Concerning the Crimean airbase attack, BDA shows three distinct craters. This looks like the work of long range munitions. The question is how did Ukraine come into possession of this capability? There’s speculation they may may converted missiles in their inventory that are intended for other purposes such as Neptune anti-ship or s-300 anti-air missiles.
This should give the orcs pause. Imagine the resources they’re going to have to expend to reconfigure their air defense assets and strategy. Going to have to spread assets over a much wider area to defend.
We, of course, don’t know for certain what happened yet, but I saw an interesting analysis from a US Army combat veteran, who argues I thought rather convincingly, that based on the pattern of damage we see, the destruction of the air base was very likely done on the ground by either partisans and/or special forces.
If the attack was pulled off by partisans or spec. forces this presents Russia with an equally big headache in terms of having to devote significantly more manpower to security in rear areas at a time when it’s already struggling to keep enough troops at the front line.
Goes without saying that an attack on Belarus would be unlikely to be Ukraine’s doing as they certainly don’t want to drag the Belarussians into the war. But Russia has already created a couple of minor false flag incidents in Belarus hoping to draw them in.
While I’m here I heard this variation of a classic Soviet joke:
A man is on a street corner in Moscow yelling “The president is an idiot“
Police surround him and handcuff him. They say “it is illegal to insult President Putin”
He says “You don’t understand I mean the Ukrainian president, Zelensky, he is the one I was insulting “
The police captain says “you can’t fool us, everyone knows who the idiot is.”
Another possibility is that it’s the work of Belarussian saboteurs sympathetic to Ukraine. Lukashenko may be all pro-Putin, but the Belarussian public in general is opposed to the conflict.
I personally think that it was either professional Ukraine forces that blew that shit up, or Ukraine resistance folks. The Russian explanations of it being an accident only add the tiniest percentage of doubt. Similar to the missile ship that got sunk, I think by the Ukrainians. Operations got too lax and , BOOM. Shit happens. But this was something that would definitely be desired and attempted.
In itself, it may not be a major blow. But it will have ripple effects. Requiring more personnel and complicated methodology. A lot of asses will also be severely kicked, demoted, etc…
Like the HIMARS, this will cause the Russians to do a lot of extra work.
I won’t be totally convinced until its confirmed with satellite photos.