Ukraine Notes
Another big one.
Speaking of big: Russia's biggest mortar visits Ukraine - briefly, Russia sells government property in Berlin without knowing it, Mariupol falls, don't we all tape GPS receivers to our fighter jets?
Downed SU34 jets, which is one of Russia’s more advanced jets, are being found with pretty basic GPS receivers TAPED to their dashboards! This could account for part of their indiscriminate bombing: they’re simply incapable of combined arms movement and coordination. But what's really to account for their campaign of indiscriminate destruction is that's Russia's military doctrine: they don't give a damn. Destroy everything, take over, and rebuild at some point, maybe. The IDGAF doctrine as long as they win.
Mariupol is officially and fully in Russian hands, the last civilians were evacuated last week and the last Ukrainian fighters withdrew from the Azovstal steel plant where they have been holed up and the Russians have been unable to dislodge them. Unfortunately the 2500 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken to the worst of Russian prison camps and their fate is doubtful. They probably don't have valuable military information as they've been stuck in that city and steel works for two months, but that won't stop the Russians from interrogating the crap out of them to no avail. Zelensky is hoping for a prisoner swap, Russia is wanting to put them on trial for war crimes. What the charges would be, aside from trumped up, are not clear.
Mariupol is the only major city to have completely fallen into Russian control after almost three months of fighting, which doesn't say much for Russia's formerly vaunted military. As has been said many times, Russia wants a land bridge to Ukraine. Mariupol is key to establishing it. Though Russia does not have complete, uncontested control over the southern part of the country, they're getting there, and it could happen. There is also talk that with the successes Ukraine has had against Russia holding them back in the Donbas and pushing them out of other parts of the country, that they could conceivably push Russia OUT OF UKRAINE. The big problem is that Russia's TOTAL army is still vastly larger than Ukraine's, but based on what has been demonstrated, what does that mean? Clearly there is a qualitative difference that is huge, and we haven't seen a full deployment of the Russian air force. And has been attributed to Stalin, quantity has a quality all its own. The war is still going to be a big slog at this point.
Captured Russian soldiers have been telling stories of a Russian lieutenant colonel murdering wounded RUSSIAN soldiers on the battlefield if they were unable to get to an aid station. It is unknown where this happened, how many soldiers were murdered, or how widespread this practice is. He would simply walk up to them, ask them if they could get up and get to the aid station, and if they say no: BANG! It has also been reported that the Russians are cremating their own war dead to try to conceal casualty numbers. Regardless, they are not respectfully treating their KIAs: there are reports of bodies being received by loved ones so badly decomposed as to be unidentifiable. Also reported that Russian doctors are asking/demanding money before treating Russian soldiers.
In the town of Bucha, just outside of Kyiv, a family returned to their apartment that had been lived in by a bunch of Russian soldiers. Everything was smashed, except their 10 y/o daughter’s piano. She noticed that her medals and awards were not arrayed the same across it as they had been when they fled. She ran her fingers across the keys and four or five didn’t work. The family called specialists, who found a Russian grenade installed in the child’s piano. It was safely removed. They’ve been booby-trapping all sorts of things as they fled, including toys, doors, and toilets.
Tchaikovski's Swan Lake holds special significance in Russian culture. From an article in Newsweek: “When Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, state-run television broadcast a full-length Swan Lake in lieu of a death announcement. The same footage was aired after the deaths of Yuri Andropov in 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985. In her book Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia, Janice Ross suggests that these screenings of the Russian ballet were used as a stalling tactic, allowing Soviet leadership time to plan while "soothing the masses." Ballerinas would dance and the public would wait, calmly, applauding the screen.
The same technique was used in 1991 when communists attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. Swan Lake aired for three days straight while the public waited it out. In 2011, the Russian national television channel Kultura aired a rebroadcast of Swan Lake to commemorate the attempted coups' 20th anniversary.”
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-dead-pay-attention-when-russia-starts-broadcasting-swan-lake-1707162
The 21 y/o Russian soldier on trial in Ukraine for war crimes plead guilty to murdering a 61 y/o civilian by shooting him in the head under orders. He could be sentenced to life in prison. Over 10,000 incidents are being prepared for trial, it is unknown how many of the accused are held vs being tried in absentia. The widow of the victim attended the very short trial and asked the man if he repented of his crime.
