What's going on in Ukraine?

[tabascoboy]

[Hellraiser]

It's just occurred to me that they've fucked the water supply to Crimea through the canal. Bravo you complete fúcking morons.

[Hellraiser]

[Hellraiser]

There's a fairly horrific 11 minute video going around of a Ukrainian medic treating some badly injured troops after an artillery strike. One has part of his jaw blown off, but can still speak coherently so it appears his tongue is mostly intact, and the medic tells him to lies on his side or he might drown on his own blood.

The other has severe blast wounds to his legs and arms, and is bleeding from the eyes. He begs the medic to kill him. He tells him he's paid to keep him alive and stabilises the guy despite a shitty Chinese knock-off tourniquet breaking while he ties it.

The first lad is in shock but has enough faculties to walk out. The medic later posted to social media that both survived.

The further fate of the Ukrainian defender with the call sign "Zeus", one of the wounded heroes of the video, filmed by a cold-blooded combat medic of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

"The jaw was assembled, the bones are growing together. So far, the lower lip and chin are still affected. I can already feel the upper lip and cheeks completely. At this stage, the work of the doctors is complete, we are waiting until the nerve endings are fully restored, then it will be possible to do plastic surgery," - said "Zeus " ".

@yigal_levin

I've seen a picture of him and while he has a huge scar he doesn't look too bad.

[tabascoboy]

Analysis will continue no doubt, but consensus among those who claim to know more suggest this was caused by placed mines underwater

[fishfoodie]

If there's one positive thing about wars, it's the improvements in medical treatments.

Triage is so good these days that wounded who would have died in the 1st Iraq war, were surviving in the 2nd Iraq war; & I know from a relative who works in the field, that the US has spent massive amounts of money on research into treating traumatic head injuries after they became a wound that was increasingly survivable, but often left the survivors severely disabled.

[tabascoboy]

RU sources really aren't putting any credible arguments at all wrt motive and opportunity for UA to be responsible. It's all "Ukraine did it to distract from their failed counter-offensive which we smashed!"

All the cogent arguments so far continue to point towards RU. Even simple negligence seems unlikely given the photographic evidence

As a non-expert, I'm privately inclined to believe Russia benefits from destroying the dam more than Ukraine. This is certainly not an accident, as the timing coincides with the increase of activity on the battleground. As we can see, the damage is hurting Ukrainian civilians, which the state cares about deeply (Russia doesn't). This destruction also aligns with Russia's general goal of wreaking as much havoc in Ukraine as possible. To a certain extent, it throws a spanner into the counter-offensive engine, adding unpredictability, and possibly buying time for Russia, though I think Ukraine took this possibility into account. There is a number of other factors, but all in all, Russia benefits more, in my opinion. They don't care at all about the reputational hit they'll take from this.

[Biffer]

Have the Russians not just flooded all their defensive positions on the east bank, making crossing the river easier for the Ukrainians?

[tabascoboy]

[tabascoboy]

Why is this conversation even taking place. We truly live in a post truth world. Hellraiser or someone else will remember better than I but the Russians specifically said they would blow up the dams ages ago if a counter offensive started.

The how and why still important though to counter RU / Vatnik deflections ( fortunately that is confined mainly to Twitter)

[fishfoodie]

Have the Russians not just flooded all their defensive positions on the east bank, making crossing the river easier for the Ukrainians?

Yeah, but they also turned a lot of ground into a swamp for the next few weeks, which they must hope will stop the Ukrainians moving tanks over it.

For me this stinks of desperation, because they can only blow the dam once, & the only time it makes sense is when they're under pressure & need the flood to retreat behind. They've got a small window when they significantly shorten their defences, but all they can do with it is run away.

[dkm57]

Guess all those amphibious vehicles will come in even more handy now then. Just swim over the defence lines and come in from behind even better if they're fitted with something like fishfinder sonar.

Never mind the Orcs drowned/stranded up trees, how much RU kit was lost?

[fishfoodie]

Guess all those amphibious vehicles will come in even more handy now then. Just swim over the defence lines and come in from behind even better if they're fitted with something like fishfinder sonar.

Never mind the Orcs drowned/stranded up trees, how much RU kit was lost?

takes all those minefields out of action too now they're under a few feet of water

[Hellraiser]

[tabascoboy]

[Hellraiser]

🏗 It will take up to $1 billion and 5 years to restore the Kakhovskaya HPP. In addition to the station, it is necessary to build a bridge and a railway crossing. Today, all this has been destroyed - said the head of "Ukrhydroenergo" Ihor Syrota.

