Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Torie]

Wagner & Russian Army has reached the railway line, fighting currently going on near the railway station.

The AFU's presence in the city is now only measly limited to it's western district.

Hey Woody, do you think Putin will complete his conquest of Bakhmut before losing his land bridge to Crimea? Any predictions?

[Torie]

Looks like there is a mole somewhere...

A new batch of classified documents that appear to detail American national security secrets from Ukraine to the Middle East to China surfaced on social media sites on Friday, alarming the Pentagon and adding turmoil to a situation that seemed to have caught the Biden administration off guard.

The scale of the leak — analysts say more than 100 documents may have been obtained — along with the sensitivity of the documents themselves, could be hugely damaging, U.S. officials said. A senior intelligence official called the leak “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” in a reference to the United States, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes nations that broadly share intelligence.

The latest documents were found on Twitter and other sites on Friday, a day after senior Biden administration officials said they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans, include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defense capabilities. One slide, dated Feb. 23, is labeled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries.

The Justice Department said it had opened an investigation into the leaks and was in communication with the Defense Department but declined to comment further.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/us/politics/classified-documents-leak.html

The documents on Ukraine’s military appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries, troop and battalion strengths, and other plans.

The "other plans" bit seems particularly concerning, e.g. just where the counteroffensive route is. What do you do with a mole that knows far too much when you find the person?

[Torie]

Russia moment:

https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1646326136085815297?s=20

It's very fortunate, but I don't think that would have been WW3 even if the missile launched properly and successfully downed the aircraft. There were similar incidents during the Cold War, some of which included deliberate shootdowns and multiple casualties.

The Soviets literally downed a South Korean civilian airliner with 269 people on board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

And Reagan went on TV to characterize the Soviet Union as an evil empire as a result. I remember watching that as if it were yesterday.

[Torie]

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/price-putin-ready-pay

Question: What price is willing to pay for Ukraine?

Answer: “Putin’s only current limitation is his feeling of personal safety. Otherwise he probably would already have launched a nuclear strike on Ukraine.”

So, if you take this guy seriously, we are where we were at the beginning. Putin must die.

[Torie]

I saw this article and was hoping it outlined a path to peace that had not occurred to me. Alas, no. The path is that Putin must lose on the battlefield, and in the ignominy of defeat, be removed from power, and a deal cut with his successors. Yeah, I had thought of that one already. Too bad.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3943927-impossible-and-possible-solutions-to-the-russo-ukrainian-war/

[Torie]

I find the above post quite insulting to Ukrainians to suggest they are but pawns serving as cannon fodder for the West. The vast majority don't want to be ruled by Russia, in particular Putin's Russia, and are willing to sacrifice everything for that, including their lives. It really is a catastrophic tragedy. Viewing it through a canned and inappropriate prepacked ideological lens is something to which I take great exception.

[Torie]

My surmise is if the US military thought Ukraine continuing to fight in Bakhmut was a terrible decision as opposed to a good decision or a coin flip, Ukraine would not have done what it did. And nobody knows the relative body counts, munitions expended, and so forth, to have an informed judgement anyway.

[Torie]

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-war-russia-coming-counteroffensive-hinge/

The article’s speculation is that Ukraine’s strategy is a redux of the Allies’ strategy on June 6, 1944 – get the enemy to think that you are attacking Calais, when the real target is Normandy. The date is when the ground gets hard enough.

Ukraine does not have enough for more than one big push, and it needs that push to be big. Why? Because Franco-German impatience has now metastasized across the pond to DC.

Ukrainian officials and lawmakers who were recently in Washington for Biden’s Summit for Democracy got that distinct impression — of the clock ticking — in their talks with U.S. State Department and National Security Council officials. After the meetings, Ukrainian opposition lawmaker and former Deputy Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze said she was left anxious about the “continuation of the same level of U.S. support to Ukraine after this financial year” — which, for the U.S. federal budget, is September.

…
Ukraine has heard such sounds of Western fatigue, and background noise about negotiations, before, when there was fear of a stalemate last fall. But it silenced these worries with highly effective counteroffensives around Kharkiv in the north and Kherson in the south.

