Russia-Ukraine war and related tensions Megathread

[Storr]

Locomotive: VL80T No. 1322 built July, 1977 (VL stands for Vladimir Lenin)

Out of curiosity, I looked up on google maps how long it would take to drive from Kherson train station to Lviv train station. It would take a 13 hour and 24 minute drive. That's for only a 904km trip. A drive from Przemyśl to Szczecin in Poland is 895km takes just 8 hours and 28 minutes. As you could guess by the train and automobile travel times, Ukraine doesn't have high speed rail and only 317km of motorways (European equivalent to American Interstates).

Hopefully Ukrainian infrastructure will be able to be greatly improved after the war. Ideally most of it would be paid through Russian reparations. But at worst, Ukraine can rely on the EU Regional Development and Cohesion Funds, as have other former Eastern-bloc countries. (In comparison, Poland has 224km of high speed rail and 4,887km of motorways.)

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1654110614778793985?s=20

https://twitter.com/AlexPanchenko2/status/1654134840680144897?s=20

[Storr]

Another Russian oil refinery on fire:

Location of refinery

https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1653926131731509251?s=20

Evidently the Ilsky Refinery was attacked again, this time by "sabetours":

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1654378116876312577?s=20

This is most definitely not a coincidence. Why would Ukraine target refineries in Crimea and the Kuban? Almost all of the Russian military traffic going to the occupied portions of Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts goes from Krasnodar Krai, across the Kerch strait, and up through Crimea.

https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1654075479559684096?s=20

[Helsinkian]

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

[Storr]

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.

Interestingly, and probably truthfully he says "not a single paper was signed to our name throughout the whole war, because the leadership is afraid of taking responsibility".

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

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

[2952-0-0]

https://twitter.com/cossackgundi/status/1654405776209788929?t=pK5qqzwPd0w8er1ZcG...

The video ends with a thinly veiled threat to take revenge through other means.

[Storr]

Annnnd Uncle Eugene is already out with another video. The first thing I thought when seeing the thumbnail was, what a horrendously ugly couch.

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1654469248574447617?s=20

[Storr]

Ukraine is denying it, but that's probably because they don't want to admit to the extent of their capabilities publicly:

https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1654444476054601729?s=20

https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1654507895646568448?s=20

[Hindsight was 2020]

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

[Stranger in a strange land]

Another Russian oil refinery on fire:

Location of refinery

https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1653926131731509251?s=20

Evidently the Ilsky Refinery was attacked again, this time by "sabetours":

https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1654378116876312577?s=20

This is most definitely not a coincidence. Why would Ukraine target refineries in Crimea and the Kuban? Almost all of the Russian military traffic going to the occupied portions of Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts goes from Krasnodar Krai, across the Kerch strait, and up through Crimea.

https://twitter.com/KyleJGlen/status/1654075479559684096?s=20

Ukraine appears to have some sort of new Deep Strike weapon. It's possible that they may have secretly been given ATACMS, or more likely, that they've McGyver'd another old Soviet System (similar to what they did with the old Tu-128 drones a few months ago) or commercially available drones to fly deep into Russian territory and hit critical infrastructure. Iran, a heavily sanctioned country with little to no aerospace industry built the Shahed series of drones with consumer-grade electronics. There's no reason to think Ukraine can't do something similar.

[Storr]

Russia is probably evacuating civilians so they don't give away their positions and deployments.

https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1654516914150952960?s=20

Why was the recording for the evacuation announcement made at a gas station? Maybe this dude is on the road heading out of town? (Presumably Melitopol, which is the "temporary" "capital" of Russian occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.)

https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1654520414465400832?s=20

[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.

[2952-0-0]

Ramzan Kadyrov chimes in.

https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1654530349790003214?t=oGItQFpkDATt-t2wk0_S...

[Stranger in a strange land]

Ramzan Kadyrov chimes in.

https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1654530349790003214?t=oGItQFpkDATt-t2wk0_S...

The other day I was thinking about how at the start of the war, we heard about Kadyrov and the Chechens all the time but nowadays we barely hear about them, which I guess makes sense when you consider:

1) A lot of the prominent TikTok warriors were killed because of, you guessed it, poor OpsSec
2) When the Chechens have actually had to fight in this war, their performance hasn't been all that great, and certainly hasn't lived up to the hype
3) A combination of the above two factors, combined with the rather silly nature of a lot of the TikTok and Telegram posts in the early days of the war, means that they aren't an effective propaganda weapon for Putin, and seem to inspire more derision and mockery rather than fear
4) There seems to have been a lot of anger among Russian milbloggers, particularly those close to the DPR leadership, that they did the actual fighting in Mariupol and then the Chechens showed up to claim all the credit.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Come to think to about, I forgot about the Chechens completely. They ended up being memory-holed.

