Ukraine

[jackd]

See which way the people ae moving and then hurry to get in front of them.

[indy]

[indy]

So the Russian Ministry of Defense has confirmed the ship the was hit and that it sustained serious damage, including munitions that exploded. The crew was evacuated and likely the ship is lost. That's what, a several hundred million dollar, possibly billion dollar loss? Also, since Turkey has closed the Black sea to Russian war ships, they won't be replacing it any time soon.

To put that in perspective, Russia has lost about 500 tanks so far, each cost about 1 million on average maybe a bit more. This loss equals the entire loss of tanks.

These are the missiles Ukraine claims they used in the attack.

[indy]

It's also worth noting that this ship probably had the best defensive capabilities of any ship in the Black Sea fleet, not only defending itself but providing cover for other less capable ships. It's loss would make the rest of the fleet more vulnerable to further attacks.

[andydp]

Apr 14, 2022 1:12:07 GMT indy said:

It's also worth noting that this ship probably had the best defensive capabilities of any ship in the Black Sea fleet, not only defending itself but providing cover for other less capable ships. It's loss would make the rest of the fleet more vulnerable to further attacks.

Excellent point. Not a navy type but this ship would have provided “cover” for the rest of the fleet.

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

3/18 : 1574 (244) - start
--
3/25 : 1831 (289) -  7 days
4/01 : 2175 (359) - 14 days
4/07 : 2614 (449) - 21 days
4/14 : 2885 (505) - 28 days

[indy]

[indy]

LOL. The money intended for bribes was apparently embezzled. There is something just...oh so Russian about it.

[LFC]

They are literally slaughtering people in vehicles marked "Children." I don't know how much of this is Putin's cruelty and how much of it's coming from undisciplined troops under weak commanders who are lashing out in frustration but either way these are war crimes.

EDIT: Per the comments this is actually in Russian to make sure they understand.

[LFC]

Perhaps this is just normal troops bitching, as Andy noted is common, but there are some pretty specific complaints that align well with the top to bottom kleptocracy that is Russia. Two state that things sent from home just get stolen.

Russian soldiers in Ukraine are said to be “dumping their stuff” and leaving after the military leadership stiffed them on special pay they were promised.

That’s according to several intercepted phone calls released by Ukrainian authorities Wednesday, all of which paint the same picture of a “total clusterfuck” among Russian troops, as one soldier put it.

In audio released by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, a man purported to be a Russian soldier is told by a woman back home to “limp” so that he’ll be rotated out.

He says military leadership has promised “enormous cash payments,” but goes on to complain that “they say things here and then don’t fulfill a damn thing.”

“Everyone is outraged, entire battalions are starting revolts. The commanders promise us that they are giving us their word,” he said.

It was not clear where the purported Russian soldier was based in Ukraine, but his version of events was backed up by other intercepted communications.

In another chat said to be between a Russian soldier and his mother, he said the troops are getting fed up because they aren’t getting the payouts they were offered to serve.

“There is such fuckery going on here, I’m telling you, 600 people have resigned from our brigade throughout this time, well about that much, give or take. Everyone is going home, they are just dumping their stuff and saying, ‘I’m going home’ and then leaving,’” he said.

“There were rumors that they would pay [us], I thought 200,000 would be on my card, because so much time has already passed, and they didn’t pay a damn thing. Only the basic pay came,” he said.

When his mother offered to send him a flask of booze, he swatted down the idea, saying “management divvies everything up” among themselves.

Another guy in his unit, he said, had a package with money sent to him by all his relatives but “nothing from that package made it to him.”

[indy]

On one hand, this is pretty hard to believe. They've lost half their BTGs? On the other hand, it does match up with, for example, the 500 tanks that have been verified as lost because that number is certainly low because only visible evidence is being used. Also, the U.S. has been pretty circumspect in throwing around numbers. Pretty stunning if true.

[indy]

LOL again. "Damage from a storm" sinks a Russian cruiser. "Moskva" means Moscow of course. The only better symbolic name would have been if it's name were "Putin".

[LFC]

Epic troll, I guess both figuratively and literally.

[LFC]

Facial recognition technology is being used to wage a brutal propaganda campaign against Russia. This is ... harsh.

A group of Ukrainian hackers and activists are using U.S. made Clearview AI facial-recognition software on the corpses of dead Russian soldiers to try to stir up dissent among Russian troops. So far, around 8,600 dead soldiers have been scanned, of which more than 580 have been identified. Once identified, the group has being sending family members photos of the abandoned or hastily buried corpses, according to The Washington Post. The macabre use of cutting-edge technology is meant to incite dissent in Russia, both to seed anger against Vladimir Putin and to discourage troops from continuing the fight. But some in the West have wondered about the use of technology for such means. “If it were Russian soldiers doing this with Ukrainian mothers, we might say, ‘Oh, my God, that’s barbaric,’” Stephanie Hare, a surveillance researcher in London, told the Post. “And is it actually working? Or is it making them say: ‘Look at these lawless, cruel, Ukrainians doing this to our boys?’ ”

If they've managed to find and scan 8,600 dead soldiers then how many have actually died?

