ALERT RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE - Consolidated Thread

Oreally

Right from the start

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
So, the idea is to deny the port of St Petersburg, Russia access to the Atlantic.
Which is the reason Russia invaded Ukraine.

That would be a bit like Russia invading Portugal because the Russians are torqued off about Vladivostok's access to the Pacific. You do realize the Black Sea is quite a way from the Atlantic (not to mention two very tight choke points at the Bosphorus Strait and the Strait of Gibraltar)? Maybe you're thinking about Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula?
 

Red Baron

Paleo-Conservative
_______________
That would be a bit like Russia invading Portugal because the Russians are torqued off about Vladivostok's access to the Pacific. You do realize the Black Sea is quite a way from the Atlantic (not to mention two very tight choke points at the Bosphorus Strait and the Strait of Gibraltar)? Maybe you're thinking about Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula?
I believe Raven is talking about the Baltic Sea and access to Kaliningrad.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
I believe Raven is talking about the Baltic Sea and access to Kaliningrad.

I read it that he said Russia invaded the Ukraine because the Russian navy was being restricted in St. Petersburg, which to me would be a very strange way to go about resolving that particular situation. Although maybe he was generalizing (and just didn't say so) about access to open ocean for the Russian navy and the NATO strategy of surrounding Russia on pretty much every front (which Putin has used as a major rallying call for Russians to support the invasion). Although Japan isn't a member of NATO the Japanese are in an excellent position to stop up Vladivostok (and recall the Japanese practically destroyed the Russian navy once before at the Battle of Tsushima).
 

raven

TB Fanatic
That would be a bit like Russia invading Portugal because the Russians are torqued off about Vladivostok's access to the Pacific. You do realize the Black Sea is quite a way from the Atlantic (not to mention two very tight choke points at the Bosphorus Strait and the Strait of Gibraltar)? Maybe you're thinking about Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula?
I believe Raven is talking about the Baltic Sea and access to Kaliningrad.
I read it that he said Russia invaded the Ukraine because the Russian navy was being restricted in St. Petersburg, which to me would be a very strange way to go about resolving that particular situation. Although maybe he was generalizing (and just didn't say so) about access to open ocean for the Russian navy and the NATO strategy of surrounding Russia on pretty much every front (which Putin has used as a major rallying call for Russians to support the invasion). Although Japan isn't a member of NATO the Japanese are in an excellent position to stop up Vladivostok (and recall the Japanese practically destroyed the Russian navy once before at the Battle of Tsushima).
There is the belief that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to "invade Europe".
However, the evidence, after 6 months of war, is that Russia is more focused on the land bridge to Crimea and connecting territory to Russia.
Why? Because Ukraine had amassed something on the order of 200,000 troops in that region. A reasonable assumption is that Ukraine intended to retake Crimea. Russia would not allow this to happen.
If you do not consider that to be a valid observation, there is not much left to discuss. However, this consideration explains Russian military movements better than any other.

If you believe that Russia is going to allow a blockade of St Petersburg by a county with the population of Oklahoma City . . . well, I would take that bet.
 

Red Baron

Paleo-Conservative
_______________
There is the belief that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to "invade Europe".
However, the evidence, after 6 months of war, is that Russia is more focused on the land bridge to Crimea and connecting territory to Russia.
Why? Because Ukraine had amassed something on the order of 200,000 troops in that region. A reasonable assumption is that Ukraine intended to retake Crimea. Russia would not allow this to happen.
If you do not consider that to be a valid observation, there is not much left to discuss. However, this consideration explains Russian military movements better than any other.

If you believe that Russia is going to allow a blockade of St Petersburg by a county with the population of Oklahoma City . . . well, I would take that bet.

Modern Russia, and especially that holdover Communist Putin, need to understand two things.

- Sovereign nations can form any alliances and relationships without the permission of the Russian government.

- Sovereign nations bordering Russia exist for their own benefit and are not vassal states to buffer against whatever threat the Neo-Communists wish to perpetuate to bolster their grip on power.

Russian leadership itself is the biggest problem that the Russian people must endure, not Russia's neighbors.
 

raven

TB Fanatic
Modern Russia, and especially that holdover Communist Putin, need to understand two things.

- Sovereign nations can form any alliances and relationships without the permission of the Russian government.

- Sovereign nations bordering Russia exist for their own benefit and are not vassal states to buffer against whatever threat the Neo-Communists wish to perpetuate to bolster their grip on power.

Russian leadership itself is the biggest problem that the Russian people must endure, not Russia's neighbors.
That's interesting but it is also a pretty woke view of history - sorry, but it is.
Almost as bad as saying a man can become a woman.

Yea, that is easy for me to say . . . "that it is a woke" idea. So, some examples.

Why the WEF is trying to create a one world government if nations can create alliances and relationships with whomever they want?
How about Cuba? Can they make military alliances with Russia?
What about Syria? Can they make military alliances with Russia?

The reality is that big countries allow small countries to administer their populations because it is more profitable.
That is why there are big countries - like the United States that had a civil war because half the country wanted to make its own alliances and relationships with whomever they wanted.

The United States and the NATO countries have propagated this notion of "sovereign countries can make relationships with whomever they want"
. . . just as long as it is beneficial to the US
. . . and of course as long as we have the military might to enforce it.
 