The Google subsidiary Alphabet in Russia is going to file for bankruptcy, saying it has become impossible to pay employees and suppliers. A Google spokesperson said an earlier move by authorities to seize its bank account made continuing operations in the country impossible. I’m curious what they have in terms of server farms inside Russia’s borders and if they do, if they’ll ship them out or just brick them and eat the loss. Google has announced it will remove its non-Russian employees from the country, not sure what they're planning on doing with its Russian workers.
McDonald’s is completely exiting Russia. They are selling their 850 restaurants to a Siberian franchise operator and have warned that they may take a $1billion hit from this move. The new owner will be renaming the stores, which will be stripped of names and branding, and keeping existing employees at their current wages for at least two years.
There are Twitter posts in Russian telling tank commanders how to surrender to Ukrainian forces. Turn your cannon to the rear at maximum elevation and drive slowly to their lines. Or force mud into the barrel and fire a round, bursting the barrel and ruining it.
The United States is reopening its embassy in Kyiv, it was closed shortly before the invasion began. They are considering using U.S. special forces for guards, we shall see. I thought it was normal to use Marines for embassy guards. Switzerland is also looking at reopening its embassy. It's an interesting preview of normalcy for embassies to reopen.
An article in the Independent says the West must break Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in order to get grain and sunflower oil exported. Despite world-wide pleas, Putin is unmoved and won’t allow it. After all, he is sitting pretty, having stolen tons of grain to make sure Russians are fed. Easiest way to break the blockade? Surface the entire U.S. Navy nuclear submarine fleet for about an hour, and in about a ten minute time span, the entire Russian Black Sea fleet mysteriously explodes and sinks. Ports are now open. The USN fleet submerges, changes patrol routes, and denies any involvement. France, UK, all sorts of countries have silent submarines that probably outclass the orcs.
Speaking of ships exploding, the USA is talking about supplying Ukraine with Harpoon anti-ship missiles. This would be a major game-changer in the Black Sea front for the war as it would push the Russian fleet much deeper away from the coast, greatly reducing their effectiveness. The Harpoon is a fantastic missile with a devastating punch. It's old, introduced in 1977, but it's still in service because it's so good. Relatively short ranged at only 67-75 nautical miles for the ship-launched version or nautical miles for the air-launched, it will greatly augment the Ukraine anti-ship contingent.
NATO expansion and Turkey. Lots of things going on here. Finland and Sweden have formally submitted their applications to join NATO. Germany would like to consider them provisional members right now while their applications are being debated, with full Article V protections, except for one problem: Turkey says that both Finland and Sweden have a lax attitude towards terrorism. Now, one could also say that Turkey has a lax attitude towards Putin. From the Al Jazeera article: “Erdogan has accused Sweden and Finland of having an “open attitude towards terrorist organisations”, in reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist organisation.” It takes a unanimous vote for NATO to expand, I'm thinking it's unlikely to happen while either the war is on, or while Erdogan is in power, perhaps both.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/24/will-turkey-block-nato-expansion
Finland is no longer taking gas shipments from Russia as they want payment in Roubles. It’s also part of the tit for tat of Finland trying to join NATO as Russia also stopped supplying them with electricity. Finland’s gas utility, Gasum, says that they have been preparing for this and that Russian imports account for less than 10% of their needs and that there would be no disruption to customers. And another source of foreign hard currency leaves Russia. In other petrol news, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder resigned from the board of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company. He has faced a lot of outrage in Germany over keeping this role as it pays a lot, he also counts Putin as a personal friend.