[andydp]

Mar 31, 2022 16:46:58 GMT andydp said:

Hmmmm, where have we seen this before in Russian history ?

Troops led by incompetents

Insufficient supplies

Angry soldiers

Authoritarian ruler being lied to

More conscripts being "fed" to the machine

All Putin needs now is a "special" train from Berlin, a deranged monk (may have that already), an emerging competitor
 

Ref "deranged monk" scenario:  Trump had Bannon and Flynn.  Vlad has this guy.

A Russian philosopher known as 'Putin's brain' said Russia's retreat from Kyiv was only 'temporary'

Earlier this month, the Russian army retreated from Ukraine's capital city Kyiv.

A Russian philosopher known for his influence in the Kremlin said the retreat was only "temporary."

"We cannot lose this war," he said. "Otherwise, the whole world will turn into a large fire."

An ultranationalist philosopher dubbed "Putin's brain" for his influence on the Russian leader said the country's retreat from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv was a "temporary situation."

www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/russian-philosopher-known-putins-brain-030236272.html

[AnBr]

[LFC]

[LFC]

Mariupol looks doomed but Russia is still sustaining losses, including of top leadership.

The dawn deadline Russia gave determined Ukrainian soldiers to surrender and lay down their weapons in Mariupol passed without incident on Sunday morning, as Vladimir Putin’s increasingly sloppy troops closed in on the strategic port city.

Russia’s defense ministry, still reeling from the loss of 8th Army Major General Vladimir Frolov in combat on Saturday, was just as determined, threatening to “eliminate” any Ukrainian and foreign troops trying to hold on to the battered city.

Russia has made considerable gains on the city after spending weeks trying to wipe it off the map. Western intelligence officials said it could fall to Russia soon, providing a key land bridge between Crimea and the eastern separatist regions it so desperately wants to take.

President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that his fighters had only a small part of the city under their control. “The situation is very difficult in Mariupol,” he said overnight Sunday, according to CNN. “Our soldiers are blocked, the wounded are blocked. There is a humanitarian crisis… Nevertheless, the guys are defending themselves.”

[goldenvalley]

Old school weapons from Russia...

At Svitlana Chmut’s house outside Kyiv, there are carrots in her garden and deadly Russian mini-arrows in her yard.

A pile of the sharp, finned projectiles rounded up by Chmut are now gathering rust in the spring’s fine mist. She combed her walled courtyard for them, she said, after a Russian artillery shell carrying them burst somewhere overhead days before the Russians withdrew late last month, seeding the area with thousands of potentially lethal darts. Some were embedded in the tarp that covered her vehicle, as if someone nailed them to her car.

These projectiles, called fléchettes, are rarely seen or used in modern conflict, experts have said. Many landed in the street in the strike, Chmut said, including some observed by Washington Post reporters, among fields of gear and the occasional liquor bottle or chocolate bar abandoned by retreating Russian soldiers.

At 3 centimeters in length, these fléchettes look like tiny arrows. They have a long history in war — a version of them was dropped from airplanes in World War I and used by the U.S. in Vietnam — but are not in common use today. Shells packed with fléchettes are primed to explode over infantry formations and spew projectiles in a conical pattern, with some versions dispersing fléchettes across an area three football fields wide.

Looks like a war on the civilians of Ukraine.

[LFC]

More Russian war crimes. It's "almost" like that's their entire strategy and judging from history it's kinda' their thing.

Russian forces are holding approximately 27,000 Ukrainians in “filtration camps” near the besieged city of Mariupol, according to local authorities.

The filtration camps along the Mangush-Nikolske-Yalta line are aimed at preparing the Ukrainians for deportation to Russia, according to Petro Andriuschenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol.

The report coincides with alerts from the Mariupol City Council and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine that have warned that Russians are using screening camps in the Donetsk region from Bezimenne to Dokuchaevsk, forcing civilians there en masse and taking away their documents.

The Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, has been working to ferret out the Ukrainians’ allegiances in the filtration camps, such as whether they’ve worked with law enforcement or with the Joint Forces Operations, the directorate said. Some reports show the Russians have been downloading data from the Ukrainians’ phones and taking their fingerprints at the filtration camps before shipping them off to Russia.

U.S. officials warned in advance of Russia’s invasion this year that Russia may round up Ukrainians, send them to camps, and seek to disappear them as a way to eliminate resistance.

And, just as the U.S. intelligence on Russia’s intentions in Ukraine have been spot-on before, it appears their predictions were accurate here, too. Since the war began, more than 45,000 have been deported to Russia, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereschuk, has said.

