Russia invades Ukraine {2022-02-24} (Part 1)

[Al128]

goodwill actions … just like when they fled snake island

[smithsb]

I’m as shocked, shocked I tell you, that

Ravil Maganov: Russian Lukoil chief dies in 'fall from hospital window'

[Broomstick]

It’s raining men oligarchs

[Love_Rhombus]

Perhaps he slipped on some oil and a nice person was helping him up and an accident happened.

[Broomstick]

Was he smoking? Smoking seems to be the cause of all sorts of unhappy accidents in Russia these days.

[Folacin]

Perhaps in a non-smoking building, so he’d opened the window and was leaning out so as not to get smoke inside?

[Walken_After_Midnight]

Yep, that’s it.

max seddon

Meanwhile:

max seddon

[Northern_Piper]

children in the Russian-occupied Donbas … “didn’t even know that Ukraine and Russia were part of a united country.”

Out of the mouth of babes…

[FlikTheBlue]

It wasn’t the fall that killed him, it was the sudden stop at the end.

[Fiendish_Astronaut]

He made some feint anti-war statements before he suffered from the defenestration.

It’s typical of a death of a Putin critic: one in which everyone can see it’s very obviously a hit, but with a tracing paper-thin veil of deniability. “We whacked him, but nothing to see here.” A clear warning to anyone else who thinks about failing to toe the line.

Thing is, this guy wasn’t even that heavy a critic. But Putin has redrawn the lines of acceptability since the invasion. And the oligarchs only exist with his blessing.

[aceplace57]

@Cardigan

Okay, I’m getting frustrated by the watercooler discussions at work where everyone is all fired up about the Ukrainian counter-offensive near Kherson. Seems like a lot of folks are expecting some sort of campaign where Patton’s 3rd Army breaks out of Normandy and tanks race to surround the objective.

I’m learning to dial back my expectations. I agree we will never see Shock and Awe level fighting in Ukraine. Russia tried at the beginning and its ineptitude quickly surfaced.

NATO has denied Ukraine any significant tactical advantage. They’ve supplied just enough weapons for a slow counter offense. Perhaps that is a wise decision. A crushing Ukrainian counter offense could bring tactical Nukes from Russia.

I still remember thread posts in March. There was concern most of Ukraine might fall at any time. Heavy Russian armor took positions just outside Kyiv. It’s astonishing Ukraine is only battered and still standing.

[aceplace57]

I find ISW analysis helpful. I am puzzled why they aren’t factoring in the upcoming snow and mud of winter. Ukrainians and the Russians certainly know their climate and how it limits maneuvers. It’s not like the German military in WWII that bogged down and imploded in winter.

Cite Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 31 | Institute for the Study of War

Military operations on the scale of this counteroffensive do not succeed or fail in a day or a week. Ukrainian officials have long acknowledged that they do not have the sheer mass of mechanized forces that would have been needed to conduct a blitzkrieg-like drive to destroy the Russian defenses in Kherson Oblast or anywhere. They have instead been setting conditions for months by attacking and disrupting Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs), Russian command and control, and Russian logistics systems throughout southwestern occupied Ukraine. The timing of the start of the counteroffensive is consistent with the observed degradation of Russian capabilities in western Kherson Oblast balanced against the need to start liberating occupied Ukrainian lands and people as soon as possible. There is no reason to suspect that the timing has been materially influenced by inappropriate considerations or tensions. Counteroffensive operations now underway will very likely unfold over the coming weeks and possibly months as Ukrainian forces take advantage of the conditions they have set to defeat particular sectors of the line they have identified as vulnerable while working to retake their cities and towns without destroying them in the process.

Military forces that must conduct offensive operations without the numerical advantages normally required for success in such operations often rely on misdirections and feints to draw the defender away from the sectors of the line on which breakthrough and exploitation efforts will focus. The art of such feints is two-fold. First, they must be conducted with sufficient force to be believable. Since they are feints, however, rather than deliberate attacks expected to succeed, they often look like failures—the attacking units will fall back when they feel they have persuaded the defender of their seriousness. Second, they take time to have an effect. When the purpose of the feint is to draw the defender’s forces away from the intended breakthrough sectors, the attacker must wait until the defender has actually moved forces. There will thus likely be a delay between the initial feint operations and the start of decisive operations. The situation during that delay may well look like the attack has failed.

