ALERT RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread
- Thread starter danielboon
- Start date
Is this a different attack or the same one?
mzkitty
I give up.
I don't know.
It's the same attack from a couple of days ago.
Just more Russian tourist pictures and video are coming in.
The Belarus airfield attack is new.
jward
passin' thru
yup it's the old one, from a few days back, but by the looks of that original traffic jam that went with it, they may well still be stuck there 
jward
passin' thru
seems rather milque-toast response
Apex
@Apex_WW
1h
Update: TASS: Russia has told the United States that bilateral diplomatic ties would be badly damaged and could even be broken off if Russia is declared a state sponsor of terrorism.
Apex
@Apex_WW
1h
Update: TASS: Russia has told the United States that bilateral diplomatic ties would be badly damaged and could even be broken off if Russia is declared a state sponsor of terrorism.
I guess we shall see if Congress has usurped the power of Foreign Policy from the Presidencyseems rather milque-toast response
Apex
@Apex_WW
1h
Update: TASS: Russia has told the United States that bilateral diplomatic ties would be badly damaged and could even be broken off if Russia is declared a state sponsor of terrorism.
jward
passin' thru
hmm.
Estonia offers Finland and Sweden to make the Baltic an internal sea of NATO
The Odessa Journal
The range of the anti-missile defense of both countries allows full control of the Gulf of Finland.
Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur spoke about plans to integrate the coast guards of Estonia and Finland, which will allow Russian ships to be closed to the Baltic Sea.
“The integration of anti-missile defenses of Finland and Estonia will allow closing the Gulf of Finland to Russian warships. The Baltic Sea, with the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, will become the internal sea of the alliance,” he said in an interview with Iltalehti.
According to Pevkur, the preliminary agreement was reached during a meeting with his Finnish colleague Antti Kaikkonen.
The minister reminded that the range of missiles of Finland and Estonia exceeds the width of the gulf and allows to keep it under control.
Last fall, Estonia decided to buy Israeli Blue Spear missiles to suppress naval targets. The range of the missiles is 290 kilometers; they can hit targets anywhere on the coast of Finland in the Gulf.
The MTO 85M anti-ship missile of the Finnish Navy has a flight range of over 100 kilometers and is equipped with a search radar head. Thus, the Finnish military can control the water area up to the northern coast of Estonia.
Also, in the coming weeks, the headquarters of the new NATO division will be established in Estonia, and five of its brigades will be stationed on the country’s territory. How many soldiers will be permanently stationed in Estonia is unknown.
“We will not only create a divisional structure but also draw up new defense plans for Estonia and the Baltics,” Pevkur said.
Estonia will also purchase anti-tank missiles, new coastal defense missiles, HIMARS missile launchers, and others from the US.
posted for fair use
Estonia offers Finland and Sweden to make the Baltic an internal sea of NATO
The Odessa Journal
The range of the anti-missile defense of both countries allows full control of the Gulf of Finland.
Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur spoke about plans to integrate the coast guards of Estonia and Finland, which will allow Russian ships to be closed to the Baltic Sea.
“The integration of anti-missile defenses of Finland and Estonia will allow closing the Gulf of Finland to Russian warships. The Baltic Sea, with the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, will become the internal sea of the alliance,” he said in an interview with Iltalehti.
According to Pevkur, the preliminary agreement was reached during a meeting with his Finnish colleague Antti Kaikkonen.
The minister reminded that the range of missiles of Finland and Estonia exceeds the width of the gulf and allows to keep it under control.
Last fall, Estonia decided to buy Israeli Blue Spear missiles to suppress naval targets. The range of the missiles is 290 kilometers; they can hit targets anywhere on the coast of Finland in the Gulf.
The MTO 85M anti-ship missile of the Finnish Navy has a flight range of over 100 kilometers and is equipped with a search radar head. Thus, the Finnish military can control the water area up to the northern coast of Estonia.
Also, in the coming weeks, the headquarters of the new NATO division will be established in Estonia, and five of its brigades will be stationed on the country’s territory. How many soldiers will be permanently stationed in Estonia is unknown.
“We will not only create a divisional structure but also draw up new defense plans for Estonia and the Baltics,” Pevkur said.
Estonia will also purchase anti-tank missiles, new coastal defense missiles, HIMARS missile launchers, and others from the US.
posted for fair use
So, the idea is to deny the port of St Petersburg, Russia access to the Atlantic.hmm.
Estonia offers Finland and Sweden to make the Baltic an internal sea of NATO
The Odessa Journal
The range of the anti-missile defense of both countries allows full control of the Gulf of Finland.
Minister of Defense Hanno Pevkur spoke about plans to integrate the coast guards of Estonia and Finland, which will allow Russian ships to be closed to the Baltic Sea.
“The integration of anti-missile defenses of Finland and Estonia will allow closing the Gulf of Finland to Russian warships. The Baltic Sea, with the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, will become the internal sea of the alliance,” he said in an interview with Iltalehti.
According to Pevkur, the preliminary agreement was reached during a meeting with his Finnish colleague Antti Kaikkonen.
The minister reminded that the range of missiles of Finland and Estonia exceeds the width of the gulf and allows to keep it under control.
Last fall, Estonia decided to buy Israeli Blue Spear missiles to suppress naval targets. The range of the missiles is 290 kilometers; they can hit targets anywhere on the coast of Finland in the Gulf.
The MTO 85M anti-ship missile of the Finnish Navy has a flight range of over 100 kilometers and is equipped with a search radar head. Thus, the Finnish military can control the water area up to the northern coast of Estonia.
Also, in the coming weeks, the headquarters of the new NATO division will be established in Estonia, and five of its brigades will be stationed on the country’s territory. How many soldiers will be permanently stationed in Estonia is unknown.
“We will not only create a divisional structure but also draw up new defense plans for Estonia and the Baltics,” Pevkur said.
Estonia will also purchase anti-tank missiles, new coastal defense missiles, HIMARS missile launchers, and others from the US.
posted for fair use
Which is the reason Russia invaded Ukraine.
Great idea.
We have all heard about the idea of the "tip of the spear."
Might want to look up another term.
Boss of the Shield - The boss was originally designed to deflect blows from the center of round shields.
Zagdid
Veteran Member
Turkey has some requirements that need to be specifically met in order for that to happen. At this point it does not look like Finland or Sweden will comply.
Turkey changed their mind/demands again?
Just to poke the bear a little more:
www.zerohedge.com
Latvia Designates Russia As Terrorist State, Urges Europe To Follow
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 03:35 AM
Latvia on Thursday became among the first European countries to designate Russia as a "state sponsor of terrorism" after nearby Lithuania was the first to do so back in May. Latvia’s Parliament made the declaration while alleging that Russian forces are targeting civilians in the ongoing Ukraine invasion, and urged other countries to implement their own formal designations.
Out of the 100-seat assembly, 67 lawmakers voted yes, with 16 abstaining. The formal designation charged Russia forces with enacting "Suffering and intimidation as tools in its attempts to demoralize the Ukrainian people and armed forces and paralyze the functioning of the state."
Latvia’s Parliament now "recognizes Russia’s violence against civilians in pursuit of political aims as terrorism, recognizes Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and calls on other like-minded countries to express the same view."
What's more is that Latvia has joined neighboring Estonia in halting all tourist visas issued to Russians. There are reports that Estonia too will soon pass its own Russian "state sponsor" terror designation.
The Baltic countries and former Soviet satellite states have been at the forefront of urging Western weapons shipments to Ukraine, and have even played host to arms in transit. Some European countries such as Finland are now trying to push an EU-wide ban on all Russian travel, which critics in Germany especially (which hosts a large Russian expat population) argue is unfair collective punishment of innocent civilians.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova hit back, condemning the Latvian parliament vote as part of anti-Russian "xenophobia."
Moscow has vowed retaliation, with one Russian parliamentarian saying they would unleash "retaliatory measures that will show Latvia its place and will be quite painful."
Earlier in the now six-month Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration began using the word "genocide" when talking about alleged Russian atrocities (but more recently has stopped using the specific word), but has so far resisted some Congressional calls to label Russia a terror state sponsor.
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Latvia Designates Russia As Terrorist State, Urges Europe To Follow
BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, AUG 13, 2022 - 03:35 AM
Latvia on Thursday became among the first European countries to designate Russia as a "state sponsor of terrorism" after nearby Lithuania was the first to do so back in May. Latvia’s Parliament made the declaration while alleging that Russian forces are targeting civilians in the ongoing Ukraine invasion, and urged other countries to implement their own formal designations.
Out of the 100-seat assembly, 67 lawmakers voted yes, with 16 abstaining. The formal designation charged Russia forces with enacting "Suffering and intimidation as tools in its attempts to demoralize the Ukrainian people and armed forces and paralyze the functioning of the state."
Latvia’s Parliament now "recognizes Russia’s violence against civilians in pursuit of political aims as terrorism, recognizes Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and calls on other like-minded countries to express the same view."
What's more is that Latvia has joined neighboring Estonia in halting all tourist visas issued to Russians. There are reports that Estonia too will soon pass its own Russian "state sponsor" terror designation.
The Baltic countries and former Soviet satellite states have been at the forefront of urging Western weapons shipments to Ukraine, and have even played host to arms in transit. Some European countries such as Finland are now trying to push an EU-wide ban on all Russian travel, which critics in Germany especially (which hosts a large Russian expat population) argue is unfair collective punishment of innocent civilians.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova hit back, condemning the Latvian parliament vote as part of anti-Russian "xenophobia."
Moscow has vowed retaliation, with one Russian parliamentarian saying they would unleash "retaliatory measures that will show Latvia its place and will be quite painful."
Earlier in the now six-month Ukraine conflict, the Biden administration began using the word "genocide" when talking about alleged Russian atrocities (but more recently has stopped using the specific word), but has so far resisted some Congressional calls to label Russia a terror state sponsor.
jward
passin' thru
Samuel Ramani
@SamRamani2
15m
Visa restrictions on Russians entering Europe herald a new phase of sanctions, as they deem the Russian people to be directly complicit in the Ukraine war Repeated emphasis by Ukrainian officials of the 70%+ Russians who support the war underscores this shift
@SamRamani2
15m
Visa restrictions on Russians entering Europe herald a new phase of sanctions, as they deem the Russian people to be directly complicit in the Ukraine war Repeated emphasis by Ukrainian officials of the 70%+ Russians who support the war underscores this shift
jward
passin' thru
Samuel Ramani
@SamRamani2
14m
British intelligence believes that the two primary bridges that link to Russian forces on the west bank of the Dnipro River are not usable A big success for Ukraine's counter-offensive in Kherson, as Russian forces will now have resupply challenges
Russia's only short-term option remains the two ferry points that it has used for resupply since late July The size of Russia's existing stockpiles in the west bank of the Dnipro, which is uncertain, will determine its ability to resist Ukraine's advance on Kherson
~~~~~~
Russia has claimed control over Pisky in Donetsk Ukraine has previously disputed these claims and in early August, there was evidence of ongoing conflict in the northern third of Pisky. Russia used thermobaric weapons as recently as August 10.
