blowing smoke. This is what Phillips Payson O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who is not bullshitting, has to say on the war. He is the author of How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II.

Ukraine Is Waging a New Kind of War
By Phillips Payson O’Brien

The fight to retake the city of Kherson plays to the Ukrainians’ strengths, not the Russians’.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220909133941/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2022/09/ukraine-counteroffensive-battle-of-kherson/671364/

Ukrainian officials, defending their country against Russian aggressors, began doing something in July that seemed odd, even counterintuitive: They started speaking loudly and regularly about their plans to liberate Kherson—a key southern city that Russia seized only a week after invading Ukraine on February 24. Indeed, the Ukrainians telegraphed their intentions in a way that the Russians could not mistake. This was like waving a red cape at an angry, incompetent bull. Almost immediately, rumors proliferated that the Russians were racing reinforcements to Kherson to prepare for the Ukrainian attack.

Goading the Russians into doing so seems to have been the Ukrainians’ exact goal. Fighting in Kherson plays to Ukrainian strength far more than to the Russians’. Russian occupiers in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas, where the war had been concentrated from April until July, can operate very close to the Russian border, seem to have solidly functional rail lines, and are currently trying to pressure the Ukrainians from two sides at the tip of the fighting around the town of Siversk. Fighting in Kherson, by contrast, nullifies almost all of Russia’s advantages in the Donbas. The Russians are at the edge of their supply lines, while the Ukrainians can maneuver around them. Kherson is deeper into Ukraine than the Donbas, so Russian aircraft have farther to travel to reach the front lines, and that clearly makes them nervous; they prefer to fly mostly over Russia itself or its ally Belarus. Finally, the entire Russian fighting force in Kherson depends for its supplies on just a small number of bridges that span the wide Dnipro River. In recent weeks, the Ukrainians have attacked those crossings almost nightly, severely hindering Russia from moving supplies to their hard-pressed troops in Kherson. The longer the Russians have to fight with limited supplies, the more the battle will turn in Ukraine’s favor.

Though Vladimir Putin had the reputation of a strategic genius when he started this war six months ago, the Ukrainians have exposed him as a plodding and unimaginative thinker who miscalculated enormously. Since then he has resorted to ponderous, unthinking offensives that have secured minimal gains at a very high cost. The Russian army, wildly overrated before the war by military analysts who hailed it as one of the most fast-moving, technologically sophisticated, and powerful in the world, turns out to be profoundly flawed. With ever-changing carousels of generals in charge, it has shown itself to be inflexible, uncreative, and unable to learn.

Ukraine has been on a more impressive trajectory. At the start of the war, the Ukrainians fought a surprisingly strong defensive struggle around Kyiv. Using attacks on Russian logistics and a strategy of denying the Russians access to Ukrainian cities, stringing Russian forces along the roads, and contesting the control of the air, they neutered the Russian drive on Kyiv in just a few weeks. Since then, the Ukrainian military has demonstrated the ability to adapt and develop new ways of countering the Russians. The sinking of the Moskva, the expulsion of the Russians from Snake Island, and the strikes on Russian facilities in occupied Crimea, an area previously thought too difficult to attack, show that the Ukrainians can plan and undertake missions requiring the operation of complex systems.

The challenge the Ukrainians now face is their most difficult one yet. They are attempting to liberate a large swath of land on the west bank of the Dnipro River, anchored by Kherson but stretching almost 100 miles in length and about 30 miles in width. The Ukrainians’ new offensive is a far grander and more complex operation than anything they have previously undertaken. They are trying to neutralize a large Russian force equipped with large stores of heavy weaponry, much of it just rushed to the Kherson region in preparation for the Ukrainian attack.

Since World War II, the advance of large armored forces has been based on control of the skies. The Ukrainians, though they are showing surprising ability in this area, are still battling the Russians for air supremacy. Moreover, Ukraine must move forward into territory now held by the enemy, rather than defend its own position. For almost all of the war, the Russians have been on the offensive. This has allowed the Ukrainians to use defensive firepower on them with great effectiveness. Recently, the number of photographically confirmed Russian-tank losses surpassed 1,000. The real figure is likely closer to 2,000; much of the destruction for the past few months has occurred in Russian-controlled territory, making photographic proof much more difficult to come by. Indeed, one could argue that the evolution of war, with the improvement of handheld anti-vehicle weapons and smaller drones, has given the defender important new advantages that make advancing extremely risky.

The Ukrainians seem to understand all of this. So far they have built a different kind of offensive in Kherson—one that could hold lessons for the future of war. What they have not done is prepare for the kind of operation that many were expecting the Russians to launch in February: a large-scale, fast-moving war in which armored units break through enemy lines and exploit the opening by moving quickly forward and cutting off or surrounding enemy forces. In the first week of this latest phase of the battle, launched on August 29, the Ukrainians have liberated just a handful of villages. But even though the front line has shifted only marginally, the Ukrainians are positioning themselves for a significant victory.

They have done this by patiently preparing the ground for success over the previous months. First, the United States and other NATO countries seemed persuaded, after seeing the tenacity and smarts that underlay the Ukrainian defense, to provide a great deal of intelligence information. The Ukrainians could thus gather a more complete picture of the logistics situation of the Russian army. Of course, they needed to translate this information into action, and for that they needed to improve the accuracy, range, and overall effectiveness of their artillery and rocket-launch systems. The Ukrainians went into the war mostly relying on old Russian or Soviet equipment, starved as they were of higher-quality NATO standard equipment by Western governments that discounted their country’s chances in a conventional war with Russia. Since then, however, the Ukrainians’ strength, resolution, and ingenuity have led the United States and other NATO countries to provide far superior weaponry. These include a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which, despite being relatively old for the American military, has shown itself in Ukrainian hands to be considerably better than any Russian equivalent. Since the Ukrainians first deployed HIMARS, at the end of June, they have methodically targeted Russian supply depots, greatly constraining the invaders’ ability to move forward.

Even more recently, Ukraine has started operating high-speed anti-radiation missiles, which take out enemy radar and seem to be playing havoc with Russian anti-aircraft defenses. This has allowed the Ukrainians to more fruitfully use drones, including the Turkish-made Bayraktars that seem to be exacting a heavy toll on Russian forces in Kherson.

As such, even with the announcements of the Ukrainians’ transition to a more intense phase of the Battle of Kherson on August 29, we have not seen major attempts to push tanks through the Russian lines. Instead, we have seen Ukrainians probing up and down the line, trying to assess the location and strength of Russian forces, attack weak spots, advance cautiously, and, most of all, continue the regular attrition of Russian forces. This kind of warfare—which involves building up offensive capability, tempting the enemy to rush defensive forces in, and then destroying those forces—moves slowly, and it does not resemble many analysts’ view of how modern war looks. But it plays to Ukrainian strengths while magnifying Russian losses.

Exactly how long the renewed Battle of Kherson will continue is tricky to say. Even if Ukraine is relatively successful, this phase of accelerated attrition might last for several weeks; even if Russian forces collapse in some places, they may prove harder to dislodge from others. However, as long as the Ukrainians can cut off Russian traffic across the Dnipro and use their superior systems to wear down Russian forces, they stand an excellent chance of driving them out of the west bank of the river. This would be the war’s most important victory since the Battle of Kyiv.

Phillips Payson O’Brien is a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is the author of How the War Was Won: Air-Sea Power and Allied Victory in World War II.

Download free books from Phillips Payson O’Brien from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.cat/search.php?req=Phillips+Payson+O%E2%80%99
Brien

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, September 9, 2022 4:48 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

All kinds of interpretations but one commentator made the parallel to Palmyra in Syria. As I recall, it was taken by the Russians but was left to the Syrians to hold. Then the Russians focused on Aleppo which allowed ISIS to re-take Palmyra while the Syrian troops ran away.

I don't follow military affairs too much, but there were criticisms of the Syrian Army that I recall, and that was the Syrian Army wasn't really a national army, it was a group of poorly-trained, cobbled-together and ineptly-commanded local and regional militias. And that if you moved a militia from... say, Afrin to Palmyra... and they thought that Afrin was under attack, they would decamp back to Afrin.

