There's never been a better time for Mossad and HUR to get together for joint projects, by which I mean operations not collection and analysis Those two orgs have the cajones and moxie to do some serious damage to Russia and Iran. Won't happen with Netanyahu of course, but it's the way things are heading 🇺🇦 🇷🇺 🇮🇷 #Ukraine summoned a senior #Iranian diplomat Monday, warning of devastating consequences after reports emerged stating that #Tehran has supplied #Russia with ballistic #missiles. Iran denied the claims, calling them "psychological warfare". @JJammine has more ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/cVHoQxGluN— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) September 10, 2024
I appreciate all the info everyone drops here. It is really enlightening. However, we are intentionally sidestepping the dread of a Russian/Putin commitment to a long drawn-out war, that really needs to keep going in perpetuity as far as Russia is concerned. We keep hoping that Russians will grow weary of the war, but they are already worn down. They are fatalistic. It is awful to think of all the Ukrainian lives being burnt up in this quixotic Russian Imperialist fever dream, but here we are. I don't know how this ends well. I don't know how this ends without some incredibly awful result, worse than what we have already witnessed. Sorry for the pessimism. Slava Ukraini! Героям слава!
I do think you have a valid point. Putin will never turn because this is existential for him. The common people won't turn because they are Russian. Most of the oligarchs are getting rich off the war economy. The inner circle is now family, sycophants, and true believers. They have allies and useful idiots all over the world. Russia is gearing itself for forever war. But there's still some Russians in the middle; of the government, of the military and intelligence, of the economy, of society. People that have something. And what people who have something fear is losing that something. The war has to progress to a place where those people feel threatened. I don't think we've really started that yet. But various trend lines are headed towards that direction, and are doing so inexorably. The battle of the economies is the most important front of the war. And I do think Ukraine is acting like they think this way as well.
I remember one of the WOTR guys saying after 6 months that Russia strategically lost the war, but the problem is making them realise that. As history shows, countries can continue lost wars for years where the politics favour it.
in hindsight yes - but it was not immediately clear the Donbas offensive would fail. the '22 Ukrainian counter offensive was the moment the war was obviously strategically lost IMO
I don't think you are wrong here. As noted by spejic, Putin can't afford to lose, the civilians don't seem to care too much, and the Oligarchs are lining their pockets. I think changing the minds of the civilians was one of the goals of the Kursk offensive. The hope was that having Ukraine occupy a portion of Russia would "bring the war home" so to speak.. That doesn't seem to have worked, unfortunately. As far as what causes the war to end.. Russia seems to be within a year or two of draining their wealth fund. If that happens, it will be hard for Russia to fund the war. While there are certainly ways to extend the war beyond the point where money runs out, no one is going to take Russian debt and the oligarchs aren't going to accept Russia raiding their bank accounts to pay for the war...
On this point. It won't work unless Ukraine is literally bombing one of a handful of major Russian cities. I just spoke to someone who was a consultant for McKinsey in Moscow (until very recently) and he's from far east of Russia (Vladivostok), but he spends most of the time in Moscow and wherever his travels take him. He basically said that while people are "aware" of this war, nobody really cares, nobody really questions anything, and people continue living their normal lives. Ukrainians occupying some irrelevant (as far as they are concerned) small towns in the Kursk oblast' is not going to change anything for the public.
I'm not sure what happened, but after a week or more of Russia putting up pontoon bridges over the Seym River and Ukraine blowing them up, Russia seems to have gotten enough troops across the bridge to launch a large scale attack in the area. There are some saying a TDF brigade was overrun, while others are saying there were "large" scale territory gain by Russia in the area, while others are saying that while Russia did take a few positions, they did not get that much territory back. In Kursk, Russian forces are conducting assaults from multiple directions, with their units organized into the now familiar small mechanized infantry assault groups. I am happy to be able to report that their progress has slowed down and this little counteroffensive was entirely… pic.twitter.com/zzRObhptOm— Astraia (@astraiaintel) September 11, 2024 I have no good news sorry. russian counter attacks in Kursk had success. 103rd TDF brigade was overwhelmed, drone operator positions were exposed leading to terrible consequences.russian forces managed to move out to Obukhivka. Heavy fighting continues.— ✙ 🔼Constantine 🔼✙ (@Teoyaomiquu) September 11, 2024 So.. I guess we wait until we get videos from one of the side showing where the Russians are?