@SamRamani2
14m
British intelligence believes that the two primary bridges that link to Russian forces on the west bank of the Dnipro River are not usable A big success for Ukraine's counter-offensive in Kherson, as Russian forces will now have resupply challenges
Russia's only short-term option remains the two ferry points that it has used for resupply since late July The size of Russia's existing stockpiles in the west bank of the Dnipro, which is uncertain, will determine its ability to resist Ukraine's advance on Kherson
~~~~~~
Russia has claimed control over Pisky in Donetsk Ukraine has previously disputed these claims and in early August, there was evidence of ongoing conflict in the northern third of Pisky. Russia used thermobaric weapons as recently as August 10.
Also further threatens supplying Kaliningrad...
Melodi
Disaster Cat
I have a feeling that if Turkey pulls a "we won't let you join - see our power! ba, ha, ha" then a good number of the NATO countries, especially in Northern Europe, may simply sign identikit mutual defense treaties. Not all NATO members may sign on to this, but if enough do then Turkey gains basically a paper victory. I could be wrong, but I suspect this "plan B" has already been drawn up and would take as little as a couple of weeks to be put in place.
So much for carefree summer holiday fun while vacationing in an occupied country in the middle of a shooting war?
Now, tens of thousands of Russian tourists have seen, in broad daylight, with their own eyes, just how ineffective their vaunted military air defenses are.
-----------------
Runtime 1:36
Russian Holidaymakers Flee Crimea After the Attack on Novofedorivka Air Base
Huge traffic jams at the Crimean bride (Kerch Bridge) in the aftermath of the strike on Saki air base.
A short video here—tying into yesterday’s strike on the Novofedorivka Air Base. Rather than looking at the base and damage itself—this video shows the impact it has had on every day Russians. The kerch bridge or Crimea Bridge is now absolutely full with traffic jams as holidaygoers try to flee Crimea. This is the first time we have seen this sort of panic from Russian civilians in the war—and it may be harsh to say this, but they’re getting a small taste of the fear everyday Ukrainians have felt for the past months.
And, this traffic jam has been going on for a while. The video is from during the day. But there’s also this image here taken during the night. The traffic jams are still ongoing. This is a largescale exodus of Russian holidaymakers fleeing back home.
And—I can see why they are fleeing now because Kerch bridge could be next. We don’t know which platform was used exactly—ATACMS and Hrim-2 are both touted as possibilities. It’s not out of the question that the Kerch bridge could be next. 250 kilometers away from the nearest Ukrainian territory—it is within range of both and would be a valuable, strategic target.
Of course, an attack on the bridge might not succeed. Russia has a barge with cubes stuck on it as protection.
Make sure to bookmark this live feed from the Kerch Bridge!
LIVE-Kerch Bridge-Kyiv-Luhansk 8.12.22
Started streaming 16 hours ago
View: https://youtu.be/WWPJpFMZyvU
LIVE-Kerch Bridge-Kyiv-Luhansk 8.12.22
Started streaming 16 hours ago
What are Russia's plans to defend the bridge connecting Russia to Crimea?
A barge with a bunch of radar reflectors on it and some smoke generators.
Good Luck!
---------------
Runtime 1:06
Russia is covering the Crimean Bridge with a decoy ship
View: https://youtu.be/DfaPNUY4gNs
-------
Runtime 0:18
Possibly testing smokescreen generatorsIn occupied Crimea bridge , Kerch bridge
View: https://youtu.be/26aj5dhwdFc
A barge with a bunch of radar reflectors on it and some smoke generators.
Good Luck!
---------------
Runtime 1:06
Russia is covering the Crimean Bridge with a decoy ship
-------
Runtime 0:18
Possibly testing smokescreen generatorsIn occupied Crimea bridge , Kerch bridge
These exercises are the annual Sniper Frontier competitions. Something like 30 countries participate annually and they are held in a different place each year. So yes there will be Russian, CHinese and Iranian troops participating but this is not a major military exercise.
vector7
Dot Collector
Tulsi, guest-hosting for Tucker last night, devoted a whole segment to the longstanding futility of US sanctions policy. Do you think you'd see this anywhere else on mainstream TV?
RT 5min
View: https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1558535917782142976?s=20&t=tQPTSLhwx5VEi0CuFzxWCw
RT 5min
View: https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1558535917782142976?s=20&t=tQPTSLhwx5VEi0CuFzxWCw
More NATO hardware turning up in Ukraine,
Runtime 0:55
British Anti-Aircraft Stormer Destroys Three Russian Orlan-10 UAVs and SU-25 Jet Fighter
View: https://youtu.be/s-A-mfAaCVU?list=PLiE2CJKxmY0dEvF-dE1B-pBmfebnyBWqB
Runtime 0:55
British Anti-Aircraft Stormer Destroys Three Russian Orlan-10 UAVs and SU-25 Jet Fighter
Ukraine trolls the fleeing Russian tourists with a "Cruel Summer" video.
This is just mean . . (LOL)
0:35
Invasion Of Ukraine - Don't Visit Crimea This Summer - Defence Of Ukraine - 11th AUGUST 2022
Fair Use Cited
-----------------
‘We Need to Get Out of Here’: Fear Grips Annexed Crimea After Airbase Attack
By Anastasia Tenisheva and James Beardsworth
Updated: Aug. 10, 2022
An apparent Ukrainian attack on a military air base in Russia-controlled Crimea sent people running for cover from a series of powerful blasts, causing shock among locals and tourists at the height of the holiday season.
Towering plumes of black smoke were seen rising from the Saki air base in western Crimea on Tuesday afternoon, clearly visible from nearby packed beaches.
“There were about 15 explosions. It lasted around 30-40 minutes. Many vacationers were trying to find shelter — some people were hiding behind the trees, children were crying. People were trying to stick together,” said Ksenia Korkina, a Russian visitor to Crimea who witnessed the explosions from a couple of kilometers away.
If proven to be a Ukrainian attack, it will be the first major Ukrainian strike on Crimea — annexed by Moscow in 2014 — since the start of Russia’s six-month invasion of Ukraine. It is likely to seriously disrupt life on the peninsula, a popular tourism destination thought of until now as safe from the fighting, and bring the war closer to many ordinary Russians.
The explosions killed one person and injured 14 others, according to Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea.
“The very first explosion was very powerful and strong. The walls and windows were shaking. The sound was deafening and scary,” Korkina told The Moscow Times.
Videos published to social media showed Russian holidaymakers gathering their belongings and fleeing the beach after the initial blasts.
“Mum let’s go, we need to get out of here,” one distressed onlooker can be heard shouting.
Satellite imagery and alleged videos from the explosion’s aftermath showed the burned-out remains of a Russian military aircraft as well as rows of charred civilian cars.
Ukraine did not openly admit that it was behind the blasts, but The New York Times quoted an anonymous Ukrainian military official Tuesday as taking responsibility. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the explosions were the result of an accident.
Tourism is an important part of the Crimean economy and the peak vacation season has already been damaged by the closure of civilian airports near the Ukrainian border amid ongoing fighting to the north.
Tuesday’s attack is likely to dissuade even more people from visiting Crimea.
“My friends tell me every day that the territory is disputed and it’s better to stay away from the [Russia-Ukraine] border,” Russian blogger Diana, who was vacationing 10 kilometers away from the airbase at the time of the explosion, told The Moscow Times.
The panic sowed by the blasts apparently even prompted some tourists to leave the region, with videos posted to social media appearing to show traffic jams on road approaching the bridge that links the peninsula to the Russian mainland.
“Some tourists went home. There was a big traffic jam near Novofedorivka,” Korkina said. “Many people were afraid to go out after the explosions. I was afraid as well.”
Exacerbating civilians’ fears is the lingering uncertainty over how Ukraine was apparently able to carry out such an attack on a target almost 200 kilometers from the front line.
Russia has significant air defense systems in Crimea around the nearby city of Yevpatoriya and should have been able to fend off a long-range missile attack, according to Konrad Muzyka, an independent military analyst at the Polish-based Rochan Consulting.
“If it was a large missile you would expect the Russians to have tried to strike it down, but we have seen no missile trails in the sky and no evidence that air defense near Yevpatoria was activated,” Muzyka told The Moscow Times. “So perhaps this was something smaller, like a loitering munition or unmanned aerial vehicle.”
A Ukrainian official cited by Reuters on Wednesday suggested that the explosions could have been caused by partisan saboteurs inside Crimea.
The attack comes as Ukraine is expected to attempt to launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the south of the country.
In his nightly address Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky did not mention the Saki air base but said that Kyiv would press on to reclaim Crimea.
“This Russian war against Ukraine and against the entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — with its liberation,” he said.
While the most significant attack on Crimea to date, the airbase strikes are not the only time targets in the peninsula have been hit in recent months.
Russia’s Navy Day celebrations in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol last month were canceled following what appeared to be a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters.
Speaking at the time, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military, Natalia Gumenyuk, did not confirm Ukrainian involvement but said Kyiv was targeting Russian military facilities inside Ukraine – and that Crimea was part of Ukraine.
Russian Scientists, Artists Ask Putin to Halt Death Penalty in Separatist Donetsk - The Moscow Times
-----------------
‘We Need to Get Out of Here’: Fear Grips Annexed Crimea After Airbase Attack
By Anastasia Tenisheva and James Beardsworth
Updated: Aug. 10, 2022
An apparent Ukrainian attack on a military air base in Russia-controlled Crimea sent people running for cover from a series of powerful blasts, causing shock among locals and tourists at the height of the holiday season.
Towering plumes of black smoke were seen rising from the Saki air base in western Crimea on Tuesday afternoon, clearly visible from nearby packed beaches.
