Ukraine vs Russia III

I'd know who Greenwald was because of his role in the Snowden leaks. But I've only ever heard of Taibbi from TJS.

More generally, TJS is fond of referring to online pundits and podcasts in such a way as to imply that they're household names, and I have no idea who he's referring to 60% of the time, the other 40%, it's only because he's referred to them before.

 

It will be interesting to see who will replace the present General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg in this time of war and crisis, when he is soon due to step down from his position. Stoltenberg himself will be visiting Biden at the White House on Monday, June 12th, to discuss the upcoming NATO Summit, where it is expected that the next General Secretary of NATO will be revealed.

British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is interested in the job and seems well qualified and British Prime Minister Sunak is visiting the White House today I believe, so this may be a topic for discussion. The problem Wallace face is that he has not been PM himself, and that the UK are not a member of the EU and so perhaps do not have the backing from Germany and France for this job.

Anther strong candidate is the Danish PM Mette Frederiksen, who told off Trump and put him to shame regarding a purchase of Greenland back in 2019. Three days ago she was visiting the White House to shake hands and have a meeting with Biden scheduled for 45 minutes but went on for almost 2 hours. The highly unusual and strange thing about this official State visit was, that after the meeting with Biden, she also had a separate meeting with CIA Director William Burns, which she told reporters without revealing the reason or any further details.

What speaks against a Danish PM as the next General Secretary of NATO is that the present one is from Norway and the one before him was also from Denmark, so that would be 3 in a row from Scandinavia, so perhaps the Eastern Europeans would like it to be their turn, for the first time. on the other hand she is a strong and charismatic woman and highly popular across the entire alliance and also in the EU, not to forget in Ukraine.

 

Screw that....I felled the trees, trimmed, hauled and cut to length. Besides....boys had a footie match to play and me to ref!

 

Russian sources are saying the front near Zaporizhzhia is on fire and that Russian positions are under constant fire from Ukrainian artillery and tanks are advancing.

Several Russian sources are noticing a dramatic increase in fire and assault on their positions tonight in Zaporizhzhia direction. They say tanks are attacking their positions and shelling is non-stop:

Zapiski Veterana:
"I think now we can already talk about the beginning of the… pic.twitter.com/z4updAEb8y

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) June 7, 2023

 

I know what I said but this one is pretty good:



This is a Russian PTM-3 anti-vehicle mine. It's meant to be temporary - it's dispersed by rocket, vehicle, or helicopter and if nothing metal moves over it within a day it blows itself up. So you see how useful it is for the defensive - when an attack starts you quickly and secretly seed them everywhere you think the attack will travel, even deep within your lines, and when the attack is over you don't need to do anything to clear your lines of communication. The problem takes care of itself.

So Russian troops have been getting thousands of them. The problem, according to Russian Telegram, is that they have been arriving without the little coin battery they need to work. Supply issues, corruption - who knows. So the soldiers have to buy them from stores and fit them themselves. At 300-500 rubles ($3-$5) each that adds up quick. And this isn't a common size either. They are resorting to using expired very-off-brand batteries and testing each one individually. So a lot of manhours are being spent on something that should be cheap and quick.

 

Stills of Ukrainian vehicles that were involved in yesterday’s fighting. Russian sources are saying they are all losses, but only the two that are on fire are obvious losses.

Claimed as aerial reconnaissance footage of Ukrainian heavy equipment used during yesterday's reported offensive actions in Zaporizhzia region. pic.twitter.com/BNNPW8R628

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) June 8, 2023

That being said, a lot of the Ukrainian sources I’ve been seeing are commenting about NATO was too slow in providing F16s and that Ukraine’s attackers are paying the price for the lack of air support. I should have copied the links when I saw them, so.. trust me bro?

 

So in other words, the Ukrainians just need to sit back and wait for one day to watch them blow up by themselves without doing any damage, and also reveal where the battlefield now has totally been demined ?

 

No, there are many kinds of mines. Most don't need batteries. These are just a niche variety.

 

Yes, but I was talking about this specific mine, on the surface it seems cleverly done, but not really if you think about it, because it would actually help the enemy by clearing a minefield of all the different mines there, in only one day after you drop them.

 

That's the point of the mines. You want them to be there temporarily, rather than permanently. NATO also uses them so that any mine fields they put up is not permanent and, as a result, makes clean-up after the conflict much easier.

As an example, the Ukrainians will mine the crap out of the open fields, but they will leave the roads unmined. This forces the Russians to drive down the roads where they can be shelled with artillery. However, while they are dropping artillery on top of the Russians as they advanced, they will also launch the NATO version of these mines behind the Russians. As a result, the Russians path of retreat will be now be mined when it was clear before. However, the Ukrainians don't want the roads to be permanently mined, so there is a battery powered timer that detonates the mines after a certain period of time.

