Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[NOVA Green]

I do regret perhaps not following the stories about political dissident activities in Russia for some time, despite the fact that there is a clear massive generation gap between older and younger citizens regarding the "Special Operation"

The Russian TV journalist who staged an on-air protest in March faces criminal charges for allegedly spreading fake information about Russia’s armed forces, her lawyer said. Marina Ovsyannikova was detained and her home was raided, the lawyer wrote, adding that the charges relate to a photograph she posted holding up an antiwar poster on July 15. “More than 350 children died in Ukraine, are these fake?” she wrote in a Wednesday post detailing the house search.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/

Russia has still not been able to shut down a website, which provides us with actual information from the Russia Underground (Anti-Fascists considering what Mother Russia looks like these days):

Here's a brief sample of how the Russian GVT is suppressing any whiff of domestic opposition in recent days:

A criminal case was opened in the Ivanovsk region against local activist Sergei Veselov under the article on discrediting the Russian army. The basis for opening the case was a video on Veselov’s YouTube channel, which has 16 subscribers.

A criminal case was opened in the Krasnoyarsk region against Roman Balyasin for violence against an agent of the state. Late at night at a park near the forest, he painted over a Latin letter “Z” which had been used in place of the Cyrillic letter “Z” on a sign reading “Zheleznogorsk.” He was then beaten by law enforcement. “I left, and out of the darkness came a blow from behind. It was some unknown person who had crept up behind me. Turning around, I pushed him away and he fell to the ground,” reported Balyasin. Balyasin noted that the men were not in uniform, but had batons and service weapons. They handcuffed Balyasin, hit him in the face, and insulted him. In response to his question about calling the required witnesses to his arrest, the men told him he was a “smart ass.” They also threatened to sexually assault Balyasin with their club and tried to pull down his pants. They then forced him to unlock his phone. There they found the contact information for Balyasin’s brother who lives in Germany with a note that mentioned the country by name. “Now we’ve found who’s paying you,” the aggressors said to Balyasin.

In Tula, 38 year-old Andrei Pavlov had a criminal case opened against him for discrediting the Russian army. The grounds for the case were posts he had made on the internet.
The Krasnoyarsk regional Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against an 18-year-old resident of Norilsk for calling for terrorism on the internet. He is accused of posting a “video with calls for activities of a terrorist nature…during Victory Day celebrations.”

Alexei sh**tik, a Tomsk journalist and politician who left Russia in 2018, had a case opened against him under the Criminal Code article on “fakes” about the Russian army. The case was opened because of “deliberately false information” about the Russian army’s financing, civilian casualties in Ukraine, and the crimes in Bucha, which he posted in the group “Asino Forest Patrol” on Odnoklassniki.

A court in Penza gave 55-year-old English teacher Irina Gen a 5-year suspended sentence under the article on “fakes” about the Russian army. Gen was also banned from engaging in any teaching activities for three years. The case was opened at the end of March after her 8th grade students reported her. In answer to a question from the students about why they wouldn’t be able to attend international competitions in Europe, Gen told them about the war in Ukraine. They recorded her speech and then gave the recording to law enforcement.

In Ulan Ude, a case was opened against two people under the Criminal Code article on rehabilitating Nazism for extinguishing the Eternal Flame. According to the investigation, on the evening of August 3rd, they went to “Victory Memorial” park and one of them poured liquid on the Eternal Flame.
A court in Tiumen sentenced Anton Shamonov to six months of corrective labor for spreading “fakes” about the Russian army. In addition, the court decided to withhold 10% of his wages to pay to the state. According to the investigation and the court, on March 24th, Shamonov posted a comment on VKontakte which characterized the actions of the Russian army “as criminal, and connected to the death of people (civilians, conscript soldiers)”

A criminal case of vandalism motivated by political hatred was opened against Tolyatti resident Alexei Arbuzenko for destroying banners that expressed support for the war with Ukraine. According to the local Center for Combating Extremism, over the course of several weeks, Arbuzenko threw paint at and graffitied three banners with images of the Russian military on them.

https://ovd.news/news/2022/03/02/russian-protests-against-war-ukraine-chronicle-events

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

It is Russians having fun at Eiffel tower and St. Marks square while their country genocides.

