Russian invasion of Ukraine

[doulikefish]

Just gotta hope he doesn't go in dry 

[Paxo]

Loving the caption - paraphrased as 'we're not gay, you're gay'.

[LongTimeLurker]

It's difficult to have the rest of Solovyov's panel guests and the host himself looking askance at you as if you are the one that is the complete nutter but this Belarusian dude manages it in this clip by suggesting Wagner should be allowed to attack the main NATO airbase in Poland that is supplying Ukraine:

 

[ICTChris]

Reports that Ukraine are beginning to move some of the brigades trained for the counter offensive to the front lines in the South.  Seems like the initial plan had been to try and punch through Russian lines and exploit a breakthrough but that didn't work.  There has since been a slower fight with minefields posing a significant issue for Ukrainian forces.

At the same time Ukraine have continued to take back territory around Bakhmut, with several villages re-captured by Ukrainian forces in thelast few days, including Andriivka and Klishchiivka to the South of the city.  Some analysts have said that Ukraine has fire superiority around Bakhmut and is using it to destroy the Russian armed forces formations who took over from Wagner after the city was fully captured.  In addition, due to the heavy fighting Russia couldn't dig in around Bakhmut the way they've done in the South so advances there are less costly.  

[Guest]

On 06/07/2023 at 17:22, FreedomFarter said:

Mentioned in that interview is Volodymyr Yakulenko, who was murdered by Russian occupiers last year. He was author of "Daddy's Book", a popular children's book in Ukraine. Yakulenko had also written a war journal that he'd buried in his garden, it was dug up after his death and later published by Victoria Amelina.  As explained in the above interview, Yakulenko was from near Kharkiv, a region many people evacuated away from when Russia invaded. He chose not to because it would've been very difficult for his severely disabled son to leave home. War cuts off overnight the systems of care that disabled people and other vulnerable cohorts rely upon within societies.

Details of some of Volodymyr Vakulenko's diary he wrote under occupation until his murder as well as description of his parents' and son's experiences:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/22/a-murdered-writer-his-secret-diary-of-the-invasion-of-ukraine-and-the-war-crimes-investigator-determined-to-find-it

[ICTChris]

Drones strike in the Moscow City business district.

 

[ICTChris]

Thread on the current battles by a British journalist embedded with Ukrainian forces. Gives an idea of how the fighting is playing out and the tactics now being used.

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by ICTChris

[TxRover]

Ukraine trying to increase pressure on Russia with Saudi help:

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-saudi-arabia-talks-ee8719ebcd6a0a541ce6a8670ae6bb09
 

Also recruiting third world countries that had been benefitting from Ukrainian grain. The question will be how does Putin respond to drone strikes on Russian targets? Does he double down, is his supply of munitions too small to allow that or does he realize that the Ukrainian strikes will continue and his lies about the conflict cannot be sustained?

[Salt n Vinegar]

You almost have to admire Putin's hard neck. His forces have been battering nineteen colours of keech out of Ukrainian cities, towns an villages for months but Putin loses his nut if Ukraine has the very nerve to attack buildings in Moscow. (Always assuming it is Ukraine, not some anti-Putin group inside Russia.)

[tamthebam]

16 hours ago, ICTChris said:

Drones strike in the Moscow City business district.

 

Bit of a minter for Russia. You'd think that they would have sufficient air defence and radar to deal with a drone attack on their own capital.

Suppose Russia launched drones at Inverness or Aberdeen airports for badness- I'd hope the RAF would be able to deal with them. Or are these things as tricky to deal with as Spitfires v V1s 80 years ago?

[Guest]

A Ukrainian academic I follow published this opinion last October and his predictions have largely transpired now:

Quote

Millions of Russians who are either mobilised to fight in Ukraine, employed in reconstruction or in the military industry, or participating in the suppression of unrest in the occupied territories and at home, or are family members, have turned into direct beneficiaries of the war.

Among other things, this means the emergence of a positive feedback loop that did not really exist before. The Russian ruling elite started the war to pursue its own interests and it managed to get only ritual and passive support from the Russian population.

However, this redistribution of state wealth through the military effort is creating a new basis for more active and conscious support within a significant section of Russian society, which now has a material stake in the conflict.

(https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/10/26/russias-military-keynesianism).

He explained at the time that the funding for the above would be dependent on Russia being able to sell oil to India and China. That is what has happened with India in particular really upping their imports from Russia. He also suggested this new military-industrial complex could be used by the Kremlin to enfranchise the working classes of peripheral regions in Russia. The regions in which we'd otherwise have expected the war to provoke the strongest anti-Moscow sentiment.

Not in the above link but what I've read elsewhere recently is that the Wagner mutiny march last month probably didn't increase the chances of Russian political change. That Putin used it to start cracking down on the various ultranationalist public figures is well known. Less reported is that the Kremlin has also used it to arrest and jail liberal and leftist dissenters, from academics to playwrights. With revolutions, for as much as they're mass popular uprisings, they're always organised and directed by the educated middle class.