 

Man, Taibbi has fallen ...

 

Russia has released video of the first damaged/destroyed Leopard.

Video of the first damaged/destroyed Leopard 2A4 in Ukraine. https://t.co/G3cTZFTqt5 pic.twitter.com/UEsdkVacrf

— Def Mon (@DefMon3) June 8, 2023

There is an impressive explosion, but keep in mind, like many NATO tanks, Leopards have the ammo stored in an area separated from the crew compartment. There is a very real chance that not only did the crew survive, but the tank is actually repairable.

 

According to US officials, Ukraine's initial offenses have been met with stiffer than expected resistance from the Russians and, as a result, have suffered greater than expected losses in heavy equipment and soldiers.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/politics/ukraine-forces-resistance/index.html

Ukraine says that despite the losses, they are determining that the offensive is successful so far. We'll, of course, find out more information in future days as Ukrainians start to release details of any advances they made up to this point.

 

The body of federal judge Artyom Bartenev was found under the windows of an apartment building in Kazan, Russian media reported.

According to the preliminary version, Bartenev fell from the 12th floor of an apartment building. He was 42 years old. pic.twitter.com/DvrHUXq1YQ

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) June 8, 2023

 

This will probably be used by pro-Russian sources as evidence that the dam was blown by Ukraine, but analysis has shown that since the Russian held side of the Dnipro is lower elevation than the Ukrainian side, the Russian side has been impacted more by then flooding than the Ukrainian side.

https://www.newsweek.com/toxic-flood-dam-breach-having-largest-impact-russian-held-territory-1805149

Tweet with a map showing the flood waters and Russian positions.

The destruction of the Kakhovka dam has flooded several Russian defensive positions along the left bank of the Dnipro River.

This graphic from @AFP overlays data I collected on Russian fortifications with a map of the floodwaters. pic.twitter.com/VlduVxQJAt

— Brady Africk (@bradyafr) June 8, 2023

 

Are you serious?? The highest-placed hard-right candidate in the presidential election got 1.62% in the first round of the presidential election and the combined hard-right total didn't reach 2.3%. If Ukraine has "a large white nationalist movement", it's large only in the sense that a country of 44 million will have more hard rightists than, say Ireland or Costa Rica.

Ukraine's white nationalist movements are loud, make great parades and marches but they have little influence, less access to the government and zero power - there's a war on, which tends to concentrate minds on priorities. Russia's white nationalists OTOH, have a great deal of access to the government and the state's leadership is busy making it into the state ideology.

You're right about that part. At the moment civil partnerships law that would give same-sex partnerships legal status for the first time is making its way through the Ukrainian parliament - which is still functioning despite the war.
From the Guardian

Ukrainian MP Andrii Kozhemiakin is a wiry, conservative ex-spy who likes to emphasise his Christian faith and large family. . . . Kozhemiakin’s committee was the first to debate it [the civil partnerships draft law] and the team behind the legislation were bracing for defeat; they had even prepared a statement. He started with a script they recognised, talking about his Soviet-era KGB training, his religious beliefs and his “personal opinion about LGBT people”.
And then he announced his wholehearted support for the legislation, referencing Vladimir Putin’s homophobic claim that there are no gay Russians.
“Anything that our enemy hates … I will support,” Kozhemiakin said. “If it will never exist in Russia, it should exist and be supported here, to show them and signal to them that we are different. This law is like a smile towards Europe and a middle finger to Russia. So I support it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/war-brings-urgency-to-fight-for-lgbt-rights-in-ukraine​

 

Peter Pomerantsev, author of Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia, posted this on the - perfectly deliberate - destruction of the Nova Kahovka dam.

beneath the veneer of military 'tactics' you see the stupid leer of destruction for the sake of it. They can't create, so all that's left is to destroy. Not in some pseudo-glorious self-immolation, they are petty cowards, but a loser shitting and smearing their faeces over life

— peter pomerantsev (@peterpomeranzev) June 6, 2023

Further comment is unnecessary

 

Whatever GFC means.

Man, are you capable of posting without requiring an addendum of definitions?

 

The dissident Russian military analyst Ian Matveev has a long Twitter post, that's well-worth reading. He's been very perceptive before and during the war, especially during Ukraine's Kherson offensive last autumn - which took 4 weeks and heavy casualties to produce real results. It's worth posting in full IMO.