This sounds a little extreme. There is nothing wrong with private citizens having fun and enjoying their holidays - they are not the ones who are responsible for what is happening in Ukraine.

 

It's also going to make things harder for Russians trying to escape on a tourist visa, which Europe should be promoting at the moment.

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1557625881601998848

It could be an accident, a Russian false flag, or a Ukrainian strike. If the latter, it was incredibly risky but doesn't seem to have precipitated Belarusian intervention just yet.

[DavidB.]

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1557621932429819907

[CumbrianLefty]

I'm highly sceptical Ukraine would deliberately hit a country that isn't officially part of this war.

[Virginiá]

I'm highly sceptical Ukraine would deliberately hit a country that isn't officially part of this war.

It may be on Belarusian territory but it is functionally a Russian air base.

This was written a month~ ago:

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-control-belarus-zyabrovka-airfield-20-miles-ukraine-1722757

A top Ukrainian official has stated that Belarus has given "full control" of the Zyabrovka airfield near the Ukraine-Belarus border to Russia, materializing previous fears that a growing number of Belarusian assets are intensifying war-time pressures.

So at the very least it should give some insight into how Ukraine views that base.

[DINGO Joe]

I'm highly sceptical Ukraine would deliberately hit a country that isn't officially part of this war.

It may be on Belarusian territory but it is functionally a Russian air base.

This was written a month~ ago:

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-control-belarus-zyabrovka-airfield-20-miles-ukraine-1722757

A top Ukrainian official has stated that Belarus has given "full control" of the Zyabrovka airfield near the Ukraine-Belarus border to Russia, materializing previous fears that a growing number of Belarusian assets are intensifying war-time pressures.

So at the very least it should give some insight into how Ukraine views that base.

Well, it could have been something done by the locals as they have been known to engage in sabotage themselves.  While Luka is a bad man and dictator with plenty of political prisoners he's managed to keep Belarus from being a source of cannon fodder for Russia  even as Russia is getting increasingly desperate for such fodder.

Speaking of Luka he had a special Rascists guest just a couple of days ago

https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1557349576167903241

[NOVA Green]

I'm highly sceptical Ukraine would deliberately hit a country that isn't officially part of this war.

It may be on Belarusian territory but it is functionally a Russian air base.

This was written a month~ ago:

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-control-belarus-zyabrovka-airfield-20-miles-ukraine-1722757

A top Ukrainian official has stated that Belarus has given "full control" of the Zyabrovka airfield near the Ukraine-Belarus border to Russia, materializing previous fears that a growing number of Belarusian assets are intensifying war-time pressures.

So at the very least it should give some insight into how Ukraine views that base.

Well, it could have been something done by the locals as they have been known to engage in sabotage themselves.  While Luka is a bad man and dictator with plenty of political prisoners he's managed to keep Belarus from being a source of cannon fodder for Russia  even as Russia is getting increasingly desperate for such fodder.

Speaking of Luka he had a special Rascists guest just a couple of days ago

https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1557349576167903241

This plus (Bolded), plus it is pretty clear that smoking cigs next to explosives naturally is not NOT a good idea.

Smoking levels tend to be signicantly higher as a % of adult-POP, not only within current EU, but especially so among current soldiers from both Russia and Ukraine, not to mention "informal Russian Volunteers", effectively drafted from '14 from Donbass & Crimea.

Naturally smoking nearby Explosive "Warehouses" is NOT a good idea, let alone Chemical Warehouses.

Here is the universal GHS Pictogram which any facility housing explosives are expected to prominently display for any area containing explosives, so that anybody entering the area will understand.



Now we see a "No-Smoking Sign"...



Russian regular soldiers already have a proven track record of being alcoholics, even within combat zones, looters, not to mention in multiple verifiable incidents of "occasional" looting, sexual assaults, not to mention many other atrocities.