Walrus

Veteran Member
There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Kyiv Independent - presumably that's a newspaper or something - can be entrusted to give the absolute, unvarnished truth of Russian casualties, especially after Zelensky shut down all opposition political parties, opposing voices and unflattering media (both print and airwave) which didn't parrot the official party line from the government. :rolleyes:
 

Walrus

Veteran Member
It's not difficult to discern that some folks just have an implacable, burned-in hatred for all things Russian. So be it, people are free to have opinions; that doesn't change the reality on the ground, especially with an expanded view of the overall situation.

For every cherry-picked point, multiple counter-points can be made to show there's all kinds of supporting documentation for almost any point of view. Here's a few examples:

New Mariupol High Rises Are Looking Nice

More Than 100 Tons Of Humanitarian Aid Delivered By "O" Group To Lisichansk

American Priest Moves To Russia With His Family To Start New Life Away From Sodom & Gomorrah

Mariupol Philharmonic Restored - And Beautiful New Buildings Sprouting Up Everywhere In City
 

Walrus

Veteran Member
.....lllllllllllllll

No need to keep score with Ukraine's losses.
They are continuously resupplied by an infinite amount of western arms manpower and ammunition.
And they are turning a profit doing it.
Ukraine's losses are virtually zero.
Except for the fact that they're losing a whole generation's worth of their young men. As the beta males of Europe demonstrate every day after losing 2 generations' worth in the two big wars, the men who march off to battle and don't come home are irreplaceable.
 

raven

TB Fanatic
Except for the fact that they're losing a whole generation's worth of their young men. As the beta males of Europe demonstrate every day after losing 2 generations' worth in the two big wars, the men who march off to battle and don't come home are irreplaceable.
that's ok too.
their women can replace men just as well . . . you can just call them men, right?
 

Walrus

Veteran Member
The Ukrainians don't want their story interrupted about how it's been the Russians and not them shelling the water cooling systems in order to scram the reactors and prevent them from cooling down slowly as they're supposed to.

So the US is preventing the inspectors from going in? Although one should think that the IAEA would be under the auspices of the UN, if not completely independent. Such hypocrisy is becoming has become the norm, though.

Russia should just independently bring them in from the east; it's all Russian-controlled territory except for the city across the lake from the plant which Ukraine has been shelling from. I'm sure that would probably violate some kind of international standard or something, or they would've already done it. But if Ukraine decided to recklessly shell them while the inspectors were there, cei la vie. Let the chips fall where they may, but get the real story out.

So much for free and open inspections.
 
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wait-n-see

Veteran Member
There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Kyiv Independent - presumably that's a newspaper or something - can be entrusted to give the absolute, unvarnished truth of Russian casualties, especially after Zelensky shut down all opposition political parties, opposing voices and unflattering media (both print and airwave) which didn't parrot the official party line from the government. :rolleyes:

Plus the fact that Ukraine casualty figures have been declared state secrets by Z boy's dictatorship.

So guess what happens to any Ukraine who dares mention a single Ukraine casualty?

Accused of being a Russian spy or sympathizer I would guess. At the very least arrested and imprisoned.
 

Walrus

Veteran Member

War Propaganda About Ukraine Starting to Wear Thin​


War Propaganda About Ukraine Starting to Wear Thin - CovertAction Magazine

N.B. Hopefully this post is reasonably in line with Dennis' recent instructions. A few pictures useful to the story have been included in this post but most have been deleted as irrelevant fluff. They can be viewed on the link above, though, should anyone wish to see them.

https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?te...ne-starting-to-wear-thin/&via=CovertActionMag
https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=...opaganda-about-ukraine-starting-to-wear-thin/

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/08/13/war-propaganda-about-ukraine-starting-to-wear-thin/#
putin-1-feature-2.jpg

More and More Are Seeing Through the Lies

As Amnesty International confirms the inconvenient truths, which many independent journalists and political observers already knew, about the Ukrainian army’s behavior in Donbass, it’s worth examining how manipulating the truth has become—not only an everyday occurrence but a central element of the West’s proxy war in Ukraine.

An increasing number of mainstream journalists, commentators and ordinary individuals who had rushed to “Stand with Ukraine ” are finding the inconvenient truths about the Zelensky regime and its Army harder and harder to ignore.

It was the icon of American democracy [Walrus note *cough*], President Abraham Lincoln that said “You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.” Of course, even though Lincoln’s astute observation has been widely misquoted, it certainly has a particular resonance when we consider the recent misadventures and persistent foreign policy failures of his beloved United States.

Most particularly are American efforts to maintain an increasingly skeptical public’s support for its faltering and hugely costly geopolitical ambitions in Ukraine.

So far it hasn’t been too difficult to package a message for general consumption, a drive-through narrative if you will, that is easily accessible and digestible by a trusting public, particularly when that same public has been globally denied key factual insights into the background of a long running complex conflict into which they have been seduced as blindfolded supporters.

The current crisis in Ukraine is however different; it has seen the pro-Western media machine cultivate and disseminate disinformation, propaganda and fake news on a previously unseen scale. While the U.S. and its NATO allies prosecute their proxy conflict on the ground, in the air, and at sea, another illicit battle is being fought on social media, TV and radio.

Of course, propaganda and the winning of “hearts and minds” is nothing new when it comes to conflict. As far back as the 19th century Governments were aware of how important the narrative was at home, they actively sought to suppress details which they thought may be offensive or unhelpful to the home audience.

In the second Boer war in South Africa (1899-1902), when the British Army’s colonial war was failing it resorted to imprisoning Boer Women and children in vast ill equipped concentration camps where a stunning 26,000 of them would die from starvation, ill treatment and disease. The British actively considered creating a publicity campaign to hide the true horror of the hellish camps, including false reports and newspaper stories.