Gerhard has problems of his own. In a recent article in Der Spiegal, he lost an almost €420,000 stipend that gave him an office and small staff as the former Chancellor due to his cozying up with Putin and collecting money from Rosneft and other Russian megacorps.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/19/gerhard-schroder-to-be-stripped-of-office-for-not-cutting-ties-with-russia?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
Russian forces are occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine, the largest nuke plant that they have. It’s north west of Mariupol, sort of directly north of Crimea. By itself it represents 40% of Ukraine’s nuclear power generation and 20% of its electricity generation. Russia says they’re going to sell the power back to Ukraine, and if they don’t pay, then they’re going to send all they power to Russia. In yet another case of either wishful or magic thinking or massive ignorance, whoever said this, is overlooking one fact. The Ukraine electric grid does not interconnect with the Russian grid, it would take many years and tremendous expense to build the high voltage transmission lines and towers to connect that plant to said Russian grid. Putin will be long dead by then, the war long over. In other energy news, Ukraine has struck a deal with Westinghouse for nuclear fuel for its reactors to replace the 40% that it needed that it got from Russia. And another source of foreign hard currency leaves Russia.
In further energy news, a BBC article says “Russia supplies 40% of the EU's natural gas and 27% of its imported oil. The EU sends the country roughly €400 billion a year in return.” Three Russian pipelines cross Ukraine, including one from Belarus. Plans are to reduce permitting and study periods to speed up construction of wind and solar farms to reduce Russian dependence, the EU is also looking to build new pipelines to change suppliers. I thought I had read that Ukraine had shut down one of these pipelines.
Syrian barrel bomb makers have gone to Ukraine. These bombs are typically filled with crude explosives and used against civilian targets in city areas, they’re sometimes filled with chlorine gas. The only marginally good part is they’re typically dropped by helicopter or slow transport/cargo aircraft, which are easy pickings for Ukraine’s increasingly effective anti-air missile capability. But it is going to mean increased civilian death. Article from The Independent.
Speaking of anti-air capability for Ukraine, it is increasing yet again as Germany is sending over a bunch of Gepard anti-aircraft systems. These are twin 35mm high-rate canons mounted on a tank chassis with its own radar system and smoke grenade launchers. The tank itself can boogie along at 40 MPH, so it's quite capable of shoot and scoot. The first 15 should be arriving in July.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-deliver-first-15-gepard-tanks-ukraine-july-defmin-2022-05-20/
I don’t know how widespread this is or if it may be concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but a dozen military recruiting offices have been torched in arson attacks since the invasion started, according to a Newsweek article!
A Russian diplomat to the United Nation’s Conference on Disarmament has resigned, stating ‘I am ashamed of my country’, reported in Reuters and Huffington Post today in an email that he sent to 40 colleagues.
Russia has lost, in three months, more men dead in Ukraine than in nine years fighting in Afghanistan. Official numbers are not acknowledged by the Kremlin, “Ukraine's military claims that around 28,700 Russian troops have been killed in the country since February, while Russia puts its own losses 1,351, a figure that has not been updated since late March”. UK defense experts estimate Russian dead at over 15,000, about the same number killed in their war in Afghanistan.
Russia announced that they had successfully used a “laser weapon” in the field to shoot down a Ukrainian drone. Pretty much 100% bullshit/propaganda designed to make the Russian public feel better about the war. Now, the U.S. military does have some weapons like this, but they're on navy vessels that have something that isn't typically seen on a modern battlefield: nuclear reactors. It takes a LOT of power and incredible tracking systems - which require powerful and fast motors - to track the incoming object to keep the laser on it to cause enough damage on it to get it to crash. A man-portable system, man-aimed, simply does not exist.
Transnistria is a tricky place. It's a little wedge of land on Ukraine's southwest border and part of Moldova. Technically it's a breakaway state and is not recognized as an independent area by any nation. And it's something that Putin covets because he can cause it to drive a wedge into Ukraine and then into Moldova. Moldova was a part of the Soviet Union until it collapsed, and there have been missile strikes into Transnistria over the last couple of months. I've only been hearing occasional news reports, but I'm guessing “freedom fighters” are hard at work to get their “referendum” and recognition of the “Transnistria Soviet Socialist Republic” or whatever it would be called, and then the inevitable call for some troop occupation.
