What's going on in Ukraine?

[tabascoboy]

British mercenary Paul Ury, who was held captive in the Donetsk People’s Republic, died on July 10 due to chronic illness and a depressed psychological state, DPR Ombudsman Daria Morozova said.

“Given the diagnoses and stress, he passed away on July 10,” she wrote in her Telegramchannel, emphasizing that during the first medical examination, the Briton was diagnosed with a number of chronic diseases.

It is also reported that he was in a depressed psychological state due to indifference to his fate in his homeland. “On our part, despite the severity of the alleged crime, Paul Uri was provided with appropriate medical assistance,” the Ombudsman noted.

[fishfoodie]

Russian Parliament holding an Extraordinary session tomorrow (15th), plenty of speculation about what this means - anything from a False Flag op today in Kherson to declaration of war and mobilization, but we've been through these a few times before with it all being just rumours. Also that Russia is still striving to get Belarus Forces actively involved knowing they are likely to be defeated in order to turn Belarus population opinion against Ukraine and more pro Russia.

After the "operational pause" the offensive could well be intensified again, at least as far the depletion of munition from UA operations allows. A few SU-25s arrived at an airbase in Crimea.

And as I type this, an update

According to the Institute for the Study of War, #Putin has ordered all 85 administrative regions, including those in occupied #Ukraine, to each supply at least one "volunteer battalion" for the war in Ukraine. That is at least 85 additional battalions.

So this turns out to be like a soft take over of private enterprise for wartime requirements. Companies must accept military contracts and employees have to work to fulfill them. It applies to everything apparently, from food to uniforms or otherwise. It doesn't force companies to change production at this stage, only they have to supply what they make.

There'll be more factual details available I'm sure shortly.

Another marvelous opportunity for graft !

It's much easier to bribe the officials, to say that you delivered the goods, rather than actually doing so, & disrupting your regular production, to sell goods to the State at below cost.

[tabascoboy]

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[Flockwitt]

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Interesting very salty comments on the F-35 in there from Trent

[Flockwitt]

That's the end game sorted.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1547911286649786368

[Uncle fester]

British mercenary Paul Ury, who was held captive in the Donetsk People’s Republic, died on July 10 due to chronic illness and a depressed psychological state, DPR Ombudsman Daria Morozova said.

“Given the diagnoses and stress, he passed away on July 10,” she wrote in her Telegramchannel, emphasizing that during the first medical examination, the Briton was diagnosed with a number of chronic diseases.

It is also reported that he was in a depressed psychological state due to indifference to his fate in his homeland. “On our part, despite the severity of the alleged crime, Paul Uri was provided with appropriate medical assistance,” the Ombudsman noted.

An aid worker in his mid forties with type 1 diabetes is prime mercenary material alright.

[tabascoboy]

[Hellraiser]

[tabascoboy]

Relatively quiet today on the news front, but the (literal) impact of HIMARS appears to have forced the RU forces into a rethinking of their supply bases and transport that puts extra strain on logistics

[Flockwitt]

Significant political issues in Ukraine at the moment. Zelensky has fired two people who came into power with him, his old friend who was made head of the security services, and a very smart woman who was Attorney General. The reason for sacking the head of the security services severe, negligence causing human life lost.

This hasn't happened in a vacuum. There have been accusations by a US congresswoman, Ukrainian born, against Zelensky's chief of staff who is clearly the Dick Cheney equivalent of his government, the guy who runs things. Now this guy, Andrey Yermak, has Russian connections everywhere, family and business, past and present associates.

A fair bit playing out here.

[tabascoboy]

Another ex ammo dump, southern side of the Dnipro river in Kherson Oblast

[Flockwitt]

Good news. Poland's getting its Abrams so 200+ tanks are enroute to Ukraine.

[tabascoboy]

[Hellraiser]

[petej]

A nice positive read. Looks good if Ukraine gets the longer range rockets (and F16's eventually).

[dkm57]

Don't know about the rest of the UK/Europe but unannounced activity locally.

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[tabascoboy]

[Blake]

A nice positive read. Looks good if Ukraine gets the longer range rockets (and F16's eventually).