Again, during World War I the gruesome details of mass casualties in the horrendous and inhumane trenches of the western front were also sterilized and minimized for the home audience. As far as the public were concerned the Kaiser was the killer, the Germans ate Belgian babies and the repulsive Teutonic octopus had to be stopped at all costs.

Of course, the fact that the entire conflict was about imperial power, commerce and competition between the three grandchildren of the British Queen Victoria was conveniently ignored. In July 1916 British newspaper reports on the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in human history, famously read “Our casualties are not heavy,” an utterly misleading headline which sounds disturbingly familiar today.

When we consider Americas most recent large-scale military misadventures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya these ill-advised and bloody failures have yet again been portrayed as the “good guys against the bad guys”, it’s the Cowboys against the Indians, the dangerous and untrustworthy Muslim savages against the very existence of Western civilisation.

The immeasurable human suffering that these wars have visited on the innocent populations seldom features. American complicity and responsibility for creating the very problems they now seek to “solve” is bizarrely entirely ignored in its client media.

Today’s conflict in Ukraine is no exception, a similar narrative is peddled with the historical truths about where conflict grew from remaining unreported. Some of the most critical facts relating to Ukraine are routinely and conveniently rendered invisible by the mainstream media, such as when this civil war began and most crucially, who paid for and built the scaffolding on which it is now burning.

It is of course unpopular in any instance to swim against the flow of the tide, to be the child suggesting the emperor has no clothes, and to challenge “realities” that have been broadly accepted by a trusting public. Despite the gross imbalance in the presentation of the facts, up to now at least dissent was something accepted as a privilege of western democratic society, that freedom of speech and opinion is however in grave danger, particularly if it is based on inconvenient truths.

The “Absolute Truth”

When it comes to Ukraine a new, dangerous and lavishly funded weapon in the counter truth war has been deployed by western governments and media, I call it “Absolute Truth”. The Absolute truth doesn’t tolerate any challenges, when its allegations are proven false those realities are suppressed and ignored.

It immediately and efficiently targets any dissent from the prescribed narrative and brands challengers as “enemies,” “foreign agents,” or “useful idiots.” Critically there is no room for debate of any kind, there is no analysis of facts, there is only their Absolute Truth.

Should a journalist, State or individual question this Absolute Truth or merely suggest an objective analysis of the facts they are immediately and brutally marginalised and then targeted for retribution. This determined and choreographed punishment can range from the loss of a job to the isolation of an entire nation with threats of violence commonplace.

1385077_orig.jpg
[Source: twitter.com]

The fact that the West’s “Absolute Truth” narrative relies implicitly on mass censorship and the wholesale destruction of freedom of speech is apparently irrelevant to its architects and disciples, if these pillars of liberal democracy must be abandoned in this war against the facts, so be it.

Absolute truth also has a selective attitude when it comes to the behavior of its idols, when Mr Zelensky’s election with the assistance, cash and muscle of a corrupt oligarch is highlighted this is ignored, when his antidemocratic banning of all opposition and the imprisonment of its leaders comes up, it's fine. if the Absolute Truth requires the acceptance and deployment of brutal Nazi militias against civilians, (previously designated by the west as terrorists) that is again entirely acceptable.

Indeed, the Absolute truth brigade have a magical ability to erase history, assign hero status to mass murders (Stepan Bandera) and demonise those that defeated Nazism in Europe. The Absolute Truth now defines the narrative, the facts do not, facts and independent evidence will be selectively deployed if at all, those that challenge this are immediately designated as collaborators, war mongers and enemies of democracy.

Another sinister element of the cult of Absolute Truth is the reluctance to correct the record or admit when you get it wrong, from the “massacre” at Snake Island that never happened to the fake headlines about the Mariupol maternity hospital to name but a few, there is never any attempt to correct the record which begs the question how sincere were the allegations in the first place?

How the War in Ukraine Is Being Covered (Up) on Russian TV
[Source: theintercept.com]

Interestingly, when the internationally respected Amnesty international bravely countered the Absolute truth with indisputable facts, it was itself attacked by an increasingly paranoid Zelensky. There is now a distinct element of “the boy who cried wolf” about Zelensky’s persistent and now routine allegations of genocide, targeting of civilians and the apparent desire to “erase Ukraine from the map”.

Any cursory examination of the facts around the Ukrainian Army’s “counter terrorist” operation against its own people in 2014 in Donbas would suggest it was an increasingly radicalised Ukrainian military that first assaulted the ethnic Russian populations in the east in 2014.

As NATOs exceptionally costly and increasingly destructive proxy war against Russia grinds on, the prospect of any military victory for Ukraine fades almost hourly, the likelihood that Russia will seek settlement also fades by the day, any incentive to do so now strategically valueless.

Western support for Zelensky’s seemingly rudderless and incompetent regime is privately wavering as the impact of ham-fisted sanctions against Russia threatens social cohesion in Europe and America alongside a global energy crisis.

Promised counter offensives in the south have not materialized, the much vaunted “Million-man army” has failed to appear and yet again, the American and European press that presented this as fact have not rowed back on their outlandish claims.

The harsh reality of war is seemingly lost on the “absolute Truth” brigade who are happy to “stand with Ukraine” but will never stand in Ukraine.

The western public are a fickle audience, given the lack of initial scrutiny generally applied to the mainstream narrative on Ukraine it’s likely that as more of the inconvenient truths about Zelensky, his junta and the realities of this conflict appear, more and more westerns will be creeping into their yards in the dead of night to take down their hastily hoisted Ukrainian flags.