This is an amazing story. A dentist in Berlin sold over €13million worth of Russian GOVERNMENT property in Berlin and the general area without them knowing it in the last couple of months! I was reading this in Der Spiegal, and it's a very puzzling story. The dentist was born in Ukraine, and might have started laying the groundwork for this before the invasion but maybe during the troop buildup? It's very convoluted. A woman, also Ukrainian, who “is” an FSB Colonel, presented him with papers showing he is working as a transfer agent for the FSB to sell off some Kremlin properties. So he sells off some properties in Berlin, the initial ones are very old, dilapidated and literally falling down. And the sales go through, so he sells a few more. And then a few more. And apparently finally the Russians get word of this and summon the German Ambassador and say “WTF?” Lots of arrests, houses and businesses being raided, computers and phones and stuff being seized. Quite the investigation. Going to be quite interesting to read about going forward.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bogus-deals-involving-russian-property-did-a-berlin-dentist-swindle-moscow-out-of-millions-a-ff98f0eb-3792-4589-96f7-768f26946a56?sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph
ABC News reports that the American howitzers being sent to Ukraine have one rather glaring difference from their U.S. Army counterparts: a lack of the digital fire computers! This reduces the pin-point fire control that they would otherwise have, which is a shame. They're still amazing guns, and still very accurate, but will have a slower rate of fire since the gunner will have to make more careful initial calculations to target. Apparently there's serious concerns about the computers getting into Russian hands, my thinking is they're probably not so much concerned about them being stolen to be copied as to being stolen to be compromised by Russian hackers.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-supplied-howitzers-ukraine-lack-accuracy-aiding-computers/story?id=84840798
Russia showed off the WORLD'S LARGEST MORTAR operating in Ukraine on TV! The 240mm mortar throws a huge bomb, equivalent to what an airplane can drop, and can throw them at a stately five rounds a minute - comparable to what a howitzer can chuck. So what happened the next day? THE UKRAINIANS BLEW IT UP! Cue Alanis! Isn't it ironic? Go ahead, show us your greatest weapons inside our borders on television. We won't blow it up. Trust us!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2022/05/22/russian-tv-shows-off-rare-2s4-mega-mortar-then-ukraine-blows-it-up/?sh=77247d627a52
Speaking of big: Russia's biggest mortar visits Ukraine - briefly, Russia sells government property in Berlin without knowing it, Mariupol falls, don't we all tape GPS receivers to our fighter jets?
Downed SU34 jets, which is one of Russia’s more advanced jets, are being found with pretty basic GPS receivers TAPED to their dashboards! This could account for part of their indiscriminate bombing: they’re simply incapable of combined arms movement and coordination. But what's really to account for their campaign of indiscriminate destruction is that's Russia's military doctrine: they don't give a damn. Destroy everything, take over, and rebuild at some point, maybe. The IDGAF doctrine as long as they win.
Mariupol is officially and fully in Russian hands, the last civilians were evacuated last week and the last Ukrainian fighters withdrew from the Azovstal steel plant where they have been holed up and the Russians have been unable to dislodge them. Unfortunately the 2500 Ukrainian soldiers have been taken to the worst of Russian prison camps and their fate is doubtful. They probably don't have valuable military information as they've been stuck in that city and steel works for two months, but that won't stop the Russians from interrogating the crap out of them to no avail. Zelensky is hoping for a prisoner swap, Russia is wanting to put them on trial for war crimes. What the charges would be, aside from trumped up, are not clear.
Mariupol is the only major city to have completely fallen into Russian control after almost three months of fighting, which doesn't say much for Russia's formerly vaunted military. As has been said many times, Russia wants a land bridge to Ukraine. Mariupol is key to establishing it. Though Russia does not have complete, uncontested control over the southern part of the country, they're getting there, and it could happen. There is also talk that with the successes Ukraine has had against Russia holding them back in the Donbas and pushing them out of other parts of the country, that they could conceivably push Russia OUT OF UKRAINE. The big problem is that Russia's TOTAL army is still vastly larger than Ukraine's, but based on what has been demonstrated, what does that mean? Clearly there is a qualitative difference that is huge, and we haven't seen a full deployment of the Russian air force. And has been attributed to Stalin, quantity has a quality all its own. The war is still going to be a big slog at this point.