"After the deoccupation of Kakhovka, we will build a temporary dam and quickly fill the Kakhovka reservoir with water from the upper reservoirs. We will need a month for this work," says Sirota

hromadske | news here

[tabascoboy]

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Meanwhile, RU have been smoking the funny stuff again, how many of those tanks and armoured vehicles were actually combine harvesters...?

[Flockwitt]

^what the actual!?!? I'd put up a wall of laughing emojis if it wasn't for the subject. Unbelievable in every sense of the word.

[Uncle fester]

It's just occurred to me that they've fucked the water supply to Crimea through the canal. Bravo you complete fúcking morons.

Playing devil's advocate, were they not managing without this supply from 2014 to 2022 anyway?

[Hellraiser]

It's just occurred to me that they've fucked the water supply to Crimea through the canal. Bravo you complete fúcking morons.

Playing devil's advocate, were they not managing without this supply from 2014 to 2022 anyway?

Yes, but long term Crimea is only viable to hold with access to the Dnipro. Otherwise it's a massive, economically unsustainable, money sink; it's been a matter of great resentment among Russians that so many billions have been pumped into Crimea since 2014 that could have been spent within Russia.

[Hellraiser]

[Hellraiser]

[_Os_]

The flooding looks like it could become a major humanitarian incident. Probably thousands of people now have no power, no clean water, no food. If they're not evacuated in the next two weeks then they're dead.

Russia is clearly responsible, their mouthpieces reported on the dam first and were initially saying a small explosion had been carried out (reporting it as a limited and professional Russian military operation). They were also cheerleading the loss of Ukrainian positions on the islands around there, Ukraine was starting to get into a position to win ground on the Russia side of the river and was raiding. Their initial reporting was of a Russian victory. As we've come to expect from the Russians this was incompetence on their part and now they've created a disaster, they're too dumb to understand trying to blow a dam in a limited way likely means taking the whole dam down. They're now pointing fingers at the Ukrainians. The same happened with MH17.

Twitter/Musk covering themselves in glory too, multiple Ukrainian accounts are being shadow banned. The following are trending: Ukraine, Russia, Crimea. But all that's showing up is pro-Russian disinformation accounts and Tucker Carlson saying Ukrainians blew the dam and what about JFK and the aliens (seriously!). The US right has gone like the far left on foreign policy, they back any madman if they're against the US.

[tabascoboy]

If accounts are true, the RU occupation forces are doing nothing whatsoever to assist citizens on the left bank who need rescue and help, it is only coming from volunteers able to navigate the river from the city

[Sandstorm]

they're too dumb to understand trying to blow a dam in a limited way likely means taking the whole dam down.

Wonder why no-one suggestd just opening the dam's floodgates and leaving them open for a couple of days? Nuclear level dumb from RU.

[tabascoboy]

they're too dumb to understand trying to blow a dam in a limited way likely means taking the whole dam down.

Wonder why no-one suggestd just opening the dam's floodgates and leaving them open for a couple of days? Nuclear level dumb from RU.

Because they wouldn't be able to blame Ukraine for that seeing as they control the dam and surrounding area, it had to be an explosive event. Plus it may have seemed like a better idea while they were pissed out of their heads...

[laurent]

they're too dumb to understand trying to blow a dam in a limited way likely means taking the whole dam down.

Wonder why no-one suggestd just opening the dam's floodgates and leaving them open for a couple of days? Nuclear level dumb from RU.

These were broken I think.

[Biffer]

The flooding looks like it could become a major humanitarian incident. Probably thousands of people now have no power, no clean water, no food. If they're not evacuated in the next two weeks then they're dead.

Russia is clearly responsible, their mouthpieces reported on the dam first and were initially saying a small explosion had been carried out (reporting it as a limited and professional Russian military operation). They were also cheerleading the loss of Ukrainian positions on the islands around there, Ukraine was starting to get into a position to win ground on the Russia side of the river and was raiding. Their initial reporting was of a Russian victory. As we've come to expect from the Russians this was incompetence on their part and now they've created a disaster, they're too dumb to understand trying to blow a dam in a limited way likely means taking the whole dam down. They're now pointing fingers at the Ukrainians. The same happened with MH17.

Twitter/Musk covering themselves in glory too, multiple Ukrainian accounts are being shadow banned. The following are trending: Ukraine, Russia, Crimea. But all that's showing up is pro-Russian disinformation accounts and Tucker Carlson saying Ukrainians blew the dam and what about JFK and the aliens (seriously!). The US right has gone like the far left on foreign policy, they back any madman if they're against the US.