Very nice.

There are certain failures that you an bullshit your way out of with papers and numbers, and certain failures you can hide with crazy spending, but there are some things that just reach a point of catastrophic failure when they get stress tested because the bullshit has been stacked so high.

I love it when that happens, be it with Russia's military or a shady business. Always hits all the pleasure centers.

[Hellraiser]

[yermum]

He keeps using dysphoria instead of diaspora makes for a slightly odd tweet thread...

[Uncle fester]

Not so sure I'd agree with the central point. There are authoritarian states that have strong educated middle classes, China for one. I doubt it's the lack of freedom that sees the educated legging it from Russia.

[petej]

Not so sure I'd agree with the central point. There are authoritarian states that have strong educated middle classes, China for one. I doubt it's the lack of freedom that sees the educated legging it from Russia.

I would be very surprised if a lot of the highly educated don't leg it from China when given the chance

[fishfoodie]

Not so sure I'd agree with the central point. There are authoritarian states that have strong educated middle classes, China for one. I doubt it's the lack of freedom that sees the educated legging it from Russia.

I would be very surprised if a lot of the highly educated don't leg it from China when given the chance

The Chinese do a very good job at vetting those that are allowed to go out of the Country to study in the first place; they are always connected to families that have a great deal to lose, if they don't return.

The Russians don't seem to be able to do the same vetting, & don't retaliate with the same vigor, if someone doesn't come back.

The 25% missile failure rate does tally very strongly with the kind of rate that's been seen with other Orc weapons; the Ukrainian EODs are kept very busy, with duds.

[Hellraiser]

[Grandpa]

Does anyone think the former Chief of Defence Staff, summarises the Ukraine war accurately here? That Russia are in Ukraine to stay? At least in the east and south?

[tabascoboy]

From the independent Moscow Times

Russia Sends Army Recruits to Fight in Ukraine After Just Days of Training

Less than two weeks after joining the army, Ivan was on the frontlines of Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine and taking part in attacks on Ukrainian positions.

Ivan, 31, who requested anonymity to protect his safety, said he received just five days of training before being transferred to Ukraine and flung into combat.

“There was a soldier in our company who didn’t know how a machine gun works. So I taught that guy how to disassemble and assemble a machine gun. I wouldn’t want to be next to him in battle. How can you fight like that?” he told The Moscow Times.

Providing minimal training to new recruits appears to be increasingly common in the Russian army as the war in Ukraine approaches its sixth month and high casualty rates combine with a lack of general mobilization to generate serious manpower shortages.

A lack of knowledge leaves soldiers without the necessary combat skills to survive on the battlefield, according to military analysts and human rights activists.

“A week [of training] is nothing — for a soldier, it is a direct path to a hospital or a body bag,” independent military analyst Pavel Luzin told The Moscow Times.

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry website, an intensive four-week combined arms training with a "survival" course is “essential” for anyone who signs a contract with the Russian army. The program takes a total of 240 hours and includes shooting, throwing grenades and a study of military tactics.

However, amid the war in Ukraine, it appears training standards are not being observed, according to Sergei Krivenko, director of human rights group Citizen. Army. Law. that provides legal assistance to Russian soldiers.

“I’ve been regularly approached by parents whose children signed a [military] contract and ended up in Ukraine just a week later,” Krivenko told The Moscow Times.

Ivan signed a three-month contract with the Defense Ministry in April.

“When the special military operation started — although in fact, it is a war — I took it as a personal tragedy,” said Ivan. “I told myself that I wanted to go there and no one would stop me. I’m a patriot.”

He was soon transferred to a military base in the Russian city of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine. Less than two weeks later, he found himself on the frontlines.

“After all the medical check-ups, they asked me if I was ready to go to the military base the day after tomorrow. They trained us for five days, we waited for another five days for a force rotation and then we went to [combat] positions,” he said in a phone interview.

In the five days Ivan and other soldiers were waiting to be deployed to Ukraine, they carried out some informal training exercises.

“Of course, it was not enough,” he said.

Similar accounts of new recruits receiving minimal training have appeared in Russian media in recent weeks.