I digress, but still the reality is that there is not only the existential struggle Ukraine is waging for existence, as well as what that might mean to other former Republics of the USSR, but perhaps even more fundamentally, that the lessons of "This Invasion", might bring to many other authoritarian and totalitarian political-social-economic structures globally, I dread to see the outcome.

Still, pretty clear that Belarus "Big-Daddy" is just sucking Putins... [INFRACTED AND DELETED FOR PROFANITIES--- MOD TEAM INTERVENTION]

So... old man emotes a bit running a stream of consciousness vibe.

Honestly gut says either domestic Belarus sabotage or yet another "industrial incident where Russian soldiers smoke in prohibited areas".

Might be slightly off-top, but Immortal Technique song I first heard from a much younger person with a skateboard and "buds", I guess what younger folk call earbuds?

Meanwhile curiously the massive "Chechen Bomb Attacks" on Moscow apartment complexes, happened to coincidentally align with Mr. Putin's rise to power, in what has effectively become a Fascist State, in anything but name.

Sure, get it we might go for what qualifies as a proper "Fascist Regime", in which technically there was only one... more than willing to discuss that further.

Personally, I would give at least a 50% min chance that this was local Belarusian "Sabots", where Ukraine already has many political dissidents who went to Ukraine or Poland, but are still in close contacts with the dissidents in "Subvert City".

One of the key questions in my mind is why Putin chose to start this insane "special operation" in Ukraine when he did?

Was it already scheduled in advance bcs of upcoming Russian elections?

Was it a last minute reaction to the popular uprising in Belarus?

Cracks in European Alliance structures and local UK, EU, and US on other items?

STILL IT IS 100% PATENTLY CLEAR FROM ALL AVAILABLE VIDEO FOOTAGE THAT RUSSIAN SOLDIERS SMOKE LIKE FIENDS, AND THEY BLEW THEIR OWN SH*T UP!

DO THEY NOT HAVE A CLUE ABOUT HAZCOMM AND PROPER STORAGE OF EXPLOSIVES?

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://mobile.twitter.com/ChuckPfarrer/status/1558076201452929025

[Virginiá]

Good news for Ukraine:

https://mobile.twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1558069162873962496

There now seems to be more sources for Soviet artillery ammunition coming online. Over the long-term, Ukraine should be able to get more modern heavy weapons on a regular basis. This won't be an immediate benefit for Ukraine, but with the eventual mud season slowing down offensive operations, it could possibly put Ukraine in a better position for counter offensives in 2023. Absent a collapse among Russian forces, Ukraine will have to play the long game, unfortunately.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

[Virginiá]

Funny enough, there is a not totally-insane theory that Ukraine didn't actually hit the Saky air base with long-range missiles, but rather someone (possibly partisans, special forces, etc) used a drone / loitering munition that caused a large fire on the dry brush/grass that eventually spread and caused those small fuel depots around the jets surrounded by berms to go kablooey. This damage was likely exacerbated by missiles and other munitions Russians have a tendency to leave laying around on air bases. It's not unlikely - Sevastopol's fleet HQ was hit by a Ukrainian loitering munition some month(s) ago. There was also clearly a large fire spreading before the two huge explosions we've seen in so many videos, which the scorch marks across the landscape confirm.

The US and UKR have denied ATACMS, which honestly seems truthful because Biden has been adamant about not giving it to Ukraine, at least so far. Another big reason is that based on the sat images, the main munition bunkers appear intact in the after images. There is no way Ukraine would not go after those if they managed to get long range missiles and fire them through protected airspace. They would arguably be the primary targets. Ukraine did recently take down some S-300/S-400 radars and launchers in Kherson days before but that air base had its own overlapping AD complexes in Crimea that out-ranged the anti-radiation missiles the US gave Ukraine.

If all this were an accurate depiction of what happened, it would have happened due to sloppy and negligent Russian supply procedures.

Just a thought.

[NOVA Green]

Meanwhile, the Russian economy contracts sharply in Q2 2022:

The economy shrank 4 percent from April through June compared with a year earlier, the Russian statistics agency said on Friday. It is the first quarterly gross domestic product report to fully capture the change in the economy since the invasion of Ukraine in February. It was a sharp reversal from the first quarter, when the economy grew 3.5 percent.