[Magiver]

If I was a billionaire in Russia I’d be buying up a small army to protect my interests and also make it known that those interests extended beyond death.

[aceplace57]

It must be a difficult decision. Stay in Russia and manage the businesses and finances. The oligarchs must try and avoid getting on the FSB watch list.

Or move and the businesses will probably fail from theft and mismanagement. At least tbe oligarch will live longer.

[Northern_Piper]

@aceplace57

Or move and the businesses will probably fail from theft and mismanagement. At least tbe oligarch will live longer.

Not necessarily. From the BBC article linked earlier:

• The body of millionaire Novatek former manager Sergei Protosenya was found alongside his wife and daughter at a Spanish villa in April

[Toxylon]

@Magiver

I’d be buying up a small army to protect my interests

Putin is rich enough (even if he wasn’t powerful enough, in Russia), to bribe any small army to do the deed on their employer. So, at least personal safety would not be there.

[Magiver]

@Toxylon

Putin is rich enough (even if he wasn’t powerful enough, in Russia), to bribe any small army to do the deed on their employer. So, at least personal safety would not be there.

I would say the chances of a Putin assassination are pretty high. His parallel to Hitler is substantial and there were attempts on his life. He’s creating a climate of fear among the people who are supposed to have is back.

[Walken_After_Midnight]

The fascists on Russian state media openly talk about murdering their political opponents:

“That liberal riffraff we have here, we know them all, we know their names. Why are we putting up with them? We say that this is a free democratic country. In our free democratic country people should be able to live free of bastards. And that’s about it. What are we waiting for? Let’s get rid of them, to the extreme. Our comrades are very proficient in these matters. As Iosif Vissarionovich [Stalin] said: ‘No man, no problem’. Enemies of the Motherland have to be destroyed. We’ll sort them out later on and explain something, or just bury them in unmarked graves.”

Julia Davis

[Bonum_Legatum]

@aceplace57

NATO has denied Ukraine any significant tactical advantage. They’ve supplied just enough weapons for a slow counter offense. Perhaps that is a wise decision. A crushing Ukrainian counter offense could bring tactical Nukes from Russia.

This reminds me of a statement from the Vietnam war, to paraphrase “our goal is to gradually increase pressure on the (Northern Vietnam government) until they negotiate”. One retired naval officer put it this way “Our goal is to BARELY win?”

WMD’s have certainly changed the face of war - especially when one side is playing “fast and loose” with their threats.

[Walken_After_Midnight]

Illia Ponomarenko, defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent:

My hypothesis on what’s Ukraine doing in Kherson region.

The Ukrainian military likely put a stake on gradually exhausting and embattling Russia’s grouping on the Dnipro right bank — while also keeping it isolated from supplies and from across the river.

So Ukrainian forces are likely probing Russian defenses all along the line, looking for weak spots, trying to advance and capitalize on their gains if possible. It certainly does not have enough manpower and hardware for a reckless, costly, Russian-style frontal attack that would guarantee nothing but a high Ukrainian death toll.

So the command has to use their brains and do it in a more subtle way. I think this operation is not about territorial gains per se, but about grinding the Russian group of 20-25 BTGs down in hard combat until it just can’t go on due to losses, and a total lack of supplies and fresh reinforcements.

So I don’t think it makes sense to expect any impressive territorial gains, let alone Ukraine retaking Kherson, any time soon. In the next weeks, we’ll be seeing heavy fighting and constant Ukrainian strikes upon Russian GLOCs and river crossings. Ukrainian need to always deny Russia of its ability to go on feeding its forces on the Dnipro right bank. That’s a lot of work to do.

So yeah - it’s way too early to tell if this operation was a success.

Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