The Ukraine war thread
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Key Russian blunder - they did not secure Antonov Airport outside Kyiv.
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@Axtremus said in The Ukraine war thread:
What is the source of this “intelligence”?
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War crimes?
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that the war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine were part of President Vladimir Putin’s master plan for the invasion.
“We, in fact, before the war began declassified intelligence and presented it,” Sullivan said on ABC’s “This Week,” “indicating that there was a plan from the highest levels of the Russian government to target civilians who oppose the invasion, to cause violence against them, to organize efforts to brutalize them in order to try to terrorize the population and subjugate it. So this is something that was planned.”
Russia’s recent retreat from areas near Kyiv left behind massive evidence of atrocities, particularly in Bucha, where civilians who had been executed, many with their hands tied behind their backs, were found through the area.
On top of that, Russia has targeted civilian sites throughout the war, with airstrikes on hospitals and places where refugees have congregated.
“The images that we’ve seen out of Bucha and other cities have been tragic, they’ve been horrifying,” Sullivan told host Jonathan Karl. “They’ve been downright shocking, but they have not been surprising.”
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Interesting (and long) thread on the status of Russian tanks and what the losses really mean.
tl;dr version - The losses that the Russians have sustained are terrible, with no replacement of equipment or personnel readily available.
Many, including a certain "evidence-based only" sources would argue that the Russian Federation is operating some 10,000 tanks so 467 is "but a scratch". Which is certainly not true. (2/n)
Their mistake is that the bulk of these "10,000 tanks" are not in a status that can be operated by the Russian troops. There are just not enough units to operate them. (3/n)
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"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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Worth watching to see what the Pentagon or London has to report. Azov Battalion is a bit too dodgy for me to trust as a source.
If true, it could be a portent of much worse sooner rather than later and leaves NATO with very little in the way options short of the very hard decision to accept Zelinsky’s invitation to intervene.
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Well, that last one was from the Sun, so....
This one is from The Daily Beast, a source of similar reliability.
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Well, that last one was from the Sun, so....
This one is from The Daily Beast, a source of similar reliability.
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I was just looking at the running total of equipment losses on both sides here.
Looking at Russian losses, what's amazing is the amount of stuff that's been captured, and, presumably, can be used by the Ukrainians.
- Tanks (476, of which destroyed: 236, damaged: 8, abandoned: 40, captured: 192)
- Armoured Fighting Vehicles (256, of which destroyed: 122, abandoned: 28, captured: 106)
- Infantry Fighting Vehicles (497, of which destroyed: 291, damaged: 2, abandoned: 32, captured: 172)
- Armoured Personnel Carriers (96, of which destroyed: 31, damaged: 1, abandoned: 17, captured: 47)
- Towed Artillery (53, of which destroyed: 10, damaged: 4, abandoned: 5, captured: 34)
- Self-Propelled Artillery (96, of which destroyed: 41, damaged: 2, abandoned: 15, captured: 37)
- Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps (787, of which destroyed: 484, damaged: 14, abandoned: 61, captured: 228)
About 40% of the "stuff" that the Russians have lost is potentially still serviceable and usable by the Ukraians.
As far as Ukrainian materiel goes, it looks like the percentage captured is higher than the Russians'. However, their total losses are much, much smaller.
- Tanks (103, of which destroyed: 42, damaged: 1, abandoned: 9, captured: 51)
- Armoured Fighting Vehicles (70, of which destroyed: 28, abandoned: 4, captured: 39)
- Infantry Fighting Vehicles (82, of which destroyed: 37, damaged: 3, abandoned: 9, captured: 33)
- Armoured Personnel Carriers (33, of which destroyed: 6, damaged: 1, abandoned: 2, captured: 23)
- Infantry Mobility Vehicles (51, of which destroyed: 16, damaged: 1, abandoned: 1, captured: 33)
- Towed Artillery (25, of which destroyed: 8, damaged: 3, abandoned: 3, captured: 11)
- Self-Propelled Artillery (20, of which destroyed: 8, damaged: 4, abandoned: 1, captured: 7)
- Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps (224, of which destroyed: 97, damaged: 5, abandoned: 5, captured: 117)
Overall:
- Russia - 2771, of which: destroyed: 1456, damaged: 39, abandoned: 234, captured: 1042
- Ukraine - 740, of which: destroyed: 340, damaged: 23, abandoned: 35, captured: 342
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Putin purges more than 100 FSB agents
Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears not to be going according to plan, and President Vladimir Putin seems intent on blaming his old colleagues at the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – the intelligence agency successor to the KGB – for the quagmire.
Putin reportedly purged more than 100 agents from the FSB, and his government sent the head of the department responsible for Ukraine to prison.
About 150 FSB officers have been dismissed, The Times of London reported Monday. The ousted agents belonged to the Fifth Service, a division that Putin – then director of the FSB – set up in 1998 in order to carry out operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union, aiming to keep those countries in Russia's orbit.
Authorities placed Sergei Beseda, the former head of the Fifth Service, under house arrest last month. He has since been moved to the FSB-run Lefortovo prison in Moscow, The Times reported. The NKVD, the KGB's predecessor, used the prison for interrogation and torture during Stalin's 1930s Great Purge.This move sent a "very strong message" to other elites in Russia, Andrei Soldatov, an expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told The Times.
At least in the US these guys could get jobs as talking heads on cable tv "news" shows.