“We thought it would be a deep dive this year and then even out,” Laura Solanko, a senior adviser at the Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition, said of the Russian economy. Instead, there has been a milder economic decline, but it will continue into next year, putting the economy in a shallower recession for two years, she said.

Michael S. Bernstam, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said the data released on Friday were in line with other reports from Russia. He, too, expects the economy to deteriorate in the second half of this year, and then again in 2023.

The prospects for Russia’s energy industry, central to the country’s economy, are deteriorating. The United States and Britain have already banned Russian oil imports, and the country’s oil output will fall further early next year when the full impact of a European Union ban on imports comes into effect. Russia would need to find customers for roughly 2.3 million barrels of crude and oil products a day, which is about 20 percent of its average output in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/12/business/russia-economy-gdp.html

[Virginiá]

This is a good article about why Russia continues to dominate so much with artillery:

https://kyivindependent.com/national/why-ukraine-struggles-to-combat-russias-artillery-superiority

Yet another wake-up call occurred on Aug. 2, just days after the Russian-led militants launched a massive offensive in the town of Pisky, a ruined suburb just northwest of occupied Donetsk next to the city’s destroyed airport.

[...]

Russian artillery methodically destroyed Ukrainian concrete defenses without facing any resistance from the Ukrainian side. Ukrainian counter-battery was not working at all, according to the message.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, serving Ukrainian artillery officers polled by the Kyiv Independent admitted that Ukrainian counter-battery activity remains largely problematic, mainly due to the lack of effective top-level organization.

From their perspective, all main components of counter-battery warfare, especially target acquisition via observation points, radar detection, drones, and sound ranging, need to be improved. And target acquisition must be better synchronized with artillery pieces reacting fast to destroy revealed Russian weapons.

And all components need to work as a system and in cooperation with infantry units that should be holding the important local high ground points for artillery, which is often not the case, as artillerists said.

In many cases, Russian successes were ensured not by its overwhelming advantage but by a problematic Ukrainian counter-artillery reaction.

“The infantry has paid for those flaws with its blood,” a Ukrainian artillery officer told the Kyiv Independent.

Russia still retains an artillery advantage, but often it seems Ukrainian forces are not properly responding, if they do at all. It's not necessarily that they don't have the resources (although at times it is), but that there isn't proper communication. As the article says, Ukraine doesn't have artillery brigades either. There is no organizational command of their artillery forces that would direct it to do counter-battery fire. That comes from other ground forces, but clearly it is not working. I've seen reports of very effective counter-battery against Russians, even from Russian sources, but I think this is probably an example of some units being effective and others not so much, and and availability of resources is also a factor (artillery itself, drones and mobile radar, which they need more).

Just worth noting that Ukrainian losses aren't happening purely because of ammo shortages or a lack of heavy weapons, but sometimes it's just a lack of proper training, organization and tactics. The upside here is that this is something they can mostly fix without huge amounts of foreign aid, aside from needing more & better communications equipment.

[NOVA Green]

Funny enough, there is a not totally-insane theory that Ukraine didn't actually hit the Saky air base with long-range missiles, but rather someone (possibly partisans, special forces, etc) used a drone / loitering munition that caused a large fire on the dry brush/grass that eventually spread and caused those small fuel depots around the jets surrounded by berms to go kablooey. This damage was likely exacerbated by missiles and other munitions Russians have a tendency to leave laying around on air bases. It's not unlikely - Sevastopol's fleet HQ was hit by a Ukrainian loitering munition some month(s) ago. There was also clearly a large fire spreading before the two huge explosions we've seen in so many videos, which the scorch marks across the landscape confirm.

The US and UKR have denied ATACMS, which honestly seems truthful because Biden has been adamant about not giving it to Ukraine, at least so far. Another big reason is that based on the sat images, the main munition bunkers appear intact in the after images. There is no way Ukraine would not go after those if they managed to get long range missiles and fire them through protected airspace. They would arguably be the primary targets. Ukraine did recently take down some S-300/S-400 radars and launchers in Kherson days before but that air base had its own overlapping AD complexes in Crimea that out-ranged the anti-radiation missiles the US gave Ukraine.