Contrary to the best efforts of those that have funded, molded and justified this proxy war the truth has a habit of resurfacing. It will be impossible to “manage” the oncoming tide of reality that will gush out of Ukraine as the western powers refocus on their self-inflicted domestic troubles this winter, Zelensky himself may become the fall guy for the failed NATO escapade in Ukraine.

That’s the thing about those inconvenient facts, they keep persisting under the surface, the truth doesn’t have a sell by date, and it is patient, the memory of the countless dead demands it to be.

And of course, as good old Abraham Lincoln said, “You can fool part of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”
 

Walrus

Veteran Member
Posted a couple of days ago on the Moon of Alabama blog. Long article with several embedded links but I've removed most of the maps which are discussed (Unless one has been monitoring the theater in detail by listening to Military Analysis' daily summary or an equivalent, they're kind of superfluous). They can be viewed by clicking the link:

MoA - Ukraine's Mystic Kherson Offensive Did Not, And Will Not Happen

Ukraine's Mystic Kherson Offensive Did Not, And Will Not Happen​

There has been much talk in 'western' media about a Ukrainian offensive in the southern Kherson region. However most of the claims made about it seem to be divorced from the observable realities on the ground. The detailed look below provides that there is no such offensive and that there is little chance that there will ever be one.

The purported offensive has for months been a core talking point:
Lets look at the map of the Kherson area and how it has changed over time. LiveUAmap, the source used here for these maps, is known to be more in favor of Ukrainian claims than Russian ones. The red parts are held by Russian forces.

This is the Kherson area as depicted on May 14, 2022:

kherson20220514-s.jpg

Source LiveUAmap 14.5. - bigger

We see that the maintainers of LiveUAmap kept the front line as it was, but added a gray zone on the Ukrainian side. I am not sure what it is supposed to show. It may designate the extend to which forward Russian reconnaissance units had been observed during their February-March offensive in the area. Since then the gray area has for some become the 'success' of a 'Ukrainian counter-offensive'. But Russian forces had never held onto that gray zone nor was there any significant fighting about it.

Another change happened around a small river at the norther part of the front line south of Kvkaz. The May 14 front line there was simplified as being straight. The real front line ran along the winding Ingulets river in that area.

At the beginning of June Ukrainian forces crossed the river around the towns Davydiv Brid, Bilohirka and Adriivka only to get slaughtered by Russian artillery. The area has since been no man's land.

Aug 12
khersondetail220220812-s.jpg

Source LiveUAmap 12.8. - bigger
One small town retaken and a failed river crossing attempt is all the much vaunted Kherson offensive has achieved since May.

That may well be because, despite the noise, there has been and will be no Ukrainian Kherson offensive. For the Ukrainian leaders in Kiev that offensive is only a joke.

On August 9 Zelenski advisor Mikhail Podolyak talked with a Ukrainian language BBC outlet. The Ukrainian Ctrana online news site reported about it (machine translation):

Podolyak called the words about the counterattack on Kherson "part of the information and psychological operation"
Reports of counteroffensives of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the southern direction are part of the "information-psychological special operation."
This was stated by adviser to the head of the OP Mikhail Podolyak in an interview with the BBC.
"Was it the IPSO? Of course, today all public comments are part of the IPSO. We need to demoralize the Russian army. They must understand that there will always be a territory of fire," he said.
Nevertheless, Podolyak clarified that "the events on the Antonovsky bridge show that it is essential for us to liberate Kherson" (as the only regional center that was under the occupation of the Russian Federation after February 24).
"And therefore, our army is already taking certain actions for this today," he said.
That news did not reach the Washington Post propagandist David Ignatius. On August 11 he still lauded the non-existing 'southern offensive':

A southern offensive opens in the Ukraine war

The grinding war of attrition in Ukraine might be entering a new phase as the Ukrainian military prepares an offensive to recover occupied land in the southern region surrounding Kherson, and Russia escalates its rhetoric by charging that the United States “is directly involved in the conflict.”
Ukraine appears to have begun its new southern campaign with a bold attack Tuesday on a Russian air base in Crimea, along the Black Sea coast.
...
With its long-anticipated southern offensive, Ukraine evidently hopes to regain momentum against Russian forces that have suffered heavy losses of soldiers and equipment since they invaded on Feb. 24. At a time when Russia is strained and vulnerable, Ukrainian leaders want to show that they can reclaim lost ground and ultimately prevail.
On August 12, a day after the Ignatius screed was published, four Washington Post reporters painted a different picture:

On the Kherson front lines, little sign of a Ukrainian offensive

MYKOLAIV REGION, Ukraine — On the front line in southeast Ukraine, there is little sign that a major counteroffensive is brewing.
For weeks, Western intelligence and military analysts have predicted that a Ukrainian campaign to retake the strategic port city of Kherson and surrounding territory is imminent. But in trenches less than a mile from Russia’s positions in the area, Ukrainian soldiers hunker down from an escalating onslaught of artillery, with little ability to advance.
...
The progress Ukrainian forces had made here in recent months — recapturing a string of villages from Russia’s control — has largely stalled, with soldiers exposed in the open terrain.
The roads that soldiers zip along among the scorched wheat fields at the front lines are pockmarked with craters from previous strikes, guided by Russia’s Orlan drones that allow them to pick and choose targets.
“There is nowhere to hide,” said Yuri, who has fought here without a break since the beginning of the war, and like other soldiers did not give his last name, in line with protocol. His unit has a hodgepodge stock: modern antitank weapons and a Soviet machine gun manufactured in 1944, and the focus here is holding the line.
Ukrainian military officials are tight-lipped on any timeline for a wider push, but say they need more supplies of Western weapons before one can happen. Ukraine lacks the capacity to launch a full-scale offensive anywhere along the 1,200-mile front line, one security official conceded.
The area north of Kherson is flat land with open fields. There is no place where one could securely assemble a force big enough to punch through the frontline. Ukrainian units went into hiding in Mykolaiv (Nikolaev in Russian writing) where they have dispersed among the civilian population after several of their concentrations had been attacked by Russian missile forces:

One woman took me to see her daughter’s school, smashed by Russian missiles. Through the broken concrete you could see a shelf of library books exposed to the sun and rain. Instead of blaming Russia for firing missiles at the school, she blamed Ukraine for quartering soldiers there. (..)
When I asked her about Putin’s aims, she said: ‘I don’t know. He must have his reasons for what he’s doing.’ Did she think what he was doing was right? ‘I never get involved in politics.’ She mentioned that salaries in Russian-annexed Crimea were higher than in Ukraine. She’d been angry, earlier on in the fighting, when Russian troops were approaching Mykolaiv, about how close Ukrainian armoured vehicles were to her house. She was Russian-born. She was unhappy that Russian language teaching was disappearing from Ukraine. She said people were punished for using Russian.
...
Another well-informed man told me what most locals would not say, that after a devastating strike on a Mykolaiv barracks in March, which killed scores and perhaps hundreds of marines, the authorities adopted a policy of dispersal, with small groups of Ukrainian personnel spending the night in a wide array of buildings, including schools.
The above quoted LRB piece, which mostly takes the Ukrainian side, details the difficulties the Ukrainians have in launching any offensive. (Sorry for the length of the quote but the details matter as they confirm the take above):

When Sasha’s company got to Posad-Pokrovske, they spent the first night in a school. The next day it was flattened in an air strike. They spent the next three and a half months living in concrete pipes under a bridge. ‘I’m already used to it,’ he said. ‘A typical day is they shell and bomb us from morning to night. Mum says, “Where are you?” and I say: “I’m home.” It’s our home now. People say, “We’re looking forward to you coming home,” and we say: “We are home.”’
Bodies of dead civilians have been lying unburied in Posad-Pokrovske for months. The soldiers aren’t allowed to collect them; since they’re civilians, it has to be done by the police, and the police don’t come.
...
A handful of villages have been liberated in the north of the Russian bridgehead, and Ukraine has won a toehold on the hostile side of a smaller river, the Ingulets. But mainly the two sides remain a few miles apart, with more lines of artillery further back. In the flat, open landscape, with little cover except the trees along the roads, any attempt by one side to breach the other’s lines is subject to withering fire from anti-tank missiles and guns, or shelling. Both sides launch drones to spy out artillery targets; when the artillery fires, it becomes the target for the other side’s artillery.
Russia has an overwhelming advantage in all these areas. It has more artillery guns and rockets than Ukraine, by a large margin. It has more attack planes and helicopters. It has more anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Ukrainian drones, and a crushing advantage in electronic warfare systems to jam them. ‘It’s easier for them,’ Sasha said. ‘They haul in shells by rail, by the wagonload. They unload them with cranes. They dig shelters with bulldozers. They shoot rockets from morning till night as if they came out of a machine. It’s shameful to admit – they have drones flying over us 24/7 and we have one. Sometimes we can see what they’re up to ... but it’s embarrassing. We don’t have the capability.’
Ukraine has been good at hiding its military, but even so, the absence in Mykolaiv and the surrounding countryside of the signs of a build-up of equipment, troops and supplies that you might expect for a counter-offensive is striking. There’s only so much you can move by night. If Ukraine is using its much vaunted mobilisation to expand its army with new units to retake Kherson, it’s being done with extraordinary stealth – or it’s simply taking a long time to integrate a chaotic array of foreign weapons and untrained recruits. Sasha was coy about his unit’s losses, but he did say they hadn’t been replaced.
No new weapons are coming into the Mykolaiv area. Front line units are depleted and have not been rotated out since March. Russian forces have overwhelming material superiority in the area.

There is no Ukrainian Kherson offensive. There will be no Ukrainian Kherson offensive.

If there will be an offensive in the general area it will be launched by the Russian side which will overrun the few exhausted Ukrainian forces which hold that frontline.

The few Ukrainian operations, missile strikes on bridges that are easily replaced by ferries, sabotage acts on a Crimean air base, are minor pin pricks to the Russian side. They will not change the imbalance of forces or the outcome of the war.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
There is the belief that Russia invaded Ukraine in order to "invade Europe".
However, the evidence, after 6 months of war, is that Russia is more focused on the land bridge to Crimea and connecting territory to Russia.
Why? Because Ukraine had amassed something on the order of 200,000 troops in that region. A reasonable assumption is that Ukraine intended to retake Crimea. Russia would not allow this to happen.
If you do not consider that to be a valid observation, there is not much left to discuss. However, this consideration explains Russian military movements better than any other.

If you believe that Russia is going to allow a blockade of St Petersburg by a county with the population of Oklahoma City . . . well, I would take that bet.

Very, very early in this thread (and in other threads about the war) I said I thought the invasion was always about Russia taking eastern Ukraine and securing a land bridge, with any other gains in territory essentially just being future concessions by Russia in the peace talks. Russia will not surrender Crimea without a lot of bad things happening to Russian forces, because Sevastopol is pretty much all they have in the south. Russia (and the Soviets) have always lusted after a warm water port for their navy that isn't held hostage by its geography. Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, and Sevastopol are all relatively easy to bottle up, with Arkhangelsk being choked with ice a big chunk of the year (and wouldn't global warming be a boon to that little problem!). For what it's worth Kaliningrad is the bite of territory that isn't directly connected to Russia, with Saint Petersburg being entirely within Russian territory, so I'm not sure where you get a small country blockading Saint Petersburg.
 