“There were about 15 explosions. It lasted around 30-40 minutes. Many vacationers were trying to find shelter — some people were hiding behind the trees, children were crying. People were trying to stick together,” said Ksenia Korkina, a Russian visitor to Crimea who witnessed the explosions from a couple of kilometers away.
If proven to be a Ukrainian attack, it will be the first major Ukrainian strike on Crimea — annexed by Moscow in 2014 — since the start of Russia’s six-month invasion of Ukraine. It is likely to seriously disrupt life on the peninsula, a popular tourism destination thought of until now as safe from the fighting, and bring the war closer to many ordinary Russians.
The explosions killed one person and injured 14 others, according to Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed head of Crimea.
“The very first explosion was very powerful and strong. The walls and windows were shaking. The sound was deafening and scary,” Korkina told The Moscow Times.
Videos published to social media showed Russian holidaymakers gathering their belongings and fleeing the beach after the initial blasts.
“Mum let’s go, we need to get out of here,” one distressed onlooker can be heard shouting.
Satellite imagery and alleged videos from the explosion’s aftermath showed the burned-out remains of a Russian military aircraft as well as rows of charred civilian cars.
Ukraine did not openly admit that it was behind the blasts, but The New York Times quoted an anonymous Ukrainian military official Tuesday as taking responsibility. Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed the explosions were the result of an accident.
Tourism is an important part of the Crimean economy and the peak vacation season has already been damaged by the closure of civilian airports near the Ukrainian border amid ongoing fighting to the north.
Tuesday’s attack is likely to dissuade even more people from visiting Crimea.
“My friends tell me every day that the territory is disputed and it’s better to stay away from the [Russia-Ukraine] border,” Russian blogger Diana, who was vacationing 10 kilometers away from the airbase at the time of the explosion, told The Moscow Times.
The panic sowed by the blasts apparently even prompted some tourists to leave the region, with videos posted to social media appearing to show traffic jams on road approaching the bridge that links the peninsula to the Russian mainland.
“Some tourists went home. There was a big traffic jam near Novofedorivka,” Korkina said. “Many people were afraid to go out after the explosions. I was afraid as well.”
Exacerbating civilians’ fears is the lingering uncertainty over how Ukraine was apparently able to carry out such an attack on a target almost 200 kilometers from the front line.
Russia has significant air defense systems in Crimea around the nearby city of Yevpatoriya and should have been able to fend off a long-range missile attack, according to Konrad Muzyka, an independent military analyst at the Polish-based Rochan Consulting.
“If it was a large missile you would expect the Russians to have tried to strike it down, but we have seen no missile trails in the sky and no evidence that air defense near Yevpatoria was activated,” Muzyka told The Moscow Times. “So perhaps this was something smaller, like a loitering munition or unmanned aerial vehicle.”
A Ukrainian official cited by Reuters on Wednesday suggested that the explosions could have been caused by partisan saboteurs inside Crimea.
The attack comes as Ukraine is expected to attempt to launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the south of the country.
In his nightly address Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky did not mention the Saki air base but said that Kyiv would press on to reclaim Crimea.
“This Russian war against Ukraine and against the entire free Europe began with Crimea and must end with Crimea — with its liberation,” he said.
While the most significant attack on Crimea to date, the airbase strikes are not the only time targets in the peninsula have been hit in recent months.
Russia’s Navy Day celebrations in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol last month were canceled following what appeared to be a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s headquarters.
Speaking at the time, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military, Natalia Gumenyuk, did not confirm Ukrainian involvement but said Kyiv was targeting Russian military facilities inside Ukraine – and that Crimea was part of Ukraine.
Russian Scientists, Artists Ask Putin to Halt Death Penalty in Separatist Donetsk - The Moscow Times
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Back to the USSR: Hints from On High
Posted on August 12, 2022
JR Nyquist
Speaking on Rossiya 1 Television, Col. Igor Korotchenko said that North Korea had offered Russia 100,000 “volunteer” troops to fight in Ukraine. “Pyongyang will be able to transfer its tactical units to Donbas,” he added, describing the North Korean troops as “Resilient and undemanding”; but more important, he said they were “motivated.” What was most curious was the communist phraseology used by Korotchenko to describe this offer of troops from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un: “If North Korea expresses a desire to meet its international duty to fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should let them.”Back to the USSR: Hints from On High
According to a Soviet textbook, written by Kharis Sabirov in 1987, we are living in the “period of transition from capitalism to socialism” where socialism is “the first phase of the communist formation….”[ii] The text further explained, “Socialism, which is the negation of capitalism, means a revolutionary restructuring of all spheres of bourgeois society on the principles of scientific communism.” This can only be done in the course of a relentless struggle by stamping out the sources of [bourgeois] might….”[iii] The founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, said that revolutionary socialism was international in character. After World War II, the followers of Lenin asserted that the communist parties of all countries have an international duty to unite and assist one another. In doing this, they were following Lenin’s lead. According to Sabirov, Lenin “upheld the principle of internationalism….” In this context, communist North Korea does not simply fight for the national interests of North Korea or of Russia. North Korea is duty-bound to the other socialist countries.
Korotchenko’s allusion to North Korea’s “international duty” is therefore a clue from on high. As he is Putin’s toady, he would never say anything to displease his boss. He would never use Leninist terminology unless that terminology was approved at the highest levels. The obliteration of the Ukrainian state, he has affirmed, is “absolutely healthy.” Why is it healthy? Because it signifies the restoration of the Soviet Union. In past appearances on Russian state TV channel Rossiya 1, Korotchenko outlined an optimistic scenario for “capturing the Baltic countries.”[iv] What possible reason could Russia have for invading three independent NATO countries? What possible reason does Russia have for invading and destroying the country of Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin’s political ally, former President Dmitri Medvedev, recently posted a controversial item on social media that has since been deleted. The post was about restoring the Soviet Union. Medvedev called into question the “independence of ex-Soviet states.” According to the Crux Channel, “Medvedev’s post … called for the return of all ex-Soviet states and the re-establishment of [the] USSR.” To explain away Medvedev’s post, the Kremlin claimed the former Russian president’s social media account had been hacked. Crux noted, however, that “many experts pointed out that the post was written in a style similar to [Medvedev’s] previous posts.” The idea that Medvedev could have been hacked is disputed by the fact that “Russia’s Security Council [on which Medvedev serves] is covered by a huge security [umbrella].” Furthermore, Medvedev’s post was consistent with recent Kremlin propaganda. The former Russian president also said that Georgia and Kazakhstan are not sovereign countries – just as Putin claimed Ukraine is not a sovereign country. Medvedev said that “Georgia had never existed before its reunification with the Russian Empire in the 19th century,” adding that Kazakhstan has been committing genocide against Russians. He also said, “all the people who once lived in the great and mighty Soviet Union will once again live together,” and that Russia is “getting ready to undertake the next move to restore the borders of our homeland.” Crux reports that Putin’s critics believe Moscow is aiming at a Soviet restoration, though confusion remains among those who erroneously say that Putin is restoring the Russian Empire.[v]
To convince the Russian people that they need, once more, to live under communism, a propaganda of anti-Western hate has been obligatory in the country’s state-controlled media. Putin may sound reasonable at times, but his spokesmen and flunkies tell us what he is really thinking. Medvedev, who is now Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, was asked to comment on the West. His answer was: “I hate them. They are bastards and degenerates. They want us, Russia, to die. And while I’m still alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.”[vi]
Will Moscow call on North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine? Will Moscow reinstate the Soviet Union? The KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn warned, in 1984, that the USSR was organizing its own collapse in the form of a “controlled liberalization.” Golitsyn wrote, “After the successful use of the scissors strategy in the early stages of the final phase of policy … a Sino-Soviet reconciliation could be expected. It is contemplated and implied by the long-range policy and by strategic disinformation on the [Sino-Soviet] split.”[vii]
Few bothered to read Golitsyn, who was slandered by journalist Thomas Mangold as a “paranoid schizophrenic.”[viii] Few career pundits or politicians dared mention Golitsyn’s uncanny predictions about the fall of the Soviet Union. But now we approach the communist end-game. The things Golitsyn warned about – the sudden revival of Soviet power – are happening before our eyes. In respect of grand strategy, Golitsyn’s warnings were prescient. But he was not psychic. He did not hear voices. His predictions were based on a deep understanding of Soviet strategic ideas. Our “consensus” politicians did not understand these ideas and fell into Moscow’s trap. Our foreign policy Mandarins, competent at foreign languages and social science, knew little of another foreign language – the language of communist strategy.
Our poli sci Mandarins, relying on game theory and mathematical models, ignored Golitsyn’s “New Methodology.” Sovietologist Francis Fukuyama characterized the fall of the Soviet Union as “the end of history.” These people never understood the mind of their enemy. Even now they are groping in the dark. Our elite schools have failed. Our elite strategists have failed. We have entered a crisis familiar in history, where a great nation is unexpectedly laid low by its own incompetent leadership.
Back to the USSR: Hints from On High – J.R. Nyquist Blog (jrnyquist.blog)
Posted on August 12, 2022
JR Nyquist
Speaking on Rossiya 1 Television, Col. Igor Korotchenko said that North Korea had offered Russia 100,000 “volunteer” troops to fight in Ukraine. “Pyongyang will be able to transfer its tactical units to Donbas,” he added, describing the North Korean troops as “Resilient and undemanding”; but more important, he said they were “motivated.” What was most curious was the communist phraseology used by Korotchenko to describe this offer of troops from North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un: “If North Korea expresses a desire to meet its international duty to fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should let them.”Back to the USSR: Hints from On High
According to a Soviet textbook, written by Kharis Sabirov in 1987, we are living in the “period of transition from capitalism to socialism” where socialism is “the first phase of the communist formation….”[ii] The text further explained, “Socialism, which is the negation of capitalism, means a revolutionary restructuring of all spheres of bourgeois society on the principles of scientific communism.” This can only be done in the course of a relentless struggle by stamping out the sources of [bourgeois] might….”[iii] The founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, said that revolutionary socialism was international in character. After World War II, the followers of Lenin asserted that the communist parties of all countries have an international duty to unite and assist one another. In doing this, they were following Lenin’s lead. According to Sabirov, Lenin “upheld the principle of internationalism….” In this context, communist North Korea does not simply fight for the national interests of North Korea or of Russia. North Korea is duty-bound to the other socialist countries.