If all this were an accurate depiction of what happened, it would have happened due to sloppy and negligent Russian supply procedures.

Just a thought.

So on that and a related note, just saw this brief snippet in the WP when I got home from work a short time ago:

The Pentagon does not know what weapons were used in a powerful attack that hit a Russian air base in Crimea this week, a senior military official told reporters Friday.

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under terms set by the Pentagon, provided a list of the various items that the United States finds to have been damaged in the incident, including “a number of Russian aircraft, fighters, fighter bombers, surveillance aircraft,” and “a pretty significant cache of munitions,” along with an ammunition dump, some other structures and the airfield.

and

The attack on the Saki air base in Crimea would hurt “the Russians’ ability to prosecute any air ability out of the airfield,” the senior U.S. military official said, adding that the Ukrainians had selected the target themselves. Earlier this week, a U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation said it appeared the weapon used in the attack had not been provided by the United States.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/12/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/

Currently we don't have any such GHS Pictograms at our large MFG facility, but still it appears from all reports that explosives were stored outside, without even any type of overhead covering, let alone in structures designed to contain any potential workplace occupational hazards, and contain any potential impact from explosives detonating, regardless of the source.

Naturally, Ukraine would claim responsibility for any significant impact from lack of proper storage protocols, HazComm incidents, even if was as simple as a Russian military individual "smoking in a prohibited area", which might have caused a series of secondary explosions.

Still, not quite sure how that would explain the (3-4) craters in the runway since not an expert on secondary explosions?

Naturally Russia would like to claim it was an "accidental explosion", rather than Ukrainian Military capabilities to hit deep within Russian Occupied Ukraine, and a "Garrison City" no less.

Even the far-right Putin sycophants on state-run TV channels are asking questions about the "commander of the base", and why explosives were allowed to stored in unsecured areas.

Still, it does appear that both Russian and Ukrainian, and US accounts agree on one critical thing, that it did not involve any hardware that did not originate within Ukraine.

Ukraine claims "special forces" carried out the operation, although that might be as simple as somebody placing GPS tracking devices within the facility.

Still, I do have some questions in the event of a "drone strike(s)" that might have triggered events, since it seems perhaps slightly implausible that Ukrainian drones would have been able to penetrate Russian Air-Defense systems, even if they were located on the Crimean Peninsula.

Definitely a bit of mystery here...

[NOVA Green]

Apparently current Ukraine has a bit of an issue paying their front-line soldiers...

The Ukrainian finance minister is struggling with a yawning gap between the cost of the war and depressed tax revenues in an economy battered by the invasion. Ukraine’s Western supporters—particularly the European Union—are sending promised financial help only slowly.

Ukraine’s central bank is having to make up the difference, printing money so the government can pay soldiers’ salaries and buy arms and ammunition. That is weakening the national currency, the hryvnia, pushing up inflation and raising fears that fragile finances could undermine Ukraine’s ability to sustain its war effort.

To cover its shortfall, the government is offering war bonds to its citizens, but the population’s savings are limited. Many Ukrainians are living off their savings, including millions who are refugees.

Most of the gap is being covered by central-bank money printing. “It was a very painful decision for us,” said Sergiy Nikolaychuk, deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine.

The central bank strengthened its political independence in 2015, as part of reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund after Ukraine’s last economic and financial crisis, which followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of the eastern Donbas region in 2014. Since then, the National Bank has followed an orthodox anti-inflation policy. But when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February, the bank had to choose between orthodoxy or saving the government from bankruptcy.

“We had no choice. Otherwise there would be a collapse of the public finances,” said Mr. Nikolaychuk. The bank prints money and buys government bonds, depending on how much Western financial aid arrives each month. Heavy money printing in June put the hryvnia’s exchange rate under pressure, leading the central bank to devalue the currency against the dollar in July. The hryvnia’s value has fallen about 30% since the war began, pushing up inflation via the cost of imports. Inflation is over 20% and rising.