Bear with me, I'm getting there...

At some point, Russia gave up trying to reform the whole Syrian Army and created a whole new division with new recruits and new commanders.

****

I see much the same dynamic in Ukraine. Russia has not actually committed a large number of troops to this "SMO". Much of the fighting is being done by the Luhansk and Donetsk militias. And bc the fighting is being done by local troops, they have a large say in what happens next. It's been mentioned more than once that the fight for Mariupol was stretched out by several weeks when Donetsk city came under shelling and a part of the military force in Mariupol left to defend Donetsk.

And when it would make more sense to advance on Bakhmut, the attacks are redirected to Avdivka, which is a heavily fortified settlement that is shelling Donetsk city.

Anyway, "Russians" were NOT in control in this region of Kharkiv. There were some militarized Russian police, but this was mostly in the hands of LPR forces. The questions "Why didn't you lay minefields?" and "Why didn't you create reinforced defenses?" or "Why didn't you ask for more artillery?" should be directed to the LPR.

Possibly this is Russia's attempt to train up the militias to national army standards by letting reality bitch slap them with failure, or winnowing out poor commanders. I suspect that Russia will pull their bacon out of the fire and possibly turn this into a cauldron. And maybe this was necessary but it sure looks bad. In the meantime, expect a massacre of "collaborators" by Kiev's army, a la Bucha.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Friday, September 9, 2022 6:05 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

Possibly this is Russia's attempt to train up the militias to national army standards by letting reality bitch slap them with failure, or winnowing out poor commanders. I suspect that Russia will pull their bacon out of the fire and possibly turn this into a cauldron. And maybe this was necessary but it sure looks bad. In the meantime, expect a massacre of "collaborators" by Kiev's army, a la Bucha.

And possibly you made up this story in your head. Please quote somebody who actually knows rather than you creating Russian fan-fiction.

By the way, Signym, those dead bodies at Bucha were killed by Russians. Here is what an actual source looks like, Signym: Bucha Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre

But if wikipedia is not to your taste, there are many more references at https://www.google.com/search?q=Bucha using a single word "Bucha".

‘I again urge Russia to stop this illegal aggression,’ the former United Nations secretary general tells The Independent. Ban Ki-moon says perpetrators of Bucha massacres must face justice: ‘If not today, tomorrow’. Former United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has spoken of his horror at the slaughter of hundreds of Ukrainian citizens whose bodies were dumped in mass graves by Russian troops.
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/world/ban-ki-moon-buc
ha-ukraine-zelensky-b2162125.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, September 9, 2022 6:19 PM

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Friday, September 9, 2022 7:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Shut up, meat popsicle.

Your time is over.

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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus
You are not okay in the head, 6ix. Neither is Trump:

Yup. Whatever you say, retard.

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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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Friday, September 9, 2022 7:32 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND:
Google?
Wikipedia?
Shirley, you jest!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Saturday, September 10, 2022 6:50 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Despite being outgunned and outmanned, Kiev troops sometimes fight like demons. I suspect Russia was counting on the Donetsk and Luhansk militias to do more of the fighting. Seems Russia is forming a Third Army (ThirdCorps) to reinforce the Donbas militias.

It's a rout comrade signym. Told you so.

T

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Saturday, September 10, 2022 8:22 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
SECOND:
Google?
Wikipedia?
Shirley, you jest!

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

There are two explanations for dead civilians at Bucha:

1) Russia's - the civilians were killed by Ukrainians.
2) Ukraine's - the civilians were killed by Russians.

You could pick one depending on which side is your personal favorite. Here is an example of option 1) Russia's - the civilians were killed by Ukrainians.:

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

Possibly this is Russia's attempt to train up the militias to national army standards by letting reality bitch slap them with failure, or winnowing out poor commanders. I suspect that Russia will pull their bacon out of the fire and possibly turn this into a cauldron. And maybe this was necessary but it sure looks bad. In the meantime, expect a massacre of "collaborators" by Kiev's army, a la Bucha.

Alternatively, you could go to Duck Duck Go https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Bucha

Duck Duck Go says the truth is option 2) Ukraine's - the civilians were killed by Russians:

Quote:
Duped by the Kremlin’s announcements that said Ukraine needed to be “liberated” from neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, Russian troops found themselves among a “stormy sea” of hostile civilians, he said.

They resorted to killing adult males and raping women as the only way to “suppress resistance and achieve a collective nervous breakdown”, he said.

“[It was] physical and psychological destruction of a will to resist,” Kushch said.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/4/will-the-bucha-massacre-wake-u
p-the-world

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, September 10, 2022 8:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Alternatively, you could go to Duck Duck Go https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Bucha

Duck Duck Go says the truth is option 2) Ukraine's - the civilians were killed by Russians:
Quote:
Duped by the Kremlin’s announcements that said Ukraine needed to be “liberated” from neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists, Russian troops found themselves among a “stormy sea” of hostile civilians, he said.

They resorted to killing adult males and raping women as the only way to “suppress resistance and achieve a collective nervous breakdown”, he said.

“[It was] physical and psychological destruction of a will to resist,” Kushch said.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/4/will-the-bucha-massacre-wake-u
p-the-world

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

They learned that from Biden* and the Democrats.

After terrorizing the public for a year, they raped a few hundred million Americans, including children, by forcibly penetrating their bodies with needles, "for their own good".

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Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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Saturday, September 10, 2022 3:08 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

September 8, 2022

Vladimir Putin aims to expand Russia’s armed forces by 137,000. But hitting that target won’t be easy. The U.S. experience in Vietnam hints at the challenges.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Moscow must increase the size of its military was greeted as good news – not by his supporters, but rather by those who are rooting for Ukraine.

It’s a sign, they say, that Mr. Putin’s war isn’t going well for him.

This point was driven home by the development this summer that officials from the Wagner Group – the Russian government’s defense contractor of choice – were offering prisoners parole in exchange for fighting on the front lines.

“It’s a sign of desperation,” says retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “These are not the kind of people who will show up and contribute to the fighting capability of any Russian unit.”

This is not bad news from the perspective of Ukrainian forces, though the use of prisoners also raises the risk of more Russian war crimes, analysts add.

Yet as the war grinds on, it’s clear that Mr. Putin is anxious to avoid bringing the protracted conflict to the attention of the greater Russian public, which has, up to this point, largely been able to continue life as usual. The question is whether he will be able to carry on with this domestic shielding strategy moving forward.

A draft would mean “pulling people from Moscow and St. Petersburg – and they don’t want to have funerals there,” Mr. Hodges says. “Politically, it would be extremely difficult for even the Kremlin to explain all that.”

America learned from its own experience that drafts tend to cause political problems – and that conscripts generally don’t make the best soldiers.

During the Vietnam War, soldiers pressed into service “brought in attitudes and behaviors that were contrary to good order and discipline,” including drug use and insubordination, says Brandon Archuleta, an Army strategist and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

After draft lotteries were put in place in 1969 in an effort to address unfairness in the system, privileged conscripts outraged at their own predicaments also started asking pointed questions about why America was at war in the first place.

Conscription tends to inspire myriad such questions, analysts note, unless the nation sees itself as facing an existential threat, as with the United States in World War II.

A number of zealous armchair Russian commentators are now pushing Mr. Putin to create a draft, arguing that Russia is indeed facing just such a threat in Ukraine – an argument in keeping with the official Kremlin line.

Mr. Putin, however, is well aware of the political turmoil conscriptions tend to cause.

Though votes are less a concern for Mr. Putin as a means of retaining power, it is likely not lost on him that “conscripts usually vote against those who conscripted them,” Professor Milam notes.

At the same time, military leaders don’t like drafts either, and in the wake of Vietnam, the top echelons of Pentagon leadership fought to put in place an all-volunteer force, which ultimately happened in 1973.

