Not likely. Ukraine is really struggling in the Donetsk Oblast right now and I suspect they are throwing something against the wall and hoping to distract Russia from that offensive. It's not likely to last tho as the Ukrainian troops aren't going to be supported by Western equipment and won't be able to hold their positions once Russians QRF units arrive.
More meat for the Russian railway network being on the verge for failing and its for the usual issues. Corruption and inability to pay workers well enough to compete with the war economy. The corruption comes from Putin eliminating the Ministry of the Railway and putting it under the Ministry of Transportation. While this could be a good thing as it would allow for coordination across the various modes of transportation within Russia, that's not what happened. Instead, they spread the railway service across the Ministry of Transportation to "reward" loyalists for a job well done. This resulted in decision making being spread across multiple agencies and these agencies are not working together. The inability to pay workers is likely related to the above. Increasing the pay of their workers means the agency head would be cutting into the profits of the portion they were given, which means less money to line their pockets. As a result of the failure to pay their workers and their workers seeing the writing on the wall, they are increasingly quitting to join the military, or to get much higher paying jobs in the war economy. i see people finally found the russia railroad article. i read it several days ago, i can sum it up like this:1: putin signed a law that abolished the russian ministry of the railway which put rail under the ministry of transportation2: the ministry of transportation split…— Andrew Perpetua (@AndrewPerpetua) August 6, 2024
A second North Korean ballistic missile has been launched against Ukraine. Like the previous one it badly missed its target, that target being "anywhere in Ukraine's largest city".
I genuinely think Ukraine would have been in a much better position now if it weren't for US meddling Ultimately it is a catch 22 as US weapons and intel clearly helped immensely and Russia would have been waaay closer Kiev right now if it weren't for USA but Jesus Biden let Ukraine cook 🇺🇸🇺🇦 | The US will be reaching out to the Ukrainian side "to get a little better understanding" of the current situation in Russia's Kursk Oblast, White House NSC spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday.https://t.co/CjTQowa5UI pic.twitter.com/4e3OBl9ZjH— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (@Archer83Able) August 7, 2024
We've had a drone downing a helicopter before, but that was during takeoff. Now video is surfacing of the first chopper being downed in flight. Enjoy Ukrainian FPV drones vs Russian helicopters. This is just the beginning. pic.twitter.com/nvWfhXTgOd— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) August 7, 2024
It sounds like the Kursk operation is a lot larger than originally thought and it includes Ukraine moving air defense assets to the Russian border. An SU-34 was shot down by something earlier today and it sounds like several more helicopters have also been shot down. Ukraine caught Russia not only with their pants down, but completely naked. Based on maps released by Russian sources (they are wrong), Ukraine has occupied about 250 square kilometers inside of Russia and they are basically moving with free reign inside of Russia. There is localized fighting inside of population centers, but Russia has no formalized defenses beyond their border defenses and Ukraine is past that. Still not a breakthrough. There was nothing there to break "through".Where are Russian divisions? Why is almost the entirety of the international border unmanned during literal wartime? https://t.co/gGIELw5jF7 pic.twitter.com/VFmIzHqESu— Astraia (@astraiaintel) August 7, 2024 It's so bad, that Ukraine has completely overrun Russian positions before they even knew they were being invaded. Not only that, but the troops are all untrained conscripts and border guards. It sounds like they are just surrendering en masse in a lot of occasions. Below is an example of a small unit of Ukrainian SOF taking capturing dozens of Russians. 🇺🇦⚔️🇷🇺 Humiliation of historic proportions. Four Ukrainian SOF soldiers take 40 Russian soldiers as POWs simultaneously.Northern front. pic.twitter.com/eQ3ZmzeZDF— Astraia (@astraiaintel) August 7, 2024 Not only that, but Ukraine caught Russia so unprepared that Ukraine is destroying tanks as they are being transported to the area on trucks. 🇷🇺🇺🇦 Northern Front. Footage showing destroyed Russian equipment north of the international border. pic.twitter.com/5DcVg0fhLe— Astraia (@astraiaintel) August 7, 2024 It also sounds like Ukraine has done this without the US's knowledge or approval. This may include the use of US provided equipment inside of Russia. Ukraine is basically challenging the US to do something about it. Either let Ukraine use US provided equipment inside of Russia, or stop sending equipment to Ukraine. 🇺🇸🧐 Washington officials "will contact Ukrainian colleagues to better understand the situation", - John Kirby, commented on the operation in Kursk region.🚫 USA has not changed its policy on allowing Ukraine to use the US weapons "to counter imminent threats emerging across… pic.twitter.com/xPUXMkkm6N— MAKS 24 🇺🇦👀 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) August 7, 2024
Besides taking over half a dozen villages, the invasion into Russia seems to have claimed the town of Sudzha. Rumors are all over the place, but it seems that it was surrounded and then fell with almost no fight. Well, except for the famous Russian warblogger/correspondent Evgeniy Poddubnyy (750,000 followers on Telegram) who died when his van was hit by a drone.