Korotchenko’s allusion to North Korea’s “international duty” is therefore a clue from on high. As he is Putin’s toady, he would never say anything to displease his boss. He would never use Leninist terminology unless that terminology was approved at the highest levels. The obliteration of the Ukrainian state, he has affirmed, is “absolutely healthy.” Why is it healthy? Because it signifies the restoration of the Soviet Union. In past appearances on Russian state TV channel Rossiya 1, Korotchenko outlined an optimistic scenario for “capturing the Baltic countries.”[iv] What possible reason could Russia have for invading three independent NATO countries? What possible reason does Russia have for invading and destroying the country of Ukraine?
Vladimir Putin’s political ally, former President Dmitri Medvedev, recently posted a controversial item on social media that has since been deleted. The post was about restoring the Soviet Union. Medvedev called into question the “independence of ex-Soviet states.” According to the Crux Channel, “Medvedev’s post … called for the return of all ex-Soviet states and the re-establishment of [the] USSR.” To explain away Medvedev’s post, the Kremlin claimed the former Russian president’s social media account had been hacked. Crux noted, however, that “many experts pointed out that the post was written in a style similar to [Medvedev’s] previous posts.” The idea that Medvedev could have been hacked is disputed by the fact that “Russia’s Security Council [on which Medvedev serves] is covered by a huge security [umbrella].” Furthermore, Medvedev’s post was consistent with recent Kremlin propaganda. The former Russian president also said that Georgia and Kazakhstan are not sovereign countries – just as Putin claimed Ukraine is not a sovereign country. Medvedev said that “Georgia had never existed before its reunification with the Russian Empire in the 19th century,” adding that Kazakhstan has been committing genocide against Russians. He also said, “all the people who once lived in the great and mighty Soviet Union will once again live together,” and that Russia is “getting ready to undertake the next move to restore the borders of our homeland.” Crux reports that Putin’s critics believe Moscow is aiming at a Soviet restoration, though confusion remains among those who erroneously say that Putin is restoring the Russian Empire.[v]
To convince the Russian people that they need, once more, to live under communism, a propaganda of anti-Western hate has been obligatory in the country’s state-controlled media. Putin may sound reasonable at times, but his spokesmen and flunkies tell us what he is really thinking. Medvedev, who is now Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, was asked to comment on the West. His answer was: “I hate them. They are bastards and degenerates. They want us, Russia, to die. And while I’m still alive, I will do everything to make them disappear.”[vi]
Will Moscow call on North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine? Will Moscow reinstate the Soviet Union? The KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn warned, in 1984, that the USSR was organizing its own collapse in the form of a “controlled liberalization.” Golitsyn wrote, “After the successful use of the scissors strategy in the early stages of the final phase of policy … a Sino-Soviet reconciliation could be expected. It is contemplated and implied by the long-range policy and by strategic disinformation on the [Sino-Soviet] split.”[vii]
Few bothered to read Golitsyn, who was slandered by journalist Thomas Mangold as a “paranoid schizophrenic.”[viii] Few career pundits or politicians dared mention Golitsyn’s uncanny predictions about the fall of the Soviet Union. But now we approach the communist end-game. The things Golitsyn warned about – the sudden revival of Soviet power – are happening before our eyes. In respect of grand strategy, Golitsyn’s warnings were prescient. But he was not psychic. He did not hear voices. His predictions were based on a deep understanding of Soviet strategic ideas. Our “consensus” politicians did not understand these ideas and fell into Moscow’s trap. Our foreign policy Mandarins, competent at foreign languages and social science, knew little of another foreign language – the language of communist strategy.
Our poli sci Mandarins, relying on game theory and mathematical models, ignored Golitsyn’s “New Methodology.” Sovietologist Francis Fukuyama characterized the fall of the Soviet Union as “the end of history.” These people never understood the mind of their enemy. Even now they are groping in the dark. Our elite schools have failed. Our elite strategists have failed. We have entered a crisis familiar in history, where a great nation is unexpectedly laid low by its own incompetent leadership.
Back to the USSR: Hints from On High – J.R. Nyquist Blog (jrnyquist.blog)
northern watch
TB Fanatic
Desperate Putin 'is considering turning to Kim Jong Un for help in Ukraine and offering energy and grain in return for 100,000 soldiers', Russian reports claim
PUBLISHED: 03:52 EDT, 5 August 2022 | UPDATED: 20:50 EDT, 6 August 2022
A desperate Vladimir Putin is considering turning to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for help in his invasion of Ukraine, and is willing to offer energy and grain in return for 100,000 soldiers, according to reports in Russia.
North Korea has made it clear through 'diplomatic channels' that as well as providing builders to repair war damage, it is ready to supply a vast fighting force in an attempt to tip the balance in Moscow's favour, reported Regnum news agency.
They would be deployed to the forces of the separatist pro-Putin Donetsk People's Republic [DPR] and Luhansk People's Republic [LPR], both of which Kim has recently recognised as independent countries.
'The country is ready to transfer up to 100,000 of its soldiers to Donbas,' said the report by the pro-Kremlin news agency. 'Pyongyang will be able to transfer its tactical units to Donbas.'
In return, grain and energy would be supplied to Kim's stricken economy.
A leading defence expert in Moscow, reserve colonel Igor Korotchenko, told Russian state TV: 'We shouldn't be shy in accepting the hand extended to us by Kim Jong-un.'
Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of Russia's National Defence journal on Rossiya 1 channel, said: 'There are reports that 100,000 North Korean volunteers are prepared to come and take part in the conflict.'
He was challenged by other presenters of the propaganda channel on whether they could be volunteers from North Korea where total obedience is required.
But he said North Korean people were 'resilient and undemanding' and 'the most important thing is they are motivated'. He told viewers: 'We shouldn't be shy in accepting the hand extended to us by Kim Jung-un…
'If North Korean volunteers with their artillery systems, wealth of experience with counter battery warfare and large calibre multiple launch rocket systems, made in North Korea, want to participate in the conflict, well let's give the green light to their volunteer impulse.'
He said: 'If North Korea expresses a desire to meet its international duty to fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should let them.' It was the 'sovereign right of the DPR and LPR to sign the relevant agreements,' he said.
Russia has repeatedly claimed Ukraine is a 'fascist' country as one of its many ways to attempt to justify Putin's brutal invasion, that has killed thousands of civilians and caused millions of people to flee their homes.
Meanwhile Russia should end its participation in international sanctions against Kim's regime, Korotchenko claimed.
Ties between Russia and North Korea dates back to 1948, when the Soviet Union became the first country to officially recognise the DPRK. During the Korean war, the Korean People's Army was supported by the USSR.
Relations between the two countries continued even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with Vladimir Putin giving it more importance when he was elected president in 2000. Kim Jong Un accepted an invitation to visit Russia in 2015, and the pair met on Russian soul - in Vladivostok - on 2019.
When Putin launched his invasion in Ukraine on February 24, North Korea was one of five countries to vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion.
North Korea also became the third country to recognise the independence of the breakaway states of Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in Eastern Ukraine - territory seized by Russian forces during the invasion.
Ukraine reacted by severing all diplomatic ties with North Korea.
The claim over North Koreans comes as Russia is desperately seeking to boost its frontline forces by recruiting prisoners in exchange for waiving their jail sentences.
A Dad's Army of men in their 50s and 60s is also being recruited with the offer of pay higher than many receive in Putin's moribund economy.
It comes as Russia's invasion of Ukraine enters its sixth month, after Moscow brazenly expected to seize Kyiv in a matter of days. Instead, Putin's forces have found themselves fighting a protracted conflict against a fierce Ukrainian defence, with predictions putting Russian fatalities in the tens-of-thousands.
The recent addition of to Ukraine's arsenal of U.S.-made HIMARS missile systems has even begin to move the dial in Kyiv's favour in some regions.
Ukraine officials have said they operate up to a dozen HIMARS systems, whose accuracy and long range have allowed Kyiv to reduce Russia's artillery advantage.
Korotchenko is known for his fierce pro-Putin rhetoric.
Recently he urged Putin to bomb Kyiv with a Kalibr cruise missile inscribed 'Hasta la vista baby!' during any Boris Johnson farewell visit - not to 'murder' the UK prime minister but in a show of strength.
Russians should feel 'no shame' of its ambition of obliterating Ukraine as an independent state, he also said recently.
Such an objective was 'absolutely healthy', he said.
'It was said here that Russia is trying to wipe Ukraine off the geopolitical map of the world,' he said. 'It isn't quite that. We are wiping an anti-Russia project off the geopolitical map of the world…'
Ukraine had 'never existed' as a truly independent state in the past, he falsely claimed. 'It is an artificial 'formation' which was born thanks to the national policy conducted after 1917 by the Bolsheviks,' he said.
But now it had become 'a springboard for a strike against Russia'.
Its political elite 'have no right to exist from the point of national interests of our country'.
The West 'will not be able to influence the decisiveness of the leadership of our country and our people to make it so that such a threat from the territory now called Ukraine never exists.'
Desperate Putin 'is considering turning to Kim Jong Un for help in Ukraine' | Daily Mail Online
- N. Korea made it clear it is willing to assist in Russia's war, news agency reported
- This would include providing a vast fighting force and builders to repair damage
- In return, it said grain and energy would be supplied to Kim's stricken economy
- Reacting, reserve colonel Igor Korotchenko told Russian state TV: 'We shouldn't be shy in accepting the hand extended to us by Kim Jong-un.'
- Russia and North Korea have shared close ties dating back to 1948, when Soviet Union became first country to recognise DPRK. Putin and Kim last met in 2019
PUBLISHED: 03:52 EDT, 5 August 2022 | UPDATED: 20:50 EDT, 6 August 2022
A desperate Vladimir Putin is considering turning to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un for help in his invasion of Ukraine, and is willing to offer energy and grain in return for 100,000 soldiers, according to reports in Russia.
North Korea has made it clear through 'diplomatic channels' that as well as providing builders to repair war damage, it is ready to supply a vast fighting force in an attempt to tip the balance in Moscow's favour, reported Regnum news agency.
They would be deployed to the forces of the separatist pro-Putin Donetsk People's Republic [DPR] and Luhansk People's Republic [LPR], both of which Kim has recently recognised as independent countries.
'The country is ready to transfer up to 100,000 of its soldiers to Donbas,' said the report by the pro-Kremlin news agency. 'Pyongyang will be able to transfer its tactical units to Donbas.'
In return, grain and energy would be supplied to Kim's stricken economy.