And Ukraine will need just as much success this time around — likely more.


If Biden really does adopt the your time is up policy, my respect for him will ... end. We're done. The thing is, is that the lack of a big success, if that is the outcome, will be due to a lack of air superiority is my surmise, and the lack of such superiority by this date, 14 months into the war, strikes me as unconscionable - shameful really.

[Torie]

Invading Russian territory would be very, very, very counter-productive in every way, bloody, and it's political capital around the world would dwindle.

if it is militarily advantageous of Ukraine to invade Russia proper, they 100% should do that.  I doubt very many people who support Ukraine would stop because of it, but I understand why your handlers would want you to push that point.  Good luck.

I was thinking just last evening about Ukraine invading Russia along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, and linking up to Georgia. The amount or real estate involved would be comparable to what Russia currently occupies in Ukraine, so there is adherence to the elegance of symmetry. And then negotiations can start. 

[Torie]

"Global south" not entirely tied to latitudes appears to be some academic bauble in fashion these days that it thinks is meaningful to bash the G7 types or something. Aside from India, it escapes me as to why "the Allies" should care about it particularly from a realpolitick standpoint, and it further escapes me that even assuming it is a real thing aside from being a grab bag of nations with relatively low per capita incomes, with next to nothing much else in common other than typically misgovernance (one reason they have stayed relatively poor), just why it would hitch its wagon to an obvious loser on its way out such as Russia. Russia has nothing to offer really other than its odious fossil fuels for a bit longer. Anyway, if Brazil or whomever wants to suck up to Russia, be my guest.

Well yeah if you dump kleptogarchic China into the bag (there is no patent or trade secret that it won't breach or steal because it can), yeah that is a place to care about. But that memo has been received.

[Torie]

We're looking at a likely schism in the lands of the former Kievan Rus. Russia and Ukraine are interested in maximalistic goals and they both have interest in keeping this up as long as they psychically can.

Considering the region only, the ideal post-war scenario might be Russia losing Crimea and everything in Donbass but Ukraine restrained from doing anything that amounts to oppression against Russian speakers or ethnic Russians by Western nations in newly re-won territories. Ukraine doing such a thing ought to (justly) render itself open to Western pressure, and all that entails. Of course the Russians are not inherently owed a naval base in Sevastopol and that can and would go in an "ideal" Ukrainian victory.

Ethnic Russians should not be rendered victims of a Ukrainian reconquista.
We cannot let this become Armenia vs Azerbaijan on a much larger scale, something Putin has helped pull along. If Russia no longer has the theoretical ability to stop things from sliding into that position, then we will have to.

The last thing we should want is a legitimate casus belli in the future of "protecting Russians" being delivered into the hands of a future President of Russia thanks to a Ukrainian government acting beyond its bounds. Especially if said Ukrainian government was actually within NATO+EU.

In the future, in any case, Ukraine might play a role vis a vis Russia what Japan does vis a vis China - very similar countries in many ways, but on our side. This is assuming a Russo-Chinese axis cannot be stopped from forming, of course.

The above strikes me as at once an optimistic and excellent outcome, and a reasonable one. I suspect that aside from the ethnic cleansing fascist oriented recent arrivals, who should be deported back home (they would flee back anyway, they arrived to be masters not guests), the Russians in Ukraine are probably by and large a lot less interested in where they live being a part of Russia than before. That, and the fact that ethnic Russians in large numbers percentage wise in Estonia and Latvia, countries which have less in common with Russia, particularly non-Slavic Estonia, are tolerated reasonably well (which ethnic Russians now perhaps mostly grateful that Putin's zone of control is across a NATO protected border from them), causes me to be optimistic that Ukraine will not be doing an ethnic cleansing in reverse. Ukraine given this horrible war and the loss of so many, including many who left whom with new ties may not return, needs the people anyway to rebuild.

My main complaint, noted above, is that I think the failure of the West to do what is necessary to give Ukraine air superiority by now is a major mistake, both from a war and ethical standpoint (as Russia focuses on the terror bombing of civilian infrastructure akin to a never ending London blitz). The West should have been training Ukrainian pilots at warp speed for the past year as an example, and provided them with the most advanced  missiles to take down the incoming one way of the other before it arrives.

