Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

[blindpig]

Ukraine's Sudden High Air Losses Likely Caused By New Russian Missiles

I am not sure how valid this is but I am sure it is relevant:

Victor vicktop55 @vicktop55 - 16:58 UTC · Oct 24, 2023
Military expert Vladislav Shurygin: The Pentagon has become sharply concerned about the suddenly increased effectiveness of the Russian Aerospace Forces.

In two weeks, the Russians staged a real massacre in the Ukrainian sky. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost at least 10 of their aircraft (according to other sources, 14).

Moreover, all of them were shot down far from the front line and outside the radius of Russian air defense systems, as well as outside the standard radius of Russian fighter missiles. Those pilots who were able to eject reported that until the moment their planes were hit, they did not receive warning information about the attack from the appropriate warning systems.

The Americans believe that the Russian Aerospace Forces have acquired new missiles capable of not only hitting targets at a great distance, but also, after launch, independently pursuing a target without illuminating it from the aircraft’s radar, using a radio signature to guide it (the target).

Now Americans carefully check this information and consider it critically important. Since, if it is confirmed, it means that the Russians have acquired a weapon that will neutralize all the advertised advantages of their new main fighter, the F-35.

Vladislav Shurygin is indeed a Russian 'military expert' who has had various appearances on Russian talk shows.

The claim that there is 'a real massacre in the Ukrainian sky' is valid if the recent daily reports of the Russian Ministry of Defense are near to reality. I for one believe they are.

The typical Ukrainian air-force loss rate over the first three quarters of this year was one to three air planes or helicopters per week.

Since the mid of October the Russian daily reports claimed, according to my notes, the shot down of:

17 Ukrainian Mig-29 fighter aircraft
2 Ukrainian SU-24 tactical bombers
3 Ukrainian SU-25 close air support jets
1 Ukrainian L-39 fighter jet trainer
3 MI-8 transport helicopters
That is a total of 26 air assets over just 9 days!

If this is even near to the truth it is a catastrophic loss rate for the Ukrainian air force.

Is this even possible, one might ask. I believe it is. In October 2022, after a decades long development phase, media announced the first kill of a Ukrainian plane by a Russian R-37M long-range air-to-air missile:

The R-37 was developed from the R-33. For compatibility with aircraft that did not have the MiG-31's sophisticated radar, the semi-active seeker was replaced with a variant of the Agat 9B-1388 active seeker. Similarly, folding tail controls allow semi-conformal carriage on planes that are not as big as the MiG-31.
Mid-body strakes enhance lift and hence increase range. According to Defence Today, the range depends on the flight profile, from 80 nautical miles (150 km) for a direct shot to 215 nautical miles (398 km) for a cruise glide profile.

The R-37M designation has since been used for a modernized variant of the missile, also known as RVV-BD (Raketa Vozduh-Vozduh Bolyshoy Dalnosty, or Long-Range Air-to-Air Missile). R-37M's range exceeds 200 km, and it is capable of hypersonic speeds (~Mach 5). It will be carried by the modernized MiG-31BM interceptors and Su-35S and Su-57 multirole fighters. It is not known whether the long-range air-to-air missile for the Su-57, designated as Izdeliye 810, is a derivative of the R-37M.

The missile can attack targets at altitudes of 15–25,000 meters, guided semi-actively or actively through the Agat 9B-1388 system.

The R-37M is claimed to have a maximum reach of 400 kilometer (~250 miles) and a hypersonic speed of Mach 5-6. It can be fired from safe airspace, outside of any Ukrainian air-defense range, deep into Ukraine.

In February 2023 Ukraine claimed to have found the wreckage of an R-37M.

Modified Ukrainian air-planes have been used to fire British Storm Shadow missiles (and the similar French SCALP-EG) at Russian targets. I haven't found any recent report of their successful use.

Ukrainian air assets have to fly near to the ground to survive.

The sudden increase in Ukrainian air losses points to the introduction, in large numbers, of a new variant of the R-37M with an updated targeting capability and/or an even longer range.

The U.S. plans to introduce F-16s fighter jets with 'long range' (100 kilometer, 60 miles) AIM-120D air-to-air missiles to Ukraine. They are clearly inferior to Russian air force capabilities and can only contribute to the losses.

Posted by b on October 25, 2023 at 6:09 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/10/u ... .html#more

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SITREP 10/24/23: Avdeevka Victories Confirmed as Mid-East Continues Slide Toward War
OCT 24, 2023

We start with major acknowledgments by Ukraine that Russia has captured important positions in Avdeevka, particularly around the Slag Heap and Stepove-railway area. Yes, these are the same positions discussed for a week now but I believe they have been going back and forth in a ‘gray zone’ that no one quite controlled. Now Russia has reportedly established firm control over them from which further expansions can be made, after some consolidations.



We talked about Russia’s OPSEC in this area, but it seems they were saving up to release one big produced video for the capture of the Slag Heap, which they finally revealed today, showing the destruction of Ukrainian defenders crawling all over the Slag Heap like flies on dung:
(Video at link)

It gives some interesting insight, as I myself didn’t realize the Slag Heap had actual burrows dug into it all over. Not only have Russian forces burned out all the defenders but placed the flag of the 114th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade on top, which is the unit I’ve been saying since the beginning has been the main breakthrough force assaulting in the north Krasnogorovka area.

The AFU was so utterly miffed (read: butthurt) about this, they even squandered precious FPV drones on trying to destroy the Russian flag—talk about insecurity and having your priorities set. It shows that to them, vanity and the information war is all-important:
(Video at link)

But speaking of the 114th on the flag. The 114th was the famed Vostok Battalion of the DPR prior to being absorbed into the Russian military structure:




I emphasize this to highlight the point that all the so-called “losses” Ukraine claims Russia is incurring here are not really Russian losses. Yes, the DPR units are now officially subsumed into the Russian military corps structure, but you have to understand the differences.

Why do the Ukrainians highlight Russian losses? It’s under the hope that Russia incurs so many losses their society will no longer accept the war, because too many cemeteries will be filled, soldiers returning home in body bags, etc. But not a single one of these soldiers return to Russia—they are all Donetsk natives. That’s not to belittle their sacrifice but simply to point out that the actual mainland of Russia proper will never “feel” the effects of these losses—the families in Moscow or any other Russia proper region will be completely oblivious. That means any hoped-for socio-political action against Putin or whatever it is pro-Ukrainians hope for cannot possibly happen as a result of any perceived “losses” in this sector. No cemetery in Russia proper will expand with a single grave or plot from this front. The actual real Russian army is not suffering almost any losses at all at present, except maybe some in the Kupyansk direction. In short, Russian political leadership can “afford” losses here without issue, as callous as that might sound.

But that’s moot anyway because we now have increasing evidence that it’s certainly not Russia or DPR taking the bulk of the losses in Avdeevka. More and more reports come to light suggesting that the AFU’s losses in this region are staggering.

Firstly, understand that reports came literally a week before the start of the Avdeevka operation that the famed Ukrainian 47th brigade had been “removed” or pulled back from the Zaporozhye front because it was so heavily destroyed and faced mutiny from within, as much of the fighters refused to go on assault any further.

You can see the date of the news below:



Recall that the 47th is the only brigade to have been given M2 Bradleys as part of the big elite 9 brigades that took part in the summer counteroffensive.

Now, it’s been confirmed that elements of the 47th, after being pulled to the rear, have been urgently injected into Avdeevka to help staunch the losses. This is confirmed through a variety of sources, including the fact that Bradleys have appeared for the first time, geolocated to the north sector near Krasnogorovka at 48°12'46.5"N 37°42'15.7"E:
(Video at link)

This captured AFU soldier from Avdeevka also speaks of both Bradleys and Leopards operating on the front:
(video at link)

And pro-Ukrainian maps are now featuring the 47th there as well:


So, why is all that important? Because we have a new video from a female medic from the 47th who plainly states that their casualties are the most horrific they’ve ever been, since the start of the conflict:
(Video at link)

“We lost more in a few hours than in the past 4 months.”

She’s been identified as Olena Rizh of the 47th brigade:



Considering that the past 4 months, the 47th was in the absolute worst Rabotino meat-grinder it’s nearly unimaginable the type of losses she must be referring to.

Due to heavy losses, at least one battalion of the 47th mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was transferred to Ocheretino and Novobakhmutovka from the Orekhovsky site. Their forces of the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to strike positions near the waste heap, but to no avail.

Recent article on the shambolic 47th:


Russian aviation and artillery continue to work on enemy lines. The losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are growing: according to sources, during a week of active fighting, the number of killed members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine alone exceeded 1 thousand people and 60 pieces of equipment.

In fact, some of AFU’s own reports now claim that much of the AKHZ chemical plant, aka Coke Plant, is in a ‘gray zone’ which neither side controls, due to not only Russia’s mass bombing but Russia’s newfound proximity to the plant by way of capturing the adjacent Slag Heap:

The most difficult situation near Avdiyivka is in the area of the AKHZ territory.

The situation is such that no one is physically controlling him now. We have fire control.

Any attempts by the occupiers to enter it and gain a foothold are ended by the powerful attacks of our cassettes on the enemy.

This is the basic scenario of the last few days. The occupiers enter the territory, suffer losses, and in the best case - those who survived leave. But very often nobody leaves

Our army also suffers losses, because it is also impossible to stop such an enemy horde without it. The best leave us.

But the enemy is losing so much that it can be compared even with the first days of a full-scale invasion.

There are also heavy battles for the railway in the direction of Stepovoy. It is under our control, but the enemy does not spare the equipment and o/s to achieve the goal.

Ukrainian Post

Recall my outlined plan from the last report. It’s likely what Russia is attempting to do: gain a foothold in the plant so as to get total fire control over the MSR (main supply route).

Today’s RT released video shows for the first time the view from the Slag Heap. You can see how tall the Coke Plant is, and how much fire control it can afford over the entire region with emplacements in the plant’s heights.



The view is going in the direction of this yellow arrow:


The problem is, as you can see, the plant is taller than expected and potentially obstructs the view of the MSR shown in red above. That’s bad news as it means that capturing the Slag Heap may not in fact give direct fire control over the MSR and in fact to do that, the plant may need to be captured, at least the top-most portion of it as outlined last time.

But by the sounds of the earlier Ukrainian report, Russia has already completed the first step in evicting AFU defenders from that portion of the plant, and is already trying to storm it. We’ll have to wait for confirmations.

Read the bottom of this Ukrainian report:



The “highway to Pokrovsk” is precisely the MSR, which AFU here appears to be confirming is under fire control.

Reports continue to highlight the significance of Avdeevka to the AFU and the deja vu of Bakhmut that it’s shaping up into:

Ukrainian Resident TG channel about the reaction of Zelensky's gang to news from Avdeevsky's leadership:

“Our source in the OP said that Zelensky at the headquarters asked Zaluzhny to hold Avdiivka by all means so as not to repeat the situation with the shameful loss of the Bakhmut fortress.

The president's office ignored all the arguments of the commander-in-chief about the complexity of the defense of the city, which is half-surrounded, and the enemy is conducting the Avdeevka noose operation, exhausting the Ukrainian Armed Forces according to the Bakhmutov meat grinder scenario

Ukraine did attempt a fairly large desperate assault in the southwest to undercut Russian forces at the southern Avdeevka axis, pushing in from around Pervomaisk. But it was said Russian forces repulsed the attack and retook the slight bit of territory AFU initially grabbed.

Arestovich has even now conceded that Avdeevka stands to fall just like Bakhmut, and that the pro-Ukrainian side is falling into the trap of the same wishful thinking, self-soothing cognitive dissonances they used during Lisichansk, Bakhmut, etc.:
(video at link)



Lastly, a representative of the Pyatnashka Brigade of the DPR involved in Avdeevka battles tells Russell “Texas” Bentley that Avdeevka will “fall soon”.

(Video at link)

I think the word “soon” is relative, however it is interesting she mentions they’re advancing on the industrial sector which does seem to imply that Russia could have the Coke Plant as a primary capture target.

And a video taken by Ukrainian drone, allegedly, of a column of Russian 114th troops moving somewhere toward the Avdeevka front:


As well as a new perspective from the side of the Russian column which advanced toward that Stepove railway, which we saw shot from a Ukrainian drone last time, over a field lightly blanketed with snow:
(video at link)

***
Now all eyes are on the Kherson front—Ukrainian accounts are doing their best to amplify the propaganda there in order to distract from their slowly building calamity in Avdeevka. They continue to push fakes about major AFU captures but in fact it’s nothing more than a dozen or two cannonfodder who continue wedging themselves into the first few buildings of a settlement there, then get destroyed from massive artillery bombardment.

To give you an example, here’s a geolocated position that a Russian FPV drone struck:
(Video at link)

As you can see, once again, all they’ve done is cross the marshy islet in the middle of the Dnieper and quickly rush some guys into one building. Big deal—it doesn’t mean anything. Some laughably try to characterize it as a ‘beachhead’ forming into a ‘lodgement’.

This is nonsense. First of all, the main thing I noticed most people don’t understand about how amphibious type of operations work is this:
(Video at link)

It’s very easy to make some kind of long distance landing, whether it’s amphibious or air assault via helicopters. That’s not the hard part. You can land and even capture a few objects—but how do you hold it, is the question. What do you do after your standard 6 or 9 magazines run out? Who’s resupplying you? Where do you get food from? More importantly, how do you break out into a wider lodgement, with what armor or mechanized forces?

This is why these landings are nothing more than little gadfly attempts to distract Russian forces. It’s all about logistics. The AFU has no way to move major armor and fuel to that side of the shore, nor any serious resupply capabilities, apart from maybe bringing a few sandwiches via drone to a small group. Anyone knows how logistics works knows it’s completely unfeasible to support a serious force in this manner. After all, that’s why the much wiser Russian generals pulled out of Kherson entirely. Even though they weren’t having huge, overt issues just yet, they nonetheless recognized how precarious of a logistical issue it was to be lodged on the other side of a river with no reliably secure cross points which can’t be disabled by the enemy.

One commenter summarized it well with the following:

Why is everyone so excited about a Dniepr crossing. It's basically DDay but the Allies have -No ships -No Air Force -No tanks or other armored vehicles -No logistics While the Germans have all of the above. You decide who has the better cards here...

One Ukrainian post complains about how they are unable to exercise any element of surprise:

Ukrainian Post

The brothers were asked to describe the situation in the area of the left bank of the Dnieper.