By the Reagan-era defense buildup, “You see morale, good order, and jumps in the right direction in the Army,” Dr. Archuleta says.

In an all-volunteer force, there may be “all kinds of reasons for joining – for money, you need a job,” Professor Milam adds. “But at least you raised your hand of your own volition. In a conscript Army, you don’t want to do it – but your country is making you.”

OK with war, but not wanting to fight

Though figures show that Russian support for war remains high – hovering at around 76% of respondents in favor, according to the Russian independent polling organization Levada – that doesn’t mean that Russians actually want to fight in it.

When Ukrainian forces struck an air base deep inside enemy lines in Crimea last month, it sent thousands of seemingly surprised Russian tourists in swimsuits rushing from their beach cabanas to their cars, filling jammed roads along the coast.

“They hauled [themselves] out of there while Russian soldiers were dying a few miles away,” Mr. Hodges says. “They weren’t going to the local recruiting office saying, ‘Hey, I want to get into the fight.’”

Though Russia requires all men between ages 18 and 27 to serve one year in the military, the government has promised that these recruits would not be sent to the “special military operation” in Ukraine – though it acknowledged that did indeed happen “by mistake” earlier in the war.

Still, many educated and connected citizens – not to mention sons of oligarchs – in the cosmopolitan centers manage to get out of this mandatory military service, claiming health exemptions or student deferments.

A draft that impacts the big cities could prove “terribly embarrassing when the whole world sees that so many people wouldn’t show up” in the face of mass conscription, says Mr. Hodges.

It would be discomfiting, too, he adds, to establish a draft for a campaign the Kremlin insists is not a war at all.

“The challenge politically that the Russians have is signaling to the Russian populace that the war is going well and as planned – while trying to replenish their depleted forces on the front,” Dr. Archuleta says. “You can’t call up conscripts without leveling with your populace that the war isn’t going well.”

This, analysts say, is what Mr. Putin is trying to avoid at all costs.

More at https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2022/0908/As-Putin-seeks-a-larg
er-army-some-see-echoes-of-US-in-Vietnam

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, September 10, 2022 5:40 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine? What we know, how we know it and what it really means.

The estimates range from 1,351 and 43,000, but this much is clear: Russia has a manpower problem.

As the 19th-century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified.”

The impact of all these casualties undeniably important, given that troop losses are likely to be a main determinant of the outcome.
Too bad for Kiev they've lost 100,000 (conservative estimate) to 300,000 soldiers.

Update, Ukraine has taken back a thousand sq. miles in two weeks. Comrade signym, can_you_see_me_laughing?

T

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Saturday, September 10, 2022 5:59 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Apparently Russia and allied forces have decided to w/ draw from the Kharkiv region. So much for me being a military strategist! There must a lot of things I don't know about the specifics. Alexander Mercouris opined yesterday that they might w/draw from Izyum. Possibly the area is too forested and too easy to launch an attack/ too hard to defend/ not important enough to commit required troops. Perhaps they want to clear the Donbas first and put Kharkiv on the back burner until winter when trees will be bare and they can target bombs/ shells more easily. Or, again, it could be that the troops mostly committed tothe area - Luhansk irregulars- aren't as committed to Kharkiv.

Hard to say.

Here is a good discussion

IMHO Alexander doesn't do his own military analysis but he IS particularly well-informed. He has many people contacting him and a wide circle of friends, acquaintances and contacts and he's pretty gootd at picking out what mades sense.

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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 6:24 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

As Russians Retreat, Putin Is Criticized by Hawks Who Trumpeted His War

As Russian forces hastily retreated in northeastern Ukraine on Saturday in one of their most embarrassing setbacks of the war, President Vladimir V. Putin was at a park in Moscow, presiding over the grand opening of a Ferris wheel.

“It’s very important for people to be able to relax with friends and family,” Mr. Putin intoned.

The split-screen contrast was stunning, even for some of Mr. Putin’s loudest backers. And it underscored a growing rift between the Kremlin and the invasion’s most fervent cheerleaders. For the cheerleaders, Russia’s retreat appeared to confirm their worst fears: that senior Russian officials were so concerned with maintaining a business-as-usual atmosphere back home that they had failed to commit the necessary equipment and personnel to fight a long war against a determined enemy.

“You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one pro-Russian blogger wrote in a widely circulated post on Saturday, referring to the Putin-led celebrations in Moscow commemorating the 875th anniversary of the city’s founding. “What is wrong with you? Not at the time of such a horrible failure.”

Even as Moscow celebrated, he wrote, the Russian Army was fighting without enough night vision goggles, flak jackets, first-aid kits or drones. A few hundred miles away, Ukrainian forces retook the Russian military stronghold of Izium, continuing their rapid advance across the northeast and igniting a dramatic new phase in the war.

The outrage from Russian hawks on Saturday showed that even as Mr. Putin had succeeded in eliminating just about all of the liberal and pro-democracy opposition in Russia’s domestic politics, he still faced the risk of discontent from the conservative end of the political spectrum. For the moment, there was little indication that these hawks would turn on Mr. Putin as a result of Ukraine’s seemingly successful counteroffensive; but analysts said that their increasing readiness to criticize the military leadership publicly pointed to simmering discontent within the Russian elite.

“Most of these people are in shock and did not think that this could happen,” Dmitri Kuznets, who analyzes the war for the Russian-language news outlet Meduza, said in a phone interview. “Most of them are, I think, genuinely angry.”

The Kremlin, as usual, tried to minimize the setbacks. The defense ministry described the retreat as a decision “to regroup” its troops, even though the ministry said a day earlier that it was moving to reinforce its defensive positions in the region. The authorities in Moscow carried on with their festive weekend, with fireworks and state television showing hundreds lined up to ride the new, 460-foot-tall Ferris wheel.

But online, Russia’s failures were in plain sight — underscoring the startling role that pro-Russian military bloggers on the social network Telegram have played in shaping the narrative of the war. While the Kremlin controls the television airwaves in Russia and has blocked access to Instagram and Facebook, Telegram remains freely accessible and is filled with posts and videos from supporters and opponents of the war alike.

The widely followed pro-war bloggers — some embedded with Russian troops near the front line — amplify the Kremlin’s false message that Russia is fighting “Nazis” and refer to Ukrainians in derogatory and dehumanizing ways. But they are also divulging far more detailed — and, analysts say, accurate — information about the battlefield than the Russian Defense Ministry is, which they say is underestimating the enemy and withholding bad news from the public.

One of the bloggers, Yuri Podolyaka, who is from Ukraine but moved to ?rimea following its annexation in 2014, told his 2.3 million Telegram followers on Friday that if the military continued to play down its battlefield setbacks, Russians would “cease to trust the Ministry of Defense and soon the government as a whole.”

It was the bloggers who first rang alarm bells publicly about a possible Ukrainian counteroffensive in the country’s northeast.

On Aug. 30, a Kremlin spokesman held his regular conference call with journalists and repeated his mantra: The invasion of Ukraine was going “in accordance with the plans.”

The same day, several Russian bloggers were reporting on social media that something was very much not going according to plan. Ukraine was building up forces for a counterattack near the town of Balakliya, they said, and Russia did not appear in position to defend against it.

“Hello, hello, anybody home?” one asked. “Are we ready to fend off an attack in this direction?”

Days later, it became apparent that the answer was no. Ukrainian forces overran Russia’s thin defenses in Balakliya and other nearby towns in northeastern Ukraine. By this weekend, some analysts estimated that the territory retaken by Ukraine amounted to about 1,000 square miles, a potential turning point in what had become a war of attrition this summer.

“It’s time to punish the commanders who allowed these kinds of things,” Maksim Fomin, a pro-Russian blogger from eastern Ukraine, said in a video published on Friday, claiming that Russian forces did not even try to resist as Ukraine’s military swept forward this week.

Some of the bloggers are embedded with military units and work for state-run or pro-Kremlin media outlets, preparing reports for television while providing more detail on their Telegram accounts. Others appear to operate more independently, relying on personal connections for access near the front line and adding their bank details to their Telegram posts to solicit donations.