Walrus

Veteran Member
Very, very early in this thread (and in other threads about the war) I said I thought the invasion was always about Russia taking eastern Ukraine and securing a land bridge, with any other gains in territory essentially just being future concessions by Russia in the peace talks. Russia will not surrender Crimea without a lot of bad things happening to Russian forces, because Sevastopol is pretty much all they have in the south. Russia (and the Soviets) have always lusted after a warm water port for their navy that isn't held hostage by its geography. Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, and Sevastopol are all relatively easy to bottle up, with Arkhangelsk being choked with ice a big chunk of the year (and wouldn't global warming be a boon to that little problem!). For what it's worth Kaliningrad is the bite of territory that isn't directly connected to Russia, with Saint Petersburg being entirely within Russian territory, so I'm not sure where you get a small country blockading Saint Petersburg.
I believe your earlier observation about Russia taking the land bridge (all the way to Transnistria) is correct; I'd surmised the same thing myself way back, when discussing some overall strategy issues, thinking of how that would turn Ukraine into a landlocked country without all the slog of going all the way across the whole country. I think it's balderdash when I read stuff about "Putin wants to go all the way to the Netherlands" posts. Those things belong in the scrapyard of 4-decade-old thinking.

(That was post #2324, actually, back in December. I just reread it and must confess that I was wrong about Moldova being more of a Russian sympathizer than the EU. I was thinking back years ago when Moldova was itself a breakaway republic from Romania and further confess that I hadn't even ever heard of Transnistria.)

However, IMHO, I would strengthen your assertion about Crimea with a slight edit: "Russia will not surrender Crimea. Period. Full stop."

Ain't gonna happen.
 
Last edited:

jward

passin' thru
Zman himself has, at times, conceded Crimea ain't going no where, and cautioned his country men to begin the bitter task of accepting it. Like many men, and all politicians, though, he seems comfie changing his tune and pretending earlier versions of the song were never sang, let alone recorded for posterity.

Looks like the other stages are ready to raise their curtains for the next ACTS of the kabuki show, so hopefully that means this RU-UK/nato first act can draw to the close sometime soonish.
 

jward

passin' thru
EndGameWW3
@EndGameWW3

Update: Switzerland: The country's energy situation is serious and we have requested supplies from Germany and Italy.

EU, 42 countries call on Russia to withdraw its forces from Zaporizhzhia NPP
View: https://twitter.com/EndGameWW3/status/1558847187299307521?s=20&t=edtrYFvi5mhaXEdMWtlHBA


Update: Russian Foreign Ministry: Moscow is struggling to get IAEA inspectors into the Zaporozhye plant, but the West prevents this.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
... further confess that I hadn't even ever heard of Transnistria.

This bit of money trivia has nothing to do with the war, exactly, except to show that Transnistria sometimes has very close ties indeed with Russia: as far as I know Transnistria had the world's first plastic coins, although I don't know how widely they circulated. The key takeaway here is that the coins were made with Russian technology, were possibly minted in Russia proper (I don't know about that part), and have microprinting in what looks to me like Russian. I don't know that Russia has any large amount of business minting coins for other countries and printing their currency (unlike, say, Germany who I think at one point was printing all of Zimbabwe's currency or the UK who I seem to recall prints quite a bit of currency for other countries), so the plastic coins may have been something of a nation-binding symbolic gesture. You gotta figure that's a fairly close relationship when you're getting the very coins you use every day from another country. Or not. Again I don't know how much the plastic coins were/are used.

Back to the regularly scheduled war ...
 

raven

TB Fanatic
Very, very early in this thread (and in other threads about the war) I said I thought the invasion was always about Russia taking eastern Ukraine and securing a land bridge, with any other gains in territory essentially just being future concessions by Russia in the peace talks. Russia will not surrender Crimea without a lot of bad things happening to Russian forces, because Sevastopol is pretty much all they have in the south. Russia (and the Soviets) have always lusted after a warm water port for their navy that isn't held hostage by its geography. Saint Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, and Sevastopol are all relatively easy to bottle up, with Arkhangelsk being choked with ice a big chunk of the year (and wouldn't global warming be a boon to that little problem!). For what it's worth Kaliningrad is the bite of territory that isn't directly connected to Russia, with Saint Petersburg being entirely within Russian territory, so I'm not sure where you get a small country blockading Saint Petersburg.
Estonia proposed a military alliance with Finland (separated by 230 across the Gulf of Finland) to provide missile coverage between Estonia and Finland in order to make the Baltic an "Internal NATO Sea".
You might check the map because making the Baltic an inland NATO sea would effectively cut off both St Petersburg as well as Kaliningrad.
 

raven

TB Fanatic
I believe your earlier observation about Russia taking the land bridge (all the way to Transnistria) is correct; I'd surmised the same thing myself way back, when discussing some overall strategy issues, thinking of how that would turn Ukraine into a landlocked country without all the slog of going all the way across the whole country. I think it's balderdash when I read stuff about "Putin wants to go all the way to the Netherlands" posts. Those things belong in the scrapyard of 4-decade-old thinking.