Kryna A small part of the settlement is under the confident control of the Armed Forces. Logistics between them and the shore - works. There is a possibility for the evacuation of 200 and 300. The settlement itself is quite stretched out, so there is no question of complete control yet. For example ork artillery works, aviation - around the clock, on the right bank. The situation is complicated by the fact that the boys work in conditions of lack of surprise and stealth. It is impossible to achieve the element of suddenness in modern conditions - everything happens online. Therefore, we do not expect quick results and support.

In contradiction, other Russian reports from the sector state AFU is not even able to reliably move wounded and dead, and does not have such a basic logistical pipeline as everything is under fire control.

Floodplain-Krynki in the Kherson region: the enemy is pinned to the railway bridge over the Konka River, up to 30 people are sitting in a green area nearby, they can't escape anywhere. Artillery works on them.

In Krynki, Marines of the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to occupy several houses in the northern part of the village. There was almost no work on them today. In general, the problem with dachas under the Antonovsky Bridge is repeated, where the enemy has been holding its mini-bridgehead for almost half a year.

One small example shows AFU huddling under a bridge after crossing, and being quickly picked off by an FPV drone:
(video at link)

There’s constant rumors of Russian problems in this sector—rumors that the commander is or was being replaced; reports showing Russians using a “home made mortar” welded together with old pipes. However, looking into it, one quickly finds potential explanations. For instance, one person reported the mortar issue was due to the Russian unit having captured a bunch of Ukrainian-American 60mm mortar shells for which Russia has no equivalent mortar (typically using 82mm and 120mm). So they fashioned their own 60mm equivalent. Frontline ingenuity and initiative quickly turns to fake enemy propaganda.

AFU also continues to take particularly large losses here because the Russian airforce is using the largest of its bombs in this sector, reportedly sending 1500kg Fabs to the right bank many times a day.

Ukrainian post

On the left bank of the Kherson region and on the islands, raiding operations continue, as well as the maintenance of certain mini-bridges that were formed earlier.

New small bridgeheads are still being formed. There is partial success. But you have to get a foothold!

We pay a high price for this, remember!

***
The last thing to mention is an interesting development in the northern front. Amidst renewed Russian advances in the Kharkov sector, there are new rumors that point to a potential second major front opening up.

Firstly, AFU accounts confirm Russia has been capturing new land in the Kupyansk direction:


Ukrainian accounts continue to report horrors in that direction, like the relatives of the 32nd outing Ukrainian brigade commander as having cremated many of the ‘missing’:


Now getting to the rumors. Firstly, more and more DRG battles are being reported on the Kharkov border, and interestingly, one Russian report claims Ukraine was now using 14-15 year old boys as soldiers:

Gennady Alekhin spoke about the situation in the Kharkov direction :

Yesterday in the Shebekinsky urban district, in the settlement of Novaya Tavolzhanka, which is located on the border with the Kharkov region, with the Volchansky district. It lasted several hours; the enemy, using sabotage and reconnaissance groups, tried to penetrate some areas located on our territory.

The enemy suffered losses. By eight in the morning the battle had died down and there were no casualties on our side.

Another very interesting touch to yesterday’s battle is that the Armed Forces use 14-15 year old boys.

At this point our intelligence officers called them the Hitler Youth. ATVs, driven by a teenager, a mortar is attached to these ATVs, they drive up as close to the border as possible, they fired several, fired mortar shots and tried to leave.

In general, judging by the Kharkov direction over the past 24 hours, our artillery and missile launchers carried out quite powerful fire strikes on military targets in the city of Kharkov, its suburbs, as well as settlements where the movement and accumulation of enemy personnel and equipment was noticed.

In Sumy region there is heightened DRG activity as well:


And now, one report claims Russia has deployed a group of 19,000 men on the northern border of Ukraine, equipped with many tanks and heavy armor and rocket systems of all types:

Ukrainian source: The Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Naev, named the number of the Russian Armed Forces on the northern border.

According to him, Russia has deployed a group of troops with a total number of about 19 thousand people, armed with tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery and rocket systems, air defense systems and operational-tactical missile systems.

At the same time, there are no signs of the formation of strike force groups that can carry out an offensive to the north. The Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to monitor the situation.

However, they conclude this is not a ‘strike group’ that can yet carry out an offensive. However other reports claim there are up to 90k in Belgorod:



Furthermore, new reports have stated that Russia has almost no troops of any kind left in Belarus.

The reason these are interesting updates is that it narrows down the potentialities for a future northern front. We used to speculate whether Russia might open a front onto Kiev, which would necessarily have to come from Belarus. But if they have moved everything out and instead placed it in Belgorod, coupled with the heightened activity on the border, which includes a lot of recent Russian artillery strikes from across the border, we’re led to conclude there’s a potential vector from Belgorod region down into Kharkov.

Given the fact that Russia is ramping up operations in Kharkov slowly, I could see a potential incursion of a new front with the sole purpose of supporting the Kupyansk direction by way of a second pincer to pressure retreating Ukrainian forces from the rear.

Here’s a map of roughly what Russian control looked like at one point last year when they retreated from most of Kharkov region; Kharkov and Kupyansk are circled for reference:


This is the type of troop disposition I can see happening in a new incursion. This is to specifically differentiate it from one where they encircle Kharkov city itself, because that’s not necessary for the current operational objectives.

The most important thing right now is to alleviate the Kupyansk-oriented forces, as well as to establish a bridgehead toward Balakleya, Izyum, onward to Slovyansk once again, as they had at one point.

Thus, if it is true that Russia is gathering a force for a possible new front, then I don’t see them opening that front from north of Kharkov but rather a bit east near Volchansk area:


By opening the front on the series of roads represented by the red lines on the right above, they can pincer AFU’s Kupyansk forces from both sides of the Oskil River without having to needlessly fight Kharkov city battles on the outskirts of the city or on its very outer ring road. From there, they can develop the line down to Balakleya and Izyum once more, as this is the only realistic way of ever hoping to capture the major Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomerate—from both sides.

We’ll keep an eye on this direction to see if Russia continues gathering forces here. But although I don’t necessarily see it as a likely vector anytime soon, I do think it militarily and strategically makes far more sense to come in this way rather than trying to capture Kupyansk exclusively from one direction. It will come down to how many available troops Russia actually has to commit to such an operation, but it is interesting and noteworthy that there’s such an amount starting to build there.

(more, see Palestine thread.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sit ... -victories

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A 14-year old girl terrifies the West and Ukraine–Faina Savenkova faces censorship
By Christelle Néant (Posted Oct 25, 2023)

Originally published: Donbass Insider on September 29, 2023 (more by Donbass Insider) |

In the three years since she began publishing texts about her life as a child in the midst of the war in Donbass, Faina Savenkova has often met with indifference from the international and Western institutions that so extol the principles of democracy and human rights. But now indifference has given way to more radical measures against anyone who dares to give her a voice. Both in Ukraine and in the West, it seems that the authorities are afraid of what a 14-year-old girl might say about their respective crimes, going so far as to threaten and censor both Faina Savenkova and all those who try to help her break the information blockade of the Donbass.

As our regular readers know, Faina Savenkova has been listed on the Ukrainian neo-Nazi website Mirotvorets (a kind of digital Gestapo 2.0) since she was 12 years old. This site lists the “enemies of Ukraine”, and is in fact a list of people to be eliminated. Incidentally, in 2016 this site put out a contract on the head of British journalist Graham Phillips, and several of the people listed were murdered after their personal details were published (including Oles Bouzina, Daria Douguina, Vladlen Tatarski and many others), after which they are marked on Mirotvorets as ‘liquidated’. With all this, it’s hard to argue that this site isn’t a “kill-list”, as trolls and staunch supporters of Ukraine are.

Why did Faina Savenkova end up on such a website? Simply for telling the truth, namely that the Ukrainian army has been deliberately shelling civilians in the Donbass since 2014, causing many deaths, including among children, and that she has called for an end to the war. This is what justifies to the Ukrainian neo-Nazis who run this site publishing the personal details of a 12-year-old child, exposing her to threats and assassination attempts! I would also like to point out that she is not alone and that over 300 children are listed on Mirotvorets, in violation of national and international law. It’s an unacceptable situation, but one that doesn’t seem to be alarming the UN or UNICEF any more than it is.

But where it gets really crazy is when the threat of being listed on Mirotvorets is extended to anyone who interacts with Faina Savenkova. Writer and publisher Guy Boulianne, British journalist Johnny Miller and Mira Terada were added to the Mirotvorets site’s list of ‘enemies of Ukraine’ just after doing an interview with Faina Savenkova! You’d have to think that Ukraine is scared to death of what this teenager has to say to threaten anyone who gives her a chance to speak!

And when threats aren’t enough to keep people quiet, Ukraine can count on the support of the West to use another weapon: censorship. Faina Savenkova’s interviews with Mike Jones and Lori Spencer of Maverick News resulted in the latter losing their YouTube channel altogether.


The latest victim of this censorship is Italian journalist Vincenzo Lorusso, who has also lost his YouTube channel simply for publishing Faina Savenkova’s appeal to the mayor of Milan concerning the photo exhibition dedicated to the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov regiment!

Our Donbass Insider channel itself suffered several acts of censorship by YouTube during the battle of Marioupol, simply because our reports from the field relayed the testimonies of the town’s inhabitants about the war crimes of Azov and Ukrainian soldiers in general. It seems that in the West it is forbidden to tell the truth about the openly neo-Nazi ideology of the Azov regiment, and even worse to talk about their crimes.

The West and its Ukrainian puppet, who pride themselves on being examples of democracy and freedom of expression, censor and threaten a teenager from the Donbass region or anyone who speaks out against her, because they are so terrified by what Faina Savenkova has to say. Their narrative must be very fragile and not hold up for more than two seconds in the face of the facts, for governments to tremble like this in the face of the shadow of a 14-year-old girl!

Translation Яннис В.Зброек for Donbass Insider

https://mronline.org/2023/10/25/a-14-ye ... ensorship/

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[blindpig]

Avdeevka
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 10/26/2023



Far from the two areas of the front line that Ukraine considers a priority - the central axis in Zaporozhie towards Melitopol and the easternmost part of the Kherson region, where the activity of sabotage groups on the left bank of the river may want to show intentions to force the Dnieper -, since last October 10, an important battle has been fought around Donetsk. Located north of the DPR capital and a few kilometers from Yasinovataya, a city hard hit by Ukrainian artillery since 2014, Avdeevka has been one of Ukraine's strong points since the Minsk ceasefire consolidated the front and prevented major offensives were repeated. However, even in those years of apparent tranquility in much of the territory of Donbass, skirmishes and occasional peaks of clashes affected the town on several occasions, a privileged place from which Kiev's troops, strongly entrenched, could attack the nearby Yasinovataya, the northern suburbs of Donetsk and even the road to Gorlovka, the DPR's second largest city. Currently, freed from the Minsk commitments, which prevented the use of large-caliber weapons, Ukraine has taken advantage of its positions around Donetsk to bomb the city absolutely indiscriminately, terrorizing the population ensuring, with its random bombings by all the neighborhoods of the town, that there is no place that can be considered completely safe.

Russia's attempt to advance on the city, fortified and reinforced for eight years as one of Ukraine's main strongpoints, may be fundamentally due to the need to alleviate the situation in the most populated place in Donbass. Driving Ukrainian troops away from Donetsk has been a failed goal since the summer of 2014, when troops then sent by Petro Poroshenko tried to lay siege to the city. The Battle of Ilovaisk and the recovery of the initiative by the DPR militias - most likely with the help of Russia - prevented Donetsk from being isolated from Luhansk or the Russian border and began a phase of tailored territory recovery. that Ukraine was forced to retreat. In a few weeks, the Donbass militias had recovered a part of the territory lost in a domino effect that began the first week of July with the fall of Slavyansk and that threatened to include the two capitals.

That was the goal of Petro Poroshenko, who during the election campaign referred to “winning the war in days, not weeks.” The DPR and the LPR reversed these advances, but were unable to distance the Ukrainian troops from the main cities, which with the disappearance of the limits marked by Minsk and the arrival of much more powerful weapons, have once again been exposed to collective punishment. in the form of bombings in residential areas and even the most central places, previously out of artillery range.


The situation of the Avdeevka front according to Rybar, a source that does not tend to exaggerate Russian advances.

Since the Russian attempt to advance on the Avdeevka industrial zone, once of great importance due to the presence of the coke plant owned by Rinat Akhmetov, began, Ukraine has exploited the situation to enhance its defensive capabilities and mock Russian offensive actions. The certainty that an operation against one of the main strong points of the most fortified area of ​​the Ukrainian defense was going to involve a high number of casualties has been enough for Ukraine and its related press to classify the offensive as a failure within a few hours of begin. Since then, images have shown destroyed Russian armor and social media accounts that track lost equipment have mocked the presence of tanks made decades ago. kyiv has also exploited the slowness of the operation, which does not seek a frontal assault but rather a systematic process of surrounding the town to try to capture it. The example of Artyomovsk has been so evident that Ukraine now follows the same propaganda pattern.

“At this stage of the war, Russia is fanatically engaged in various activities,” Mikhailo Podolyak wrote yesterday. “First of all, counteroffensives that are massive carnage, trying to advance at least 500 meters for propaganda objectives,” he added before going on to tell how it is Russia that is trying to destabilize large areas of the planet. Podolyak's words were not intended to contain any irony, although they perfectly describe the Ukrainian performance since the beginning of June. Kiev has continued to send unit after unit to fronts in which the Russian defenses have held up more reliably than expected, so their progress has been limited. In that sense, it was Volodymyr Zelensky, not Vladimir Putin, who this week stated that it is necessary to advance 500 meters a day, something that Ukraine is not achieving.

Russian advances around Avdeevka have been, for days, very scarce and although there is no data available on casualties, the nature of the battle suggests that they had to be high. One of the important points for which the parties have actively fought, and continue to fight, is the ash dump, an elongated hill that marks the orography and which is, at just over 200 meters, the dominant height. Control of that point represents a position of strength to try to advance towards the train station area, a Russian objective from the beginning of the maneuver. Russian sources refer to the railway area as the place where Russia began fighting on October 10 and mention Ukrainian control over the hill as the main reason why the advance was not possible. For several days, the local offensive towards Avdeevka has been questioned not only by Ukrainian sources, who have used it to minimize their failure in the attempted advance from Rabotino, but also by some Russian sources who, from the most pessimistic realism, They have come to see the repetition of what happened in Ugledar. In that case, with the need to advance on the city, located at a height, through an open field, the Russian troops suffered heavy casualties in their several failed attempts to approach the city and finally abandon them.