A leading defence expert in Moscow, reserve colonel Igor Korotchenko, told Russian state TV: 'We shouldn't be shy in accepting the hand extended to us by Kim Jong-un.'
Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of Russia's National Defence journal on Rossiya 1 channel, said: 'There are reports that 100,000 North Korean volunteers are prepared to come and take part in the conflict.'
He was challenged by other presenters of the propaganda channel on whether they could be volunteers from North Korea where total obedience is required.
But he said North Korean people were 'resilient and undemanding' and 'the most important thing is they are motivated'. He told viewers: 'We shouldn't be shy in accepting the hand extended to us by Kim Jung-un…
'If North Korean volunteers with their artillery systems, wealth of experience with counter battery warfare and large calibre multiple launch rocket systems, made in North Korea, want to participate in the conflict, well let's give the green light to their volunteer impulse.'
He said: 'If North Korea expresses a desire to meet its international duty to fight against Ukrainian fascism, we should let them.' It was the 'sovereign right of the DPR and LPR to sign the relevant agreements,' he said.
Russia has repeatedly claimed Ukraine is a 'fascist' country as one of its many ways to attempt to justify Putin's brutal invasion, that has killed thousands of civilians and caused millions of people to flee their homes.
Meanwhile Russia should end its participation in international sanctions against Kim's regime, Korotchenko claimed.
Ties between Russia and North Korea dates back to 1948, when the Soviet Union became the first country to officially recognise the DPRK. During the Korean war, the Korean People's Army was supported by the USSR.
Relations between the two countries continued even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with Vladimir Putin giving it more importance when he was elected president in 2000. Kim Jong Un accepted an invitation to visit Russia in 2015, and the pair met on Russian soul - in Vladivostok - on 2019.
When Putin launched his invasion in Ukraine on February 24, North Korea was one of five countries to vote against a United Nations resolution condemning the invasion.
North Korea also became the third country to recognise the independence of the breakaway states of Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in Eastern Ukraine - territory seized by Russian forces during the invasion.
Ukraine reacted by severing all diplomatic ties with North Korea.
The claim over North Koreans comes as Russia is desperately seeking to boost its frontline forces by recruiting prisoners in exchange for waiving their jail sentences.
A Dad's Army of men in their 50s and 60s is also being recruited with the offer of pay higher than many receive in Putin's moribund economy.
It comes as Russia's invasion of Ukraine enters its sixth month, after Moscow brazenly expected to seize Kyiv in a matter of days. Instead, Putin's forces have found themselves fighting a protracted conflict against a fierce Ukrainian defence, with predictions putting Russian fatalities in the tens-of-thousands.
The recent addition of to Ukraine's arsenal of U.S.-made HIMARS missile systems has even begin to move the dial in Kyiv's favour in some regions.
Ukraine officials have said they operate up to a dozen HIMARS systems, whose accuracy and long range have allowed Kyiv to reduce Russia's artillery advantage.
Korotchenko is known for his fierce pro-Putin rhetoric.
Recently he urged Putin to bomb Kyiv with a Kalibr cruise missile inscribed 'Hasta la vista baby!' during any Boris Johnson farewell visit - not to 'murder' the UK prime minister but in a show of strength.
Russians should feel 'no shame' of its ambition of obliterating Ukraine as an independent state, he also said recently.
Such an objective was 'absolutely healthy', he said.
'It was said here that Russia is trying to wipe Ukraine off the geopolitical map of the world,' he said. 'It isn't quite that. We are wiping an anti-Russia project off the geopolitical map of the world…'
Ukraine had 'never existed' as a truly independent state in the past, he falsely claimed. 'It is an artificial 'formation' which was born thanks to the national policy conducted after 1917 by the Bolsheviks,' he said.
But now it had become 'a springboard for a strike against Russia'.
Its political elite 'have no right to exist from the point of national interests of our country'.
The West 'will not be able to influence the decisiveness of the leadership of our country and our people to make it so that such a threat from the territory now called Ukraine never exists.'
Desperate Putin 'is considering turning to Kim Jong Un for help in Ukraine' | Daily Mail Online
northern watch
TB Fanatic
RT: 0.13 minutes
northern watch
TB Fanatic
northern watch
TB Fanatic
And the "New Soviets" are not even trying to hide it anymore. They think they still have the juice baby.
vector7
Dot Collector
Russia, and China and their allies start massive military drills near US waters, openly calling it "A message to America"...
Analysts : It is one of the clearest signs of forming an alliance in Latin #America against #USA . Naval exercises will begin tomorrow in #Venezuela , with the participation of #Russia , #China and #Iran . The exercises will continue until the 27th of August.
View: https://twitter.com/DaeemKamal/status/1558157914896056320?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
Military exercises of Russia Iran,China and other participants begin in Venezuela.
RT 2min
View: https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1558470558139965441?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
The opening ceremony for the Korla section of the competitions hosted by China as part of the International Army Games 2022 took place in Korla, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Teams from China, Russia, Belarus, Iran and Venezuela will participate in the contests.
View: https://twitter.com/fcn_84/status/1558544883652202497?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
View: https://twitter.com/fcn_84/status/1558545489993269250?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
The Int'l Army Games, co-hosted by 12 countries including China, Russia & Iran, is taking place from Aug 13-26. The competitions hosted by the PLA Army in Xinjiang see 9 teams from 5 countries – China, Russia, Belarus, Iran & Venezuela -- participate.
RT 2:36secs
View: https://twitter.com/CGMeifangZhang/status/1558338912975818753?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
Analysts : It is one of the clearest signs of forming an alliance in Latin #America against #USA . Naval exercises will begin tomorrow in #Venezuela , with the participation of #Russia , #China and #Iran . The exercises will continue until the 27th of August.
View: https://twitter.com/DaeemKamal/status/1558157914896056320?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
Military exercises of Russia Iran,China and other participants begin in Venezuela.
RT 2min
View: https://twitter.com/AZmilitary1/status/1558470558139965441?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
The opening ceremony for the Korla section of the competitions hosted by China as part of the International Army Games 2022 took place in Korla, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Teams from China, Russia, Belarus, Iran and Venezuela will participate in the contests.
View: https://twitter.com/fcn_84/status/1558544883652202497?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
View: https://twitter.com/fcn_84/status/1558545489993269250?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
The Int'l Army Games, co-hosted by 12 countries including China, Russia & Iran, is taking place from Aug 13-26. The competitions hosted by the PLA Army in Xinjiang see 9 teams from 5 countries – China, Russia, Belarus, Iran & Venezuela -- participate.
RT 2:36secs
View: https://twitter.com/CGMeifangZhang/status/1558338912975818753?s=20&t=zDeCa01oJJSoA_2gU2v7Bw
jward
passin' thru
uhoh. truth tellin can't be a good sign : (
EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3
8m
Update: WSJ: The former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, said that the US is "on the brink of war with Moscow and Beijing over controversial issues for which we are partially responsible."
EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3
8m
Update: WSJ: The former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, said that the US is "on the brink of war with Moscow and Beijing over controversial issues for which we are partially responsible."
northern watch
TB Fanatic
vector7
Dot Collector
Last edited:
jward
passin' thru
The Cavell Group
@TCG_CrisisRisks
Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes continued yesterday and overnight, but remain far more subdued than the usual trend with still no obvious sign of any retaliatory strike for the Crimean Saki airbase attacks earlier this week.
2. Most impacts the last 24hrs were in the south and southeast.
3. Russian shelling continues to be intensive north of Donetsk City, around Bakhmut and north of Kherson. In other impacted regions shelling was more sporadic yesterday and overnight.
4. Fighting increased again near Donetsk with significant activity around Pisky, Oleksandropil, Krasnohorivka, Avdiivka and Maryinka yesterday. Reports of some heavy losses, but no reports any Russian offensives were able to push through Ukrainian defensive lines.
5. Fighting continues southeast of Siversk near Vyimka where Russian SOF are active and further south around Soledar, but the heavier fighting remains around Bakhmut.
6. Russian air/missile strikes hit Bakhmut defences again yesterday with several localised Russian offensives conducted, but again minimal gains were made.
7. An increase in Russian small team SOF activity in this region and increased fighting around Donetsk is likely a deliberate Russian strategy to keep pressure on Ukrainian forces here as Ukrainian commanders try to resource further their southern counteroffensives.
8. Most other Russian units including the Airborne units near Izyum have redeployed to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to bolster Russian defences and likely conduct new offensives to try and push back advancing Ukrainian counteroffensives in the south.
9. Some fighting continued west of Izyum, but elsewhere in this region fighting was sporadic. South of Izyum Ukrainian forces re-secured more ground and around Izyum they continue to mostly contain Russian manoeuvres except to the north.
10. Russian forces continue to heavily secure their resupply corridor from the north into their Izyum FOB, but most manoeuvres seem to be heading back north.
11. There was some Russian activity further south of Izyum towards Dolyna, but this was repelled.
12. East of Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian forces destroyed more Russian vehicles as their counteroffensive continues to re-secure some ground.
13. Around Kherson there are reports Russian forces launched a large offensive against the Ukrainian counteroffensive around Lozove and Shyroke, but were repelled.
14. Ukrainian forces and partisan units continue to target and sabotage Russian defences, resupplies, railway and other critical infrastructure in and around Kherson. Ukrainian HIMARS long range artillery continues to be used highly effectively.
15. Russian Naval activity in the Black Sea reduced slightly the last 24hrs, but Cruise Missile launchers remain active and we still anticipate a strategic retaliatory strike for the Saki attack, likely including targets in western Ukraine, including Kyiv.
12:21 AM · Aug 14, 2022·Twitter for iPad
@TCG_CrisisRisks
Ukraine SITREP 1. Russian air/missile strikes continued yesterday and overnight, but remain far more subdued than the usual trend with still no obvious sign of any retaliatory strike for the Crimean Saki airbase attacks earlier this week.
2. Most impacts the last 24hrs were in the south and southeast.
3. Russian shelling continues to be intensive north of Donetsk City, around Bakhmut and north of Kherson. In other impacted regions shelling was more sporadic yesterday and overnight.
4. Fighting increased again near Donetsk with significant activity around Pisky, Oleksandropil, Krasnohorivka, Avdiivka and Maryinka yesterday. Reports of some heavy losses, but no reports any Russian offensives were able to push through Ukrainian defensive lines.
5. Fighting continues southeast of Siversk near Vyimka where Russian SOF are active and further south around Soledar, but the heavier fighting remains around Bakhmut.