Russia has long used filtration camps during war, human rights watchdogs say. Russians tortured, beat, and raped Chechen civilians in filtration camps in Chechnya in 2000, following and during the wars in Chechnya, according to Human Rights Watch and witnesses. In those cases, those who escaped said the Russians used filtration camps as a way to try to “disappear” individuals.

[LFC]

Scott Adams is clearly mentally ill but he can still be funny.

[LFC]

Equipment destruction update:

3/18 : 1574 (244) - start
--
3/25 : 1831 (289) -  7 days
4/01 : 2175 (359) - 14 days
4/07 : 2614 (449) - 21 days
4/14 : 2885 (505) - 28 days
--
4/19 : 2995 (519) - 33 days

If this tweet is correct then Russia has lost 25% of its military capacity since Feb. 24, not even two full months. That means its military capabilities are still powerful but good gawd, that's a massive cost in soldiers and equipment.

[andydp]

Apr 19, 2022 18:55:18 GMT LFC said:

Equipment destruction update:

3/18 : 1574 (244) - start
--
3/25 : 1831 (289) -  7 days
4/01 : 2175 (359) - 14 days
4/07 : 2614 (449) - 21 days
4/14 : 2885 (505) - 28 days
--
4/19 : 2995 (519) - 33 days

If this tweet is correct then Russia has lost 25% of its military capacity since Feb. 24, not even two full months. That means its military capabilities are still powerful but good gawd, that's a massive cost in soldiers and equipment.

25% loss of front line units, equipment and personnel is not sustainable in any context.  Don't forget the losses are of front line units, the ones that do the fighting.  They may still have 75%, but it may be mostly support troops.  Equipment losses may be a good indicator how desperate they get.  If we start seeing more Soviet Union tanks and equipment, then it can be assumed they're using their "mothballed" equipment to make up the losses.

[LFC]

Here's another story of the problems and lack of discipline among the Russian troops. The fact that Chechens are involved might not go over well with the rank and file. If this is how bad things have gotten in two months then will the Russian Army be capable of doing more than shelling, firing missiles, and holding limited territory with through troop massing? It seems like the slaughter of innocent civilians is still well within their capabilities.

Russian troops tried to rebel against their military commanders in an occupied part of southeast Ukraine, but three of them were killed by Chechen fighters in response, according to Ukrainian intelligence.

Ivan Arefyev, a spokesman for the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, detailed the incident in a statement on Telegram early Wednesday.

“According to Ukrainian intelligence, yesterday in the Pologovsky district Russian troops started to rebel: Russia’s soldiers didn’t want to fight because they have not received their promised payouts. [Ramzan] Kadyrov’s men brutally killed three of the instigators of the riot who were ready to lay down their weapons and head home,” Arefyev wrote.

No further details were provided on the brigade said to be involved in the riot, but Chechen troops have widely been seen as playing the role of “enforcers” during the war, and many survivors of the Bucha massacre outside Kyiv said the mass execution of civilians only began after Chechen troops were sent in to replace Russian soldiers there.

Authorities in nearby Dnipro reported similar instances of Russian troops rebelling. In a statement Wednesday, the Dnipro City Council said intercepted phone calls revealed Vladimir Putin’s troops plotting to shoot their own commanders.

An accompanying audio recording released by Ukraine’s Security Service features a man purported to be a Russian soldier complaining to a friend that commanders have given orders to shoot at civilians and threatened charges of desertion if troops don’t fulfill the command.

[LFC]

Chernobyl continues to be a shit-show thanks to the Russians. Here's a more complete summary than I've seen before but the mining of the area and setting of forest fires are particularly awful.

The full extent of Russia’s activities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is still unknown, especially because the troops scattered mines that the Ukrainian military is still searching for. Some have detonated, further disturbing the radioactive ground. The Russians also set several forest fires, which have been put out.

Ukrainian authorities can’t monitor radiation levels across the zone because Russian soldiers stole the main server for the system, severing the connection on March 2. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Saturday it still wasn’t receiving remote data from its monitoring systems. The Russians even took Chernobyl staffers’ personal radiation monitors.

In the communications center, one of the buildings in the zone not overgrown by nature, the Russians looted and left a carpet of shattered glass. The building felt deeply of the 1980s, with a map on a wall still showing the Soviet Union. Someone at some point had taken a pink marker and traced Ukraine’s border.

In normal times, about 6,000 people work in the zone, about half of them at the nuclear plant. When the Russians invaded, most workers were told to evacuate immediately. Now about 100 are left at the nuclear plant and 100 are elsewhere.

Semenov, the security engineer, recalled the Russians checking the remaining workers for what they called radicals.

“We said, ‘Look at our documents, 90% of us are originally from Russia,’” he said. “But we’re patriots of our country,” meaning Ukraine.