The government is in talks with the IMF about a new loan program, and last week sent the fund a formal proposal. An IMF program would help give Ukraine’s plans credibility and encourage Western governments to step up their financial support, Mr. Marchenko hopes. “Without an IMF program, it will be very tricky to look at 2023,” he said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-western-funds-slow-to-arrive-ukraine-scrapes-to-pay-its-soldiers-11660296604?mod=hp_lead_pos7

[Virginiá]

Russian Command moving to the left bank of the Dnieper. Possibly laying the groundwork for a fallback of Russian forces to more defensible ground.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1558478313701707778

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Russian Command moving to the left bank of the Dnieper. Possibly laying the groundwork for a fallback of Russian forces to more defensible ground.

https://twitter.com/kyivindependent/status/1558478313701707778

Good news if true, but Ukraine's been pretty open about official government sources being actively involved in information warfare. Kim could well be lying to lower Russian morale west of the Dnieper.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://mobile.twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1558546952672903168

[NOVA Green]

Russia's treatment of Ukrainian clergy who do not cooperate from the WSJ:

Decent size read, but these are just a few limited excerpts from a much longer article

Ukrainian Clergy Say Russian Occupiers Target Them With Threats, Violence

Priests say they face assaults if they refuse Russian demands to collaborate and influence the local population

The Russian soldiers who showed up at Rev. Sergey Chudinovich’s church put a bag over his head, took him to the police station, then made him an offer.

Let us distribute aid at your church, they said, which is located in Russian-occupied Kherson in the south of Ukraine. Or make a video telling residents to accept Russian aid.

Fr. Chudinovich refused. The Russians tied him up, tossed him in the basement and tortured him for the next two days, he said.

Dozens of priests from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the country’s largest denomination, have been kidnapped or killed since the invasion began, according to church officials.

In Bohdanivka, a village east of the capital, Russian troops put bullet holes through a cross along the main road, and broke another cross inside Rev. Antoniy Pyasetskiy’s Orthodox church. Fr. Pyasetskiy, who fought in the Soviet army in Afghanistan, said he and another priest were detained while checking on a local resident. The soldiers told them to strip and searched them for tattoos in the street, beat them and forced them to walk two hours to a Russian base.

When allowed to leave later that day, Fr. Pyasetskiy said he had several teeth missing. The other priest, who had been beaten so severely that Fr. Pyasetskiy said his face was unrecognizable, had to walk home naked.

In the first month of the war, Fr. Chudinovich turned his Kherson church into a local aid center, where he and his members offered haircuts, medicine and food. A sign on the wall advertised two-tiered coffee prices: 1,000 hryvnia, equivalent to about $27, if you ordered in Russian, no charge if you spoke Ukrainian. A photo of the sign wound up on social media in late March. The Russians showed up at the church the next morning.

After Fr. Chudinovich declined to let them distribute aid at his church, he said, they found some numbers of Ukrainian soldiers and policemen in his phone. They blindfolded him, he said, and took him to the basement.

Over the next two days, Fr. Chudinovich said, the Russians grilled him about his acquaintances. They left him in the cold without shoes, beat him in the knees and chest with a police baton, choked him until he passed out, and taunted him, saying: “Your God doesn’t exist.” At one point, he said, they tried to rape him with a stick.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukrainian-clergy-say-russian-occupiers-target-them-with-threats-violence-11660377935?mod=hp_lead_pos8

[Woody]

Are there any estimates how many Ukrainians are left living in occupied territory? (incl Crimea)

[JimJamUK]

Are there any estimates how many Ukrainians are left living in occupied territory? (incl Crimea)

Would also be interested in any analysis of the economy in post-February occupied parts of Ukraine.

[NOVA Green]

Are there any estimates how many Ukrainians are left living in occupied territory? (incl Crimea)

Wow!

Very good question and one of which I suspect even relative experts on the subject would likely have a hard time answering.

There was a very very good long story in the Economist in their 7/28/22 edition from their 1843 Magazine, during their first Summer "bumper issue" ever.