I still suspect this war can't really end with Putin ending, which is a sobering but I fear all too realistic thought. And he clearly has gotten that memo. Nobody gets near him, he never announces his schedule, and he seems to have his doubles running around all over the place. Too bad nobody has been able to put a chip in the bastard.

[Torie]

Putin blowing away civilians by destroying apartment buildings that while creating horrific civilian human suffering has next to no military value, is evidence of  madman bent on genocide. It is certainly not going to break Ukrainian will to do what it takes to not be subjugated to the cruel fascist. How long will the West tolerates this until it does what needs to be done to clear Ukrainian skies of Putin's ability to continue the slaughter remains to be seen. I sometimes wish I were POTUS right now. I mean that. It traumatizes me to witness this where it could be stopped with an adequate will.

[Torie]

If you are planning to leave Crimea by automobile, allow for some extra time.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1652380888183762945

Meanwhile, in other news we have:

Pro Putin Bikers Bound for Berlin.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/04/29/pro-putin-bikers-launch-rally-bound-for-berlin-a80988

Not sure how these tough guys avoided the draft, nor what their route will be to Berlin. I don’t think going through Poland will be feasible, much less through Ukraine (except for occupied Donbas which is in fact on the itinerary). So, I checked with Putin’s travel agent, and was told the route, which includes going through the occupied bit of Georgia, and then through a series of the usual suspect nations. Not sure about Macedonia, but it’s better than Albania, where its UN representative when I watched her was one tough sister as she excoriated Putin, in fluent English no less. Lavrov fled from the room.  

I'm checking with a former poster about the availability of a basement in Austria for a pit stop, but no word as yet. The ETA for Berlin is May 9, for a final rally, Z flags and all. Maybe we can get an update then from our German poster friends.

[Torie]

An inside look at the Russian military, albeit from the disaffected – racism run rampant, alcoholism, dumping soldiers into containers and basements without food or water who refuse to serve as cannon fodder, and pacts among soldiers to shoot each other in the leg and call them battle wounds, whatever it takes to avoid the at once incompetent but vicious meat grinder.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/30/world/europe/russia-military-deserters-ukraine.html

[Torie]

Back to Bakhmut again, both sides are claiming that they gained ground in the past few days, none of which can be verified.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/world/europe/bakhmut-ukraine-russia.html

[Torie]

I do wish people would stop mis-using the word "refute" though.

(unless the Ukrainian side has cast-iron *proof* he is still alive, in which case its usage is correct)

The writer meant dispute. English is not the writer's first language.

[Torie]

Putin and Co. just don't have the skill set to put on a performance that has enough verisimilitude to enable one to suspend one's disbelief. Whatever that fire cracker thing was didn't even hit the building as the white suits watched the light show from the stairs on the roof. Putin, you will have to do better than that to generate the false news to try to justify going to the next level of war criminal depravity.

[Torie]

This squib that popped up in the NYT caught my eye. If Putin thinks it a good idea to just bring it to NATO directly by blowing up its undersea infrastructure, then he truly has gone nutter.

"Moscow is actively mapping NATO’s critical infrastructure systems and could target the undersea cables that help provide Western nations with everything from internet service to gas supplies, NATO’s top intelligence official warned on Wednesday.

'There is “significant” risk that Russia could pursue such sabotage to “disrupt Western life and gain leverage against those nations that are providing support to Ukraine,” NATO’s assistant secretary general for intelligence and security, David Cattler, told reporters."

[Torie]

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1654097328284872712?s=12
Further proof it was a false flag as now Russia has quickly moved on from blaming Ukraine to blaming US

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1653838878858420255?s=20
*snip*

Most of the article reads like the result of the usual chauvinist brainworms, but I love how the ending suddenly pivots into "...and this is happening because America plans to evacuate to an occupied Russia when Yellowstone erupts."

Hey Vlad it’s too late to blame the US. Tucker is off the air.