In the case of Avdeevka, the ash dump hill is being presented as a differential element when it comes to making the operation feasible. For days, Russia and Ukraine have fought for its control and the height has changed hands on at least four occasions. On Tuesday, Russia announced it had captured the hill and provided visual proof: drone footage showed the Russian flag and that of the 113th Brigade, which is leading the assault, above the site. Ukraine denied the advance, although it admits that Russian troops have crossed the road from Krasnogorovka, something equally relevant and dangerous for Ukrainian positions, and continued fighting for the place. Within hours, kyiv responded to the Russian images with its own video recorded by a kamikaze drone flying towards the flags to destroy them. “The hill is still behind the Russian troops, but what are the details,” Boris Rozhin, Colonel Cassad, commented ironically . Ukraine's propaganda coup was countered again yesterday by the appearance of new Russian flags on the hill, implying that Russian troops have maintained, at least for the moment, control of the site. That small step, the cost of which is unknown, but which has been fought for for days, makes it possible that the battle for Avdeevka, which will remain tough, can continue. This will be the case both on the front and in propaganda.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/10/26/avdeevka/

Google Translator

*******

Chronicle of a special military operation for October 25, 2023
October 25, 2023
Rybar

In the Kherson direction, a group of Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters tried to advance to Podstepnoye , but, having come under artillery fire, they were forced to retreat and were evacuated to the right bank of the Dnieper . Another group attacked the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in Peschanivka , but also failed and withdrew.

Against the backdrop of the transfer of Ukrainian marines to the Kherson direction, Russian military personnel counterattack in the Vremevsky sector . The Russian Armed Forces were able to advance northeast of Priyutnoye and occupy a large stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, pushing the enemy back to the ravine. Fighting in this direction continues.

In the vicinity of Avdeevka, Russian soldiers are successfully defending a previously occupied waste heap, which the enemy is trying to recapture. Now there are heavy rains in the area, which is why the intensity of hostilities has decreased somewhat.

In the Soledar direction, the Russian Armed Forces hold positions near the railway east of Kleshcheevka and Andreevka . During the next attack, the fighters managed to destroy a Ukrainian Armed Forces tank and several armored vehicles.



Attack on the Ukrainian arsenal in Slavuta

Today, colorful footage of a powerful explosion near Slavuta in the Khmelnytsky region that night appeared on social networks . Apparently, the target of the Russian attack was Arsenal 47 (military unit A1358) southeast of the village. A huge glow, a cloud of smoke and numerous secondary detonations make it possible to roughly estimate the amount of ammunition located there. Outwardly, this strongly resembles the May visit to a similar facility in Khmelnitsky , where, among other things, depleted uranium shells supplied from Britain were stored.

When analyzing the latest attacks by the Russian Armed Forces on the warehouses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one can notice that the enemy often stores ammunition in long-known explored arsenals. This can be explained by their remoteness from populated areas and prying eyes, as well as the presence of special infrastructure. It is curious that after the arrivals, local authorities managed to announce the downing of “all 11 out of 11” Geran-2 drones flying in the Khmelnitsky region. The results of such a successful interception can be seen in videos that have surfaced on the Internet.

The situation on the front line and combat operations

In the Kupyansky sector, Russian troops are defending previously occupied positions from counterattacks by the 68th Jaeger Brigade, 32nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade and 101st Ukrainian Armed Forces Terrestrial Defense Brigade in the area of ​​Sinkovka , Ivanovka and Sergeevka . To the south, in the Svatovsko-Kremensky sector , the Russian Armed Forces repelled enemy raids near Krasnaya Dibrova and Yampolovka .


In the Soledar direction , Ukrainian formations continue to attack the positions of the Russian Armed Forces at the Kleshcheevka - Andreevka line near the railway, but Russian military personnel hold their positions. East of Kleshcheevka, fighters destroyed a Ukrainian tank and two more armored vehicles. According to some reports, it was also possible to stop an attempt by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to carry out a rotation near Bakhmut , covering the enemy infantry with artillery fire.


In the Donetsk direction, in the vicinity of Avdeevka , fierce fighting continues near the waste heap , where Russian military personnel were previously able to gain a foothold. The fighters are repelling counterattacks of Ukrainian formations trying to dislodge the Russian Armed Forces from tactically important positions. Now there are heavy torrential rains in the area, which complicates both the work of aviation and artillery, and the advance of the enemy.


In the Vremyevsky sector, Russian troops are gradually pushing through the defenses of the Ukrainian formations, weakened after the transfer of the Marine Corps to the Kherson direction. The main backbone of the Armed Forces of Ukraine consists of military defense units from the 118th, 127th and 128th brigades. At the same time, in the 127th TRO, 40% of the personnel from among the soldiers and sergeants were sent to the front without basic combat training.

Colleagues from the Voin DV channel reported that the attack was coming from the side of Priyutnoye along the forest belts to the north near the Grushevaya gully . Soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces managed to partially push the enemy to the ravine, but the fighting still continues. Due to a shortage of people, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are relying on small-sized drones and mortars, which they use to hit Russian positions. Also along the LBS, mobile electronic warfare teams “Nota” are actively operating to combat UAVs and communications.

The command of the Russian Armed Forces in the sector took into account the weakening of the enemy’s lines in the Vremevsky sector and took advantage of this by launching a systematic attack, gradually knocking out the Ukrainian Armed Forces and at the same time preserving the lives of personnel.


There is an active counter-battery fight in the Orekhovsky sector of the Zaporozhye direction . Due to heavy rains, enemy activity on the ground has been reduced to a minimum. Taking this opportunity, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are removing the wounded from the front line and conducting a rotation. Several attacks by Ukrainian DRGs were repelled in the direction of Verbovoy , and the enemy retreated with losses. At the same time, Ukrainian formations are conducting remote mining of territories, trying to interfere with the work of the Russian Armed Forces. Russian troops carried out a number of local counterattacks in the Novopokrovka area . Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft operated against enemy positions.


In the Kherson direction, yesterday evening, after the transfer of assault groups 35, 36 and 38 infantry infantry infantry to various parts of Aleshkinsky Island, the enemy gained a foothold at an intersection near Dach and began moving in the direction of Peschanivka with Poima and Podstepnoye - Kudasovo . Two assault groups of the 35th brigade, which were moving towards Podstepnoye, came under a massive artillery attack. As a result, three people were killed and seven were injured. They were evacuated first to Dachi, and then to the right bank.

The second group from the 36th Infantry Brigade was consolidated in the area of ​​the small railway bridge and tried to advance to the Poima, and a detachment of the 35th Infantry Infantry Division attacked the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in Peschanovka. During the ensuing battle, they first managed to enter the northern outskirts, but after that they were knocked out with losses.

In Krynki , Marines of the 810th Marine Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces continued to clear the village. Ukrainian formations were seriously entrenched in the populated area, but over the past 24 hours, Russian fighters in heavy battles almost managed to squeeze the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of Krynki. However, clashes continue. The enemy is transferring reinforcements, and artillery (M777 and self-propelled guns) and mortars are being massively deployed in areas where the Russian Armed Forces are concentrated, including in landing areas.

Russian fighters are also conducting an intensified counter-battery fight. If in the Peschanivka-Krynki section the work of the UAV is complicated by the active counteraction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' electronic warfare, then to the north everything is somewhat better. As a result of a drone strike, the Russian Armed Forces were able to hit the repair base of the 7th separate support regiment in Novaya Kamenka , where several pieces of equipment were being repaired. And in Sablukovka a warehouse with ammunition was destroyed.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas


This afternoon, Ukrainian formations continued their attacks on the Bryansk region : the village of Belaya Berezka and the Klimovsky district came under fire . In addition, at night, air defense systems managed to intercept four enemy drones near Suponev .


At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased the intensity of shelling of the border area of ​​the Kursk region . In the village of Popovo-Lezhachi, Glushkovsky district, seven flights were recorded, one car was damaged. The neighboring village of Tetkino was also under attack ; no one was injured. In the village of Kozino , Rylsky district, a village club was damaged, but no one was injured. In the village of Gorodishche, three residential buildings, a gas pipe and power lines were damaged as a result of shelling; restoration work is underway.


In the Belgorod region, the enemy shelled Novaya Tavolzhanka and Spodaryushino. There is no information about damage or casualties.

In the Lugansk People's Republic, Ukrainian formations struck the village of Belorechensky , damaging a local kindergarten, community center and school. In addition, apartment and private buildings in the locality were damaged.

[
Meanwhile, Ukrainian formations continue to strike at the Donetsk agglomeration : Donetsk and Makeevka , as well as Zaitsevo , Golmovsky and Yasinovatsky districts of the DPR , again became targets . According to preliminary data, no one was injured as a result of the shelling.


Ukrainian formations continue indiscriminate shelling of the left bank of the Kherson region . The civilian infrastructure of Nova Kakhovka, Dnieper, Sag, Vasylivka, Kardashinka and Kakhovka came under attack . Over the past 24 hours, one civilian has died in the village of Solontsy . In Kostogryzovo and Cossack Camps, three people were injured.

Political events
Problems with the allocation of the next aid package to Ukraine

Journalists from Politico report that Republicans will freeze a bill to allocate $106 billion for Israel and Ukraine . Despite the fact that there are no disagreements on Israel , Republican senators have questions about the allocation of a large amount of money specifically to the Ukrainian side.

In their opinion, the money allocated to Ukraine is too significant and more attention needs to be paid to internal issues. A hearing is scheduled for next week. However, even if Biden’s request is approved , the document will still have to pass a vote in the House of Representatives , which currently remains without a speaker, which will certainly stall the resolution of any issues related to financing.

In addition, according to Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Alexey Sobolev , the European Union can allocate only part of the planned amount of funding to Ukraine for the next year - 9 billion euros out of 18 previously agreed upon. This includes, among other things, money to cover the budget deficit. The decision has not yet been made, the final verdict will be at the end of December.

About the Ukrainian demographic crisis

Director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Research Ella Libanova said that at best, half of the citizens who fled the country will return to Ukraine. Against this background, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba recently announced the possible introduction of “multiple citizenship” so that Ukrainians could legally remain citizens of Ukraine, having dual citizenship. At the same time, he clarified that we are talking only about the citizenship of “allied countries.”

On the production of drones for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Minister for Strategic Industries of Ukraine Alexander Kamyshin said that the key goal is to achieve the production of tens of thousands of drones per month - now the count is in the thousands. According to him, this industry is developing even faster than the production of shells and small arms.

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/

(Other images at link.)

Google Translator

*******

WaPo’s Report About The US-Ukrainian Spy Alliance Confirms Russia’s Security Concerns



ANDREW KORYBKO
OCT 25, 2023

It’ll now be much more difficult for the Mainstream Media to gaslight their targeted audience into thinking that Russia’s special operation was supposedly an “unprovoked invasion”.

The Mainstream Media (MSM) always describes Russia’s special operation as an “unprovoked invasion”, which is why it was so surprising that the Washington Post (WaPo) just reported about the US-Ukrainian spy alliance and thus confirmed Russia’s concerns about security threats emanating from that country. Titled “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia”, the piece details the extent to which the CIA has exerted predominant influence over Ukraine’s SBU and GUR since 2014.

According to their unnamed Ukrainian, US, and Western intelligence and security sources, whose claims WaPo’s journalists alleged were vetted with multiple sources with independent streams of intelligence, the CIA literally created a whole new SBU directorate and rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up. For all practical intents and purposes, Ukraine’s spy agencies have been operating as American proxies for nearly a decade, which therefore makes the US responsible for everything that they’ve done since then.

This includes assassinating “at least half a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking separatist commanders or collaborators” prior to the special operation, one of whom was killed in Moscow, and dozens of others after February 2022. The first part of this disclosure confirms that the US was waging its proxy war on Russia through Ukraine long before the latter was forced into commencing its special operation as a last resort to uphold the integrity of its national security red lines that Washington was gradually eroding.

As for the second, WaPo also reported that the SBU was responsible for assassinating Darya Dugina last summer despite Kiev’s denials, and their sources told them that “no major operation by the SBU or GUR proceeds without clearance — tacit or otherwise — from Zelensky.” This revelation implicates the Ukrainian leader in all the terrorist attacks that his side carried out since February 2022, including the one against the Crimean Bridge that involved an “unwitting accomplice” who was then blown up.

All that being the case, it’ll now be much more difficult for the MSM to gaslight their targeted audience into thinking that Russia’s special operation was supposedly an “unprovoked invasion” since WaPo of all sources just confirmed its concerns about Ukrainian-emanating security threats. The CIA was employing that country’s SBU and GUR intelligence agencies to wage proxy warfare against Russia this entire time, which made a larger conflict inevitable in hindsight.

After all, there was never any realistic chance that the US would voluntarily cede the predominant influence that it obtained over those two after “EuroMaidan” since this enabled it to keep Ukraine’s pro-Western puppet regime in power, thus entrenching American power in Eastern Europe. That former Soviet Republic was transformed into a pro-US dictatorship that wantonly violated its own people’s universally recognized human rights in parallel with posing an expanding range of threats to Russia.

All of this served to reassert America’s previously declining unipolar hegemony over the continent by dividing-and-ruling the EU and Russia through Ukraine, which culminated with NATO clandestinely expanding there upon its complete state capture by the CIA and thus provoking the special operation. It goes without saying that the US would have responded in a similar way had a fascist coup led to Russia’s spy agencies obtaining control over Mexico with a view to dividing-and-ruling the US and Ibero-America.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/wapos-re ... -ukrainian

******
And that's all we got for now....

[blindpig]

Resource war
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 27/10/2023



“In the 20 months since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, kyiv's allies have directed a flood of military and other assistance worth more than $230 billion. The chances of Kiev receiving a remotely similar amount in the next 20 months are zero,” writes this week an article published by The Washington Post , which includes the current preparation of European countries for the real possibility of an electoral victory for Donald Trump. . Recently, the European Union has surpassed the United States as the main provider of economic and financial assistance to Ukraine, with Washington apparently the main military supplier. However, the fact that Kiev is using practically half of its budget for goods and services and military salaries means that a significant part of that European Union monetary assistance is also being allocated to the war.