Mr. Kuznets, a former Russian war correspondent himself, said that Russian military officials appeared to tolerate the presence of war bloggers despite their occasional criticism, in part because they agreed with the bloggers’ hawkish, imperialist views. And the bloggers play a crucial role in spreading the pro-Russian message on social media, where their audience includes both Russians and Ukrainians.

Still, among some bloggers, the anger over the Russian military’s mistakes reached a fever pitch on Saturday. One called Russia’s retreat a “catastrophe,” while others said that it had left the residents who collaborated with Russian forces at the mercy of Ukrainian troops — potentially undermining the credibility of the occupying authorities all across the territory that Russia still holds.

And while the Kremlin still maintains that the invasion is merely a “special military operation,” several bloggers insisted on Saturday that Russia was, in fact, fighting a full-fledged war — not just against Ukraine, but against a united West that is backing Kyiv.

The stunned fury reflects how some analysts believe many in the Russian elite view the war: a campaign rife with incompetence, conducted on the cheap, that can only be won if Mr. Putin mobilizes the nation onto a war footing and declares a draft.

“I am sure that they reflect the opinion of their sources and the people they know and work with,” Mr. Kuznets said. “I think the biggest group among these people believes that it is necessary to fight harder and carry out a mobilization.”

Both Western and Russian analysts said that Mr. Putin would need a draft to sharply expand the size of his invading force. But he appears determined to resist such a measure, which could shatter the passivity with which much of the Russian public has treated the war. In August, 48 percent of Russians told the independent pollster Levada that they were paying little or no attention to the events in Ukraine.

As a result, analysts say, Mr. Putin faces no good options. Escalating a war whose domestic support may turn out to be superficial could stir domestic unrest, while continuing retreats on the battlefield could spur a backlash from hawks who have bought into the Kremlin narrative that Russia is fighting “Nazis” for its very survival.

Ever since Russia retreated in April from its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s goals in the war have been unclear, disorienting Mr. Putin’s supporters, said Rob Lee, a military analyst at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“The Ukrainians’ war effort is obvious, it’s understandable, whereas on the Russian side, it was always a question of: What is Russia doing?” Mr. Lee said in a phone interview. “The goals aren’t clear, and how they achieve those goals isn’t clear. If you’re fighting a war and you’re not sure what the ultimate goal is, you’re going to be quite frustrated about that.”

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as-russians-retreat-putin-is-crit
icized-by-hawks-who-trumpeted-his-war/ar-AA11GyNN

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 10:06 AM

Ukraine had better win this war in 59 days or they're fucked.

Tick Tock

--------------------------------------------------

Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 10:23 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ukraine had better win this war in 59 days or they're fucked.

Tick Tock

Tuesday, November 8, 2022 is not that important. You know that the next Congress isn't sworn in until January 3, 2023. Only 5 percent of Republicans support Russia over Ukraine, but the MAGA wing of the GOP has continually sided with Putin and against Ukraine. Unless the MAGA in Congress, or Trumptards as I prefer to call them, become the majority in 2023, the United States will continue to support Ukraine.

https://accountability.gop/ukraine-quotes/

Evidence that 6ix is from the MAGA wing of the GOP:

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Ukraine is a joke. I'm sure Russia is doing fine.

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64889&mid=11620
09#1162009

6ix, Russia is not doing fine. Trump won't be fine, either, but I do wish he is the GOP's 2024 Presidential candidate.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 5:08 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

On the eastern front, a stunning week of Ukrainian success and Russian failures

Updated 3:04 PM ET, Sun September 11, 2022

The last week has seen a stunning transformation of the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, as a swift armored offensive by Ukrainian forces rolled through lines of Russian defenses and recaptured more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory.

That is more territory than Russian forces have captured in all their operations in Ukraine since April.

As much as the offensive was brilliantly conceived and executed, it also succeeded because of Russian inadequacies. Throughout swathes of the Kharkiv region, Russian units were poorly organized and equipped -- and many offered little resistance.

Their failures, and their disorderly retreat to the east, has made the goal of President Vladimir Putin's special military operation to take all of Luhansk and Donetsk regions considerably harder to attain.

Over the weekend, the Russian retreat continued from border areas that had been occupied since March. Villages within five kilometers of the border were raising the Ukrainian flag.

The collapse of Russian defenses has ignited recriminations among influential Russian military bloggers and personalities in Russian state media.

As the Ukrainian flag was raised in one community after another over the last several days, one question came into focus: how does the Kremlin respond?

. . . The poor quality of Russian defenses along a critical north-south axis sustaining the Donetsk offensive is hard to fathom. Once underway, the intent of the Ukrainian offensive was crystal clear -- to destroy that artery of resupply. Within three days, they had done so -- not least because Russian reinforcements were slow to be mobilized.

. . . The most influential -- and perhaps surprising -- public critic of the situation was Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has supplied thousands of fighters to the offensive. In a Telegram post Sunday, he said he would be contacting senior officials at the Defense Ministry to spell out his message.

"It's clear that mistakes were made. I think they will draw a few conclusions," he said.

Hinting at disarray among commanders, Kadyrov said that "if Russia's General Staff did not want to leave, the (troops) wouldn't back out" -- but Russian soldiers "didn't have proper military training" and that led them to retreat.

. . . A pro-Putin blogger who goes by the name Kholmogorov reposted an account by the Partizan Telegram channel from the front lines, essentially accusing the Russian authorities of abandoning the troops.

"The soldiers were on foot with one machine gun and a sack. Abandoned by the command, not knowing the way, they walked at random," the post said.

More at https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/11/europe/ukraine-russia-eastern-front/ind
ex.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 6:13 PM

Comrade like all other Russians, you just can't speak the truth. It won't come out of your mouth.

Can_you_see_me_laughing? Can you?

T

5 MINUTES AGO! Moscow Officials Urge Putin to GTFO: ‘Everything Went Wrong’

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Apparently Russia and allied forces have decided to w/ draw from the Kharkiv region. So much for me being a military strategist! There must a lot of things I don't know about the specifics. Alexander Mercouris opined yesterday that they might w/draw from Izyum. Possibly the area is too forested and too easy to launch an attack/ too hard to defend/ not important enough to commit required troops. Perhaps they want to clear the Donbas first and put Kharkiv on the back burner until winter when trees will be bare and they can target bombs/ shells more easily. Or, again, it could be that the troops mostly committed tothe area - Luhansk irregulars- aren't as committed to Kharkiv.

Hard to say.

Here is a good discussion

IMHO Alexander doesn't do his own military analysis but he IS particularly well-informed. He has many people contacting him and a wide circle of friends, acquaintances and contacts and he's pretty gootd at picking out what mades sense.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 6:35 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Typical border crossing from Ukraine into Russia on Google Maps:

https://goo.gl/maps/GGTS5xpEkMkURcHu7

There is nothing stopping Ukraine, other than orders, from going all the way to the closest Russian city.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, September 11, 2022 9:56 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Comrade like all other Russians, you just can't speak the truth. It won't come out of your mouth.

The video isn't me, and he's not Russian

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Monday, September 12, 2022 2:20 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ukrainian troops retook a wide swath of territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the northeastern border in some places, and claimed to have captured many Russian soldiers as part of a lightning advance that forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat.

A spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence said Russian troops were surrendering en masse as “they understand the hopelessness of their situation.” A Ukrainian presidential adviser said there were so many POWs that the country was running out of space to accommodate them.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-kharkiv-a691ab16016aab0
1cedb68ea5e247b37

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, September 12, 2022 3:53 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukrainian troops retook a wide swath of territory from Russia on Monday, pushing all the way back to the northeastern border in some places, and claimed to have captured many Russian soldiers as part of a lightning advance that forced Moscow to make a hasty retreat.