(That was post #2324, actually, back in December. I just reread it and must confess that I was wrong about Moldova being more of a Russian sympathizer than the EU. I was thinking back years ago when Moldova was itself a breakaway republic from Romania and further confess that I hadn't even ever heard of Transnistria.)

However, IMHO, I would strengthen your assertion about Crimea with a slight edit: "Russia will not surrender Crimea. Period. Full stop."

Ain't gonna happen.
I was surprised that Russia could not manage an amphibious landing in Odesa - they virtually owned Odesa for 100 years. How can you not make an amphibious landing in a place you know like the back of your hand?
And then they made arrangements to allow shipments of grain from there. What manner of lunacy is this? Just level the place, take the grain, and ship it yourself.
Unless . . . you intended to allow Ukraine to continue to exist and to do so you wanted them to have a port. Why?
Because a landlock Ukraine would become completely dependent on Europe. Allowing them the Port of Odesa would provide you years and years of leverage in negotiations.
 

raven

TB Fanatic
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.

That's a pretty good analysis from Starbaby, Instructor Electronic Warfare Officer with 150 combat missions and 12 combat deployments.

I would have added that Russia has observed US combat operations, from the receiving end of Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses, since Vietnam. They observed Libya twice. Iraq twice, Afghanistan, Syria.

If one wanted to invade a country but knew your weakness in defending from Wild Weasels, you can either:
"take them out" first
OR
one could devise a plan that would prevent the enemy from using Wild Weasels.

I believe that it is likely that Putin was willing to accept. what we would have considered unacceptable, losses in order to avoid giving NATO an embossed invitation to unleash our Wild Weasels on Russian Air Defenses.

And so far, NATO has not unleashed the hounds. If that was the plan, it has worked thus far.
And since Putin and the Russians are so stupid . . . its just been dumb luck.
 

jed turtle

a brother in the Lord
Modern Russia, and especially that holdover Communist Putin, need to understand two things.

- Sovereign nations can form any alliances and relationships without the permission of the Russian government.

- Sovereign nations bordering Russia exist for their own benefit and are not vassal states to buffer against whatever threat the Neo-Communists wish to perpetuate to bolster their grip on power.

Russian leadership itself is the biggest problem that the Russian people must endure, not Russia's neighbors.
most of those buffer states, from Russia’s point of view, were once part of Russia. But empires come and go. Therein lies the problem: as the old ones get surpassed by the new ones, however the smart old ones, re-invent themselves to stay relevant with the times. Those with superpowers (super weapons) know that their Artificial Intellegence computers will ultimately decide who ends up “king of the hill”, but no one knows what God has already decided...
 

jward

passin' thru

Ukraine – the situation August 15, 2022​

The larger army wins a war of attrition unless the smaller army’s allies supply large amounts of added resources
by Uwe Parpart August 15, 2022


Overview

  • OPSEC: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told government officials last week to stop talking about the coming offensive and Kiev’s military tactics, an apparent response to remarks by the Ukrainian General Staff G-3, Major General Gromov, that the offensive would begin soon and liberate much of occupied Ukraine by the end of the year. The general rule is simple: war is definitely not the time for vanity and loud statements” Zelensky said, forgetting perhaps that he had forecast the liberation of Kherson “by September.”
  • UK MinDef Ben Wallace said: They [the Russians] have failed so far and are unlikely to ever succeed in occupying Ukraine.”
  • The Ukrainian General Staff reports that Russian air forces have doubled their sortie rate since last week and that Russian artillery fire across all lines of control has increased substantially. Independent observers (American) report that the Russians are now sustaining 20,000 rounds of artillery fire per day while the Ukrainians are firing 5,000-6,000 rounds per day.
  • Russian ground forces’ activity at the western end of the Donbas salient near Bakhmut and Kramatorsk has picked up significantly.
  • Further to the southwest opposite Donetsk, both sides report heavy fighting near Avdivka and Krasnohorivka. The town of Pisky has been taken over by Russian forces and is being cleared out.
  • Ground activity in the south is limited to, at most, company-size skirmishes at the small Ukrainian bridgehead across the Inhulets River.
  • On the regional-strategic level, continued concern is voiced by Western observers over Russian plans to move west from the City of Kherson and beyond Mykolaiv for a link-up with Russian and pro-Russian forces in Transnistria. However, we’re talking here about covering a distance of close to 200 km, which – with current Russian forces – is as unrealistic as Gromov’s home-by-Christmas talk.
Map1.png

East/Center

The Ukrainian General Staff over the weekend reported that the city of Kramatorsk was attacked by Russian ground forces and later was struck by heavy rocket fire. The UGS also said that the Russians were pushed back.
If the UGS reports are correct, even if only Russian reconnaissance elements were involved, this is a new development. Kramatorsk lies about 30km northwest of Bakhmut and 8 to 10 km south of Sloviansk. As Bakhmut falls (as is expected in the course of the coming 7 to 10 days), Russian forces driving southwest from the Izium region could be pushing between the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk or just south of Kramatorsk and trap Ukrainian forces to the east of the Izium-Kramatorsk-Bakhmut line.
Near Bakhmut, the town of Zaitseve just southeast of Bakhmut is now under Russian control. The Russian front line is still moving slowly, but now more perceptibly westward. The UGS says that more than 150 missiles hit Bakhmut overnight.

Map2.png

The intensity and size of engagements has also been picking up opposite the city of Donetsk from Krasnohorivka 20 km to the north to Avdivka directly opposite to Pisky further south. The town of Pisky essentially is leveled. According to the UGS morning report, a Russian foray along major route M-04 toward the town of Pervomaiske was unsuccessful.
Avdivka, as we have previously detailed, is a fortified town that has defined the line of control since 2017. A breakthrough by Russia there would open up major railroad and highway connections to the western portion of Donetsk Oblast and be seen as a strategic loss for Ukraine. No surprise that both sides describe the fighting as fierce.