Kremlin press chief Dmitry Peskov stated that the decision to carry out strikes deep into Russian territory with ATACMS missiles has been made and is currently being formalized. pic.twitter.com/5bbK46tvvl— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) September 11, 2024
Blinken's in Kiev with UK foreign secretary Lammay and others. Speaking in a joint press conference Blinken just said the magic words "we want Ukraine to win."
Multiple and conflicting reports of Russia, despite losing numerous pontoon bridges, having accumulated enough forces to launch counter attacks on the western flank of the Ukrainian salient this morning, mostly from the area between the Seym and the border. They are apparently making some tactical gains, including retaking some villages. See the red arrows in the map below.. Ukraine is in turn launching attacks in the west of that area, where the blue arrow is and to its west, threatening their rear and their supply lines.
A Russian SU-30 reportedly crashed over the Black Sea after launching missiles at targets near Odessa. A Russian Su-30SM fighter jet went missing near Sevastopol during the night after launching missiles at mainland Ukraine. The jet, alongside a Su-35, fired Kh-31P missiles from over the sea, targeting offshore platforms, but disappeared from radar after launching four out of six… https://t.co/SBHd2Acaco pic.twitter.com/IR325GDQDb— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) September 11, 2024
Fighterbomber has confirmed the loss of the Su-30. The Fighterbomber channel appears to confirm the Su-30SM loss.https://t.co/BRCHkAHzYp https://t.co/L7ixA8TSHW pic.twitter.com/wu2kOyF293— Rob Lee (@RALee85) September 11, 2024 I'm also seeing reports that the SU-30 was shot down.
It appears that Russian counteroffensive in Kursk Oblast is petering out. They may have forced some insignificant advances and had taken a few villages, but are no longer able to achieve significant break-through
The Turkish grain ship MV Aya had left a Ukrainian port and was in Romanian waters when it was hit by a Russian Kh-22 anti-ship missile fired from a T-22M bomber. The Russians do use Kh-22 missiles against purely military ground targets such as apartment blocks and supermarkets, so this might be an accident. Or not. There does not seem to be any casualties, but there is a massive hole in the ship and Egypt won't be getting their grain any time soon. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...ip-hit-by-russian-kh-22-missile-in-black-sea/
The Russians found an oil slick, but not much else. The 2 crew are most likely dead. The current reporting is that it was a MANPADS that was installed on a Ukrainian naval drone that did it. We've known that Ukraine has been fitting short range SAMs to these drones for around a year, usually to try to spring a reverse card on helicopters trying to hunt them. For some reason this Su-30 was flying pretty low.
Over the last few weeks Ukraine's probably blown up a dozen pontoon bridges that the Russians put up on the Seym river in the Kursk region. It seems they are trying a new tactic. Ukraine is now waiting for troop concentrations and high value vehicles to cross these natural chokepoints and then track them to a location where they can be hit by drone, artillery, or GMLRS missiles.
The Su-30 is the pride of Russian aviation and a good seller overseas. But its more recent made-for-Russia versions had a lot of French components, including navigation systems, heads-up display, cockpit screens, and radios, which were made by the French companies Thales and Safran. Since the war started these systems have gotten increasingly difficult to service (although there were some holes in the sanctions), and while there is a program to replace them with Russian equivalents, those are also made of components that are made overseas and are slow to get. We now know the way Russia gets around this is by sending the aircraft to Kazakhstan to be serviced there.
Funny you should mention that.. Here is a Russian remote mine laying vehicle being obliterated shortly after it drove off a pontoon bridge. Kursk Oblast, a Ukrainian M30A1 GMLRS rocket slams into a rare Russian ISDM Zemledeliye remote minelaying system, causing a catastrophic cookoff of the Russian launcher. pic.twitter.com/DuJx5lGyjI— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 12, 2024
The Insider's Michael Weiss has a source quite high up in Estonian intelligence named "Karl" probably it former director, the serving director or one of the deputies. A new thread has dropped which, as always, is very insightful. The whole thing is worth reading. Money quote: "Preliminary assessment [of Kursk op success]: UA has become under less pressure from several directions. RU has had to withdraw units from both the Kharkiv and southern fronts in preparation for the Kursk counter-operation. Possibly also from the direction of Chassiv Yar. It…— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) September 12, 2024