A spokesman for Ukrainian military intelligence said Russian troops were surrendering en masse as “they understand the hopelessness of their situation.” A Ukrainian presidential adviser said there were so many POWs that the country was running out of space to accommodate them.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-kharkiv-a691ab16016aab0
1cedb68ea5e247b37

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Baloney. It was widely reported BEFORE the lightning strike that the Izyum area was virtually devoid of Russian troops and was only lightly manned with Luhansk irregulars. There were no mass surrenders. There was no mass caoture of heavy weaponry. You should know by now that Kiev and western officials lie virtually every time they open their mouths.

Here's an example:

Quote:
Cold, Hunger and Darkness in Ukraine 'Not as Terrible' as Russia: Zelensky

https://www.newsweek.com/cold-hunger-darkness-ukraine-not-terrible-rus
sia-zelensky-1741891

Seriously? With Kiev's economy only given a semblance of life by western aide? Why is Z compelled to lie? Bc

Quote:
Vengeful Putin blitzes Ukraine power stations plunging 9million into darkness

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/19777406/putin-blitzes-ukraine-revenge-z
elensky-russian-terrorists/

They don't tell little white lies, they tell Hilterian Josef Goebbels-sized lies. That you are stupid enough to repeat them just means you're as stupid as a faithful German Nazi.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Monday, September 12, 2022 4:35 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

They don't tell little white lies, they tell Hilterian Josef Goebbels-sized lies. That you are stupid enough to repeat them just means you're as stupid as a faithful German Nazi.

The next year will reveal whether or not Putin is the Emperor With No Clothes and whether or not the Russian Army is naked and incompetent. Who knows? But Russia did an estimated $350 billion in damage to Ukraine. It would be only fair if Ukraine did equal damage to Russian real estate.

Sept 9 (Reuters) - Rebuilding Ukraine after Russian invasion may cost $350 bln, experts say
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-invasion-ukraine-caused-o
ver-97-bln-damages-report-2022-09-09/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, September 12, 2022 4:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Comrade like all other Russians, you just can't speak the truth. It won't come out of your mouth.
The video isn't me, and he's not Russian

Your response takes my post out of context. No matter comrade it stands without support from you.

T

'Situation more difficult by the hour': Ukrainian forces break through to Russian border.

The Ukraine military's stunning offensive gained momentum Monday, reclaiming several more northeastern villages and forcing the retreat of overwhelmed Russian troops from the region.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/situation-more-difficult-by-the-h
our-ukrainian-forces-break-through-to-russian-border-live-updates/ar-AA11JlD5?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=57cf16821b524fa2bdbe4cbe6b0ee331

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Monday, September 12, 2022 5:20 PM

*yawn*...

Nobody gives a shit.

--------------------------------------------------

Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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Monday, September 12, 2022 6:07 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

They don't tell little white lies, they tell Hilterian Josef Goebbels-sized lies. That you are stupid enough to repeat them just means you're as stupid as a faithful German Nazi.
The next year will reveal whether or not Putin is the Emperor With No Clothes and whether or not the Russian Army is naked and incompetent. Who knows? But Russia did an estimated $350 billion in damage to Ukraine. It would be only fair if Ukraine did equal damage to Russian real estate.

How? Kiev has few military planes, no long-range artillery and old, slow missiles left in it's arsenal and Russia has decent air defenses.

Unless Kiev resorts to terror action. The Chechens tried it: it did not work well for them.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Monday, September 12, 2022 6:26 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

How? Kiev has few military planes, no long-range artillery and old, slow missiles left in it's arsenal and Russia has decent air defenses.

Unless Kiev resorts to terror action. The Chechens tried it: it did not work well for them.

If Ukraine can regain its old borders from 2014, its artillery will reach 50 miles into Russia. Ukraine could establish a demilitarized zone 50 miles wide inside Russia. Maybe that loss of Russian real estate value will be approximately equal to the real estate damage Russia did to Ukraine.

The secrets of Russia's artillery war in Ukraine
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-russia-is-waging-its-war-with-arti
llery-in-ukraine-2022-7
Ukraine uses Western-supplied HIMARS and M270 rocket artillery systems, which can precisely attack targets nearly 50 miles away using GPS-guided rockets.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, September 12, 2022 7:08 PM

Sure thing, Z.

Poke the bear. See what happens to you.

--------------------------------------------------

Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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Monday, September 12, 2022 7:27 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Sure thing, Z.

Poke the bear. See what happens to you.

Putin said Ukraine should be wiped from the face of the earth, so Putin can't be trusted to remain peaceful after this war has a ceasefire. A 50 mile-wide demilitarized zone, on Russian territory, is the answer to Putin being totally untrustworthy.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, September 12, 2022 7:43 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

How? Kiev has few military planes, no long-range artillery and old, slow missiles left in it's arsenal and Russia has decent air defenses.

Unless Kiev resorts to terror action. The Chechens tried it: it did not work well for them.
If Ukraine can regain its old borders from 2014

Hahahaha!!!

Not gonna happen, muchacho!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Monday, September 12, 2022 8:23 PM

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Monday, September 12, 2022 8:33 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

When, THUGR??

WHEN??

Put your predictions on the line. Set a date. Next month? In six months?
Stop being a weasel.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Monday, September 12, 2022 9:17 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

How? Kiev has few military planes, no long-range artillery and old, slow missiles left in it's arsenal and Russia has decent air defenses.

Unless Kiev resorts to terror action. The Chechens tried it: it did not work well for them.
If Ukraine can regain its old borders from 2014
Hahahaha!!!

Not gonna happen, muchacho!

Let's do a calculation: Russia sends 250,000 troops to Ukraine. The USA sends $25 billion in ammo to Ukraine. Divide one number by the other gives $100,000 worth of explosives for each Russian. I'm pretty sure it is possible to kill every Russian inside of Ukraine. But then Putin has plenty more Russians to sacrifice for his personal glory. Maybe $25 billion in ammo isn't enough, but the USA has agreed to send $40 billion worth. Maybe that is enough to kill them all and discourage Putin. Only Putin knows how many Russians must die before he changes his mind.

U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine Grows to Historic Proportions — Along With Risks
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/u-s-military-aid-to-ukraine-grows-to-his
toric-proportions-along-with-risks/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, September 12, 2022 9:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:

When, THUGR??

WHEN??

Put your predictions on the line. Set a date. Next month? In six months?

Stop being a weasel.

Are you a total idiot. It's happening now.

T

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Monday, September 12, 2022 9:57 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Uh huh.

Pretty transparent dodge, THUGR.

You're not fooling anyone.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE someone poor - William Blake

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Monday, September 12, 2022 11:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Sure thing, Z.

Poke the bear. See what happens to you.
Putin said Ukraine should be wiped from the face of the earth, so Putin can't be trusted to remain peaceful after this war has a ceasefire.

Oh yeah? Show me.

--------------------------------------------------

Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 12:26 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Sure thing, Z.

Poke the bear. See what happens to you.
Putin said Ukraine should be wiped from the face of the earth, so Putin can't be trusted to remain peaceful after this war has a ceasefire.

Oh yeah? Show me.

For the past three months, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have been ominously threatening to use nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. According to Pavel Podvig, the director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project and a former research fellow at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, now based in Geneva, the long-range ballistic missiles deployed on land and on submarines are Russia’s only nuclear weapons available for immediate use. If Putin decides to attack Ukraine with shorter-range, “tactical” nuclear weapons, they will have to be removed from an Object S site—such as Belgorod-22, just 25 miles from the Ukrainian border—and transported to military bases. It will take hours for the weapons to be made combat-ready, for warheads to be mated with cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, for hydrogen bombs to be loaded on planes. The United States will most likely observe the movement of these weapons in real time: by means of satellite surveillance, cameras hidden beside the road, local agents with binoculars. And that will raise a question of existential importance: What should the United States do?

https://web.archive.org/web/20220823232819/https://www.theatlantic.com
/ideas/archive/2022/06/russia-ukraine-nuclear-weapon-us-response/661315/

Signym, two world leaders constantly make threats to nuke their enemies. One is Kim Jong-un and the other is Putin. Neither is trustworthy. Kim has a 2 km wide demilitarized zone separating him from the world. Russia deserves a 50-mile wide demilitarized zone around it.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 7:26 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Russian air force is missing in action. It has made no meaningful effort to halt the twin Ukrainian counteroffensives that kicked off on Aug. 30 in the south and eight days later in the east.