[Badger]

I’m shocked Wagner isn’t a reliable source of information

You sure? Because not long ago you were quoting the same man like crazy when he was fearmongering.

Yes, I'm completely sure Wagner PMC is not a reliable source for a conflict that Wagner PMC is fighting in.

This logic is not inherently wrong, but it needs to be applied equally.

Every foolish post you've made about this war in a nutshell.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Question: where do we think Kadyrov is likeliest to be in five years?

[NOVA Green]

Question: where do we think Kadyrov is likeliest to be in five years?

Dead. Period End of Sentence. Would happily take online betting markets odds in the event that Predictit or other markets are betting the opposite direction.

[NOVA Green]

Since "Putin's Chef" is currently in the forefront of Russian '22 Invasion of Ukraine v.2 news...

Discord leaks sheds a few additional nuggets beyond previously reported conflict between the head of the Wagner Group and Russian Military leadership.

I will not bother to post sections of the article which cover those conflicts previously posted on this thread, and assume that the audience has been paying attention.

Previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents allegedly leaked by National Guard airman Jack Teixeira on the Discord platform indicate that the military leadership struggled to respond to Prigozhin, and the outspoken Wagner chief appealed personally to President Vladimir Putin to intervene.

The leaked documents indicate that Russia’s military leadership was frustrated by Prigozhin’s bitter public attacks, and debated how to quash his criticism.

Defense Ministry officials considered launching a public campaign to discredit Prigozhin through a proxy, according to the documents.

“The officials initially noted that, if the MoD was going to try to counter Prigozhin’s public statements, they should find allies of equal status to fight Prigozhin rather than doing so itself,” stated one document, labeled top secret. “However, they were ultimately unsure how the MoD could successfully fight an information war with Prigozhin if the Russian government did not forbid Prigozhin from making public releases.”

The leaked documents note that military officials “could not decisively” say whether Wagner was receiving munitions because they were not distributed directly from the ministry but through a task force in Bakhmut — an acknowledgment that “Prigozhin’s claims could be legitimate.”

Separately, officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, later determined that Wagner’s requests were met — but not in full — during the first half of February, the documents said.

Prigozhin is believed to have been called into a meeting with Putin and Shoigu on or around Feb. 22, the day he posted the picture of the dead soldiers, the documents indicate.

EDIT: Spaced link to actual source.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/05/wagner-russia-ukraine-discord-leak/

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1654582736332414980?s=20

[Storr]

Ramzan Kadyrov chimes in.

https://twitter.com/albafella1/status/1654530349790003214?t=oGItQFpkDATt-t2wk0_S...

The other day I was thinking about how at the start of the war, we heard about Kadyrov and the Chechens all the time but nowadays we barely hear about them, which I guess makes sense when you consider:

1) A lot of the prominent TikTok warriors were killed because of, you guessed it, poor OpsSec
2) When the Chechens have actually had to fight in this war, their performance hasn't been all that great, and certainly hasn't lived up to the hype
3) A combination of the above two factors, combined with the rather silly nature of a lot of the TikTok and Telegram posts in the early days of the war, means that they aren't an effective propaganda weapon for Putin, and seem to inspire more derision and mockery rather than fear
4) There seems to have been a lot of anger among Russian milbloggers, particularly those close to the DPR leadership, that they did the actual fighting in Mariupol and then the Chechens showed up to claim all the credit.

https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1654533463771324418?s=20

[Woody]

Prigozhin says the transfer of control is happening already. Chechen Spetsnaz and Rosgvardia are being sent to Bakhmut.

Prigozhin: We are starting to transfer positions, Bakhmut will be taken by Akhmat forces

“I thank Ramzan Akhmatovich for agreeing, having, most likely, the opportunity to obtain everything necessary and all the necessary resources, to take our positions in Bakhmut. I am already contacting his representatives in order to start transferring positions immediately, so that on May 10, at 00.00, exactly at the moment when, according to our calculations, we will completely exhaust our combat potential, our comrades will take our places and continue the assault the village of Bakhmut. A little more than two square kilometers remained in Bakhmut. Bakhmut will be taken, no doubt, by the forces of "Akhmat".

[Woody]

Another American killed in Bakhmut. Previously stationed in Iraq/Kuwait (82nd Airborne). He was 27 years old.


https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1654803695195033601

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/noelreports/status/1654803604635615232?s=12
This is getting really weird as everything about this screams fake out but at some point even Wagner troops on the ground are going to be confused about what is going on

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Another American killed in Bakhmut. Previously stationed in Iraq/Kuwait (82nd Airborne). He was 27 years old.


https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1654803695195033601

Rest in peace.

[Hindsight was 2020]

***WARNING GRAPHIC/UPSETTING CONTENT

For people who keep calling for Ukraine to give up territory to Russia to end the war know what you are condemning locals in the area to

https://twitter.com/anno1540/status/1654655910009085953?s=12