Almost five months after the start of the summer counteroffensive, Ukraine has achieved partial results only in the rear. The attacks on Crimea and the growing sense of increased danger of missile arrival have prompted preventive measures by Russia, which has withdrawn part of the Black Sea fleet to safer ports. However, changes in the configuration of the front line are minimal and both Ukraine and its partners seem to be already preparing the ground to announce future successful offensives. The F16s that Zelensky has already stopped constantly requesting are undoubtedly intended for this, perhaps aware that they will arrive once the training of the few pilots that Kiev has selected for it is completed. The arrival of Western aviation - possibly in quantities not high enough to make a difference - can be considered a fact, although for the moment it will not help Ukraine improve its results.

Installed in the trenches, without a clear winner in sight and with the door to diplomatic channels closed since April 2022, the reality of the conflict is summarized in the need to maintain a long war that can be costly for both the countries that they deliver it directly as well as for those who do it via proxy. This is the case of the European Union, which is faced with the uncertainty of what consequences the 2024 electoral result will have for the Washington-Brussels partnership, but also the coming months, in which the electoral campaign may influence even more Joe Biden's chances of achieving the funding he has requested from Congress.

A long conflict is necessarily a war of resources and industrial capabilities. In February 2022, the countries of the Western bloc and their allies blindly trusted that Russia would never be able to compete with the economic and production potential of the combined NATO countries. Added to this was also the certainty, which soon proved unsuccessful, that the imposed sanctions would lead to the collapse of the Russian economy, while the lack of technological elements would make the production of, for example, missiles unviable. Sanctions experts such as Agathe Demarais noted a decrease in production as a result of the lack of advanced microchips, a lack that she affirms that Russia solved in a few months to return to a production that it has managed to maintain. Throughout this year, one of the common comments about Russian missiles has been precisely that their components showed production serial numbers from this same year, confirming that Russia not only has not “run out of missiles” as Arestovich claimed. would occur already in March 2022, but maintains its production capacity.

Having already rejected the theory that a long war would favor Ukraine because Russia would not be able to maintain production, Western countries have been forced to renew the discourse in order to maintain the level of assistance to Ukraine. Victory around the corner or international solidarity towards a victim that they describe as completely innocent - although the years of war in Donbass and future intentions towards the population of Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea refute this - are no longer enough. “The White House is losing the war over message. Now, that message has changed,” says Politico .

The objective of these changes is to promote legislative initiatives that make the Biden administration obtain the funds it has requested for Ukraine -60,000 million dollars of a package of 105,000 that also includes Israel, Taiwan and the border wall-, but also boost production. Because in the face of ridicule about Russian shortages and the supposed need to turn to the People's Republic of Korea in search of supplies of artillery ammunition, the West also suffers from difficulties, perhaps even greater than those of the Russians, in meeting the needs implied by the war. “The European Union is falling behind on its plans to provide Ukraine with one million artillery shells by March, people familiar with the matter said… With more than half that time passed, the initiative has so far delivered about 30% of the objectives," Bloomberg recently wrote , one of the many media outlets that have echoed the industrial challenge posed to the West by supplying the necessary material for a conventional land war. The situation is further complicated considering that, as Axios reported last week , a portion of the 155-millimeter projectiles initially intended for Ukraine have been sent to Israel. Ukraine must fight against war fatigue and the disinterest it is beginning to cause in certain sectors but also with the competition posed by the Israeli war against Palestine in Gaza.

The consequences of delays and the inability to operate industrial machinery at full capacity are added to the speculation factor on the part of companies that implies shortages but, above all, increased demand. In recent hours, several NATO representatives have expressed concern, not only about the need to increase production, but also about containing prices. Rob Bauer, president of NATO's military committee, warned yesterday of the need to implement "common standards and limitations on protectionism to relaunch artillery production." Jens Stoltenberg, for his part, appealed to Alliance countries and industrial representatives to “show responsibility.” “The challenge here is that when we increase demand, we want more supply, not higher prices,” he insisted. According to what the German newspaper Welt Rheinmetall has published, the price of 155 mm projectiles has increased from 2,000 to 3,600 euros per piece since the beginning of the Russian military intervention. The forecast is that these numbers will continue to increase.

Although without explicitly stating it, all relevant parties show signs of preparation for a long-term conflict. For weeks, a huge increase in Russian military spending by 2024 had been announced, which was finalized yesterday. Next year, 29.4% of spending is expected to be spent on the military sector. Media such as Reuters , which echoes the news, compares the data with the weight of Russian military spending in 2021, 14.4% and 2022 17.7%, but not with the Ukrainian one. According to data published by the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, in the first seven months of this year, kyiv spent 48% of spending on goods and services and military salaries. Yesterday, Volodymyr Zelensky again called for “long-term macroeconomic aid.”

kyiv's allies, for their part, are looking for ways to boost military production and obtain the necessary funds to allow Ukraine to maintain that spending pattern. While the European Union continues to promise more funding, the United States, finding it more difficult to gain legislative support for additional requests for funds, is seeking a domestic argument for international investment. According to Politico , the Biden administration's main reasoning is to insist that the additional funds contain a $50 billion package for the American defense industry “ensuring that our military remains the most prepared, capable and best-equipped force in the world.” but, above all, that increased military spending in Ukraine will strengthen the economy “by increasing production lines, strengthening the American economy and creating new jobs in the United States.” Faced with difficulties in convincing the Republican Party to maintain the flow of financing, Biden no longer presents the need to support Ukraine as a matter of national security but as an economic opportunity.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/10/27/guerr ... more-28438

Google Translator

******

Chronicle of a special military operation for October 25, 2023
October 25, 2023
Rybar

In the Kherson direction, a group of Ukrainian Armed Forces attack aircraft tried to advance to Podstepnoye , but, having come under artillery fire, they were forced to retreat and were evacuated to the right bank of the Dnieper . Another group attacked the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in Peschanivka , but also failed and withdrew.

Against the backdrop of the transfer of Ukrainian marines to the Kherson direction, Russian military personnel counterattack in the Vremevsky sector . The Russian Armed Forces were able to advance northeast of Priyutnoye and occupy a large stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, pushing the enemy back to the ravine. Fighting in this direction continues.

In the vicinity of Avdeevka, Russian soldiers are successfully defending a previously occupied waste heap, which the enemy is trying to recapture. Now there are heavy rains in the area, which is why the intensity of hostilities has decreased somewhat.

In the Soledar direction, the Russian Armed Forces hold positions near the railway east of Kleshcheevka and Andreevka . During the next attack, the fighters managed to destroy a Ukrainian Armed Forces tank and several armored vehicles.



Attack on the Ukrainian arsenal in Slavuta

Today, colorful footage of a powerful explosion near Slavuta in the Khmelnytsky region that night appeared on social networks . Apparently, the target of the Russian attack was Arsenal 47 (military unit A1358) southeast of the village. A huge glow, a cloud of smoke and numerous secondary detonations make it possible to roughly estimate the amount of ammunition located there. Outwardly, this strongly resembles the May visit to a similar facility in Khmelnitsky , where, among other things, depleted uranium shells supplied from Britain were stored.

When analyzing the latest attacks by the Russian Armed Forces on the warehouses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, one can notice that the enemy often stores ammunition in long-known explored arsenals. This can be explained by their remoteness from populated areas and prying eyes, as well as the presence of special infrastructure. It is curious that after the arrivals, local authorities managed to announce the downing of “all 11 out of 11” Geran-2 drones flying in the Khmelnitsky region. The results of such a successful interception can be seen in videos that have surfaced on the Internet.

The situation on the front line and combat operations

In the Kupyansky sector, Russian troops are defending previously occupied positions from counterattacks by the 68th Jaeger Brigade, 32nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade and 101st Ukrainian Armed Forces Terrestrial Defense Brigade in the area of ​​Sinkovka , Ivanovka and Sergeevka . To the south, in the Svatovsko-Kremensky sector , the Russian Armed Forces repelled enemy raids near Krasnaya Dibrova and Yampolovka .


In the Soledar direction , Ukrainian formations continue to attack the positions of the Russian Armed Forces at the Kleshcheevka - Andreevka line near the railway, but Russian military personnel hold their positions. East of Kleshcheevka, fighters destroyed a Ukrainian tank and two more armored vehicles. According to some reports, it was also possible to stop an attempt by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to carry out a rotation near Bakhmut , covering the enemy infantry with artillery fire.


There is an active counter-battery fight in the Orekhovsky sector of the Zaporozhye direction . Due to heavy rains, enemy activity on the ground has been reduced to a minimum. Taking this opportunity, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are removing the wounded from the front line and conducting a rotation. Several attacks by Ukrainian DRGs were repelled in the direction of Verbovoy , and the enemy retreated with losses. At the same time, Ukrainian formations are conducting remote mining of territories, trying to interfere with the work of the Russian Armed Forces. Russian troops carried out a number of local counterattacks in the Novopokrovka area . Russian Aerospace Forces aircraft operated against enemy positions.


In the Kherson direction, yesterday evening, after the transfer of assault groups 35, 36 and 38 infantry infantry infantry to various parts of Aleshkinsky Island, the enemy gained a foothold at an intersection near Dach and began moving in the direction of Peschanivka with Poima and Podstepnoye - Kudasovo . Two assault groups of the 35th brigade, which were moving towards Podstepnoye, came under a massive artillery attack. As a result, three people were killed and seven were injured. They were evacuated first to Dachi, and then to the right bank.

The second group from the 36th Infantry Brigade was consolidated in the area of ​​the small railway bridge and tried to advance to the Poima, and a detachment of the 35th Infantry Infantry Division attacked the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in Peschanovka. During the ensuing battle, they first managed to enter the northern outskirts, but after that they were knocked out with losses.

In Krynki , Marines of the 810th Marine Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces continued to clear the village. Ukrainian formations were seriously entrenched in the populated area, but over the past 24 hours, Russian fighters in heavy battles almost managed to squeeze the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of Krynki. However, clashes continue. The enemy is transferring reinforcements, and artillery (M777 and self-propelled guns) and mortars are being massively deployed in areas where the Russian Armed Forces are concentrated, including in landing areas.

Russian fighters are also conducting an intensified counter-battery fight. If in the Peschanivka-Krynki section the work of the UAV is complicated by the active counteraction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' electronic warfare, then to the north everything is somewhat better. As a result of a drone strike, the Russian Armed Forces were able to hit the repair base of the 7th separate support regiment in Novaya Kamenka , where several pieces of equipment were being repaired. And in Sablukovka a warehouse with ammunition was destroyed.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas


This afternoon, Ukrainian formations continued their attacks on the Bryansk region : the village of Belaya Berezka and the Klimovsky district came under fire . In addition, at night, air defense systems managed to intercept four enemy drones near Suponev .


At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased the intensity of shelling of the border area of ​​the Kursk region . In the village of Popovo-Lezhachi, Glushkovsky district, seven flights were recorded, one car was damaged. The neighboring village of Tetkino was also under attack ; no one was injured. In the village of Kozino , Rylsky district, a village club was damaged, but no one was injured. In the village of Gorodishche, three residential buildings, a gas pipe and power lines were damaged as a result of shelling; restoration work is underway.


In the Belgorod region, the enemy shelled Novaya Tavolzhanka and Spodaryushino. There is no information about damage or casualties.

In the Lugansk People's Republic, Ukrainian formations struck the village of Belorechensky , damaging a local kindergarten, community center and school. In addition, apartment and private buildings in the locality were damaged.


Meanwhile, Ukrainian formations continue to strike at the Donetsk agglomeration : Donetsk and Makeevka , as well as Zaitsevo , Golmovsky and Yasinovatsky districts of the DPR , again became targets . According to preliminary data, no one was injured as a result of the shelling.


Ukrainian formations continue indiscriminate shelling of the left bank of the Kherson region . The civilian infrastructure of Nova Kakhovka, Dnieper, Sag, Vasylivka, Kardashinka and Kakhovka came under attack . Over the past 24 hours, one civilian has died in the village of Solontsy . In Kostogryzovo and Cossack Camps, three people were injured.

Political events
Problems with the allocation of the next aid package to Ukraine

Journalists from Politico report that Republicans will freeze a bill to allocate $106 billion for Israel and Ukraine . Despite the fact that there are no disagreements on Israel , Republican senators have questions about the allocation of a large amount of money specifically to the Ukrainian side.

In their opinion, the money allocated to Ukraine is too significant and more attention needs to be paid to internal issues. A hearing is scheduled for next week. However, even if Biden’s request is approved , the document will still have to pass a vote in the House of Representatives , which currently remains without a speaker, which will certainly stall the resolution of any issues related to financing.

In addition, according to Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Alexey Sobolev , the European Union can allocate only part of the planned amount of funding to Ukraine for the next year - 9 billion euros out of 18 previously agreed upon. This includes, among other things, money to cover the budget deficit. The decision has not yet been made, the final verdict will be at the end of December.

About the Ukrainian demographic crisis

Director of the Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Research Ella Libanova said that at best, half of the citizens who fled the country will return to Ukraine. Against this background, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba recently announced the possible introduction of “multiple citizenship” so that Ukrainians could legally remain citizens of Ukraine, having dual citizenship. At the same time, he clarified that we are talking only about the citizenship of “allied countries.”

On the production of drones for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

Minister for Strategic Industries of Ukraine Alexander Kamyshin said that the key goal is to achieve the production of tens of thousands of drones per month - now the count is in the thousands. According to him, this industry is developing even faster than the production of shells and small arms.

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

(Other images at link.)

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Former German leader Schroeder divulges more detail on thwarted Russia-Ukraine peace deal


Former German leader Schroeder divulges more detail on thwarted Russia-Ukraine peace dealAccording to Schroeder the peace deal that was taking shape was shot down by the US at the last moment. / bne IntelliNews

By Ben Aris in Berlin October 24, 2023

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is the latest figure to confirm that a Russia-Ukraine peace deal was nearly reached in the spring of 2022. He discussed the apparent near-success that could have brought the war in Ukraine to an early end in an interview with Berliner Zeitung on October 21.

"At the peace negotiations in Istanbul in March 2022 with [the now Defence Minister of Ukraine] Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainians did not agree on peace because they were not allowed to. For everything they discussed, they first had to ask the Americans,” Schroeder told the German newspaper.

The question of whether a peace deal was so very nearly sealed between Ukraine and Russia remains a hugely controversial topic. As bne IntelliNews reported at the time, a contemporary report by Ukrainska Pravda claimed a deal between the Kremlin and Bankova was put together in March and April.

“Wow! The Ex-leader of Germany corroborates statements by ex-Israeli PM [Naftali Bennett], Ukrainian officials close to [Ukraine's leader Volodomyr] Zelenskiy, ex-senior US officials and Russian leaders,” Ivan Katchanovski, a professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa, said in response to the interview with Schroeder.