The Russian air force is airborne artillery. Pilots bomb — sight unseen — coordinates that ground commanders provide them, often based on old intelligence. The air force doesn’t track enemy ground troops in real time. It doesn’t free its pilots to hunt the enemy on their own.

As long as the Ukrainians keep moving — and to be clear, they’ve been moving fast since late August — they should be able to stay inside the Russian air force’s targeting processes, and avoid attack.

On those few occasions in the last 10 days that the Russians have launched sorties, pilots have faced stiff Ukrainian air-defenses. The government in Kyiv claimed its forces shot down nine Russian warplanes between Aug. 29 and Sept. 12. Independent analysts scouring social media for photos and videos have confirmed at least five losses, including two Su-25s, two Su-34s and an Su-30.

It’s unclear exactly how the Ukrainians shot down the Russian jets, but The Economist cited Ukrainian sources singling out the German-made Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns. Berlin is providing Kyiv 20 of the classic vehicles.

The Gepard is mobile and protected, as it combines the basic chassis of a Leopard tank with a lightly-armored turret. Its twin Oerlikon cannons fire 550 rounds a minute out to a range of three miles. The three-person crew is cued by a turret-mounted radar with a nine-mile range.

The Ukrainians’ Gepards, combined with their other air-defense systems — including long-range S-300s, medium-range Buks and short-range Strelas and shoulder-fired missiles — should top the Russian air force’s list of targets. If it could suppress Ukrainian air-defenses and speed up its targeting cycle, the Russian air arm could become relevant again.

But 200 days into Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the Russian air force still hasn’t made a concerted effort to find, track and attack Ukrainian air-defenses.

Contrast this with the Ukrainian air force’s own SEAD campaign. Ukrainian MiG-29s and Su-27s firing American-made anti-radar missiles have knocked out some Russian air-defense systems and suppressed many more. In essence, scaring their crews into turning off their radars.

Which is one reason why the Ukrainian air force – with its 100 or so surviving jets–is active where the much larger Russian air force — 300 jets just at bases near Ukraine — is idle. Photos and videos from the current counteroffensives depict Ukrainian planes conducting close-air-support missions near the fast-moving front lines.

It’s possible that, with the onset of winter in the next couple months, the front could freeze in place — and Russian commanders might discover that their outdated doctrine is useful again.

But Ukrainian air-defenses might be even more dangerous by then. The United States and Germany both have pledged to Ukraine new and better surface-to-air missiles, which should begin arriving soon.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-air-force-goes-missing-a
t-the-worst-possible-time-during-ukraine-s-counteroffensive/ar-AA11Komb

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 8:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Kremlin anticipates operation to end soon, maybe within "days".
https://www.rt.com/russia/553495-operation-ukraine-end-days-kremlin/

The only military onjective that is within "days" is the destruction of a large part of Ukraine's army in SE Ukraine.

Meanwhile, I've been looking for General Gerasimov in the news, and he is nowhere to be found, indicationg a possible planning/military intelligence failure. (Based on human intel disinfo about the morale of the Ukie army and/or the "dug in" nature of Ukie positions).

I have no doubt that Russia could "win" the entire Ukraine, but what would "winning" look like? If Mariupol is any indication it would require Russian army losses, the destruction of alot of civilian infrastructure (which Russia would be responsible for fixing) and overseeing a resentful people. Cost v reward doesn't pencil out.

I think Russia will aim for achieving most of its goals by splitting off SE and coastal Ukraine and negotiating neutrality from "rump" Ukraine. Being practical.

Meanwhile, if Russia's other goals in this hybrid war were to

expose the west's hatred of Russia and Russians and solidify the Russian populatin
expose the risky nature of dollar-denominated assets
split the world and commit China to the Russian side
fully divorce Russia's economy and finances from the west

I'd say ... job well done.

Poor signym, her lies are being exposed in real time.

T

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 9:20 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Kremlin anticipates operation to end soon, maybe within "days".
https://www.rt.com/russia/553495-operation-ukraine-end-days-kremlin/
Poor signym, her lies are being exposed in real time.

T

That Russia Today article Signym quotes was dated April 7th. The Kremlin's operation did NOT end real soon nor within "days".

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 10:33 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I see SECOND is jonesing for war, again.

Hey, SECOND, why don't YOU go to Kiev and help them out? You could help direct their war effort/relay orders from USA neocons. Or better yet, go to the front lines and show 'em how it's done.

I have a better idea comrade signym. Why don't you go and teach the Russians how to fight because they obliviously do not know how too.

T

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 11:26 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Kremlin anticipates operation to end soon, maybe within "days".
https://www.rt.com/russia/553495-operation-ukraine-end-days-kremlin/

The only military onjective that is within "days" is the destruction of a large part of Ukraine's army in SE Ukraine.

Meanwhile, I've been looking for General Gerasimov in the news, and he is nowhere to be found, indicationg a possible planning/military intelligence failure. (Based on human intel disinfo about the morale of the Ukie army and/or the "dug in" nature of Ukie positions).

I have no doubt that Russia could "win" the entire Ukraine, but what would "winning" look like? If Mariupol is any indication it would require Russian army losses, the destruction of alot of civilian infrastructure (which Russia would be responsible for fixing) and overseeing a resentful people. Cost v reward doesn't pencil out.

I think Russia will aim for achieving most of its goals by splitting off SE and coastal Ukraine and negotiating neutrality from "rump" Ukraine. Being practical.

Meanwhile, if Russia's other goals in this hybrid war were to

expose the west's hatred of Russia and Russians and solidify the Russian populatin
expose the risky nature of dollar-denominated assets
split the world and commit China to the Russian side
fully divorce Russia's economy and finances from the west

I'd say ... job well done.

"Poor signym, her lies are being exposed in real time." - T

My gawd, did she actually type that nonsense??? These 4 are laughable. I hope she is getting paid well.

expose the west's hatred of Russia and Russians and solidify the Russian population
--- Yeah, like they needed to kill Ukrainians to figure that out. Almost everyone hates Russians, and even more than ever now. Look at the scum they have for friends. "Solidifying Russian population" is being done by Russian police locking citizens up if they speak out against the *special operations* er, WAR.

expose the risky nature of dollar-denominated assets
--- because rubbles are now so much safer???

split the world and commit China to the Russian side
--- you mean make China think they could take down on Russia?

fully divorce Russia's economy and finances from the west
--- too funny! YOu owe me a keyboard! You mean destroy Russia's economy with sanctions imposed by the civilized first world? Check!

She's gotten even loonier.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 11:29 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

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NY Times Russia/Ukraine updates today - so far it's one of the more consistently objective sources I have found online:

Welcome to the Russia-Ukraine War Briefing, your guide to the latest news and analysis about the conflict.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said it was actively negotiating with both sides to end fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which Ukraine took offline over the weekend.

Reversal of fortune
Ukrainian forces blitzed the northeast over the weekend, driving Russian troops from more than 1,000 square miles and completely reshaping the six-month-old war in a matter of days.

When we reported on Ukraine’s early gains on Friday, the reality on the ground was still not confirmed. But now there is no doubt: A grinding stalemate has been transformed in Ukraine’s favor, giving Russia its most humiliating defeat since the initial stages of the war.

The lightning gains, which at times seemed to have surprised both sides, have lifted morale in Ukraine, left Russia’s leadership with few good options and increased Ukrainian calls for more Western weapons.

“Ukrainian forces have inflicted a major operations defeat on Russia,” said the Institute for the Study of War, a group in Washington that tracks the war.

The advances in the Kharkiv region included the recapture of the town of Izium, a railway hub that has been a key military stronghold for Russian forces.