Captured Russian soldiers have been telling stories of a Russian lieutenant colonel murdering wounded RUSSIAN soldiers on the battlefield if they were unable to get to an aid station. It is unknown where this happened, how many soldiers were murdered, or how widespread this practice is. He would simply walk up to them, ask them if they could get up and get to the aid station, and if they say no: BANG! It has also been reported that the Russians are cremating their own war dead to try to conceal casualty numbers. Regardless, they are not respectfully treating their KIAs: there are reports of bodies being received by loved ones so badly decomposed as to be unidentifiable. Also reported that Russian doctors are asking/demanding money before treating Russian soldiers.
In the town of Bucha, just outside of Kyiv, a family returned to their apartment that had been lived in by a bunch of Russian soldiers. Everything was smashed, except their 10 y/o daughter’s piano. She noticed that her medals and awards were not arrayed the same across it as they had been when they fled. She ran her fingers across the keys and four or five didn’t work. The family called specialists, who found a Russian grenade installed in the child’s piano. It was safely removed. They’ve been booby-trapping all sorts of things as they fled, including toys, doors, and toilets.
Tchaikovski's Swan Lake holds special significance in Russian culture. From an article in Newsweek: “When Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, state-run television broadcast a full-length Swan Lake in lieu of a death announcement. The same footage was aired after the deaths of Yuri Andropov in 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985. In her book Like a Bomb Going Off: Leonid Yakobson and Ballet as Resistance in Soviet Russia, Janice Ross suggests that these screenings of the Russian ballet were used as a stalling tactic, allowing Soviet leadership time to plan while "soothing the masses." Ballerinas would dance and the public would wait, calmly, applauding the screen.
The same technique was used in 1991 when communists attempted to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev. Swan Lake aired for three days straight while the public waited it out. In 2011, the Russian national television channel Kultura aired a rebroadcast of Swan Lake to commemorate the attempted coups' 20th anniversary.”
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-dead-pay-attention-when-russia-starts-broadcasting-swan-lake-1707162
The 21 y/o Russian soldier on trial in Ukraine for war crimes plead guilty to murdering a 61 y/o civilian by shooting him in the head under orders. He could be sentenced to life in prison. Over 10,000 incidents are being prepared for trial, it is unknown how many of the accused are held vs being tried in absentia. The widow of the victim attended the very short trial and asked the man if he repented of his crime.
The Google subsidiary Alphabet in Russia is going to file for bankruptcy, saying it has become impossible to pay employees and suppliers. A Google spokesperson said an earlier move by authorities to seize its bank account made continuing operations in the country impossible. I’m curious what they have in terms of server farms inside Russia’s borders and if they do, if they’ll ship them out or just brick them and eat the loss. Google has announced it will remove its non-Russian employees from the country, not sure what they're planning on doing with its Russian workers.
McDonald’s is completely exiting Russia. They are selling their 850 restaurants to a Siberian franchise operator and have warned that they may take a $1billion hit from this move. The new owner will be renaming the stores, which will be stripped of names and branding, and keeping existing employees at their current wages for at least two years.
There are Twitter posts in Russian telling tank commanders how to surrender to Ukrainian forces. Turn your cannon to the rear at maximum elevation and drive slowly to their lines. Or force mud into the barrel and fire a round, bursting the barrel and ruining it.
The United States is reopening its embassy in Kyiv, it was closed shortly before the invasion began. They are considering using U.S. special forces for guards, we shall see. I thought it was normal to use Marines for embassy guards. Switzerland is also looking at reopening its embassy. It's an interesting preview of normalcy for embassies to reopen.
An article in the Independent says the West must break Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports in order to get grain and sunflower oil exported. Despite world-wide pleas, Putin is unmoved and won’t allow it. After all, he is sitting pretty, having stolen tons of grain to make sure Russians are fed. Easiest way to break the blockade? Surface the entire U.S. Navy nuclear submarine fleet for about an hour, and in about a ten minute time span, the entire Russian Black Sea fleet mysteriously explodes and sinks. Ports are now open. The USN fleet submerges, changes patrol routes, and denies any involvement. France, UK, all sorts of countries have silent submarines that probably outclass the orcs.