“I was shocked. Some have not properly held a machine gun in their hands, have never seen real tanks in person, and they’re leaving for the frontline in a couple of days,” one anonymous soldier said last month in an interview with the BBC Russian Service.

Yevgeny Chubarin, 24, was killed in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region just four days after being transferred to the Belgorod military base on a three-month contract with the Russian military, independent news outlet Mediazona reported last month. “There was no training,” his mother Nina Chubarina told Mediazona. ”They arrived, got a uniform and a machine gun — and that’s it, go ahead.”

While most Russian men have completed at least a year of compulsory military service in the Russian Armed Forces, training is still seen as essential to update and refresh their skills, which may be many years out of date.

Under Russian law, conscripts can't be sent into combat unless they have at least four months of training. The same logic should apply to those who sign a contract with the military to go to Ukraine, according to expert Luzin.

According to Ivan, the five days of training they did receive was “intense.”

All soldiers were treated the same during the training regardless of experience. The majority had not been in a war zone before, according to Ivan, although there were some who had battlefield experience, including in Russia’s military campaigns in Syria and the North Caucasus republic of Chechnya.

“We were at the training ground from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. We practiced combat skills, seizing and storming buildings, all-around defense, working in combat teams, field medicine, evacuation and treatment of wounded soldiers. The focus was on those skills you needed for your position — a machine gunner, a grenade launcher operator and so on,” said Ivan.

While such basic instruction may be enough to allow soldiers to carry out simple tasks in combat, military experts told The Moscow Times military training should be much broader.

“There’s a lot that needs to be learned in terms of coordination and cooperation with a team. And it’s quite time-consuming,” said Samuel Cranny-Evans, a military analyst at the London-based Royal United Services Institute think tank.

High casualty rates mean the Russian military is likely losing cohesion, according to experts, with training deficiencies only exacerbating this problem.

The army has begun to mix soldiers from different units, according to Dara Massicot, a senior researcher at the U.S.-based RAND think tank and a former senior analyst at the Pentagon. “The soldiers don’t know the commanders, they don’t know where their unit is as it's fighting in the field,” Massicot told The Moscow Times.

“Plus, there’s a lack of specialists [in the Russian army]. This means if some equipment breaks down, they simply cannot repair it,” she added.


Despite the situation on the battlefield, one of the motivations for people signing up to fight is apparently money, with the military offering salaries up to four times higher than local averages.

Ivan said he was paid over 240,000 rubles ($3,794) per month.

Independent Russian journalists have used publicly available information to confirm the deaths of almost 5,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine. However, the actual death toll is likely to be much higher and analysts have estimated the true figure to be well over 10,000.

The Russian Defense Ministry last updated its official death toll in late March, with 1,351 confirmed fatalities.

Ivan suffered shrapnel wounds in his leg and arm while fighting near the northeastern Ukrainian city of Izyum in late April, and was transferred to a hospital in Russia. He said last week that he was still recovering from his wounds at home in Moscow.

“The problem is that the planners of the operation assumed the Ukrainians would not resist them in this way, so they didn’t think about the manpower and now they are just filling the gaps,” said analyst Massicot.

“Essentially it all means they [the Russian army] are not going to advance quickly anymore.”

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/07/ ... ing-a78314

[petej]

Does anyone think the former Chief of Defence Staff, summarises the Ukraine war accurately here? That Russia are in Ukraine to stay? At least in the east and south?

At least a month out of date. Russia are in Ukraine to stay but will likely have to leave soon. The south first (kherson).

[tabascoboy]

Does anyone think the former Chief of Defence Staff, summarises the Ukraine war accurately here? That Russia are in Ukraine to stay? At least in the east and south?

At least a month out of date. Russia are in Ukraine to stay but will likely have to leave soon. The south first (kherson).

Very much doubt they will leave voluntarily, since they were unable to get a quick overthrow with token resistance and installing quislings to run the country they have little choice other than occupation (which they insisted before was not a goal). Leaving either by force of opposition or "as goodwill gesture" will be regarded as embarrassing weakness so they will try and stay put - and since they have wrought so much damage the least they can do is to bear the financial cost of rebuilding as a form of restitution.