The Russian military acknowledged that its forces had pulled back to the eastern side of the Oskil River, about 10 miles east of Izium. Russian forces retaliated with airstrikes that knocked out power, water and other civilian infrastructure.

How it happened

The advance was enabled by a misinformation campaign by the Ukrainian military, which signaled throughout August that it was readying a counterattack on another side of the country, near the southern region of Kherson.

This led to Russia pulling troops from other occupied regions to reinforce defense lines in the south, with analysts estimating that about 15,000 to 25,000 soldiers had been deployed there by mid-August.

The decision by Ukraine to tout its counteroffensive in the south before striking in the northeast is a standard technique for misdirection used by the American Special Operations troops, who have been training the Ukrainians since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Ukraine was also aided by advanced weapons from its Western allies and increased intelligence sharing with the U.S., which provided information on command posts, ammunition depots and other key nodes in the Russian military lines.

Earlier in the war, American intelligence officials said they often had a better understanding of Russia’s military plans than of Ukraine’s. But as Ukraine started to plan its counteroffensive, senior leaders in Kyiv overcame their reluctance to share strategy with the U.S.

Finally, the blitzkrieg appears to have come about partly because of persistent morale problems in the Russian military. In the village of Zaliznychne, locals told The Washington Post that the Russians fled in disarray, disguised as locals and on stolen bicycles.

“What really surprises us,” Lieutenant General Yevhen Moisiuk, the deputy commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, told Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic in Kyiv, “is that the Russian troops are not fighting back.”

What’s next

In the northeast, Ukraine needs to consolidate the rapid gains it has made, the country’s defense minister said.

And despite the feint on the southern front, intense fighting continues there, with the Ukrainian military claiming to have recaptured nearly 500 square miles in the region in recent days.

Thousands of Russian soldiers west of the Dnipro River appear to be increasingly isolated as Ukrainian attacks erode Russian defenses and shell bridges over the river, cutting the Russians off from resupply. Ukrainian troops have also stepped up efforts to get Russian soldiers to surrender.

Videos and audio have cropped up on social media in recent days purporting to show Ukrainian soldiers urging surrender through loudspeakers and answering calls on a hotline from Russian soldiers inquiring about surrender.

The Ukrainian government has restricted access to journalists along the entire front line, and the situation in the south is particularly difficult to assess. Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Kherson have reported fierce battles in recent days.

Together, the two offensives have put the Russian leadership in a tough spot. If it leaves its troops where they are, Ukrainians could push through to recapture the province of Luhansk. If it pulls troops from Kherson or the east, it will weaken positions there.

Russia’s stated objective is to fully capture the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, areas in Ukraine’s industrial heartland where the Kremlin has been backing separatists since 2014. It captured Luhansk with the fall of the city of Lysychansk on July 3.

But the loss of Izium dooms a similar scenario in Donetsk because the town was a key logistical base for Russian troops. Continued Russia operations in the Donetsk region “have thus lost any real operational significance for Moscow and merely waste some of the extremely limited effective combat power Russia retains,” the Institute for the Study of War said.

Continuing to sell the war as a success to Russians and finding more motivated and capable forces will be difficult, said Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute research group in London.

“The already limited trust deployed troops have in Russia’s senior military leadership is likely to deteriorate further,” Britain’s defense intelligence agency added.

Despite the gains, Pentagon and White House officials urged caution and voiced doubts about the capacity of Ukrainian forces to push Russia back to the lines that existed before the invasion.

Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, echoed the concern, telling The Financial Times that while the offensive had gone better than expected, there were reasons for Ukraine to worry, as it had to hold on to the recaptured territory.

“A counteroffensive liberates territory and after that you have to control it and be ready to defend it,” he said.

On Wednesday, we will report in detail on the effect Ukraine’s offensive is likely to have inside Russia.

What else we’re following
To provide comprehensive coverage of the war, we often link to outside sources. Some of these require a subscription.

In a major new request for weapons, Ukraine will ask for longer-range missiles that the U.S. has thus far declined to provide, The Wall Street Journal reported.

With dissent silenced, Russians voted overwhelmingly for pro-Kremlin candidates in regional and municipal elections over the weekend.

Putin discussed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in his first call in almost a month with France’s president, Emmanuel Macron.

The U.S. must proceed with Cold War-era crisis diplomacy on Ukraine — pursuing its interests while avoiding a clash, Samuel Charap and Michael Mazarr write in Foreign Affairs.

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Tuesday, September 13, 2022 11:56 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russian Top Gun in action -- turn on sound: https://imgur.com/gallery/5ECmnAv

One commenter explained the crash: "I guess he went into the tailing downdraft of his frontman. That's why you need extensive training for these formations."

Video shows Russian fighter jet crashing after takeoff in Crimea
https://nypost.com/2022/09/13/russian-fighter-jet-crashes-after-takeof
f-in-crimea/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, September 14, 2022 7:02 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Putin Has a New Opposition—and It’s Furious at Defeat in Ukraine

Right-wing nationalists are spreading a dangerous “stab-in-the-back” myth to explain Russia’s crushing defeats.

By Alexey Kovalev at Foreign Policy

A new Russian protest movement is coalescing, but it’s neither pro-democracy nor anti-war. Instead, it’s the most extreme of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s supporters, who have grown increasingly furious at the unfolding military disaster for Russia in the six-month-long war in Ukraine. They want Putin to escalate the war, use more devastating weapons, and hit Ukrainian civilians even more mercilessly. And they’ve openly attacked the Russian military and political leadership for supposedly holding back Russia’s full might—even as they rarely mention Putin by name.

Their push to escalate the war, including widespread demands to use nuclear weapons, is dangerous in itself. But by creating a fantasy world in which a supposedly all-powerful Russian army is being defeated by domestic enemies—instead of by superior Ukrainian soldiers fighting for their own land with modern tactics and Western weapons—the movement has potentially disturbing implications for a postwar and possibly post-Putin Russia. In fact, the narrative sounds a lot like the Dolchstosslegende, the German “stab-in-the-back” conspiracy theory that blamed the country’s defeat in World War I on nefarious enemies at home, including Jews. This narrative of military defeat became an integral part of the propaganda that brought the Nazis to power.

The promoters of the Russian stab-in-the-back myth aren’t a single party, movement, or group. Rather, the protesters are a loose coalition—mostly active online—of far-right ideologues, militant extremists, veterans of the 2014 Donbas war, Wagner Group mercenaries, bloggers, war reporters running their own Telegram channels, and individual Russian state media staff. Some are soldiers or mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, and their channels have doubled as recruitment tools. Others already had a modest following before the war by promoting different causes, some obscure but mostly nationalist or right-wing issues: restoring the Soviet Union’s rule over Eastern Europe, building a new Russian empire, or promoting “Russia for the Russians.”

Their loyalty to the Kremlin varies from veneration of and complete submission to Putin as a godlike historical figure to activism in right-wing opposition movements. But unlike the Kremlin’s mouthpieces on state television and in its troll factories, members of this amorphous war escalation camp are united in their scathing criticism of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

Their demand comes down to this: They want more war crimes—no mercy, no remorse, no pretense to even caring about civilian deaths until Ukraine is completely subdued and the very idea of Ukrainian-ness erased forever. Frustrated by the astonishing, unexpected defeat on Ukraine’s Kharkiv front, many pro-war bloggers demanded a swift retribution without regard for civilian deaths. Some recommended a nuclear strike on Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to decapitate the government; popular blogger Maxim Fomin (who blogs as Vladlen Tatarsky), called for a nuclear warning strike against Ukraine’s Snake Island. Others called for “total war” against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. When the Russian military appeared to oblige by launching missiles at several Ukrainian cities’ electricity grids overnight, an orgy of gloating ensued on Russian pro-war channels.

The level of hatred and derision toward everything Ukrainian in their blog posts is difficult to convey. Ukrainians are described as illegal squatters on Russian imperial lands or followers of the Nazi bandits supposedly governing in Kyiv. Their cities must be “hammered into the Stone Age” while massacres against civilians are gleefully referred to as “pig-butchering.” Even as they throw the Nazi slur at Ukrainians, these Russians’ views are not only genocidal in ways that recall the worst crimes of the 20th century but also, in some cases, openly fascist or neo-Nazi.