It was both a really intense human interest story, whose primary sources were actually Ukrainians who had left to Russia from Mariupol, who had no real vested interest in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but effectively with all of the communications cut off, as the war comes closer and closer to their neighborhood they split and crossed the lines into a Russian held neighborhood, after a Russian shell had caused the death of a child, and permanent injuries to several others...

The article also provides additional insights from primary sources, into a few of the "Filtration Camps", not to mention their experiences once they passed the "screening process".

 which provided  titled the following:

"East of Mariupol: what happened to the Ukrainians who fled to Russia?

Some refugees who went east faced interrogations. Others were met with cups of tea and kindness

More than 6m people have fled Ukraine since the war began. Most of these went west, but around 1.5m have entered Russia, according to the un (some think this is an overestimate). Many who have gone east have come from occupied territory. In the early weeks of the war there were reports of Russians forcing people onto evacuation buses and transporting them to the Donetsk People’s Republic.

So if we assume anyone who lived within Ukrainian territorial boundaries post the 2014 border can be properly considered "Ukrainian", and then we assume that the 1.5 Million Ukrainians who went to Russia are subtracted from the post 2014 "border" we have at least a certain sense if one were to run Census numbers from pre- 2/22 numbers.

Tricky part would likely to assess how many Ukrainians evacuated Russian Occupied territories prior to the occupation, or even in some cases able to head West and not East.

Very good question, since Sir Woodbury, we haven't really seen that much coverage of the migrations of civilian populations within Ukraine within the past couple months, especially closer to the front lines, where Ukrainian officials periodically call for civilians to evacuate as the Russian offenses used to heat up.

Still, just because the MSM isn't covering it that much, I'm pretty sure that various NGOs are likely trying to track internal and external mass-migrations within a massive war zone, simply in order to help assist in providing resources to civilian refugees, as well as steering them towards resources provided by the EU in the event of external migrants.

Interestingly enough, I can imagine that it will be much easier in the future for Ukrainian passport holders to obtain work and residency papers in both Europe and the US, than it will be for those currently holding Russian passports.

[NOVA Green]

Really decent read from The Economist from 8/11/22 regarding Ukrainian Conscripts from Russian Occupied territory, being forced into war...

He is luckier than others. Since the start of the war Russian forces and leaders in the occupied “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk are said to have mobilised some 100,000 men. Ukrainian officials say 25,000 conscripts from the occupied territories have been killed or are missing in action, an improbably high figure. Russian sources mention about 3,000 dead, an improbably low one. But data suggest that Ukrainians from the separatist republics are dying at a higher rate than troops from Russia. By June 2022 more than half of the original members of the Donetsk militia had been killed or wounded in combat, reckons Britain’s defence ministry.

Pro-Russian sympathies run deep in Donetsk and Luhansk. Thousands of the men Russia has deployed to the eastern front are loyalists who have seen action frequently since 2014. Many of them have welcomed the chance to fight Russia’s war. But interviews with relatives and activists suggest that most of the new conscripts are unprepared, underequipped and unwilling. “He told me many of them did not know how to use weapons, and nobody wanted to fight,” says Alina, a woman whose brother, a schoolteacher from Donetsk, also ended up in Kharkiv. “Their commanders told them they would be shot if they turned back.”

In March groups of women, outraged that their husbands had been sent to the front, repeatedly confronted officials in Donetsk and Luhansk. Their protests escalated when the first bodies returned. Conscription was reportedly paused as a result. But now it seems to be restarting, albeit more cautiously. On August 1st 21 men were enlisted in Donetsk, says Pavel Lisyansky, of the Eastern Human Rights Group, a watchdog. Conscription also seems to have begun in bits of eastern Ukraine that Russia has only recently captured, says Mr Arestovych. That includes the cities of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, which were taken in June and July.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/08/11/russia-is-forcing-ukrainian-conscripts-into-battle


https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/08/11/russia-is-forcing-ukrainian-conscripts-into-battle

[Frodo]

It looks it is the beginning of the end for Russia's occupation of Kherson:

https://twitter.com/Aviation_Intel/status/1558563995451133952