Speaking of ships exploding, the USA is talking about supplying Ukraine with Harpoon anti-ship missiles. This would be a major game-changer in the Black Sea front for the war as it would push the Russian fleet much deeper away from the coast, greatly reducing their effectiveness. The Harpoon is a fantastic missile with a devastating punch. It's old, introduced in 1977, but it's still in service because it's so good. Relatively short ranged at only 67-75 nautical miles for the ship-launched version or nautical miles for the air-launched, it will greatly augment the Ukraine anti-ship contingent.
NATO expansion and Turkey. Lots of things going on here. Finland and Sweden have formally submitted their applications to join NATO. Germany would like to consider them provisional members right now while their applications are being debated, with full Article V protections, except for one problem: Turkey says that both Finland and Sweden have a lax attitude towards terrorism. Now, one could also say that Turkey has a lax attitude towards Putin. From the Al Jazeera article: “Erdogan has accused Sweden and Finland of having an “open attitude towards terrorist organisations”, in reference to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Ankara considers a terrorist organisation.” It takes a unanimous vote for NATO to expand, I'm thinking it's unlikely to happen while either the war is on, or while Erdogan is in power, perhaps both.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/24/will-turkey-block-nato-expansion
Finland is no longer taking gas shipments from Russia as they want payment in Roubles. It’s also part of the tit for tat of Finland trying to join NATO as Russia also stopped supplying them with electricity. Finland’s gas utility, Gasum, says that they have been preparing for this and that Russian imports account for less than 10% of their needs and that there would be no disruption to customers. And another source of foreign hard currency leaves Russia. In other petrol news, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder resigned from the board of Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company. He has faced a lot of outrage in Germany over keeping this role as it pays a lot, he also counts Putin as a personal friend.
Gerhard has problems of his own. In a recent article in Der Spiegal, he lost an almost €420,000 stipend that gave him an office and small staff as the former Chancellor due to his cozying up with Putin and collecting money from Rosneft and other Russian megacorps.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/19/gerhard-schroder-to-be-stripped-of-office-for-not-cutting-ties-with-russia?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1
Russian forces are occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine, the largest nuke plant that they have. It’s north west of Mariupol, sort of directly north of Crimea. By itself it represents 40% of Ukraine’s nuclear power generation and 20% of its electricity generation. Russia says they’re going to sell the power back to Ukraine, and if they don’t pay, then they’re going to send all they power to Russia. In yet another case of either wishful or magic thinking or massive ignorance, whoever said this, is overlooking one fact. The Ukraine electric grid does not interconnect with the Russian grid, it would take many years and tremendous expense to build the high voltage transmission lines and towers to connect that plant to said Russian grid. Putin will be long dead by then, the war long over. In other energy news, Ukraine has struck a deal with Westinghouse for nuclear fuel for its reactors to replace the 40% that it needed that it got from Russia. And another source of foreign hard currency leaves Russia.
In further energy news, a BBC article says “Russia supplies 40% of the EU's natural gas and 27% of its imported oil. The EU sends the country roughly €400 billion a year in return.” Three Russian pipelines cross Ukraine, including one from Belarus. Plans are to reduce permitting and study periods to speed up construction of wind and solar farms to reduce Russian dependence, the EU is also looking to build new pipelines to change suppliers. I thought I had read that Ukraine had shut down one of these pipelines.
Syrian barrel bomb makers have gone to Ukraine. These bombs are typically filled with crude explosives and used against civilian targets in city areas, they’re sometimes filled with chlorine gas. The only marginally good part is they’re typically dropped by helicopter or slow transport/cargo aircraft, which are easy pickings for Ukraine’s increasingly effective anti-air missile capability. But it is going to mean increased civilian death. Article from The Independent.
Speaking of anti-air capability for Ukraine, it is increasing yet again as Germany is sending over a bunch of Gepard anti-aircraft systems. These are twin 35mm high-rate canons mounted on a tank chassis with its own radar system and smoke grenade launchers. The tank itself can boogie along at 40 MPH, so it's quite capable of shoot and scoot. The first 15 should be arriving in July.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-deliver-first-15-gepard-tanks-ukraine-july-defmin-2022-05-20/
I don’t know how widespread this is or if it may be concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but a dozen military recruiting offices have been torched in arson attacks since the invasion started, according to a Newsweek article!