South

The Kherson region where the Ukrainian offensive was supposed to take place has arguably been the quietest region over the past several weeks.
Russian ground forces undertook no substantive ground operations in the past several days, but did conduct artillery and missile strikes across most of the line of contact. Seven to eight towns in and around the small Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets – about 6km wide and 5km deep – were subjected to air strikes, and essentially every town was struck by rocket and or tube artillery. The city of Mykolaiv continues to be struck by rockets, as does Nikopol.
Ukrainian artillery and HIMARS and other MLRS systems continue to target Russian supply and ammo dumps and are reported to have struck two more ammo dumps in Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblast, but with diminishing effects as the Russians have minimized their size and dispersed them.

An American observer on the scene near Kherson City notes that HIMARS has been effective, but the numbers are not adequate to change the outcome, only provide scattered tactical successes. Without the advent of some game-changing technology in sufficient quantity to shift the balance, it’s hard to predict anything other than a grinding war of attrition.”
But Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition.

Assessment​

A Ukrainian official, not the one chided by President Zelensky, commenting on the explosions at the airfield in Crimea last week, told a reporter, in response to a question as to whether that might mark the start to Ukraine’s long awaited offensive, “You can say it is.”
A NATO member country military intelligence report of which we have seen excerpts noted, “The comment by the official doesn’t ring true. Rather, it would seem that the Ukrainians are reaching the end of the rope before the Russians – optimistic predictions of most Western media and some Western governments and intelligence agencies notwithstanding.”
This war, on all fronts, has settled into a war of attrition. It also appears that Russia is meeting both its manpower and firepower supply needs. Without an infusion of substantial amounts of new offensive weapons and the trained troops to wield them, it will be difficult for the Ukrainians to win in even a limited sense. A few spectacular hits like the sinking of the Moskva or the destruction of a Crimean military airfield will not turn the current tide.

A war of attrition in which neither side is willing or able to launch decisive offensive action is, in effect, a war in which both sides are trying to destroy the other’s army, to kill or disable as many enemies as possible. Such a war the larger army wins – unless the smaller army’s allies supply large amounts of added resources, including personnel.
 

jward

passin' thru


Samuel Ramani
@SamRamani2
4h

BREAKING: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirms that Germany will not support an EU-wide ban on Russian visas

Germany is rejecting Ukraine's contention that high public support for the war makes the Russian public complicit. Instead, Germany is supporting easier entry for Russian refugees to the EU, as many are anti-war
View: https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1559311066802405386?s=20&t=7btPjBNEmaP1YxV6nu1kzg
 

Housecarl

On TB every waking moment
Samuel Ramani
@SamRamani2
4h

BREAKING: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirms that Germany will not support an EU-wide ban on Russian visas

Germany is rejecting Ukraine's contention that high public support for the war makes the Russian public complicit. Instead, Germany is supporting easier entry for Russian refugees to the EU, as many are anti-war
View: https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1559311066802405386?s=20&t=7btPjBNEmaP1YxV6nu1kzg

Hummm, such "refugees" would be a lot more profitable to the EU than those from Africa and the Middle East that they've been inundated with all of these years....
 

Zagdid

Veteran Member

15 Aug, 2022 11:53 Home Russia & FSU

Ukraine’s ‘best fighter pilot’ killed​

An obituary for the celebrated captain was released by his school

A Ukrainian Air Force captain described by the military as an ace fighter pilot died while defending his homeland, his childhood school has reported in an obituary. It did not reveal the circumstances of his death.

The institution in the city of Ivano-Frankovsk said on social media that Anton Listopad was “recognized in 2019 as the best pilot of the Ukrainian Air Force and took part in military action in the east of Ukraine.”

A captain of that name was listed among those awarded with various merits by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky last month. The man has his own Wikipedia page in the Ukrainian version of the online encyclopedia, though it was only created two days before Zelensky’s order was published.

The school that announced Listopad’s death published a biography of the man last year, according to which he joined the Ukrainian armed forces in 2010. He underwent two surgeries to qualify to be a combat pilot, and studied at a military aviation school in Kharkov, which he graduated from in 2018, realizing his childhood dream, the article said.

Listopad was 31 at the time of his death, judging by the bio. The article included several photos of him as a student, piloting a fighter jet, and receiving the Order for Courage from Zelensky.

The obituary stated that Listopad led the air parade over Kiev during last year’s celebration of the country’s independence, with “millions of Ukrainians watching with joy and pride.”

The Russian military says it has virtually undisputed control of the airspace of a large part of Ukraine, making most combat missions by Ukrainian military pilots extremely dangerous. According to the latest update by the Russian Defense Ministry, more than 260 Ukrainian fighter jets have been destroyed during the conflict, both in the air and on the ground, by Russian warplanes and air defenses.
 

Red Baron

Paleo-Conservative
_______________
Reports of black smoke thanks to a possible attack on Simferopol Air base in Crimea, Russian authorities are apparently suspecting a drone attack. There is no video yet, but Ukrainian media sources are reporting another attack in Crimea. This time at Simferopol airfiel. The report says clouds of black smoke were seen over it.

Runtime 2:43

(Unconfirmed) Reports That Simferopol Airbase in Crimea Has Been Hit​


View: https://youtu.be/3_hzrQebys8
 
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