"Propaganda is that branch of the art of lying which consists in nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies." F.M. Cornford.
Gambling 2-4 brigades of your best veterans with their scarce and hard-to-replace equipment for a propaganda coup? Seriously? If those brigades are wiped out/captured, and they will, there'll be a propaganda coup all right; for Putin. Taking Moscow was a considerable propaganda coup for Napoleon. Fat lot of good it did him.
From the Chairman of the Bundestag's Defence Committee Twitter feed: Dear friends, The Ukrainian advance against the invading troops at #Kursk is going better than expected. It is forcing the aggressor to withdraw massive numbers of troops from the front in the east. This creates a relaxation there. An opportunity to talk about further #Leopard2 . The move shows the Russian population that their dictator has no control over anything and that the military leadership is overwhelmed. A good basis for #Friedensverhandlungen [literally 'peacekeeping operations' but may mean negotiations] with #Putin |'s successor. And negotiations with Putin before the International Criminal Court #IStGH . Our military aid for the #Ukraine is the best investment in our security. It reduces the Russian threat potential every day. It prevents Ukrainian civilians from becoming refugees. Putin's mouthpieces in Germany can now also realize this. Ukraine may - I stress may - be doing considerably better in Kursk than the conventional wisdom of the analytical community. They have allocated a lot of forces, reports of up to 10 brigades are emerging, for this and DRG armoured vehicles continue to be spotted up to 15km behind assessed Russian lines. Their current Chief of Staff? Syrsky, who planned and commanded the Kharkiv offensive in 2022
BBC and Al-Jazeera are claiming Russia is evacuating Krasnaya Yaruga in Belgorod oblast...78km away from Sudzha.
Then there's a secondary thrust opening up and one of the main goals of this campaign is to expose the inadequacies of the Russian army's rigid, top-down leadership for all to see and to stretch its lousy C3 (command, control and communications), terrible logistics and its late 80s grade weapons beyond their capacities. I'm not a military analyst but I think they'll try to occupy and dig in on the hilly areas while staging raids on the flatlands all along the border. Putin won't be able to stop that without putting bodies on the border to back up the barely trained teenage conscripts that are manning it at present. Most of those will have to come from other fronts or the reserves for those fronts. That should be enough to stabilize the Donbass front, where things have become quite dicey
🤡 Kadyrov's soldiers run to help Russian conscripts in #Kursk region pic.twitter.com/BKnP1TwSZF— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) August 10, 2024 What the Ukrainian army will find when it storms the Kremlin:
Sudzha definitively taken: Ukrainian armoured vehicle moving through the centre of Sudzha, Kursk region. https://t.co/0eSEPy4ghc https://t.co/EXTXO0TTCv pic.twitter.com/vKV2SV9yO5— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 12, 2024 There's another video of what looks like the same vehicle driving on the town's ring road, deserted and with a number of abandoned civilian vehicles
An interesting point about the Kursk operation: back in 1922 - 1924, Sudja was, actually, a part of Ukrainian SSR. Sudzha has a long history as part of Sloboda Ukraine, eastern Ukrainian lands (including Kharkiv) that first were occupied by the expanding Muscovite state in early 17th century. Even today, majority of the population around Sudzha are ethnic Ukrainians, many of who are able to speak Ukrainian. In fact, we have already seen several videos where Ukrainian soldiers communicate with locals in Ukrainian. By the way, the same is true for Rylsk, Lhiv, and Korenevo. All had been Ukrainian during the signing of Brest-Litovsk separate peace that ended Russia's participation in World War I and occupied by the German troops, because they were considered Ukraine then.
Blast from the past - this post was made last October. China has finally admitted that Newnew Polar Bear caused the damage. They say it was accidental. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/dip...ip-destroyed-key-baltic-gas-pipeline-accident
Russia has shut down access to a number of social media sites, most notably YouTube. In response, YouTube has disabled any ad revenue for Russian YouTubers.
All true but also not terribly relevant. 100 years of Russification will have taken their toll on the population's politicial/national orientation. The people speaking Ukrainian in those videos tend to be old. Very old. TBH I'm surprised they can communicate in Ukrainian at all. Their grndkids are pretty unlikely to.
Who do you think normally represents folk memory? Old people. But, keep in mind, even the old people are not 100 years old. When you watch any videos made by the panicking locals in Kursk Oblast, you will notice the pronunciation is very similar to ukrainophone "h" / "g", a lot of strong "o" that suggests strong influence of ukrainian speech. I do not know whether they have some sort of "balachka" (Kuban Ukrainian) but I would not be surprised.
I was wrong about the purpose of the thrust on Krasnaya Yaruga, which is the southern "finger" in yellow on this map. That line of advance cuts off the key road and rail junction towns of Belaya and Belitsa, which will force Russian forces to evacuate to the east. Taking those towns secures the southern approach to Sudzha and gives the Russians significant logistical headaches in mustering for a counter-attack on it - have to assemble further away, have to slog uphill towards higher ground before attacking even higher ground, etc.. It'll also open more supply lines for Ukrainian forces and put more counter-attacking forces within HIMARS/ATACMS range and under the air defence umbrella. I think the rest holds up . It will also give Ukrainians an additional access point to the Russian Railways computer network. That means real-time access to Russian logistics movements
True about accent and dialect which, given the location, is probably surzhyk (Ukrainian grammar with Russian and dialect vocabulary), but the key is their political/national orientation and that's clearly Russian: "if only the good Tsar in the capital knew, we'd have good boyars". They've gone beyond being Moskals at this stage. That's why they younger population is running away. It'd be wonderful if they weren't: a year or two under Ukrainian government might change their orientation, especially if they actually took the cities of Kursk or Belgorod (which ought to be called Bilhorod, no?) The prospect of that would really put the frighteners on the Kremlin.
Russia still showing a lot of signs of having their pants down. Ukraine is getting everything they want right now. A morale victory and easy routes to sabotage Russian missiles all over Russia's underbelly. So, the short term is great for Ukraine. Long term what's the plan? Eventually, Russia should establish air superiority and a stable front where they will grind away. Ukraine in that situation has one huge advantage over Russia. If they can find a weak point in that long southern front they can move troops there much, much faster than Russia and could cut off a large part of their army. That depends on a much stronger air force and continued Western supplies.
AFAICT, the Belitsa attack was accomplished by just punching another hole through Russian border defense. Russia may well have been lured by Ukraine to overextend themselves farther south and the whole border north of Kharkiv is ripe for exploitation.
Per the UK, Crimea and the Donbas have water supply issues Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 13 August 2024. Find out more about Defence Intelligence's use of language: https://t.co/Bs1ytlZr0C#StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/NlXLXajwwu— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) August 13, 2024