Crimea I think they will strive to hold on to no matter what.
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and...

Ukraine war: CIA chief says no intelligence that Putin is in bad health

There is no intelligence that Vladimir Putin is unstable or in bad health, the director of the CIA has said. There has been increasing unconfirmed media speculation that Mr Putin, who turns 70 this year, may be suffering from ill health, possibly cancer.

But William Burns said there was no evidence to suggest this, joking that he appeared "too healthy". His comments came as the US announced it would provide Ukraine with more long-range weapons.

Earlier Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia's military focus in Ukraine was no longer "only" the east and implied Moscow's strategy had changed after the West supplied Ukraine with such weapons.

"There are lots of rumours about President Putin's health and as far as we can tell he's entirely too healthy," Mr Burns said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Responding to laughter, he added that this was not a formal intelligence judgement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62246914

[tabascoboy]

https://wartranslated.com/russians-unde ... -russians/

The Russians under attack by the Russians?

We spoke about the difference between worldviews of the supporters of the “federal” approach to the Russian state pursued by existing authorities, and the “true” Russians (imperialists, chauvinists) who are disgruntled by the Russian Federation’s lacklustre performance in the war with Ukraine.

Just recently we shared a post where a representative of the latter group slammed the existing state building efforts in the Russian Federation, claiming it to be a simulation that uses the image of a “true” ethnic Russian state for its own selfish purposes.

It appears as if the rift between the two approaches is widening. Prevented from building the “Russian World” from the rubble of the 2014-2015 war in the Donbas, the “true Russians” were once again let down in 2022 when the Russian Federation blew another chance to restore the “historical justice” in the troubled territories of “Novorossiya”. Now, these “true Russians” are under attack.

A few days ago the pro-Russian internet space blew up after the news came through about arrest by the Russian security services in Melitopol of Lt. Colonel Alexey Selivanov, who acts as a Deputy Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the occupied Zaporizhye region. Selivanov was known for supporting the pro-Russian movements during the events of 2014 whilst working in the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. He switched sides and was not liked by the Ukrainian authorities.

Described to be a staunch supporter of the “Russian World”, a monarchist, a person who raised Russian flags over “liberated” towns, Selivanov is an important figure. His arrest by the Russian services led to an uproar. Confused, pro-Russian sources put blame on “Ukrainian forces in Moscow”, on “crooked policemen who want him sacked and get him out of the way of their dealings”, and other reasons. We don’t know exactly what happened with Selivanov. One way or another, he hasn’t been heard from for a week, and Russians see this arrest as a direct attack on their movement.

No less “outrageous” is the visit of two policemen in Moscow to the official residence of the “LPR” blogger Murz whose criticisms of the way the special operation is conducted were shared and translated here on a number of occasions. Murz is currently in the Donbas helping with supplying pro-Russian forces with UAVs, he is an active supporter of the “Russian World” movement since early 2000’s, and a fairly close acquaintance of Igor Girkin. At the very least, they share mutual respect, which is not common for Girkin.

Luckily for Murz he was not in Moscow, otherwise there is a chance he would have already been behind the bars, which certainly wouldn’t be liked by his colleagues. Yet these “true Russians”, to whom Murz belongs to, are unlikely to be able to enjoy the same safety as before going forward.

There is no evidence to say there is a crackdown of the Russian authorities on all the outliers representing the project “Russian World” in its most radical form, that puts a clear boundary between them and the official position. There is no evidence there is any link between the arrest of Selivanov and a visit to Mr. Murz, either. Yet this demonstrates a rift which is likely to continue expanding as the prospects of the Russian success of the special military operation in Ukraine dwindle. With time, and especially in circumstances of a successful counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces, criticisms of the authorities might start coming from all kinds of unexpected corners, and perhaps even from the most loyal supporters of the authorities.

[Biffer]

Does anyone think the former Chief of Defence Staff, summarises the Ukraine war accurately here? That Russia are in Ukraine to stay? At least in the east and south?

Maybe they're going to be staying like they stayed in Afghanistan.

[tabascoboy]

Thread unroll at https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1547 ... 18336.html