The counteroffensive of Ukraine has begun? It looks like yes
On the Zaporizhzhia front, the Armed Forces of Ukraine switched from preparatory strikes and attacks by light forces to a full-fledged attempt to break through the front in the Orikhiv region. All signs point to this. Namely:
— Using of great forces.
— Appearance of Leopard 2 tanks in battle.
— Attack in three directions at once and continuous pressure.
— The first results and positions recaptured from the Russian army.

There is no point in guessing whether the breakthrough will be successful, especially since we do not fully understand what results the Armed Forces of Ukraine have already achieved. Simply because the only source of information is the Russian side. But even from their messages, you can learn some information.
First of all, they don’t hesitate to report on the local successes of the Armed Forces of Ukraine — the liberation of 1-3 small settlements or their outskirts. In addition, the rhetoric of the Z-channels is strongly reminiscent of the one that was at the very beginning of the Izium operation. It takes 2-3 days for them to begin to recognize the obvious. I do not rule out that the same thing may happen on the Zaporizhzhia front.
However, the attacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine cannot be taken too optimistically now either. As I said, so far we see only an attempt to break through. This is a war between two sides. And it isn’t at all necessary that the Ukrainian army will win all the battles. Now we need to observe and analyze what is happening, keeping a sober head. It is important that the main direction for the first attempt was exactly Melitopol. About why, in my opinion, it is preferable, I wrote back in the spring. In short, this is the closest road to the Crimea and to the “land corridor” of the Russian army.
I note that any offensive implies losses. You remember the classic formula of 3 to 1 and even 5 to 1 — the necessary advantage of the attacking side over the defending one. Including margin for losses. Therefore, there is no need to perceive the demonstrated photos and videos with burning Ukrainian equipment as some kind of critical factor. It is better to soberly evaluate what we see. In the meantime, there are a maximum of 4 Leopard 2 tanks (1 destroyed and 3 damaged) and about 10 armored personnel carriers / infantry fighting vehicles. If this is all that the Russian side can show as "huge losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine", then the offensive is super-successful. And most importantly, losses at the very first stage of a breakthrough are always the largest. But what will happen after this breakthrough and whose army will lose more — we’ll see.
In the next 1-2 days I'm waiting for an update of the situation. Either the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to break through and the truth will no longer be hidden - there will be evidence of a successful attack. Or they will withdraw and inflict new blows somewhere in neighboring areas. In the worst case scenario, the AFU has a couple of weeks for such attempts. And if they all turn out to be unsuccessful, then it will already be possible to talk about a certain failure of the offensive, and the troops will have to reorganize and change their plans. But something tells me we won't see it.
This map is from my post on April 21st. I highlighted on it the directions in which strikes are now taking place, and the thin arrows are what I assumed back then. Subscribe to my channel, we will follow the events at the front together: https://t.me/arrowsmap

The counteroffensive of Ukraine has begun? It looks like yes

On the Zaporizhzhia front, the Armed Forces of Ukraine switched from preparatory strikes and attacks by light forces to a full-fledged attempt to break through the front in the Orikhiv region. All signs point to this.… pic.twitter.com/Rrl8VXldko

— IanMatveev (@ian_matveev) June 8, 2023

 

There is videos floating around of one Leopard 2A4 tank being destroyed. This is being debunked though, according to an analysis on German TV there were two leopard 2 in action, but what ever it was that blew up, it was non-identifiable and not one of the two leopard 2 that can be seen unharmed in the top left corner in the same video, you can watch the analysis here, but it is in German :

 

Analysis of the news reports about what will happen to the reservoir behind the dam.. The reservoir has already reached "dead pool" meaning it has reached the stage where no water would have been able to leave the reservoir if the dam hadn't been destroyed. This also means the retention pond for ZNPP is no longer being refilled and cities that used the reservoir for water can no longer do so. The reservoir is also lowering about 1 meter a day, is a little above 11m in depth and will drop to about 3m deep, so there is another 7-8 days of draining under the reservoir is completely drained.

A lot of that is going to depend on just how much of the dam has been destroyed. The 3m depth is the natural depth of the river and would be if the dam was destroyed all the way down to the foundations. I'm not sure how likely this is, but we could be looking at another week of draining. Also, if it drains completely, the natural width of the Dnipro is 1.5km in this area. so, sadly, not any better chance to ford the river than it was to do it across the river below the map.

1/ The Kakhovka reservoir has reached 'dead pool' only two days after its dam was breached, and is no longer able to supply settlements or the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant. It's expected to stabilise at a drastically lower depth and to shrink the Dnipro's width by kilometers.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/l7bEpwtWWR

— ChrisO_wiki (@ChrisO_wiki) June 8, 2023