[Torie]

The only real impact of  these courts is to let bad rulers know that if and when they "retire," their retirement years might not be as comfortable as otherwise.

[Torie]

Prigozhin says that Wagner will pull out of Bakhmut next week due to lack of ammunition.

He said they'd withdraw on May 10th, a day after Victory Day. The man sure does have a flair for the dramatic.

https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1654412610069037057?s=20
https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1654401109425893377?s=20

I’ve had concerns it could be a fake out to bait Ukraine but the more I think about it that wouldn’t work as Ukraine is given our spy satellite intel so they’ll know if Wagner is actually leaving or not

Yeah, the trap bit makes zero sense. Nothing moves on the ground of any significance without the Allies knowing about it. My speculation is that Prigozhin thinks he's not going to succeed in Bakhmut after all the sound and fury, and this is his way of "preparing the ground" for his defeat (blame someone else of course). I would also think regular Russian troops will not be pouring in to fill the gap if Ukraine is really getting ready to try to push to the sea in another direction.

[Torie]

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65515443

Ukraine war: 'Mad panic' as Russia evacuates town near Zaporizhzhia plant

If Ukraine is worried about counter offensive hype, it should tell this guy to shut up:


On Sunday, the Ukrainian general staff said civilians were being evacuated to the cities of Berdyansk and Prymorsk, further inside Russian-held territory.

The exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram that shops in the evacuated areas had run out of goods and medicine.

He also said hospitals were discharging patients into the street amid fears that electricity and water supplies could be suspended if Ukraine attacks the region.

And he claimed that two-thirds of evacuation convoys - allegedly made up of civilians - consisted of retreating Russian troops. The BBC cannot verify this claim.

"The partial evacuation they announced is going too fast, and there is a possibility that they may be preparing for provocations and (for that reason) focusing on civilians," Mr Fedorov added.

[Torie]

And it looks like Wagner might not be pulling out from Bakhmut after all.

The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group said on Sunday that he had been promised as much ammunition and weaponry as needed to continue the fight for the embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, two days after he threatened to withdraw his fighters because Moscow’s Ministry of Defense was failing to support them.

“We have been promised as much ammunition and armament as we need to keep going,” the Wagner group’s founder, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said in an audio statement released Sunday on his channel on the Telegram messaging app. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s defense ministry.

Mr. Prigozhin also said that Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the commander of the air force nicknamed “General Armageddon,” had been appointed as his liaison with the military.

If confirmed, the appointment of Gen. Surovikin, who developed a close relationship with Wagner while commanding the Russian forces in Syria, could help address the deep-seated tension between the Wagner mercenary forces and the regular Russian Army, which has repeatedly interrupted Russian efforts to push forward in Ukraine.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/world/europe/russia-ukraine-crimea.html

Threaten to (effectively) desert and get rewarded with supplies which were presumably bound for other units. Wagner has a particularly high profile, but it's still a bit surprising they pulled this off.

It may have implications for other Russian army units and mercenary groups. Pretty much all of them want more supplies and might be willing to play this kind of dangerous game to win them, which would be bad news for the military as a whole.

Would you rather be in a well armed Wagner unit, or without ammunition in a regular Russian army unit at the front, so you can't even frag your officers?

[Torie]

OK, Ukraine by concentrating its forces at one point against a dispersed Russian defense line, cuts through the first line of defense. So the fix is for Russia to rush troops to the sector to reinforce the second line of defense. Problem solved for Russia.

Except that moving troops around means on roads and trains right? What is to prevent Ukraine with far better ordinance now than then, to do to those Russian troop columns what it did to the Russian columns between the Belarus border and Kiev, that for so many, turned out to be a one way ticket?

Who is bold enough to help an old man out here? Twitter blurbs don't do much for me by the way.

CC: Woody

[Torie]

lol...

I looked it up. The T-34 tank was manufactured between 1940 and 1958. Tells you how well the special operation is going.

The sound of that tank motor running sounded just so 19th century. I expected steam to be coming up from under its carriage. In this day and age, military parades have become an embarrassment. They should be done away with.

CC King Charles III