As the parties moved towards concluding the deal, the massacre at Bucha in Ukraine, a slaughter of hundreds of innocent civilians committed by retreating Russian troops, was discovered. The effort to seal the agreement was reportedly abandoned after former UK PM Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskiy a few days later and advised him to abandon the path to the deal as the West would withdraw its support if he did not.

Schroeder was involved in the talks and, according to his interview, most of the peace deal negotiations were conducted before the Bucha story broke. Moreover, he claims it was the White House that refused to accept a deal as it wanted to “keep Russia small”, by continuing to fight a resource-burning proxy war in Ukraine. Schroeder’s version of events suggests that Johnson was delivering a US message, not expressing his own view.

Schroeder remains one of the very few former Western leaders that remains close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two men worked together for almost a decade when Schroeder was German chancellor. Schroeder was immediately given a seat on the board of Russia’s biggest oil company Rosneft after he left office. He has remained a strong advocate for Russian interests and was a vocal Putin supporter in the run-up to the war in Ukraine.

Thanks to his close rapport with Russia, Schroeder was included in the March 2022 talks held in Istanbul that attempted to bring the conflict to an end.

Prior to Schroeder's statements, Israel’s Bennett confirmed that a peace deal was almost cut in Istanbul, but that the efforts were scuppered at the last moment by the US. Putin also recenlty confirmed a deal was agreed.

Putin made his first public remarks on the deal during a press conference taking questions from war correspondents at the Kremlin on June 13, 2023. He also confirmed that a peace deal had been tentatively agreed in March in Istanbul. The deal would have seen Russia withdraw to its pre-war position in exchange for a Ukrainian promise to give up its Nato aspirations.

But at the June press conference, Putin corroborated other reports on just how the deal had progressed. The tentative agreement had been initialled by both sides. “I don’t remember his name and may be mistaken, but I think Mr Arakhamia headed Ukraine’s negotiating team in Istanbul. He even initialled this document.” Russia, too, signed the document: “during the talks in Istanbul, we initialled this document. We argued for a long time, butted heads there and so on, but the document was very thick and it was initialled by Medinsky on our side and by the head of their negotiating team.”

The host of the Istanbul talks has also confirmed a deal was done. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the local Turkish press that, because of the talks, “Turkey did not think that the Russia-Ukraine war would continue much longer.” But, added, “There are countries within Nato who want the war to continue.”

“Following the Nato foreign ministers’ meeting,” he explained, “it was the impression that…there are those within the Nato member states that want the war to continue, let the war continue and Russia get weaker.”

Cavusoglu is not alone. Numan Kurtulmus, the deputy chairman of Erdogan’s ruling party, told CNN TURK that “We know that our President is talking to the leaders of both countries. In certain matters, progress was made, reaching the final point, then suddenly we see that the war is accelerating… Someone is trying not to end the war. The United States sees the prolongation of the war as its interest… There are those who want this war to continue… Putin-Zelenskiy was going to sign, but someone didn’t want to.”

More recently Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed elements of the same story, with remarks made during his “Empire of Lies” speech at the UN, saying Russia signed off on the details of a ceasefire.

"We were not only ready – we agreed to negotiate, we reached an agreement in April 2022. And after that, as I understand it, Zelenskiy was told: since they agreed so quickly, let's exhaust [Russia],” said Lavrov.

Details of the deal

According to Schroeder the deal would have included the following main aspects:

· Ukraine would abandon its Nato aspirations;

· The bans on the Russian language in Ukraine would be removed;

· Donbass would remain in Ukraine but as an autonomous region (Schroeder: "Like South Tyrol");

· The United Nations Security Council plus Germany should offer and supervise the security agreements; and

· The Crimea problem would be addressed.

“Umerov opened the conversation with greetings from Zelenskiy. As a compromise for Ukraine's security guarantees, the Austrian model or the 5+1 model was proposed. Umerov thought that was a good thing,” said Schroeder. “He also showed willingness on the other points. He also said that Ukraine does not want Nato membership. He also said that Ukraine wants to reintroduce Russian in the Donbass. But in the end, nothing happened.”

“My impression was that nothing could happen, because everything else was decided in Washington,” said Schroeder, who had two sessions of talks with Umerov, then a one-on-one meeting with Putin in Moscow, and then a meeting with Putin's envoy.

In an interview posted to his YouTube channel in February this year, Bennett said something very similar in reference to the US and its European allies. “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong [to do so],” he said, speaking of the efforts to end the war in March and April last year.

Schroeder also confirmed that the Europeans didn’t push for the deal. “They have failed. There would have been a window in March 2022. The Ukrainians were ready to talk about Crimea. This was even confirmed by Bild newspaper at the time,” Schroeder said holding up a copy of the German daily with the title "Finally peace in sight?"

Bild reported at the time that Zelenskiy was no longer insisting on his country's accession into Nato and that he was also ready for a “compromise” on Crimea and the breakaway provinces in the Donbass.

bne IntelliNews reported at the time that Ukraine was prepared to give up on its Nato ambitions, and that this was announced by members of the Ukraine negotiating team meeting with their Russian counterparts during the several weeks the talks went on.

Schroeder insisted that the US was in the driving seat of the negotiations, although the White House has repeatedly stated that the only people that can decide to start ceasefire talks are the Ukrainians. Schroeder flatly contradicted that rhetoric.

“[The Ukrainians] first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed… My impression: Nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington. That was fatal. Because the result will now be that Russia will be tied more closely to China, which the West should not want,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder also said that Bucha didn’t change anything. Interviewed by the BBC on-the-ground in Bucha, Zelenskiy confirmed to a reporter that the peace deal talks were still on: “I have to [have these talks],” Zelenskiy said at the time.

The Berliner Zeitung reporter repeated to Schroeder Ukrainian statements that the Bucha massacres committed by the Russian soldiers meant the end of the negotiations.

“Nothing was known about Bucha during the talks with Umerov on March 7 and 13,” Schroeder replied. “I think the Americans didn't want the compromise between Ukraine and Russia. The Americans believe they can keep the Russians down. Now it is the case that two actors, China and Russia, who are constrained by the USA, are joining forces. Americans believe they are strong enough to keep both parties in check. In my humble opinion, this is a mistake. Just look at how torn the American side is now. Look at the chaos in Congress.”

However, Schroeder did not end his interview without offering some hope for peace. Asked if he thought the peace plan could be revived he replied: “Yes. And the only ones who can initiate this are France and Germany.”

Asked how the West could come to trust the Russians after the litany of broken promises in the lead-up to the war and since it started, Schroeder scoffed at the idea that Russia has ambitions to invade Europe.

“We have no threat. This fear of the Russians coming is absurd. How are they supposed to defeat Nato, let alone occupy Western Europe?” Schroeder replied.

“What do the Russians want? Status quo in Donbass and Crimea. Not more. I think it was a fatal mistake that Putin started the war. It is clear to me that Russia feels threatened. Look: Turkey is a Nato member. There are missiles that can reach Moscow directly. The USA wanted to bring Nato to Russia's western border, with Ukraine as a new member, for example. All of this felt like a threat to the Russians. There are also irrational points of view. I don't want to deny that. The Russians responded with a mix of both fear and forward defence. That's why no one in Poland, the Baltics, and certainly not in Germany - all Nato members, by the way - has to believe they are in danger. The Russians would not start a war with any Nato member,” Schroeder concluded.

Schroeder noted that while the West continued to supply Ukraine with arms, it was not combining that with an offer to start talks.

“If you combine that with an offer, you can do that,” said Schroeder. “Why do [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz and [French President Emmanuel] Macron not combine the arms deliveries with an offer to talk? Macron and Scholz are the only ones who can talk to Putin… None of the people who matter are moving. The only one who got anything done, even though he is always vilified, was [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan with his grain agreement. This really bothers me.”

Schroeder described what he regarded as Russian paranoia over Western expansion and said any deal would have to take account of Russian fears.

“Nobody in the West wants to hear it: No matter who is in power, there is a conviction in Russia that the West wants to expand further with Nato, namely into the post-Soviet space. Keywords: Georgia and Ukraine. No one at the head of Russia will allow this. This threat analysis may be emotional, but it is real in Russia. The West must understand this and accept compromises accordingly, otherwise peace will be difficult to achieve....” Schroeder ended.

https://intellinews.com/former-german-l ... rce=russia

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Orban No. 2
colonelcassad
October 26, 14:56



In Slovakia, the new Prime Minister Robert Fico outlined the main directions of the country's new policy.

1. Slovakia will no longer provide military assistance to Ukraine.
2. The war in Ukraine began due to attacks by Ukrainian fascists on the Russian inhabitants of the country.
3. The war in Ukraine should be stopped as soon as possible and negotiations for peace should begin.
4. Slovakia will no longer support any anti-Russian sanctions that could in any way harm Slovakia.
5. Zelensky’s “peace formula” is divorced from reality.

And so on in the same spirit.
In general, Fico actively cosplays the late Orbán. This is an additional headache for Brussels.
However, most of what Slovakia could transfer to Ukraine, it had already transferred before Fico.
However, Fico's victory and his position quite characteristically show the growing fatigue from the war in Europe.
Although we should not have any illusions about its imminent cessation.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8729890.html

Google Translator

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The Ukraine and Israeli/Palestine Conflicts Show the Demise of Western Imperialism and Foreshadow its Coming Collapse
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 26, 2023
Dmitri Kovalevich


A composite image of two photos, one featuring Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden, the other featuring Antony Blinken and Benjamin Netanyahu

The escalation of hostilities between the Israelis and the Palestinian people (whose historic lands the Israelis occupy) has been met with much irritation in governing circles in Ukraine. Events in and around Ukraine have dominated Western media for nearly two years, but now this has given way to the news of violent conflict by the Israelis, a satellite of the Western powers, against the Palestinian people. The conflict threatens to spread to neighboring Arab countries. All this has Ukrainian authorities fearing a decline in Western attention and support for war against Russia.

Indeed, the Western news outlet Axios reported on October 19 that the U.S. government will divert hundreds of thousands of artillery shells destined for Ukraine to the Israelis. So although Ukraine and the Israelis are each a satellite of the United States and NATO, Ukraine must now compete with the Israelis for the title of the most favored recipient of U.S. weaponry.

When Palestine resistance forces first launched their breakout from the open-air prison of Gaza on October 7, Ukraine president Zelensky called on all Western leaders to fly to the Israeli-occupied lands to show their support. He sought to travel there himself to show ‘solidarity’, but the Israelis told him ‘no’, fearing the political distraction it would cause and also fearing the image of military disaster that Ukraine brings along due to its failing war, in alliance with NATO, against Russia. In Western parlance, there is an ‘image problem’ with Zelensky and his governing regime due to the terrible pounding Ukraine’s armed forces are suffering at the hands of the Russian military.

Former Ukrainian MP and ultranationalist Igor Mosiychuk has recently observed, “For some reason, the Ukrainian government believes that the whole world owes [military and financial assistance] to us, to Ukraine and the Ukrainians.” But he also observes, “The whole world does not think so”.

The former MP continued, “President Zelensky thinks the whole world will applaud him all his life, will greet him, hug him, kiss him, and so on,” the former people’s deputy said in an interview with journalist Alexander Shelest. But according to him, Zelensky has already become a “lame duck”.

The Ukrainian government, media, and ultranationalists have been unambiguously supportive of the Israelis in the current conflict (although historically, the far-right ideology of Ukrainian ultranationalists is anti-Jewish). This is due not so much to ideological proximity as it is to a common dependence on the United States. Another factor in support of the Israelis is the common racist trope of protecting ‘Western civilization’ from ‘barbarians’, which in Ukraine means combatting ‘Russian hordes’ while in Palestine it means the Israelis combatting the Palestinian and broader Arab populations.

Discriminatory attitudes towards migrants and refugees have been observed since last year in and around Ukraine. Ukrainian refugees were immediately granted refugee status, protection, health insurance, housing, and allowances in the NATO countries, standing in contrast to the fates of so many refugees and migrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The latter are often routinely refused refugee status, obliged to wait years for residency application cases to be heard, or forcibly deported to third countries, many of whose economies have been destroyed by Western corporations.

Like the Israeli regime in the Middle East, Ukraine has become an outpost in eastern Europe of the Western imperialist world. Since 2014, Ukraine has been used by the West to punish those who stand up to imperialist meddling or domination, such as what happened to the people of Donbass and Crimea following the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

Palestinian journalist Manar Bsoul, who lives in the Russian Federation, writes in the Ukrainian publication Liva (‘Left’) that the ongoing military provocations by Western countries in the Middle East are increasingly aimed at promoting a new regional bloc under the U.S. umbrella that would include the Israelis as well as the monarchies of the Gulf. “This new regional bloc is being created as another ‘watchtower’ against the ‘axis of evil’ (China, Iran, Russia, North Korea), on a par with the imperialist military bloc AUKUS in the Asia-Pacific,” the Palestinian journalist writes.

In her opinion, it is primarily Hamas that stands in the way of the creation of a new U.S. “watchtower” in the Middle East. “The U.S. nuclear umbrella, Israeli technology and finance, oil and gas, and the human resources of the Muslim countries of the Middle East – these are the foundations of the “watchtower” that Washington wants to construct and complete prior to the U.S. presidential election in 2024. The world of big money does not tolerate interference, and interference in the form of Hamas must now be neutralized, despite the enormous civilian casualties in Gaza,” Bsoul writes.

The U.S. has been using Ukraine, among other things, as an instrument of influence on the countries of the Global South. However, promoting Ukraine and the Israelis at one and the same time is an impossible task for the United States and its NATO allies. Without question, most people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America instinctively support the rights of Palestinians, recognizing their own historic longings as similar to those of Palestine.

“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” says one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost… Forget about rules, forget about world order, they won’t ever listen to us again.” Many developing countries have traditionally supported the Palestinian cause, seeing it through the prism of self-determination and a push against the global dominance of the U.S., the Israelis’ most important backer.

“Some American diplomats are privately concerned that the Biden administration’s response has failed to acknowledge how its broad support of Israel can alienate much of the Global South,” writes an analysis in the Financial Times on October 17.

Moreover, the process of deindustrialization in Ukraine and in the Western countries is calling into question the ability of Western imperialism to supply arms to several of its satellites at once. For this reason, Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik says that any shift of attention to other events is dangerous for Ukraine. “For Ukraine, any external global event means a decrease in attention and resources spent on the war in Ukraine. Besides, we can hardly count on deliveries of Israeli weapons in the near future, even hypothetically, and the quality of their use in a real conflict, even with semi-guerrilla units, is questionable today,” the political analyst argues.