Twitter isn't doing that for me. I get plenty pro Ukraine / anti Russia stuff, majority in fact.

However, some time ago I muted every variation of elon and musk I could think of. So I see very little of him or his bois. Made my life better.

[robmatic]

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Meanwhile, RU have been smoking the funny stuff again, how many of those tanks and armoured vehicles were actually combine harvesters...?

What's really funny is the American tankies who regurgitate that Russian propaganda as if it were fact:

[tabascoboy]

...
And Prigozhin went off on one again about the incompetence of the RU MoD leadership and lack of organisational command ability.

A very long analysis here

Prigozhin Unbound
The mercenary magnate is talkative, opinionated, blunt-spoken—but what does he really want?

The last paragraph:

IN FICTION, PRIGOZHIN WOULD be a fascinating character: a mashup of Better Call Saul’s Saul Goodman, a James Bond villain, and Roose Bolton from Game of Thrones, with a bloody sledgehammer for a sigil in lieu of Bolton’s skinned man. In real life, Prigozhin may be entertaining in his own awful way. (He is certainly full of surprises, including a friendship with the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.) But he is also part of a horrific war waged by a brutal dictatorship, a ruthless amoralist who profits from death, suffering, and destruction. In a just world, he would end his days in prison as a war criminal.

In the real world—who knows? Putin, or any one of the many people the “chef” has crossed, could take him out. He could resume his role as a Putin henchman, or pursue his own path as either a hawk or a pragmatist. He could become a popular politician—so far, only four percent of Russians name him in an open-ended question about public figures they trust, but in turbulent times, fortunes can change quickly. He could be a contender in a violent struggle for power in a post-collapse Mad Max-like Russia, or hightail it to Africa to retire on his ill-gotten wealth.

As Russian-born Deutsche Welle columnist Konstantin von Eggert recently noted, the very fact that a Prigozhin can emerge on the Russian political scene as an important figure—even a potential Putin rival!—is both a sign of a system in crisis and a catalyst for deepening that crisis by conveying the message that things are out of control. More than three decades ago, Prigozhin’s career began with the collapse of the USSR. Who know where it will go with the collapse of Putin regime?

[inactionman]

If accounts are true, the RU occupation forces are doing nothing whatsoever to assist citizens on the left bank who need rescue and help, it is only coming from volunteers able to navigate the river from the city

Spoiler

Show

It's another episode of scumbaggery to add to the litany of scumminess.

There's the bigger issue of pollution, as there's likely to be shitloads of effluents sitting at the bottom of the reservoir that have just been agitated and spread over vast areas of land. Not great for people who have to wade through the water, or in time try to grow crops on the contaminated land.

Praying to God there's nothing nuclear in there - it's on the same river as Chernobyl, although 500 odd miles downstream. Wouldn't surprise me if there were al sorts of other nasties from soviet era industry just dumped into the Dnipro.

[Hellraiser]

The Swiss upper house has approved the re-export of weapons. RUAG can now sell 96 Leopard 1A5s to Rheinmetall and 25 Leopard 2A4s can be transferred from the Swiss Armed Forces.

[Glaston]

There's a video some where of just fields of fish dying.


Price of food will go up again.
Think the figure I saw of farmland irrigated by water from that lake is like 2 million acres.

[Biffer]

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Meanwhile, RU have been smoking the funny stuff again, how many of those tanks and armoured vehicles were actually combine harvesters...?

What's really funny is the American tankies who regurgitate that Russian propaganda as if it were fact:

Liked this reply

[Flockwitt]

[Ymx]

The US right have gone full Pro Putin. WTF

I can’t help but think the only reason, is simply because Biden was in charge when it kicked off, and due to their hatred of the Biden administration.

[Flockwitt]

From ISW's 5th of June remarks which speaks for itself.

Ukrainian sources and Belarusian sources indicated that Belarus has been involved in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children.

[Hellraiser]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... ance-chief

[Uncle fester]

The US right have gone full Pro Putin. WTF

I can’t help but think the only reason, is simply because Biden was in charge when it kicked off, and due to their hatred of the Biden administration.

They've been that way for a good while.

[Ymx]

They’ve stepped it up a notch now. It was before against giving money to Ukraine. Now it’s more….

Tucker Carlson fully blaming Ukraine for blowing up the dam on his first screening of new show.