Although most of these bloggers are unknown in the West—except to a small, dedicated circle of Russia-watchers—a few of them have caught the attention of the international press. Since they routinely point out Russian military failures in hopes of goading the Kremlin into escalating, some have become highly informative sources of unvarnished news from the front. As I write, I see Western war experts’ Twitter accounts full of detailed maps produced by pro-war Russians documenting the unfolding rout of Russian positions in the Kharkiv Oblast almost in real time while Ukrainian sources are several days behind in their statements in an attempt to preserve operational secrecy. The bloggers, who spout their diatribe mainly via Telegram and YouTube, also stand in sharp contrast to the bland, content-free triumphalism of Russia’s state-owned airwaves. The best-known individual among the critics is Igor Girkin, known by his nom de guerre, Strelkov. He is a retired Federal Security Service officer and a Russian Civil War reenactment aficionado who has proudly admitted that he “pulled the trigger of [the 2014 Donbas] war” when he led a band of armed Russians across the Ukrainian border, seized the city of Slovyansk, and held it for some six weeks.

By all accounts, Strelkov is a violent extremist—and quite possibly a war criminal for carrying out extrajudicial killings in the occupied Donbas in 2014. But he has become much-quoted in the Western press—and even profiled—as a critic of Putin’s war strategy since April, when he openly said Russia’s retreat from the Kyiv suburbs and parts of northeastern Ukraine had made a Russian defeat inevitable. On his Telegram channel, which has some 500,000 subscribers, and in his livestreams on the Russian social media network VKontakte, Strelkov has called Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu a “plywood general” and Russian Security Council deputy chair Dmitry Medvedev a bumbling fool. The lack of a countrywide military mobilization, he said, is a major criminal oversight. But he has mostly steered clear of criticizing Putin directly—not out of respect but only “until the war is over,” as he hinted in a recent post. That may be a reason why there have been no apparent attempts to silence him.

Ironically, some of the least palatable figures in Russia are now the most consistent and insightful critics of the Kremlin’s strategy—if for all the wrong reasons. One of them is Igor Mangushev, a senior manager at the Internet Research Agency, the troll factory in St. Petersburg, Russia, that was responsible for disinformation campaigns and interference in Western elections. One of the most unapologetically genocidal supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Mangushev recently gave a macabre performance in a Moscow club where he presented a human skull he claimed to have harvested from a Ukrainian soldier killed during the bloody siege of Mariupol. “We will burn down your homes, murder your families, take your children, and raise them as Russians” is a fairly typical post on his Telegram channel. He also claims credit for inventing the letter Z as the symbol of Russia’s invasion. Yet Mangushev has no love lost for Russia’s military brass and decision-makers in the Kremlin, constantly attacking them for what he says is their indecision and bureaucratic slumber, which he sees as the main obstacle to the war effort.

Equally indignant is Yevgeny Rasskazov, also known as Topaz and a member of the far-right Rusich mercenary unit associated with the Wagner Group. On April 20, Rasskazov posted what appeared to be a celebration of Adolf Hitler’s birthday without naming the former Nazi leader directly. After the Russians’ loss of Balakliya, a city in eastern Kharkiv Oblast, during last week’s surprise Ukrainian offensive, he mocked the Russian defense ministry for attempting to present the defeat as a “tactical feint.” In a monologue, Rasskazov listed all the things that, in his view, the Russian war machine lacks: honesty in admitting a local defeat, a fully reformed defense ministry, more skilled commanders, and a well-oiled military with better coordination among different branches of the military.

In attempting to explain the Russian military’s increasingly desperate situation in Ukraine, the pro-war camp is developing its own “stab-in-the-back” myth that echoes the German intrawar version. Already, voices such the ultra-conservative pundit and RT commentator Egor Kholmogorov are openly accusing the Russian top command of criminal incompetence and demanding purges. The movement’s anger at treacherous “elites”—as of yet unnamed but almost universally reviled—is palpable. Although still marginal, there is even a new emerging subculture associated with the movement; for example, “Bands of Veterans” by singer Pavel Plamenev is a modern rock version of a 1920s German song, “We Are Geyer’s Black Company,” which became part of the official Nazi songbook. In Plamenev’s version, a Russian Donbas veteran returns from the war filled with rage, urging his fellow soldiers to burn the palaces of the rich and pass their wives around among the looters. In a worrying sign for the Kremlin, the new pro-war opposition is increasingly turning to the same indignant anti-corruption messages that fueled the opposition movement headed by now-jailed Russian dissident Alexey Navalny.

Surprisingly, considering the Kremlin’s accelerated crackdown on criticism since the start of the invasion in February, there have been no high-profile arrests of pro-war bloggers or even signs of censorship so far. The Kremlin couldn’t have missed these outbursts; a special monitoring department in the presidential administration watches Russian social media platforms closely and files daily reports to Putin’s aides. Nonetheless, there are signs that Moscow recognizes the problem and will seek to rein in the angry nationalists who are fast becoming what political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya calls “the most significant challenge to the Kremlin” since it crushed Navalny’s movement.

Whether or not the Kremlin now cracks down, the pro-war movement’s toxic narrative will take on a life of its own—especially if and when Russia loses the war, which is now all but inevitable. As the disconnect between official propaganda about an easy, successful “special operation” and the reality of crushing defeat becomes clear, many Russians will be looking for someone to blame. Here, the German example is instructive, where the combination of defeat, national humiliation, and economic collapse was the fertile soil for right-wing, extremist movements that blamed domestic enemies, assassinated liberal politicians, stirred antisemitic hate, and swore revenge on the victorious World War I Allies. This was the vicious brew that Hitler fed on as he rose to power.

Russia’s inevitable defeat, deep economic malaise, and loss of great-power status at the hands of a country whose existence the Kremlin didn’t even recognize will be fertile ground for extremists. That counts double should Putin’s regime fall and a struggle for the future course of Russia ensue. If the pro-war nationalists searching for enemies to blame are the only opposition left in Russia, the world may be going down a dark and dangerous track.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220912165441/https://foreignpolicy.com/2
022/09/12/russia-ukraine-war-defeat-opposition-putin-stab-in-the-back-conspiracy-theory-far-right/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, September 14, 2022 10:28 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

' Massive explosion in Kharkiv / Kharkov. '

https://twitter.com/UnerkanntW/status/1569303120529838081

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Wednesday, September 14, 2022 1:57 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The US has sent 126 M777 cannons and more than 800,000 rounds of 155 mm ammunition to Ukraine as of early September.

The Army recently put out a market survey to identify US and Canadian companies that can manufacture up to 12,000 M795 155 mm high-explosive shells a month. It's not clear how many shells the Pentagon is aiming to produce.

The M795 is the standard shell for Army and Marine 155 mm howitzers and would be the prime ammunition for any US-designed 155 mm howitzers sent to Ukraine, which is already using M777 towed 155 mm guns sent by the US and Canada.

To the shell manufacturers, the government would provide "projectile metal parts, rotating band covers, wooden pallets, lifting plugs, IMX-101 explosive and TNT/PBXN-9 supplementary charges." However, the contractor would need to procure "bulk TNT" on its own.

The M795 is an unguided shell first deployed in 1999. It is 103 pounds and 33 inches long and has an attached fuze.

The high-fragmentation steel projectile is armed with 23.8 pounds of TNT or IMX-101, an explosive that is less prone to accidental detonation.

The M795 has a kill radius of about 55 yards, though fragments can inflict damage beyond that distance. The M795 has a range of about 14 miles.

Ukrainian forces were already firing 6,000 shells a day in June.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-us-has-given-ukraine-nearly-a
-million-155-mm-artillery-shells-now-it-s-looking-for-us-companies-to-build-more-of-them/ar-AA11NcfL

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, September 14, 2022 2:01 PM