Last year, Zelensky pleaded to the Israelis without success that it supplied Ukraine with its ‘Iron Dome’ air defense system. In September of this year, Zelensky told the Israeli prime minister that Ukraine could better protect Jewish (Hasidic) pilgrims if it received the weapon system.

Another Ukrainian political scientist and economist, Oleksandr Ryabokon, warned recently that the shift in military attention away from Ukraine may be followed by a shift in Western financial aid. “Another round of the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict has in a few days completely pushed Ukraine off the front pages of world media. Informational oblivion can be followed by financial and material oblivion. The chief ‘gardener’ of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, is already whining that in the conditions of uncertainty with the American financing of Ukraine, Europe will not be able to do it on its own,” he writes.

In early October, Admiral Rob Bauer, the Dutch chairperson of the NATO Military Committee, commented on the problems with ammunition deliveries to Ukraine: “We started to give away from warehouses half-full or less, and now the bottom of the barrel is visible.” The military depots of another U.S. satellite, South Korea, are also running low. “Ukraine’s counter-offensive relied on a massive infusion of shells from South Korea, and its rate of fire will inevitably fall in the months ahead”, writes The Economist on October 14.

Now the West is demanding that Kiev increase its own arms production. But this is extremely difficult to do after three decades of deindustrialization (since the demise of Soviet Ukraine), propelled by austerity policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and other Western financial agencies. And that is not to speak of catastrophic shortages of skilled factory workers, engineers, etc. caused by the current military conscription. Millions of Ukrainian women have fled abroad and many skilled men have been forcibly mobilized into the army. There are, quite simply, not enough human resources in Ukraine to maintain critical infrastructure.

It can be added that the only ammunition manufacturer in Ukraine prior to 2014 was located in Lugansk territory, which is today a constituent of the Russian Federation. In 2014, the people of Lugansk rebelled against the coup in Kiev that year. The new, anti-coup governing authority took control of the ammunition manufacturer and nationalized it. Since then, Ukraine has not established its own ammunition production, despite the years of warfare it waged against Donbass (the region consisting of the former Ukrainian territories of Lugansk and Donetsk).

Ukrainian expert Vitaliy Zaitsev observes that Ukraine lacks not only laborers but also skilled workers for the production of weapons. “Our professional schools have been practically lost. In addition, we need to re-establish the production of steel and rolled steel suitable for military production.”

Serhiy Bondarchuk, the former head of Ukrspetseksport (state arms exporter), is also quite cautious about the prospects of arms production in Ukraine. “How to organize the logistics of components? Armor, gunpowder, special chemicals, special components – none of this is produced in Ukraine, so we will have to import, while also taking into account national borders and the threat of military strikes [by Russia] along the related transport routes.” And there are further organizational issues of which the former head of arms exports speaks, including whether there can be an uninterrupted power supply.

In other words, Western imperialism cannot yet make its Ukrainian satellite self-sufficient in arms production or even supply. Quite simply, it cannot easily supply several recipients at once.

In this regard, Ukrainian political scientist Kost Bondarenko recently noted in an interview that the strategy of the Kiev regime, which relies so heavily on Western support, will have to change for objective reasons. The political scientist believes that the time of U.S. global omnipotence, coming after its seeming victory in the Cold War, is passing away.

“This era is over. Now it is necessary to find points for a new world order amidst this new world chaos that has arrived. The U.S. is no longer an authority for the whole world; in fact, some two-thirds of the world is today in opposition to the United States.” Bondarenko added that Ukraine is now “among the minority” in its alliance with (subordination to) the United States.

According to Bondarenko, the first task in Ukraine following the end of the current war will be for its people to “dismantle the current state system” in the country. For him, that includes the adoption of a new and fair constitution; creation of a new state on the basis of the current, de facto borders; dismantling of the power of the economic elites; and overall, “the creation of a new political structure that is truly fair and not detached from society, as is the case today.”

Other satellites of Western imperialism are pondering something similar for their future development. The Biden administration in Washington is well aware of this and may well embark on further, bloody military interventions and wars to forestall such scenarios.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... -collapse/

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Ukraine’s Desperate Search for War Funding Hits Local Budgets
Posted on October 27, 2023 by Yves Smith

Yves here. I have a post underway on Ukraine’s economy and this post launched, with some new, germane sightings. I thought it would be useful to provide this information first, since it provides useful breadcrumbs.

The short thesis of my post underway is that conditions in Ukraine are worse, likely markedly worse, than the Western press would have you believe, and the withdrawal/substantial reduction of external support will have a cliff effect. Note that given the source, the article below contains admissions against interest (as in Ukraine has tried in its messaging to present an image of strength and inevitable success).

If readers can send me links to relevant articles in the foreign language press to yves-at-nakedcapitalism-dot-com, it would be helpful, since English language/Anglosphere reporting is thin.


By Yurii Gaidai, a senior economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian non-governmental research body. Originally published at openDemocracy

Ukraine is preparing to roll out its second wartime budget. Faced with an existential threat from one of the world’s largest military forces, the country has dramatically increased its military spending. As a result, every other hryvnia from the Ukrainian budget is now spent on defence.

But Ukraine is in a vulnerable position: the country is heavily reliant on external funding.

According to estimates by the Centre for Economic Strategy, the Kyiv-based think-tank where I work, Ukraine’s total funding needs for 2024 will amount to roughly £43.6bn – to cover its budget deficit and debt repayments.

A fifth of this is expected to be sourced domestically via Ukrainian government bonds. The remaining 81% is anticipated to come from external sources, including a mixture of loans and grants from the US, EU, IMF and other creditors.

But as of now, neither the EU nor the US has confirmed the exact amount of financial support it will give Ukraine for 2024.

If external funding is not secured, Ukraine may have to consider monetary financing – the direct transfer of central bank funds to the state, usually by the purchase of government bonds.

This is a strategy it was forced to employ until late 2022, but has managed to avoid since. Monetary financing means creating additional money, which is not matched by an increase in a country’s economic output, usually resulting in higher inflation and interest rates. And if the situation does not improve, there is a tangible risk of a collapse of the Ukrainian public finance system.

Thus, in its desperate search for additional sources to finance the country’s resistance, the Ukrainian government has been exploring various options for funding defence needs and the production of weapons.

Measures taken so far include revoking most tax breaks initially introduced to support Ukrainian businesses at the onset of the Russian invasion, increased taxes on banks’ income, and a significant reduction in non-essential state-funded expenses.

But one particularly stark and controversial measure is the Ukrainian government’s plan to tap into local community budgets.

Officials have proposed transferring the income tax local authorities receive from Ukrainian military personnel into a centralised defence fund. The Russian invasion led to a significant increase in the size of Ukraine’s defence forces, up to a million service personnel – who all pay income tax on their wages to local authorities. Now this tax income could be set to pay for drones and other munitions.

The move could cut across the successes of Ukraine’s decentralisation reform, which has been one of its most impactful. This 2014 initiative transferred powers and funding from the central state level to local city and village authorities – known as hromadas, or communities. This shift brought local authorities closer to citizens, incentivising more responsive public services for citizens and businesses and making local government more accountable.

The decision has met resistance from many hromadas themselves as well as some Ukrainian MPs. They argue that the larger revenues give hromadas greater flexibility in addressing the needs of internally displaced citizens, which are often not promptly dealt with by central government, as well as additional defence costs such as some drones and vehicles. Yet local authorities used less than 20 billion hryvnia (£450m) on military expenditure for the first eight months of 2023.

The primary funding source for Ukrainian local budgets is personal income tax, 64% of which is allocated to the hromadas where Ukrainian taxpayers’ employers are registered. However, many large employers are registered in major cities like Kyiv, which exacerbates regional economic disparities. It also creates a gap between where taxes are paid, where services are delivered and where voters are represented, partially neutralising the positive effects of decentralisation.

To mitigate this, wealthier communities are obliged to transfer a share of their “excess” revenue back to the state budget, which then redistributes these funds to economically weaker communities through subsidies. Kyiv, being a hub for business registrations, receives only 40% of personal income tax.

Since the invasion, local authorities where military personnel are stationed have received a windfall in income tax revenue. (Ukrainian soldiers have had increased salaries that significantly exceed the national average.) These funds have helped offset the loss of tax revenues caused by the Russian invasion in 2022.

Meanwhile, as hromadas’ spending has largely been limited to critical expenditure, local budgets have started accumulating substantial surpluses. For the first eight months of this year, the overall surplus reached nearly 96.5 billion hryvnia (about £2.2bn), comparable to the state budget’s monthly tax revenues. Income tax revenues of local budgets from military personnel over the same period reached 67.8 billion hryvnia (just over £1.5bn).

Yet these military income tax revenues are distributed unevenly, as they depend on the place of registration of military units. The situation also creates incentives for unjustified changes of registration address of military units, likely in exchange for informal agreements on financial support by local authorities. Researchers at the Kyiv School of Economics identified over 60 such cases since April 2022.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance argues that, overall, local budgets will remain in aggregate surplus even without these military-related revenues. To offset the loss of income for less economically developed hromadas that had relied on military income tax before 2022, the subsidies mentioned above will continue to be provided, along with a further 33.4 billion hryvnia (£750m) in direct grants.

Public sentiment is also a factor. In major cities like Kyiv and Odesa, citizens have actively protested against non-critical and inefficient spending like the reconstruction of streets or beautification, demanding that funds be redirected to military needs.

In an attempt to find a compromise, the Ukrainian parliament’s budget committee proposed that 10% of military income tax be transferred to military units for urgent or unplanned expenses. But this proposal failed to gain parliamentary support last week, and the draft law has been sent back for further changes ahead of another reading in parliament.

The search for additional defence funding – and for a compromise between the needs of local government and the state – continues.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10 ... dgets.html

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Biden has noticeable cognitive decline
October 27, 6:26



The new Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, from the start began to justify his reputation as a person associated with Trumpists.

1. According to Johnson, the priority of military assistance from the United States should now, and indeed, be given to Israel.
2. Johnson opposes Biden's plan to combine military aid for Israel and Ukraine into one package. Biden's plan called for combining them into one package to make it easier to push through parliament. With this position of the speaker, this becomes unrealistic.
3. Money for Ukraine Johnson proposes to consider it separately, which will require Biden to make domestic political concessions to the Trumpists, who could block any individual package.
4. Johnson also demanded a full audit of all funds already allocated to Ukraine, fulfilling a long-standing demand of the Trumpists.
5. Well, regarding Biden, the new speaker said that Biden has a noticeable weakening of cognitive functions.
In general, the White House will have more problems implementing the previous policy. Money for Ukraine will obviously become the subject of difficult negotiations.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8731183.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Volunteers in wars supported from the West
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 10/28/2023



On July 13, The Guardian newspaper published an article by Luke Harding in which he collected, among others, the testimony of a British volunteer with a specific peculiarity: his participation in the wars that led, starting in 1991, to the complete dissolution of Yugoslavia inherited from Marshal Tito. Harding presents, in fact, this volunteer as a “ veteran of the war in the former Yugoslavia .”

International veterans of the war in Croatia

Croatia was the first concentration point for foreign volunteers in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. In 2017, the International Association of Volunteers of the Croatian Forces completed a list of 597 foreign fighters in Croatian units during the so-called Patriotic War . This is an approximate figure, given that it is known that the real number of these volunteers was higher, probably close to a thousand troops. According to research by Daniel Kington , up to 55 foreign fighters lost their lives in Croatia, a death toll that would rise to 122 when considering the wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo.

According to available, although incomplete, data, international volunteers arrived from 30 different countries, although the largest contingent, with around 200 volunteers, arrived from Great Britain. The largest concentration of these foreign volunteers occurred in eastern Slavonia, around Vukovar, Vinkovci, Osijek and Nuštar, one of the central points in the bloody conflict between Croatian and Serbian forces.

One of those foreign fighters was Alan Boydell. According to Anthony Rogers, who describes part of his career in Soldiers of Fortune, Mercenary and Military Adventurers, 1960-2020 , Boydell is a war professional with a long career as a soldier (the English term soldiering sums it up precisely), as well as private security contractor. Some sources indicate that he was born in Devon, a few miles south of Plymouth.

A former member of the British Royal Marines, in late 1989, while working in London's private security networks, Boydell joined a group of former members of the British Army and the French Foreign Legion as a mercenary. The objective was to train rebels from the Suriname National Liberation Army (SNLA), better known as Jungle Commando, in Moengo. Boydell met former French Legion member John Richards who recruited him to train the Hindustani SNLA guerrillas in the north-western district of Nickerie. Shortly afterwards, accompanied by two French filmmakers, probably including Eric Deroo, the group set off in the direction of French Guyana.

The Suriname rebellion was directed against the forces supported by Desiré Bouterse, the main figure of the political and military groups that had seized power in Suriname in the early 1980s and had had the support of Maurice Bishop in Grenada. in addition to that of Cuba and Libya. At the end of the decade, when men from Richards and Boydell's group arrived in Suriname, Bouterse still maintained ultimate control in the country. And, despite the peace agreement signed in July 1989 with the rebel formations, he was firmly opposed to any compromise with them.

In Suriname, upon arrival at the SNLA headquarters, the group was received by rebel leader Ronnie Brunswijk. Then, in the negotiation phase with the government, they had changed their plans: they would no longer work on the training of the Hindustanis, but on the instruction of the Maroons of the Jungle Commando, then facing the Amerindian minority of the Tucajana.

The mercenary group's passage through Suriname was not very successful, to the point that its leader, John Richards, after losing Brunswijk's trust, was murdered, according to some sources, by some members of his unit. The three members of the group closest to Richards were forced to leave Suriname hastily and only Boydell and two other companions (Irish legionnaire Bill Oakey and British Royal Marine Neil Finnighan) were able to complete their training actions before returning, in the scheduled time, to Europe.

Although it is possible that the Irishman Bill Oakey also participated in the Yugoslav wars, of the Suriname group only Alan Boydell's participation in the combats of the 90s in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina is accredited. According to Rogers, Boydell arrived in Croatia in 1991 and initially joined the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) in Nuštar, a town less than 15 kilometers from Vukovar that was key to the control of decisive areas in the war such as Vinkovci. From there he became part of the 110 Karlovac Brigade of the Croatian Army (HV).