6. Russian air/missile strikes hit Bakhmut defences again yesterday with several localised Russian offensives conducted, but again minimal gains were made.
7. An increase in Russian small team SOF activity in this region and increased fighting around Donetsk is likely a deliberate Russian strategy to keep pressure on Ukrainian forces here as Ukrainian commanders try to resource further their southern counteroffensives.
8. Most other Russian units including the Airborne units near Izyum have redeployed to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to bolster Russian defences and likely conduct new offensives to try and push back advancing Ukrainian counteroffensives in the south.
9. Some fighting continued west of Izyum, but elsewhere in this region fighting was sporadic. South of Izyum Ukrainian forces re-secured more ground and around Izyum they continue to mostly contain Russian manoeuvres except to the north.
10. Russian forces continue to heavily secure their resupply corridor from the north into their Izyum FOB, but most manoeuvres seem to be heading back north.
11. There was some Russian activity further south of Izyum towards Dolyna, but this was repelled.
12. East of Zaporizhzhia Ukrainian forces destroyed more Russian vehicles as their counteroffensive continues to re-secure some ground.
13. Around Kherson there are reports Russian forces launched a large offensive against the Ukrainian counteroffensive around Lozove and Shyroke, but were repelled.
14. Ukrainian forces and partisan units continue to target and sabotage Russian defences, resupplies, railway and other critical infrastructure in and around Kherson. Ukrainian HIMARS long range artillery continues to be used highly effectively.
15. Russian Naval activity in the Black Sea reduced slightly the last 24hrs, but Cruise Missile launchers remain active and we still anticipate a strategic retaliatory strike for the Saki attack, likely including targets in western Ukraine, including Kyiv.
12:21 AM · Aug 14, 2022·Twitter for iPad
jward
passin' thru
Amateur Hour Part II: Failing the Air Campaign
Mike Pietrucha
An air campaign is the controlled conduct of a series of interrelated air operations to achieve specified objectives. The conduct of effective air campaigns is the hallmark of all successful air forces. Effective air campaign planning is founded upon the professional mastery of air force personnel which includes an understanding of the interface between military and other national security operations.
– The Air Campaign: The Application of Air Power, Sanu Kainikara and Bob Richardson, Royal Australian Air Force Air Power Development Centre
The ongoing war with Ukraine continues to cause some head scratching among Western observers with respect to the Russian use of airpower. From the beginning of the invasion, the Russian Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno-kosmicheskiye sily or VKS) have astounded airpower advocates by their manifest failures, including an inability to gain air superiority, limited use of precision weapons, and poor targeting selection. Blinded by the technological potential of Russia’s newest combat aircraft, Western military analysts fell deeply into the “capabilities-based analysis” trap, deceived by the ease of comparing equipment, divorced from cultural preferences, training, and the human element. In reality, however, what we’re seeing is exactly what we should have expected from the Russian air force. The Russian military does not use airpower the way the United States and NATO do because they’ve never had to, and they’ve never suffered from an adversary who did. Russia cannot plan an air campaign because it has never seen one from either side — offensive or defensive — and Russian airpower has always been used for flying artillery and not as a strategic tool. What we are seeing from Russian airpower in Ukraine is the logical outcome of the way the Russian military fights, not a failed mirror-image of the way the United States and its allies employ airpower.
World War II and Beyond
It isn’t that the Russian military doesn’t use airpower: It’s simply that they have never conducted a campaign with airpower used as a strategic tool. Instead, they support a ground campaign with airpower employed tactically in support of ground forces.
In 1937, Russia had the largest air force in the world, but it was one without a coherent doctrine that was further crippled by Stalinist purges. The Soviet Air Force (Voenno-Vozdushniye Sily or VVS) was of little interest to Stalin in the run-up to World War II, as he did not foresee Hitler’s intentions towards the Soviet Union and anticipated little need for strategic airpower. By 1939, Russian airpower capabilities were declining, not advancing, and by 1940, many of Russia’s prewar airpower advocates were dead or in jail, caught up in purges that eliminated 75 percent of the Soviet Air Force leadership, including most of the aviators who had participated in the Spanish Civil War. Russian airpower in the Winter War in 1939 was ineffective against an air force that was well trained, if not superbly equipped, with only two squadrons of the obsolescent Dutch Fokker D.XXI. In three-and-a-half months, the Finnish aviators downed 300 aircraft and racked up a five-to-one kill ratio, with 10 aviators making ace. (When I was on a military exchange with the 21st Fighter Squadron in Tampere, Finland, I was reminded that Finland has the highest per-capita collection of fighter aces in the world). Finnish gunners did as well, downing another 300 Soviet aircraft.
Figure 1: A rare color photo of a Finnish Fokker D.XXI at Nurmoila airfield in 1943. The Finnish swastika predates the Nazi use of the symbol and is unrelated to Nazi Germany.
The Soviet planners took little notice of their experience, and in 1941, Germany attacked an unready and incompetent Russian air arm, downing over 200 aircraft in aerial combat and destroying almost 900 on the ground on the first day. Within a week, the Russian air force was combat-ineffective. This was completely in line with the prevailing German airpower philosophy, which had gaining air superiority as its first task. Still, the German military themselves were not executing an air campaign. The Luftwaffe’s twin-engine bombers could not reach Russia’s industries east of Moscow, and the few four-engine bombers were too little to have an effect, particularly without escort. Then, air superiority was not an opening move to an air campaign by the Luftwaffe, but it instead allowed the Luftwaffe to be entirely focused on the tactical fight, expecting a short war of ten weeks where strategic attacks that destroyed infrastructure were counterproductive to Nazi war goals.
While it’s true that the Luftwaffe provided support for the rapidly moving advance, it was German ground mobility that shattered the Red Army, not the Luftwaffe. It’s not clear that the Russian military suffered strategically from the loss of its limited airpower. Yes, the massive loss ratio at the onset of the operation shattered the Russian air force, but it’s not likely that it had the equipment, trained personnel, or doctrine to be more than an annoyance to the Wehrmacht divisions raging across eastern Europe, even were it functional.
Lucky for Germany. According to the U.S. Air Force’s Historical Studies No. 153, “t was impossible for the Luftwaffe to perform simultaneously its two assigned missions, the achievement of air superiority and support of the ground forces,” and the main effort switched to the latter mission three days into the war.
The German forces would lose air superiority after the Battle of Kursk, not because the Russian side gained it through force of arms, but because the German military was by then on a losing battle of attrition and could not keep up with the Allied powers in terms of training or aircraft production. But if the Russia was no longer bedeviled by German control of the air, it did not conduct a strategic air campaign against Germany but instead did the exact same thing the the German military had done — used aircraft as flying artillery to support ground forces. It’s no surprise really, as Russia intentionally mirror-imaged its German opponents.
Airpower was simply not independently decisive on the eastern front, although it was an effective supporting arm for whichever side could put it into play. As imperfect as the Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Forces were in designing air campaigns of their own, there simply was no German or Russian equivalent. German air superiority, which was not an end in itself, did not prevent Russia from turning back the German advance into Russia. And when the Russian forces gained air superiority, they did not conduct an air campaign against Germany but instead returned to their preferred application of airpower as flying artillery. The chief benefit of air superiority for Russia was to reduce its losses of airmen, who had been treated as expendable assets exactly like their Red Army brethren.
More recently, air superiority was not an issue in Afghanistan, and it was irrelevant in Chechnya (1994 and 1999), Georgia (2008), and Ukraine (2014-2015). In Syria (2015- ), Russia had it and used it, but airpower still played a supporting role to ground forces — and mostly Syrian and not Russian ground forces at that. There was no Russian air campaign against the Islamic State designed to dismantle the Islamic State as a system, unlike the American effort alongside. Instead, Russia used Syria as a testing ground, delivering aerial artillery at the behest of their in-country command elements. This was completely in line with the Russian preference for delivering fires via massed artillery, and this preference extends into the aerospace forces, where tactical aircraft are often employed as “flying artillery.” Precision-enabled close air support, as practiced by the United States, NATO, and Australia, is simply not an element of the Russian combat paradigm either.
Ukraine
In retrospect, it seems pretty clear that the Russian forces did not plan an air campaign, instead falling into the same “short war” mentality that bedeviled the German military leaders in 1941 and NATO force planners in 1999 prior to Operation Allied Force during the Kosovo War. If a major power with an airpower tradition like the United States can fall prey to “short war syndrome,” then it should come as no surprise if the Russian military felt that an air campaign was unnecessary. There does not appear to be a Russian equivalent to Col. Warden’s The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, which has served as the foundational document for modern air campaign planning for the United States since Operation Desert Storm. Similarly, they have not developed the follow-on tools, processes, or techniques which are routinely used by the United States and NATO for air campaign planning. In short, the Russian military may have passed over an air campaign plan because it had no air campaign planners — or if it did, then those individuals don’t appear to have been involved in the preparation of the war plan for Ukraine.
The initial strikes against Ukraine on Feb. 24 looked like textbook counter-air operations: target fixed radars, impede command and control, and suppress airfields. Fixed radars were definitely caught, as were S-300P (SA-10A) elements that had long since lost their mobility due to a lack of spares. There is no question that Ukraine lost comprehensive low-altitude coverage of its airspace, and S-300s from Belarus successfully engaged at least one Ukrainian fighter over Kyiv, demonstrating a Russian ability to contest airspace control at higher altitudes from outside Ukraine.
Russian tactical aviation entered play with sunrise: The Ukrainian military claimed to have downed seven Russian aircraft before nightfall on that first day. The Ukrainian forces were not without aircraft losses themselves, losing aircraft to both surface and air threats. Ukrainian airmen adapted very early to the use of low altitude, where simple earth curvature provided sanctuary from long-range missiles in Belarus and Russia. Interviews with Ukrainian aviators revealed that the MiG-29 pilots tend to fly fast and low, taking advantage of the low-altitude regime to enable look-up shots while capitalizing on the inherent difficulty of engaging a fast-moving aircraft in a high clutter (radar and infrared) environment. This was not a sudden adaptation of necessary tactics. The Ukrainian pilots trained for low-altitude operations where the Russian pilots did not.