There are reports of Russia using glide bombs against this attack, as ridiculous as it sounds for Russia to be using a near-indiscriminate weapon in their own territory. I guess when your main weapon is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.
Seems appropriate as Scott Ritter is one of the largest pushers of Kremlin propaganda in the US. After being blocked from boarding an international flight and having his passport taken a month or two ago, the FBI raided Ritter's house today. https://wnyt.com/top-stories/fbi-searching-delmar-home-of-ex-un-weapons-inspector-ritter/
There's also this. The FBI is searching the home of Scott Ritter, who has been a frequent visitor of Russia (and Chechnya in particular) in support of their war effort.He was also arrested twice (jailed once) in sting operations in 2001 & 2009 related to contact with minorshttps://t.co/DU5JT5Zqwl— Aric Toler (@AricToler) August 7, 2024 He gave this speech earlier this year. This is surely one of the most surreal moments of the war yetScott Ritter has turned up in Chechnya and spoken in broken Russian (some of which I couldn’t make out) to thousands of Kadyrov’s fighters about his efforts to strengthen the "friendship between Chechnya and America" pic.twitter.com/vGiEs90ktW— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) January 6, 2024
Not only that, but the situation is so fluid and Russian information exchange is so poor, that Russia is dropping the glide bombs on their own troops.
One of the things that Ukraine has captured is the only gas metering station that currently sends natural gas to the EU. Ukraine already announced they will not allow natural gas to pass through Ukraine anymore, but now they control the station inside of Russia. Ukrainian Armed Forces control the Sudzha gas metering station in Russia.Nearly 50% of all Russian gas exports to the European Union flow through this station. It is the only operational Russian gas pipeline supplying the European market. pic.twitter.com/lDbZ5AAaWq— Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) August 7, 2024
This actually shows why this kind of attack is so difficult and so many previous attempts missed. Because you have a fixed forward view on this kind of drone, the drone pilots point the drone at the helicopter and keep flying towards it. If the helicopter was flying at any decent speed, this will always miss. Luckily for the Ukrainians, this one was stupidly slow for some reason. What anti-aircraft missiles do is have a system that predict where the aircraft will be and aim the missile to cross paths with that. In a drone with a gimbaled camera you can look to the side and try to keep constant bearing / constant direction on the target helicopter to do the same. I think despite the recent successes, this kind of attack is going to continue to be rarely successful.
This push is quite interesting. They've already taken a good deal of higher ground overlooking a railway line that's a critical GLOC for Russia's Task Group North (i.e. Kharkiv), with Sudzha being one of 4 staging grounds for that group and the other 3 being supplied from/through it. Even with this ground, they have fire control over the line. If they take more ground, they can cut it completely - and wreck it while they're in control of it by destroying the electrical grid and the substations.
Putin had a meeting with his top command to discuss the situation. His face while Gerasimov was speaking speaks volumes Shortened clip: pic.twitter.com/kZSmOIbzv0— OSINTNic (@OSINTNic) August 7, 2024
In more general Russian economic news, Gazprom's losses this year are double what they were last year. They have gone from valuable source of wealth for Russia to unjettisonable anchor on their economy. https://kyivindependent.com/gazprom-net-losses-nearly-double-year-on-year/ -- And news for Russian farmers continue to gets worse. If you recall, I reported that the first two years of the invasion saw Russia produce and export a record amount of grain after good weather for them made a bumper crop. What we now know is that the farmers didn't see much profit off that. Russia made a special tax on grain exports to help fund the war, so their profits were hurt badly. And then we had the frost / drought / floods this year. Things continue to get worse. Desperate for money, Russia continues to see the farmers are a revenue source, so they have increased the cost of fertilizer and seeds, raised taxes, and look like they will cut special agricultural loans that used to be available. Due to inflation you would expect farmers to invest in hard goods now (ie buy tractors and combines and such equipment), but sales of those are down. Expect drastically lower yields and bankruptcies even if the weather is good.
Sign in Ukrainian maternity ward: translated: Dear parents! According to Ukrainian law, children CANNOT be given names containing numbers and non-letter symbols. INCLUDING F-16!!!
Russia is still shipping stolen grain from Ukraine tho. Russis forcing Ukrainians to work the fields in the occupied regions and are shipping them out of the occupied ports in Ukraine. Given the above, it's probably a good assumption that Russia is pocketing revenue created from the sales of this grain and isn't returning it to the Ukrainian farmer working the fields.
Looks like this is effecting other aspects of government services. Municipal bus systems all over are hurt badly because their drivers are leaving for places that pay better. https://nitter.poast.org/ChrisO_wiki/status/1820905505948053835#m
These have similar problems - they were taken over by Russia, but handed over to oligarchs and existing farming concerns and those are still taxed heavily.