After suffering injuries from mortar fire, Boydell spent some time convalescing in the United Kingdom before rejoining the Croatian Army in the Bojna Frankopan Brigade operating in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a special unit of the Croatian Army General Staff. This elite unit, commanded by former members of the French Foreign Legion, notably Bruno Zorica (Zulu), operated on the Osijek front, from where it was later redirected to the Kupres front in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bojna Frankopan had an important role in Bugojno and Gornji Vakuf. And he participated in the Maslenica operation under the command of Ante Gotovina.

A key feature of Bojna Frankopan was its foreign volunteers. Among them stood out the Frenchman René Dutruel who organized and developed the commando training in Žutica, the British Paul Ogilvie and David Pherson, the Welshman Christopher Llywelyn Thomas, as well as some Scottish volunteers and German fighters such as Thomas Linder (actually a member of the Zrinski battalion , but leader in a phase of a group that also included members of Frankopan). Gaston Besson was also a member of Bojna Frankopan, who years later would collaborate in the first years of the war against Donbass with the Azov movement.

Boydell later went to Mostar where he participated in the fighting at the siege of the city. He served in the Croatian Defense Council (HVO), being assigned to the Baja Kraljevic group, led by Mladen Naletilic (Tuta), a Bosnian Croat special police anti-terrorist unit that would become one of the cruelest in the Bosnian conflict. Naletilic called his unit Bojna Kaznjenicka, a punitive or convict battalion, and incorporated a large group of foreign volunteers. Naletilic would later be convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), even though the indictment did not include his participation in the ethnic cleansing of the Serb population of Mostar.

After the summary execution of a group of Muslims falsely accused of being Chetniks, Boydell preferred to join the Bosnian Armija (ARMBiH). He fought in Sarajevo on the side of Bosnian Muslim forces for the rest of the war.

Boydell's Croatian and Bosnian background made him a very experienced military man. After a long period in which Rogers does not mention anything in his study, and during which the British maintained his residence in Croatia, the researcher places Alan Boydell in 2003 as a private security contractor in Iraq occupied by British and American forces. .

Fourteen years later, he was operating in Mosul, escorting a British-American civilian Explosive Ordnance Disposal group following Iraqi forces and part of the US-led coalition against ISIS. . Rogers shows a photo of Boydell in Bashiqa, northern Iraq, in 2017, with a Canadian colleague. His role was to guarantee the group's security in the Kurdish advance in their confrontation with ISIS forces.

From Croatia to Ukraine

The volunteer Harding refers to in his 2023 article calls himself Alan, but he did not want to mention his last name so it is not possible to completely ensure that it is Alan Boydell, something that is not very relevant either. The interesting thing is to see some common points that are representative of a certain type of soldiering trajectory in former British soldiers who, since 1991, have had a continuous presence in the reconfiguration of the once sovereign space of the USSR and the former socialist Yugoslavia.

According to Harding, the English sniper or sniper Alan is a 58-year-old former British marine, doctor and former member of the parachute regiment, originally from Plymouth. He participated in several conflicts and worked as a private military contractor in Iran and Afghanistan. He lives in Croatia and rarely visits the UK. According to him, he has spent most of his adult life in Eastern Europe. He would be part of a small group of foreign volunteers who continue fighting in Ukraine, a country where he arrived in September 2022.

Alan participates in actions on the front and, in his conversation with Harding, is in a period of rest and training. “ You have to keep practicing ,” he said, pointing to a row of targets, all of which turned out, he says, to be an easy target. “ The Russians are not on the whole very good soldiers, but they are not stupid. It would be crazy to assume that there are no decent units or motivated troops. They are powerful, very dangerous and good at artillery and electronic warfare .”

In his Ukrainian adventure, the most relevant part of Alan is his military assignment: the Gonor unit of Da Vinci's Wolves, the Hero of Ukraine and far-right Praviy Sektor honored upon his death by the entire leadership of Ukrainian politics. In this framework, according to Harding, he spent months of frontal combat with Wagner's fighters, street by street, with the aim of keeping open the so-called "Road of Life", the ultimate route of material supply for the Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut. /Artyomovsk. There he played a relevant role: providing covering fire to the Ukrainian forces, in collaboration with another volunteer, a 44-year-old American ex-Marine and reservist from Texas, Steve. “ We were basically in bunkers and trenches like in World War I ,” Alan remembers. “ It was very difficult. There was constant artillery fire from the Russian side. They were accurate. You had to keep your head down .” Ukraine eventually lost control of the city, although it has never officially accepted that withdrawal.

Alan hopes to pass on some of his knowledge to newer Ukrainian soldiers. “ I instruct them on how to patrol, how to shoot and how to stay alive,” he said. “If you stop for more than five minutes you have to dig a hole .” He advises them not to use mobile phones in the trenches, which can be intercepted by the Russians and geolocated. And stay away from social media.

For Alan there is no problem in shooting at Russian soldiers, against whom he uses the whole battery of commonplaces that have been repeated so much - and denied, on occasions by the Ukrainian commanders themselves - throughout the war. “ These people are going to kill my friends. If it happens that I hit a bullet, so be it .” And he added: “ Some are completely untrained. They run towards you without any concept of self-preservation. It's like they're on drugs. Most of the Ukrainians who are directly on the front lines are young, in their early twenties. They are very, very good soldiers .”

Other volunteers from Croatia's war in Ukraine

The case of Alan de Harding is not isolated, but there are other significant examples of volunteers from the British forces or the French Legion with experience in the Croatian war and subsequent careers in Ukraine. Some participated directly in the Yugoslav wars alongside Alan Boydell.

The best known of these is the Frenchman Gaston Besson , Boydell's comrade in the Frankopan Brigade (and perhaps in the international forces of the ARBiH). Already in 2014, Besson volunteered in kyiv to contribute to the Ukrainian nationalist revolution. He thus assumed the role of recruiter and organizer of volunteers in favor of groups such as the Pravy Sektor or the Men in Black (largely from Andriy Biletsky's SNA) that would constitute the base of the Azov Battalion. Besson promoted the formation of a Croatian Legion within Azov.

Even more relevant is the role of Bojna Frankopan's main leader, Bruno Zorica, a Zulu. A former member of the French Legion, Zorica arrived in Croatia in July 1991 with a group of fifteen compatriots of Croatian origin (among them the future generals Ante Gotovina and Ante Roso) and at the end of that month they created the Frankopan battalion, subordinated as special forces unit to the General Staff of the Croatian Armed Forces. In an article published in 2018, Vladislav Maltsev referred to the description of one of Zorica's legionnaire colleagues regarding Bojna Frankopan's forces, accustomed to participating in rearguard actions. These were, according to him, “ people who had fought in the Foreign Legion and whose only mission in life was to kill; and that professional ability to kill was the best letter of introduction to come to Croatia .”

In his article, Maltsev mentioned Zulu participation in various acts of nationalist far-right forces promoted by Azov. In one of them, the third Conference of the Intermarium Support Group in October 2018, Zorica addressed the topic of “Defense cooperation between Croatia and Ukraine as a driver of Adriatic Sea-Black Sea integration”, with the commitment of fund for an action in the style of Operation Krajina in Ukraine. In addition to granting the Azov regiment honorary participation in the Bojna Frankopan veterans association, in his Ukrainian meetings with the ultranationalist battalion, Zorica would have promised to support the development of a foreign legion.


Olena Semenyaka and Bruno Zorica at the 3rd Conference of the Intermarium Support Group.

In a 2019 article, Vox of America confirmed this intention and mentioned the announcement on the Azov social network profiles of Zorica's intention to “ help the development of the Ukrainian Foreign Legion ,” with cooperation that “ will reach a new level .” . According to VOA , Zorica maintained “ close communication ” with the head of the Azov military school. “ We are willing to share our experience and knowledge with the Ukrainian army ,” said the veteran legionnaire.

In February 2022, at the beginning of the war, Zorica told the Croatian press that he was in contact with Azov. In an interview in March of that year, Zorica pointed out that, for now, only about ten volunteers had left Croatia for Ukraine, among them “ several retired veterans of the Patriotic War… The average age of our veterans is 60 and they can no longer give what is needed .”

Another Bojna Frankopan fighter was Paul Ogilvie (Black Paul) who, like Alan Boydell, was also a member of the 110 Karlovac Brigade. Wounded three times in Croatia, Ogilvie would receive a new injury in Ukraine: a double open fracture in the lower part of his right leg. Despite this, “ his plan is to return to service after rehabilitation and help Ukrainian fighters achieve their ultimate goal .”


Kupres 1992. Gaston Besson and Paul Ogilvie.

It is interesting to see the speech management of all these volunteers, beyond their military training. In Harding's article, Alan's interviewee has perfectly assimilated some of the key elements of the foreign volunteer's discourse in wars supported by the West. One of these aspects has to do with the motivations for participation, which are intended to be distanced from both mercenary activity and the image of the “dog of war.” According to Alan, he traveled to Ukraine as a result of what he claims were executions of civilians in Bucha and Irpin: “ I had to do something to help, even at my age .” He claims not to have any official contract with the Ukrainian army, his commander covers his daily expenses. He sees the Ukraine as his last war: “ I am almost 60 years old. It’s probably time to hang up my gun .” “ This is my last war. When I finish, I will return home .”

The second relevant aspect is related to the affirmation of being on the right side. According to Alan, “ The guys I'm with are patriots. I have yet to find a Nazi anywhere on this side of the lines .” A categorical sentence despite the fact that Alan says he has not yet managed to learn Ukrainian. Except for one radio operator, the members of his battalion do not speak English. Also the numerous images in which Nazi-inspired tattoos and emblems can be seen call into question Alan's ability to count the fascist troops in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Everything seems to indicate that the management of correct discourse is an essential fact in the training of volunteers for the wars in the former Soviet-Yugoslav space.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/10/28/volun ... more-28444

Google Translator

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Chronicle of a special military operation for October 27, 2023
October 27, 2023
Rybar

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are again showing activity in the Kherson direction : yesterday evening the enemy tried to advance to Peschanivka through the Kudinovo tract , but, coming under artillery fire, retreated. In addition, at night several groups of Ukrainian marines dispersed in plantings along the Podstepnoye - Cossack Camps road, but are not yet conducting active operations. The Ukrainian Armed Forces also continue to hold a small bridgehead in Krynki .

In the Orekhovsky sector, Ukrainian formations again attacked near Rabotino , achieving minor successes. However, this “success” cost them some of their personnel and armored vehicles, including several German Leopards. At the same time, the enemy tried to attack near Verbov , but retreated under artillery and aviation fire.

In the Vremyevsky sector, the Russian Armed Forces are consolidating positions occupied during the recent counterattack northeast of Priyutnoye . After the transfer of marines to the Kherson direction, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is pulling additional forces to the site: some of them are accumulating north of Novomayorsky , which may indicate the possibility of a new enemy attempt to attack Russian positions in the populated area.



The situation on the front line and combat operations
In the Republic of Crimea, there was an attempt on the life of former Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev. Data about the incident vary: according to some, he was wounded with a knife, according to others, he received gunshot wounds. Now the politician, according to media information, is in serious condition in the hospital. Journalists from the American publication Reuters write that the assassination attempt was allegedly carried out by Ukrainian special services.


Positional battles continue in the Starobelsky direction . The Russian Armed Forces are launching attacks on supply points and deployments of Ukrainian formations. In addition, information has appeared on the network about the advance of Russian troops west of Liman 1, but there is no more detailed information or footage yet.


In the Donetsk direction, fighting continues in the Avdeevsky fortified area. Russian military personnel confidently hold the previously occupied waste heap, which is the dominant height. At the same time, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is actively pulling fresh reinforcements to the site in order to prevent the encirclement of Avdeevka and the breakthrough of the front by fighters of the Russian Armed Forces.


In the Vremyevsky sector, Russian troops are consolidating positions northeast of Priyutnoye that were occupied during recent counterattacks . Meanwhile, Ukrainian formations are transferring fresh forces to the site, experiencing a shortage of experienced groups after the transfer of marines to the Kherson direction . According to Voin DV , they plan to transfer 1 rifle battalion of the 1st brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to the site. In addition, fresh forces are accumulating north of Novomayorsky as part of the 58th infantry brigade, which may indicate plans of the Ukrainian command to initiate new attacks on the positions of the Russian Armed Forces in the populated area.


In the Orekhovsky sector, fighting continues at the Rabotino-Verbovoe line. Today, Ukrainian formations managed to achieve local success near Rabotino , somewhat displacing the Russian Armed Forces. However, this success can hardly be called significant given the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost several armored vehicles, including German Leopards. The enemy also tried to attack near Verbov , but retreated under artillery and air fire.


In the Kherson direction, yesterday evening two assault groups of the 35th infantry infantry regiment of the Ukrainian Navy, moving along the Kudasovo tract near Peschanovka , tried to approach the latter. The attack was disrupted by artillery strikes of the Russian Armed Forces, and evacuation groups, under the cover of a smoke screen, took the wounded in boats to the right bank.

At night , groups of the 35th brigade were again withdrawn to the northern part of Aleshkinsky Island . Together with the Marines of the 503rd separate battalion of the 38th Marine Brigade, they dispersed in forest plantations along the Podstepnoe - Cossack Camps road. There are currently no attempted attacks. However, seven assault groups consisting of the 35th, 36th, 38th Marine Brigades and the 140th Reconnaissance Battalion were concentrated along the line. Judging by their location, their main task is to consolidate in Podstepnoye and Peschanivka from the Dach side.

In Krynki the situation remains the same. A small contingent of the 35th Brigade still occupies several houses in the village. It is difficult to push them out of there due to the massive artillery and mortar fire of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the approaches to this area. At night, reinforcements from the 2nd and 137th battalions of the 35th infantry brigade were transported to Frolov Island from Ivanovka on boats and the PTS-2 floating transporter. Towards evening they are going to cross the Dnieper to relieve the blockade of forces in Krynki and subsequently expand the zone of control.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas
Last night, Ukrainian formations attempted to attack the Kursk nuclear power plant with three UAVs. The attack was stopped on the evening of October 26 and did not affect the operation of the nuclear power plant.


In the Belgorod region, air defense systems went off during the day near Belgorod . Footage of the event appeared on social networks, but there was no official comment. In addition, residents of the Shebekinsky district reported arrivals from Ukraine, although without specifics.


At the same time, Ukrainian formations continue shelling the Donetsk agglomeration , albeit on a smaller scale. Today in the Kalininsky district of Donetsk , 2 people were wounded by enemy artillery fire, and civilian infrastructure also came under attack again. In addition, the village of Golmovsky near Gorlovka again became the target of the Ukrainian Armed Forces .