Absent a campaign plan, however, the Russian forces still made basic mistakes. While the initial Russian plans might have been superficially correct, they failed to follow through. Airfields are notoriously difficult to suppress, and the Russian military did not commit the weight of metal necessary to do so. Cratering runways must be comprehensive and precise: Runways are easy to repair and the least vulnerable to damage of all airfield components, while the Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum in Ukrainian service was designed to operate from damaged, gravel-strewn airfields. The loss of fixed-site radars is expected by professional air defense forces, which always have some plan for remaining in the fight. Most critically, Russian forces did not follow up with an effort intended to use the confusion in the opening round of a fight to make sure that any air defense that had been put down stayed down — they appear to simply have discounted the possibility of Ukrainian resilience. They did not put a major weight of effort into counter-air sweeps with fixed-wing aircraft to clear the skies of Ukrainian fighters. Another critical failure was the missed opportunity to bag the TB-2 drone control stations while they were in garrison. Those systems scattered after the opening round and are unlikely to be vulnerable again.
Also noteworthy was the assumption that an air assault could be carried through without air supremacy. How the Russian military leadership expected to reinforce the air assault on Hostomel airfield is open to question and may have rested on the expectation that Ukraine would fold early. In any event, at least Russia realized that committing the airborne corps to an airdrop without air superiority was suicidal, although this realization came too late for the desant in the air assault.
Mike Pietrucha
An air campaign is the controlled conduct of a series of interrelated air operations to achieve specified objectives. The conduct of effective air campaigns is the hallmark of all successful air forces. Effective air campaign planning is founded upon the professional mastery of air force personnel which includes an understanding of the interface between military and other national security operations.
– The Air Campaign: The Application of Air Power, Sanu Kainikara and Bob Richardson, Royal Australian Air Force Air Power Development Centre
The ongoing war with Ukraine continues to cause some head scratching among Western observers with respect to the Russian use of airpower. From the beginning of the invasion, the Russian Aerospace Forces (Vozdushno-kosmicheskiye sily or VKS) have astounded airpower advocates by their manifest failures, including an inability to gain air superiority, limited use of precision weapons, and poor targeting selection. Blinded by the technological potential of Russia’s newest combat aircraft, Western military analysts fell deeply into the “capabilities-based analysis” trap, deceived by the ease of comparing equipment, divorced from cultural preferences, training, and the human element. In reality, however, what we’re seeing is exactly what we should have expected from the Russian air force. The Russian military does not use airpower the way the United States and NATO do because they’ve never had to, and they’ve never suffered from an adversary who did. Russia cannot plan an air campaign because it has never seen one from either side — offensive or defensive — and Russian airpower has always been used for flying artillery and not as a strategic tool. What we are seeing from Russian airpower in Ukraine is the logical outcome of the way the Russian military fights, not a failed mirror-image of the way the United States and its allies employ airpower.
World War II and Beyond
It isn’t that the Russian military doesn’t use airpower: It’s simply that they have never conducted a campaign with airpower used as a strategic tool. Instead, they support a ground campaign with airpower employed tactically in support of ground forces.
In 1937, Russia had the largest air force in the world, but it was one without a coherent doctrine that was further crippled by Stalinist purges. The Soviet Air Force (Voenno-Vozdushniye Sily or VVS) was of little interest to Stalin in the run-up to World War II, as he did not foresee Hitler’s intentions towards the Soviet Union and anticipated little need for strategic airpower. By 1939, Russian airpower capabilities were declining, not advancing, and by 1940, many of Russia’s prewar airpower advocates were dead or in jail, caught up in purges that eliminated 75 percent of the Soviet Air Force leadership, including most of the aviators who had participated in the Spanish Civil War. Russian airpower in the Winter War in 1939 was ineffective against an air force that was well trained, if not superbly equipped, with only two squadrons of the obsolescent Dutch Fokker D.XXI. In three-and-a-half months, the Finnish aviators downed 300 aircraft and racked up a five-to-one kill ratio, with 10 aviators making ace. (When I was on a military exchange with the 21st Fighter Squadron in Tampere, Finland, I was reminded that Finland has the highest per-capita collection of fighter aces in the world). Finnish gunners did as well, downing another 300 Soviet aircraft.
Figure 1: A rare color photo of a Finnish Fokker D.XXI at Nurmoila airfield in 1943. The Finnish swastika predates the Nazi use of the symbol and is unrelated to Nazi Germany.
The Soviet planners took little notice of their experience, and in 1941, Germany attacked an unready and incompetent Russian air arm, downing over 200 aircraft in aerial combat and destroying almost 900 on the ground on the first day. Within a week, the Russian air force was combat-ineffective. This was completely in line with the prevailing German airpower philosophy, which had gaining air superiority as its first task. Still, the German military themselves were not executing an air campaign. The Luftwaffe’s twin-engine bombers could not reach Russia’s industries east of Moscow, and the few four-engine bombers were too little to have an effect, particularly without escort. Then, air superiority was not an opening move to an air campaign by the Luftwaffe, but it instead allowed the Luftwaffe to be entirely focused on the tactical fight, expecting a short war of ten weeks where strategic attacks that destroyed infrastructure were counterproductive to Nazi war goals.
While it’s true that the Luftwaffe provided support for the rapidly moving advance, it was German ground mobility that shattered the Red Army, not the Luftwaffe. It’s not clear that the Russian military suffered strategically from the loss of its limited airpower. Yes, the massive loss ratio at the onset of the operation shattered the Russian air force, but it’s not likely that it had the equipment, trained personnel, or doctrine to be more than an annoyance to the Wehrmacht divisions raging across eastern Europe, even were it functional.
Lucky for Germany. According to the U.S. Air Force’s Historical Studies No. 153, “t was impossible for the Luftwaffe to perform simultaneously its two assigned missions, the achievement of air superiority and support of the ground forces,” and the main effort switched to the latter mission three days into the war.
The German forces would lose air superiority after the Battle of Kursk, not because the Russian side gained it through force of arms, but because the German military was by then on a losing battle of attrition and could not keep up with the Allied powers in terms of training or aircraft production. But if the Russia was no longer bedeviled by German control of the air, it did not conduct a strategic air campaign against Germany but instead did the exact same thing the the German military had done — used aircraft as flying artillery to support ground forces. It’s no surprise really, as Russia intentionally mirror-imaged its German opponents.
Airpower was simply not independently decisive on the eastern front, although it was an effective supporting arm for whichever side could put it into play. As imperfect as the Royal Air Force and U.S. Army Air Forces were in designing air campaigns of their own, there simply was no German or Russian equivalent. German air superiority, which was not an end in itself, did not prevent Russia from turning back the German advance into Russia. And when the Russian forces gained air superiority, they did not conduct an air campaign against Germany but instead returned to their preferred application of airpower as flying artillery. The chief benefit of air superiority for Russia was to reduce its losses of airmen, who had been treated as expendable assets exactly like their Red Army brethren.
More recently, air superiority was not an issue in Afghanistan, and it was irrelevant in Chechnya (1994 and 1999), Georgia (2008), and Ukraine (2014-2015). In Syria (2015- ), Russia had it and used it, but airpower still played a supporting role to ground forces — and mostly Syrian and not Russian ground forces at that. There was no Russian air campaign against the Islamic State designed to dismantle the Islamic State as a system, unlike the American effort alongside. Instead, Russia used Syria as a testing ground, delivering aerial artillery at the behest of their in-country command elements. This was completely in line with the Russian preference for delivering fires via massed artillery, and this preference extends into the aerospace forces, where tactical aircraft are often employed as “flying artillery.” Precision-enabled close air support, as practiced by the United States, NATO, and Australia, is simply not an element of the Russian combat paradigm either.
Ukraine
In retrospect, it seems pretty clear that the Russian forces did not plan an air campaign, instead falling into the same “short war” mentality that bedeviled the German military leaders in 1941 and NATO force planners in 1999 prior to Operation Allied Force during the Kosovo War. If a major power with an airpower tradition like the United States can fall prey to “short war syndrome,” then it should come as no surprise if the Russian military felt that an air campaign was unnecessary. There does not appear to be a Russian equivalent to Col. Warden’s The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, which has served as the foundational document for modern air campaign planning for the United States since Operation Desert Storm. Similarly, they have not developed the follow-on tools, processes, or techniques which are routinely used by the United States and NATO for air campaign planning. In short, the Russian military may have passed over an air campaign plan because it had no air campaign planners — or if it did, then those individuals don’t appear to have been involved in the preparation of the war plan for Ukraine.
The initial strikes against Ukraine on Feb. 24 looked like textbook counter-air operations: target fixed radars, impede command and control, and suppress airfields. Fixed radars were definitely caught, as were S-300P (SA-10A) elements that had long since lost their mobility due to a lack of spares. There is no question that Ukraine lost comprehensive low-altitude coverage of its airspace, and S-300s from Belarus successfully engaged at least one Ukrainian fighter over Kyiv, demonstrating a Russian ability to contest airspace control at higher altitudes from outside Ukraine.
Russian tactical aviation entered play with sunrise: The Ukrainian military claimed to have downed seven Russian aircraft before nightfall on that first day. The Ukrainian forces were not without aircraft losses themselves, losing aircraft to both surface and air threats. Ukrainian airmen adapted very early to the use of low altitude, where simple earth curvature provided sanctuary from long-range missiles in Belarus and Russia. Interviews with Ukrainian aviators revealed that the MiG-29 pilots tend to fly fast and low, taking advantage of the low-altitude regime to enable look-up shots while capitalizing on the inherent difficulty of engaging a fast-moving aircraft in a high clutter (radar and infrared) environment. This was not a sudden adaptation of necessary tactics. The Ukrainian pilots trained for low-altitude operations where the Russian pilots did not.
Absent a campaign plan, however, the Russian forces still made basic mistakes. While the initial Russian plans might have been superficially correct, they failed to follow through. Airfields are notoriously difficult to suppress, and the Russian military did not commit the weight of metal necessary to do so. Cratering runways must be comprehensive and precise: Runways are easy to repair and the least vulnerable to damage of all airfield components, while the Soviet-era MiG-29 Fulcrum in Ukrainian service was designed to operate from damaged, gravel-strewn airfields. The loss of fixed-site radars is expected by professional air defense forces, which always have some plan for remaining in the fight. Most critically, Russian forces did not follow up with an effort intended to use the confusion in the opening round of a fight to make sure that any air defense that had been put down stayed down — they appear to simply have discounted the possibility of Ukrainian resilience. They did not put a major weight of effort into counter-air sweeps with fixed-wing aircraft to clear the skies of Ukrainian fighters. Another critical failure was the missed opportunity to bag the TB-2 drone control stations while they were in garrison. Those systems scattered after the opening round and are unlikely to be vulnerable again.