[Dev]

Anyone have any idea about these reports? Are they real? Iranian and North Korean projectiles and rockets being used by Ukraine?

www.newsnow.co.uk/h/World+News/Europe/Eastern+Europe/Ukraine has these links:

english.nv.ua/nation/at-the-front-ukraine-firing-122-mm-projectiles-manufactured-in-iran-this-year-50342779.html

asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Ukraine-war-Free-to-read/Ukraine-from-July-21-to-July-31-Kyiv-fires-North-Korean-rockets-at-Russian-positions

[ICTChris]

There has definitely been Iranian components in some Ukrainian weapons. Due to being sanctioned since 1979 Iran is pretty resourceful with producing weapons and I’d imagine quite a few of them find their way into the global market and from there to Ukraine. 

Quite a few of the drones Ukraine has used to hit inside Russia have been commercial UAVs from China that they’ve modified, you can literally buy some of them on Amazon. I’m sure one that hit a power plant was confirmed as being available online for £1500. 

[Guest]

The North Korean bit is also correct: 

https://archive.ph/LqMT6

[welshbairn]

It would be astonishing if Russia weren't buying munitions off North Korea, there's a direct train link without crossing any borders and the Koreans don't have any more sanctions to worry about.

Edited July 31, 2023 by welshbairn

[highlandmac]

14 hours ago, tamthebam said:

Bit of a minter for Russia. You'd think that they would have sufficient air defence and radar to deal with a drone attack on their own capital.

Suppose Russia launched drones at Inverness or Aberdeen airports for badness- I'd hope the RAF would be able to deal with them. Or are these things as tricky to deal with as Spitfires v V1s 80 years ago?

perhaps its less spitfires and V1S ,more the bismarks&the old british biplanes that attacked it-its defences were state of the art automated and they simply didnt factor in attacking aircraft as slow as the outdated swordfish biplanes sent against it,I think an RAF jet against a drone would be similar

[welshbairn]

14 hours ago, tamthebam said:

Bit of a minter for Russia. You'd think that they would have sufficient air defence and radar to deal with a drone attack on their own capital.

Suppose Russia launched drones at Inverness or Aberdeen airports for badness- I'd hope the RAF would be able to deal with them. Or are these things as tricky to deal with as Spitfires v V1s 80 years ago?

Remember the panic when they thought Gatwick was getting attacked by drones?

[TommyDickFingers]

9 minutes ago, highlandmac said:

perhaps its less spitfires and V1S ,more the bismarks&the old british biplanes that attacked it-its defences were state of the art automated and they simply didnt factor in attacking aircraft as slow as the outdated swordfish biplanes sent against it,I think an RAF jet against a drone would be similar

Not a bad analogy imo.

Full article

Quote

The great advantage of a drone, besides its low cost, is its small size and – believe it or not – low speed compared to a supersonic manned warplane. Air-defense radars are optimized for detecting large aircraft and missiles. And they have so-called “speed gates” that ignore very slow objects such as birds. It’s speed gates that make it so hard for radars to detect slowly-drifting spy balloons. 

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Pantsir air-defense vehicle in Moscow failed to stop the one-war drone attack on Sunday. The crew may never have seen the drone coming. 

I know nothing of the weekends attack but I'd be surprised if it was 1 drone, more likely multiple and 1 got through.

Defending a built up area the size of greater Moscow will have some the same issues the Ukrainians have with russian missiles/ drones, over oversaturation of point air defence systems being one.

[beefybake]

22 hours ago, FreedomFarter said:

A Ukrainian academic I follow published this opinion last October and his predictions have largely transpired now:

(https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/10/26/russias-military-keynesianism).

He explained at the time that the funding for the above would be dependent on Russia being able to sell oil to India and China. That is what has happened with India in particular really upping their imports from Russia. He also suggested this new military-industrial complex could be used by the Kremlin to enfranchise the working classes of peripheral regions in Russia. The regions in which we'd otherwise have expected the war to provoke the strongest anti-Moscow sentiment.

Not in the above link but what I've read elsewhere recently is that the Wagner mutiny march last month probably didn't increase the chances of Russian political change. That Putin used it to start cracking down on the various ultranationalist public figures is well known. Less reported is that the Kremlin has also used it to arrest and jail liberal and leftist dissenters, from academics to playwrights. With revolutions, for as much as they're mass popular uprisings, they're always organised and directed by the educated middle class.

As far as  can see, they've been doing that for ages.

And, aren't the peripheral regions of Russia the places where much of the recruiiting is being done.  And therefore the dying.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, beefybake said:

As far as  can see, they've been doing that for ages.

The academic I'm thinking of is Boris Kagarlitsky. He was arrested a few days ago supposedly for sympathising with Ukraine's strike on the Crimean bridge. The latest round of crackdowns do seem to have been prompted by the Wagner mutiny. Kagarlitsky actually wrote an English language opinion following it in which he called Putin and Prigozhin clowns. You're right, though, this isn't anything new. Then also the playwrights I was thinking of, Yevgeniya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk, were first arrested in May, before the Wagner mutiny. Their detention was extended this month but that was likely always due to happen.

 

2 hours ago, beefybake said:

And, aren't the peripheral regions of Russia the places where much of the recruiiting is being done.  And therefore the dying.

Sure, but the war has also brought Kremlin investment in those regions.

Quote

Retail growth has been driven by increased salaries and social handouts (some of which are connected to the war). Real incomes are up in regions that are home to military factories and where reports suggest there are large numbers of contract soldiers (for example, Buryatia, the Jewish Autonomous Okrug and Chechnya).

(https://en.thebell.io/russia-is-preparing-for-a-long-war/).