A Russian diplomat to the United Nation’s Conference on Disarmament has resigned, stating ‘I am ashamed of my country’, reported in Reuters and Huffington Post today in an email that he sent to 40 colleagues.
Russia has lost, in three months, more men dead in Ukraine than in nine years fighting in Afghanistan. Official numbers are not acknowledged by the Kremlin, “Ukraine's military claims that around 28,700 Russian troops have been killed in the country since February, while Russia puts its own losses 1,351, a figure that has not been updated since late March”. UK defense experts estimate Russian dead at over 15,000, about the same number killed in their war in Afghanistan.
Russia announced that they had successfully used a “laser weapon” in the field to shoot down a Ukrainian drone. Pretty much 100% bullshit/propaganda designed to make the Russian public feel better about the war. Now, the U.S. military does have some weapons like this, but they're on navy vessels that have something that isn't typically seen on a modern battlefield: nuclear reactors. It takes a LOT of power and incredible tracking systems - which require powerful and fast motors - to track the incoming object to keep the laser on it to cause enough damage on it to get it to crash. A man-portable system, man-aimed, simply does not exist.
Transnistria is a tricky place. It's a little wedge of land on Ukraine's southwest border and part of Moldova. Technically it's a breakaway state and is not recognized as an independent area by any nation. And it's something that Putin covets because he can cause it to drive a wedge into Ukraine and then into Moldova. Moldova was a part of the Soviet Union until it collapsed, and there have been missile strikes into Transnistria over the last couple of months. I've only been hearing occasional news reports, but I'm guessing “freedom fighters” are hard at work to get their “referendum” and recognition of the “Transnistria Soviet Socialist Republic” or whatever it would be called, and then the inevitable call for some troop occupation.
This is an amazing story. A dentist in Berlin sold over €13million worth of Russian GOVERNMENT property in Berlin and the general area without them knowing it in the last couple of months! I was reading this in Der Spiegal, and it's a very puzzling story. The dentist was born in Ukraine, and might have started laying the groundwork for this before the invasion but maybe during the troop buildup? It's very convoluted. A woman, also Ukrainian, who “is” an FSB Colonel, presented him with papers showing he is working as a transfer agent for the FSB to sell off some Kremlin properties. So he sells off some properties in Berlin, the initial ones are very old, dilapidated and literally falling down. And the sales go through, so he sells a few more. And then a few more. And apparently finally the Russians get word of this and summon the German Ambassador and say “WTF?” Lots of arrests, houses and businesses being raided, computers and phones and stuff being seized. Quite the investigation. Going to be quite interesting to read about going forward.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/bogus-deals-involving-russian-property-did-a-berlin-dentist-swindle-moscow-out-of-millions-a-ff98f0eb-3792-4589-96f7-768f26946a56?sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph
ABC News reports that the American howitzers being sent to Ukraine have one rather glaring difference from their U.S. Army counterparts: a lack of the digital fire computers! This reduces the pin-point fire control that they would otherwise have, which is a shame. They're still amazing guns, and still very accurate, but will have a slower rate of fire since the gunner will have to make more careful initial calculations to target. Apparently there's serious concerns about the computers getting into Russian hands, my thinking is they're probably not so much concerned about them being stolen to be copied as to being stolen to be compromised by Russian hackers.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-supplied-howitzers-ukraine-lack-accuracy-aiding-computers/story?id=84840798
Russia showed off the WORLD'S LARGEST MORTAR operating in Ukraine on TV! The 240mm mortar throws a huge bomb, equivalent to what an airplane can drop, and can throw them at a stately five rounds a minute - comparable to what a howitzer can chuck. So what happened the next day? THE UKRAINIANS BLEW IT UP! Cue Alanis! Isn't it ironic? Go ahead, show us your greatest weapons inside our borders on television. We won't blow it up. Trust us!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2022/05/22/russian-tv-shows-off-rare-2s4-mega-mortar-then-ukraine-blows-it-up/?sh=77247d627a52