Also noteworthy was the assumption that an air assault could be carried through without air supremacy. How the Russian military leadership expected to reinforce the air assault on Hostomel airfield is open to question and may have rested on the expectation that Ukraine would fold early. In any event, at least Russia realized that committing the airborne corps to an airdrop without air superiority was suicidal, although this realization came too late for the desant in the air assault.
jward
passin' thru
continued
Beneath the Surface
The flaws in the Russian tactical airpower enterprise are not limited to doctrine or planning limits. Russia also lacks depth in its fighter force. Though it has advanced aircraft, the Russian air force might well have been designed as a living advertisement for export sales rather than as a credible air arm. True, Russia does possess a world-class mix of strategic bombers and cruise missiles, but its tactical aviation fleet lacks the realistic training and precision capabilities of its NATO opponents. It may also lack staying power: Total sortie counts with some 300 tactical aircraft appear to have run from 200 to 300 sorties per day in theater, far less than comparable with U.S. or NATO air operations. Five days into the invasion, Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute wrote on the surprising inability of the Russian forces to gain air superiority, citing a number of possibilities, including low aircrew experience, a lack of precision munitions and targeting sensors, risk aversion, and lack of confidence in their ability to manage a joint engagement zone as possible inhibitors. Each of those factors is credible and well-documented: Russian aviators receive a fraction of the flying hours of most of their NATO counterparts, some 100-120 hours per year according to Russian public figures. Running a joint engagement zone is so difficult that neither the United States or NATO attempt it, instead relying on procedural and geographic deconfliction measures to separate a missile engagement zone from a fighter engagement zone. Even transiting a missile engagement zone with friendly aircraft can be chancy: The Patriot missile system has never downed a hostile air-breathing target, only friendly ones. And while Russia has invested in precision munitions, they have largely been concentrated in cruse and ballistic missiles rather than air-delivered precision munitions: Russian fixed-wing aircraft can deliver precision weapons, but not all of them are so equipped, and unguided ordnance remains the weapon of choice to Russian tactical aviation. It is also possible that risk aversion plays a role, as the number of advanced fighter-bombers in Russian service remains relatively low.
Another explanation offers itself — unrealistically high expectations by analysts who focus entirely too much on equipment and not enough on the human element, combined with a tendency to mirror-image. Mere possession of airborne sensors and GPS-aided weapons does not a precision capability grant: Precision targeting of aerial munitions requires an entire enterprise to back it up, from the mind-numbing work of collecting and cataloging a target library to the actual expertise needed to task the correct aircraft with appropriate munitions and then giving the aircrew sufficient data to detect, identify, and engage the target. But really those are tactical considerations. Also missing is the obvious link between a campaign plan and what the United States calls the master air attack plan. Wasting precision munitions hitting civilian targets like hospitals, shopping malls, and theaters is merely precision munitions being used in an old-fashioned, Douhet-style terror bombing campaign — a style of aerial warfare that has never worked.
Next Up?
At this writing, neither side has air superiority, but Russian fixed-wing aviation has learned to avoid Ukrainian-defended airspace at any altitude. At low altitude, shoulder-launched missiles remain a lethal threat, which is playing out mostly against helicopters and the Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft, on both sides. At higher altitudes, radar surface to air missile systems still prove effective. The Kh-31 Krypton anti-radiation missile — similar to the American AGM-78 Standard used in Vietnam — is simply too slow and is typically launched from too far away to interrupt an engagement sequence, which is characterized by tight emissions control. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian forces have suffered some radar attrition that they attribute to this missile and are thus limiting the amount of time that their radars remain on air. Ukrainian radar batteries are also successfully defending against cruise missiles, with Ukrainian claims for successful engagements exceeding 50 percent. While unverifiable, the fact that numerous videos show cruise missiles being employed singly instead of in dense salvos make the claim credible. The Soviet-era S-300s in Ukrainian service were designed to perform this mission, even against low altitude targets.
It’s likely that the Russian forces have made incremental improvements in their air defense posture, and the likelihood of TB2 drones catching powerless air defense systems on the ground is gone with the cold weather, although winter is coming again. But the opportunities for airpower employment normally accruing on the side with the initiative have been squandered, and Russia will not get them back. Russian airpower has largely returned to the three areas where the Russian military is most comfortable: flying artillery support, artillery spotting, and the haphazard employment of long-range weapons against civilian targets against a population that is long since past terror.
Russia failed by Western standards of airpower employment, but it’s not at all clear that Western standards apply. The Russian use of airpower is not an aberration by Russian standards, and it’s not entirely clear that what Western analysts regard as an abject failure is viewed that same way inside Russia, at least among all of the other, more compelling failures highlighted by the invasion of Ukraine. It is not reasonable to judge Russian air activities as a failure by Western standards because Russia is not using Western metrics to judge success (a cautionary note also for China). Russian forces have never exhibited the same view of airpower as the other Allied powers in World War II, and thus their use of airpower is largely what we should have expected — if we were looking at Russia and not in a mirror.
Mike “Starbaby” Pietrucha retired from the Air Force as a colonel. He was an instructor electronic warfare officer in the F-4G Wild Weasel and the F-15E Strike Eagle, amassing 156 combat missions over 10 combat deployments. As an irregular warfare operations officer, he has two additional combat deployments in the company of U.S. Army infantry, combat engineer, and military police units in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Beneath the Surface
The flaws in the Russian tactical airpower enterprise are not limited to doctrine or planning limits. Russia also lacks depth in its fighter force. Though it has advanced aircraft, the Russian air force might well have been designed as a living advertisement for export sales rather than as a credible air arm. True, Russia does possess a world-class mix of strategic bombers and cruise missiles, but its tactical aviation fleet lacks the realistic training and precision capabilities of its NATO opponents. It may also lack staying power: Total sortie counts with some 300 tactical aircraft appear to have run from 200 to 300 sorties per day in theater, far less than comparable with U.S. or NATO air operations. Five days into the invasion, Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute wrote on the surprising inability of the Russian forces to gain air superiority, citing a number of possibilities, including low aircrew experience, a lack of precision munitions and targeting sensors, risk aversion, and lack of confidence in their ability to manage a joint engagement zone as possible inhibitors. Each of those factors is credible and well-documented: Russian aviators receive a fraction of the flying hours of most of their NATO counterparts, some 100-120 hours per year according to Russian public figures. Running a joint engagement zone is so difficult that neither the United States or NATO attempt it, instead relying on procedural and geographic deconfliction measures to separate a missile engagement zone from a fighter engagement zone. Even transiting a missile engagement zone with friendly aircraft can be chancy: The Patriot missile system has never downed a hostile air-breathing target, only friendly ones. And while Russia has invested in precision munitions, they have largely been concentrated in cruse and ballistic missiles rather than air-delivered precision munitions: Russian fixed-wing aircraft can deliver precision weapons, but not all of them are so equipped, and unguided ordnance remains the weapon of choice to Russian tactical aviation. It is also possible that risk aversion plays a role, as the number of advanced fighter-bombers in Russian service remains relatively low.
Another explanation offers itself — unrealistically high expectations by analysts who focus entirely too much on equipment and not enough on the human element, combined with a tendency to mirror-image. Mere possession of airborne sensors and GPS-aided weapons does not a precision capability grant: Precision targeting of aerial munitions requires an entire enterprise to back it up, from the mind-numbing work of collecting and cataloging a target library to the actual expertise needed to task the correct aircraft with appropriate munitions and then giving the aircrew sufficient data to detect, identify, and engage the target. But really those are tactical considerations. Also missing is the obvious link between a campaign plan and what the United States calls the master air attack plan. Wasting precision munitions hitting civilian targets like hospitals, shopping malls, and theaters is merely precision munitions being used in an old-fashioned, Douhet-style terror bombing campaign — a style of aerial warfare that has never worked.
Next Up?
At this writing, neither side has air superiority, but Russian fixed-wing aviation has learned to avoid Ukrainian-defended airspace at any altitude. At low altitude, shoulder-launched missiles remain a lethal threat, which is playing out mostly against helicopters and the Su-25 Frogfoot attack aircraft, on both sides. At higher altitudes, radar surface to air missile systems still prove effective. The Kh-31 Krypton anti-radiation missile — similar to the American AGM-78 Standard used in Vietnam — is simply too slow and is typically launched from too far away to interrupt an engagement sequence, which is characterized by tight emissions control. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian forces have suffered some radar attrition that they attribute to this missile and are thus limiting the amount of time that their radars remain on air. Ukrainian radar batteries are also successfully defending against cruise missiles, with Ukrainian claims for successful engagements exceeding 50 percent. While unverifiable, the fact that numerous videos show cruise missiles being employed singly instead of in dense salvos make the claim credible. The Soviet-era S-300s in Ukrainian service were designed to perform this mission, even against low altitude targets.
It’s likely that the Russian forces have made incremental improvements in their air defense posture, and the likelihood of TB2 drones catching powerless air defense systems on the ground is gone with the cold weather, although winter is coming again. But the opportunities for airpower employment normally accruing on the side with the initiative have been squandered, and Russia will not get them back. Russian airpower has largely returned to the three areas where the Russian military is most comfortable: flying artillery support, artillery spotting, and the haphazard employment of long-range weapons against civilian targets against a population that is long since past terror.
Russia failed by Western standards of airpower employment, but it’s not at all clear that Western standards apply. The Russian use of airpower is not an aberration by Russian standards, and it’s not entirely clear that what Western analysts regard as an abject failure is viewed that same way inside Russia, at least among all of the other, more compelling failures highlighted by the invasion of Ukraine. It is not reasonable to judge Russian air activities as a failure by Western standards because Russia is not using Western metrics to judge success (a cautionary note also for China). Russian forces have never exhibited the same view of airpower as the other Allied powers in World War II, and thus their use of airpower is largely what we should have expected — if we were looking at Russia and not in a mirror.
Mike “Starbaby” Pietrucha retired from the Air Force as a colonel. He was an instructor electronic warfare officer in the F-4G Wild Weasel and the F-15E Strike Eagle, amassing 156 combat missions over 10 combat deployments. As an irregular warfare operations officer, he has two additional combat deployments in the company of U.S. Army infantry, combat engineer, and military police units in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Amateur Hour Part II: Failing the Air Campaign - War on the Rocks
An air campaign is the controlled conduct of a series of interrelated air operations to achieve specified objectives. The conduct of effective air
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