Ukraine vs Russia III

Even better, looks like the Syrian rebels captured one of those rare and valuable 48Y6-K1 Podlet radar systems that I occasionally mention whenever Ukraine blows one up.

 

Today Russia placed one trillion rubles worth of floating OFZ bonds today. They still have about a trillion to go before the end of the year.

By hook or by crook this has to be done or things stop working. We have to wait a bit to see where the money came from, as the banks as a whole don't have the liquidity to do this by themselves. There are no good answers to this question, but you have to worry about today before you can worry about tomorrow.

 

@Yoshou : that Noel Reports account you post here sometimes is claiming that Russia is planning to cross the Dnipro and retake Kherson.

Is this a valid concern? My understanding is that would not be possible but it seems plausible reading the report.

 

So far the second-biggest oxymoron of this war - after Putin's strategy - is "successful Russian river crossing" but there's always a first time.

It depends on how well they've learned their lessons from those and how the Ukrainians react, especially whether they look to repel any and all landings, thereby bringing their artillery into range, or stand off and let the Russians establish footholds that they turn into kill boxes.

If they launch a crossing, it could well be the decisive battle of the war.

 

Not really. Kherson has basically turned into a ghost town as the Russians have been killing everyone they see with FPVs, including flying into buildings to blow up people sitting in their living rooms. However, Ukraine has also been using FPVs to kill everything on the Russian side of the river. The volume of military equipment and personnel that Russia would need to successfully cross the Dnipro would be huge and during that time they'd be completely decimated by FPVs. The most likely speculation that I've seen is that Russia is trying to occupy the islands in the middle of the Dnipro. That could be used as stepping stones to get Russian troops across the river, but it would likely only be infantry and they'd be largely cut off from supplies.

 

Russia has blocked all anime web sites. They didn't say why, but presumably it's part of the anti-LGBT campaign.

https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/04/vrossii-perestali-rabotat-saiti-sanime-a149625

 

I think this is the first time that I've seen an official source in the Ukrainian government mention casualty figures.. In this case, they are saying there are around 105k "irreversible" losses, which means KIA and MIA. However, the tweet mentions that the MoD figures reference 300k KIA and MIA. I really hope it is closer to the 105k as that would give Ukraine the much more sustainable 1:7 KDR, while 300k would be closer to 1:2.5. A 1:2.5 KDR would definitely favor Russia, particularly if you continue the tactics that Russia is currently using.

https://bsky.app/profile/devana.bsky.social/post/3lclhp5slh22b

 

The tweet mentions the 300,000 figure, but the video it includes does not.

 

Yeah, the video is the Ukrainian official saying 105k, but the remainder is one of those "unofficial sources" type of tweet that is common in OSINT. Grain of salt is likely on that front, but it is also likely that the official number is low.

 

This came out this morning.


Putin’s relative accidentally reveals secret Russian death toll in Ukraine.

Partial:
“I earnestly ask you not to use these figures anywhere. This is such sensitive, closed information. And when we draw up the final documents, we should not include these figures anywhere,” he said.

The Russian government regards its casualty numbers as top secret because it doesn’t want ordinary Russians to understand the true cost of its war in Ukraine.

Western intelligence has said that Russia has suffered more than 700,000 dead or badly injured in the near-three-year war, vastly surpassing the decade-long Afghan War that the Soviet Union fought from 1979. The Kremlin suffered around 70,000 casualties in its war in Afghanistan, which was said to have defined a generation.

November was Russia’s bloodiest month since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, suffering 1,500 casualties every day as Putin urges on his forces ahead of an expected peace deal set to be imposed by Donald Trump after he is sworn in as the next US President in January.

Full report.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/04/putin-relative-secret-death-toll-russia-ukraine/

Another report here.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-sets-new-average-daily-losses-record-in-ukraine-uk-2024-12?utm_source=copy-pool link&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar

 

As people talked about this

Romanian elections cancelled due to Russian meddling

Every candidate will need to apply again which mean basically the Kremlin dude is out and possibly in jail

 

Some chatter about an approaching "Russian helicopters evacuating staff from the embassy roof" moment in Damascus.

I strongly doubt it'll happen. Russia no longer has the capabilities in Syria to evacuate the Russian military by helicopter from any roof.

 

Naah. After years of selling the gas out the back, the battalion logistics officers took the last of the fuel, poured it into into their SUVs and legged it.

Seriously. If the Assad army was paying its conscripts $15-20 a month, you can imagine how little even relatively senior officers were getting. There's no army left.

For Assad to still be mayor of Damascus on Friday, Iran better get 10k men in position by Monday morning. With Deir El Zor falling to the Kurds at lunchtime, their road through Iraq is now cut.

 

Russian Z-blogger Fighterbomber says the situation in Syria is catastrophic. According to him, Russian military bases and airfield are virtually unprotected from shelling, there is nowhere to withdraw them, and evacuation is completely impossible. He says they probably will come… https://t.co/59wGlP8Qnv pic.twitter.com/9Cclht2kaD

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) December 6, 2024

According to Fighter Bomber Russia is about to lose some jets in Syria

 

For all the needless killing and suffering to end in such a weak refrain is just so….. AAAAHHH!!!!!

Millions of lives ended, destroyed, or stunted for one asshole’s ego.

 

He was just following family tradition. Look up Hama Rules.

 

Oh, I know well. The send off his dad got was so infuriating!

 

They're going to lose everything. Multiple reports of negotiations to surrender Homs peacefully in the last hour or so and a mechanized division, or what passes for one, has started retreating from the mountains just south of it towards Damascus which, with reports - from official news channels - of an attempted mutiny at army HQ and other reports of minsters resigning/defecting, is insane.

They still have enough time to move that division through the south-west of Homs into the Latakia mountains so Assad can set up a "legitimate government" in the Alawite heartland. Russia could then use a puppet state as a pretext to keep its bases.

Then again, maybe it's not so insane. There's a small group of ME analysts, scorned equally by realists, tankies and the kind of "thoughtful" experts that the Jake Sullivans of this world turn to, who have insisted that regime Syria's economy was too degraded to bear the usual Baathist predation and that a kind of exhausted anger had spread to every community.

If he flees to his own community, they may kill him themselves

 

Can we move the Syrian discussions to the War with Iran thread? Granted, that's probably also not the best place since this doesn't move the US closer to war with Iran, but it's better than this one since Assad is an Iranian puppet.

 

Speaking of Ukraine, the Russians have started hitting Zaporizhzhia with glide bombs. So far, 9 civilians have been confirmed as killed and 17 wounded.

https://kyivindependent.com/russian...izhzhia-kills-7-injures-4-including-children/

 

Zelensky announced in his evening address that Ukraine's new long range cruise missile has been sent to the military for use. The cruise missile, called Peklo or "Hell" in Ukrainian, has a range of 700km with a speed of 700km/hr and is, at least partially, human navigated. Zelensky didn't say how many were released to the military, but Ukraine is increasing production and hopes to start hitting targets deep inside of Russia

https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-delivers-first-peklo-drone-missiles/

 

Fair enough. OTOH

There is a case to be made—and I've made it here before—that the Syrian civil war is the most important event of the 21st century. Possible deadliest war, generated a host of other conflicts, produced ISIS and massive European refugee crisis, possibly gave us Brexit and Trump...

— Armin Rosen (@ArminRosen) December 6, 2024

If Obama had shown some steel back in 2014-15 - when the Charles de Gaulle was off the coast of Syria, locked and loaded - there a 50-50 chance that this thread wouldn't exist and probably better than that IMO