Ukrainian formations continue shelling the left bank of the Kherson region. Today's attack affected Golaya Pristan, Cossack Camps, Kakhovka, Kostogryzovo, Krynki, Novaya Kakhovka and Sagi . In addition, it was reported that one civilian from Radensk was injured as a result of yesterday's enemy attack.

Political events
The end of pro-Ukrainian OSINT projects

On the social network X (formerly Twitter), pro-Ukrainian OSINT projects are slowly being closed. Over the past month, the Oryx and Ukraine Weapons Tracker accounts, which were engaged in counting losses in the NWO zone, stopped working , and the Caliber Obscura project recently announced its imminent closure. Despite the fact that Oryx and CO were actively working before the Ukrainian conflict, the distinctive feature of all three was the biased presentation of information, distortion of statistics, smoothing of angles when covering Ukrainian losses and savoring the losses of the Russian Armed Forces.

Perhaps the closure of these projects is due to the end of the fiscal year in the United States in October , or perhaps due to the redistribution of the budget for media support for Ukraine, which is gradually weakening. In any case, there are still a huge number of Twitter accounts working in the interests of the West, which means work in this field is an unplowed field.

New military aid package from Germany

Germany announced a new package of military assistance for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine . In addition to the supplied armored vehicles and uniforms, new deliveries of air defense systems are planned. This will include one IRIS-T SLM air defense system . The West expects a repeat of the winter strikes of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities, and therefore we should expect that this is not the last batch of Western air defense systems supplied to Ukraine.

About the main opponents of support for Ukraine in the EU

Hungary and Slovakia may vote against the adoption of a new aid package for Ukraine. This was reported by Politico with reference to an unnamed European diplomat. According to the publication, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that foreign support for Ukraine does not work, and his Slovak colleague Robert Fico pointed to the problem of Ukrainian corruption.

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

(Other images at link.)

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THE EU CANNOT FULFILL ITS PROMISE TO SEND MILLIONS OF PROJECTILES TO UKRAINE
Oct 26, 2023 , 1:24 pm .



The European Union (EU) has only contributed to exacerbating the war in Ukraine with its logistical and financial support. In addition to allocating $22 billion in military aid, it has also promised to supply one million projectiles to the Slavic country.

However, the provision of such a quantity of ammunition could be an empty promise with a view to continuing to fuel the conflict and maintain the illusion of support, and thus use Ukraine to weaken Russia.

The initial plan was for the bloc to commit to delivering artillery shells to Ukraine over the course of 12 months by drawing on its reserves and placing joint orders. However, other sources point out that EU members risk not being able to provide Kiev with what was promised and are calling for the deadline to be extended.

In recent months, several reports indicate that both the United States and the EU are struggling to provide Ukraine with much-needed ammunition against Russia, even if the efforts are in vain due to the very high military capabilities of the Russian military.

Meanwhile, fears that Kiev may receive less collaboration from its Western backers have been fueled by US President Joe Biden's decision to eliminate aid, under a funding bill earlier this month, to avoid a government shutdown.

It is also not ruled out that the current conflict between Israel and Hamas could affect the volume of intervention in Ukraine, taking into account that for the United States the Zionist occupation regime is a key and symbiotic ally of its foreign policy.

https://misionverdad.com/la-ue-no-puede ... es-ucrania

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Another false dawn? Or does the Trump factor assure us that the United States will quietly slip out of Ukraine?
October 27, 2023

The spin-masters at BBC were working overtime a couple of days ago to put a good face on the election of Mike Johnson as House Speaker. Their guest political analyst explained to the BBC audience that Johnson’s links with Trump are greatly exaggerated. Yesterday morning’s Financial Times took a more serious view of the situation, identifying Johnson squarely as a “Trump ally” and reminding us of his vote back in 2020 in the Electoral College to overturn Biden’s victory. Considering that Johnson has consistently voted against any further aid to Ukraine, in line with Trump’s thinking, the FT is preparing its readership for the second shoe to drop. In a separate FT Magazine article yesterday reviewing journalist Sylvie Kauffmann’s new book Les Aveuglés (‘The Blinded Ones’), the argument was made that the re-imposition of Russian control over Ukraine will be no big deal.

I will deal with Kauffmann further on. But first let us just consider what the installation of Mike Johnson likely means for the war in Ukraine. He has already made it clear that the House will not proceed with Biden’s call to package aid to Ukraine together with aid to Israel, with funds to improve defense of the U.S. southern borders from illegal migrants, and with several other contentious appropriations in a single bill. Now, the various elements in Biden’s proposed legislation will be dealt with separately, with first priority given to helping Israel.

We cannot say with certainty that Johnson will succeed in preventing any further funds going to Ukraine, because a strong majority of both chambers supports Ukraine. But we may assume that any further aid to Ukraine will be substantially lower than Kiev has hoped for. We may assume there will be major cuts to continued funding of the entire pension system and payroll of state employees in Ukraine, which many representatives find particularly repugnant at a time when U.S. finances are greatly stretched, when the national debt is rising to dangerous limits and when needy Americans are being overlooked as a result of curtailed welfare programs.

Now what would cut-off of funding for the Ukrainian government payroll mean? It would be a good prompt for there to be a regime change movement within the Kiev establishment. Zelensky’s primary utility has been as deliverer of a cornucopia of Western financial assistance as well as military hardware. If you take this away, all that is left of Mr Zelensky is a deliverer of Ukrainian males to their slaughter on the battlefield in hopeless offensive maneuvers which he ordered at the instigation of Washington.

Note that while American’s continued assistance to Ukraine is placed in doubt by the new constellation of power on Capitol Hill, with Trump’s hard right taking the whip in hand, there is also a revolt taking place in Europe. Hungary’s Viktor Orban is now joined by the newly elected prime minister of Slovakia Fico in publicly declaring opposition to further sanctions on Russia and on further arms deliveries to Ukraine. We heard this loud and clear yesterday at the gathering of EU leaders at a summit in Brussels. Since the EU budgetary laws require unanimity of all member states, the stated opposition of these two puts all the promises of Borrell, of von der Leyen to keep supporting Kiev “as long as it takes” on hold.

The prospect of an early end to the war in Ukraine under Moscow’s terms rises by the day. It is buoyed by domestic political conflict, power struggles within the USA, within Europe in the jockeying for position ahead of general elections on both continents in 2024. The undeniable failure of Kiev’s counter-offensive that began on 4 June is surely one important factor. But greater still was the unforeseeable outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war and threat of a regional war in the Middle East with devastating economic consequences for the West. This has provided a convenient diversion from the bleating of Kiev for help and papers over an admission of Russia’s superiority in men and hardware on the field of battle.

From these obvious facts, I am obliged to add the following conclusion: If indeed Kiev fails militarily and politically in the days ahead for lack of material aid from the West, it will not be thanks to the efforts of our feeble anti-war movement and to the intellectuals off and on campuses who have countered the lies about Russian “aggression” with well documented historical analysis of the sources of the conflict. It will be due to the calculations of self-interest and also of national interest by politicians in the West on two continents, with the accent on the USA.

*****

The review article in The Financial Times of Sylvie Kauffman’s latest book has the title “The west appeased Putin once. They’ll do it again.” Of course the looming “appeasement” is over the fate of Ukraine, which the author assumes will move back into the Russian orbit. The take-away of reviewer Simon Kuper is:

I finished her book feeling that, yes, western leaders were often blind to Putin. And like him, they treated eastern Europeans as second-tier nations that needn’t be consulted. But in appeasing Russia from 2008 to 2022 westerners were also pursuing their interests. I suspect they’ll do it again.

Not having read Les Aveuglés, I cannot say if the concluding paragraph in the review was taken from Kauffmann or if it was the contribution of the review author. But its inclusion in this featured review in the FT tells us clearly that the viciously anti-Russian newspaper is appealing to the cynicism of its readership in finding a tolerable spin on what they will see as the unfavorable denouement to the war in Ukraine.

Since the west won’t bring down Putin, it will have to live with an imperialist Russia. It learnt from 1945 to 1990 that it can, even as it knows that eastern Europe cannot. When British soldier Fitzroy Maclean was fretting in 1942 about postwar Yugoslavia going communist, Winston Churchill asked him, “Do you intend to make your home in Yugoslavia after the war?” No, Maclean responded. “Neither do I,” said Churchill. Substitute Ukraine for Yugoslavia, and traces of that western attitude linger: no longer blind, just selfish.

So much for the 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers and officers who will have died for nothing thanks to the West prolonging the war with escalation after escalation of military supplies.

For those who are unfamiliar with Sylvie Kauffmann, she has a substantial biography in Wikipedia. What is most relevant for our purposes is her longstanding position at the top of the editorial committee at Le Monde, the newspaper of French intellectuals that like all once Left-leaning publications is now borderline Neocon in its views on global politics. She was once published frequently in The International Herald Tribune, later renamed The International New York Times (now simply The New York Times) by the acquirer of that Paris-based paper. She also appears from time to time in the FT with op-ed articles.

I have followed Kauffmann over the years with a certain contempt for what I saw as her complacency or garden variety intellectual laziness. See my essay “Push-Back to Sylvie Kauffmann’s op-ed page essay ‘How Europe can help Kiev’ in The International New York Times,” p.91 ff in Does Russia Have a Future? (2015). However, if the latest FT review is correct, this time she may have done proper due diligence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/10/27/ ... f-ukraine/

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SITREP 10/27/23: Ukraine's Prospects Dim as Russian Gains Grow

SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER
OCT 27, 2023

There are several important Russian breakthroughs in Avdeevka, which are now being bitterly confirmed by Ukrainian sources. It’s now without doubt that both sides have gone “all in” and Avdeevka has in fact become the de facto central battlefield to define the latter part of this year.

Before I wasn’t certain whether Avdeevka may just be a ruse or misdirection from Russian command, or perhaps even a ‘testing of the waters’ just to see if it’s worth committing a large force there, sort of how Ugledar was in early 2023. They never meant Ugledar to be a massive “all in” committed operation, unless the early tests proved that Ukrainian defenses there were weak.

But here, it has become clear that Russia has gone all in and will not stop until it’s captured, no matter how stiff the Ukrainian defense is. In short, Avdeevka is set to become the new Mariupol, Lisichansk-Severodonetsk, and Bakhmut.

But some have correctly pointed out that there’s actually another, more distant battle which Avdeevka resembles much more closely. That of 2015’s Debaltsevo—famed for its unprecedented defeat of Ukraine’s JFO/ATO troops in what became one of the first big ‘cauldrons’ which placed the term on the map for a new generation of would-be armchair generals and war historians.



This February 2015 battle had a closer size to that of Avdeevka and similar smaller troop groupings, compared to the monster groupings that ended up partaking in battles like Bakhmut. The shape and troop dispositions are even similar. Then too, Novorossiyan troops stifled the AFU from cross artillery barrages, inflicting grave losses and forcing a retreat as Novorossiyan forces pushed in from the outskirts with constant squeezing pressure.



Similarly, it had one main supply route, the Bakhmut Highway, which led in a northwesterly direction toward Bakhmut, and which Novorossiyan troops similarly began to bring into a pincer and under fire control, forcing the AFU to retreat in panic.

Of course everything is harder now in Avdeevka as there have been many more years of fortifications and unprecedented financial NATO support as well as full societal mobilization giving an endless stream of reserves to replenish losses.

But so far, Russian forces are succeeding in the same maneuver once carried out in Ilovaisk and Debaltsevo: pushing in from both south and north of Avdeevka at the same time to bring the supply route under tighter restriction.

So what are the new advancements?

Firstly and most importantly, there are some key, confirmed advancements from the southern district this time—which truly gives an indication that the jaws are closing. A couple fields were captured about Opytne, but some have it even slightly further than the below visualization:





Russian forces are narrowing the ring around Avdeevka.

According to Come and See, the Russian army has again launched an offensive both north and south of the Avdeevsky fortified area in the DPR.

“In the south, Russian units are advancing from Yasinovataya. The enemy is rolling back,” the source noted.

According to him, the forward speed has increased and can be up to 2 km in this direction.

There is also a direct attack on Avdiivka itself. Russian and Ukrainian artillery are in full swing.

The liberation of Avdiivka is important not only strategically but also psychologically. From there, a significant part of the attacks on the civilian population and civilian infrastructure of Donetsk are carried out.

Other sources claim success on the direct southerly and easterly direction. For instance in the ‘Royal Hunt’ fortification, Russian forces are said to have made headway, and in the east Russian forces reportedly have been fighting for the Filtration Station, which is here:



On the northern front, several Ukrainian accounts have now dispelled rumors that the Slag Heap is still in the ‘gray zone’ and have confirmed it is not only fully captured by Russian forces, but that the forces are even digging in there with their own positions, which means fire-control weaponry will certainly be brought to bear up there:



Some sources continue to state that Russian forces are actively storming the northern part of the Coke Plant, as well as clearing and digging into the area south of the Slag Heap—though this is not yet confirmed:





It’s important to recall many sources, particularly Rybar of late, tend to jump the gun, so these are still very preliminary bits of info that should be taken with a grain of salt.

At the minimum though, if Russian forces haven’t fully seized that southern part of the Heap, it is very likely to be a full gray zone with no Ukrainian presence there any longer.

Donetsk volunteer Elena Bobkova told UkrainaRU about the importance of control over the garbage heap for the capture of Avdeevka:

First, and most importantly, thanks to this control, our artillery penetrates through the city. Secondly, it is an excellent observation post that allows us to see everything around. Any movement around the city, any transfer of reserves and military units immediately becomes known to us. After that, at the identified points, our men begin to strike.

Third, the control of the waste pile is actually the beginning of the cleanup of the Avdeevsky coking plant, the largest factory of this profile in Europe in terms of area. Of course it is smaller than Azovstal, but the defense of Avdiivka is actually the defense of the coking plant. There is a garrison headquarters and warehouses with used fuel and lubricants.

At night all of Donetsk sees the glow on Avdeevka. It is the Russian air force and artillery that destroy the warehouses. If the defense of the coking plant collapses, the defense of Avdeevka will also collapse."

If Avdiivka is liberated, the artillery terror to which Yasinovataya, Makeevka and part of Donetsk have been subjected every day for a year and a half will cease

Here’s Rybar’s map at least showing the general directions of advancement, most significantly toward the filtration plant in the southeast and the Opytne direction from the southwest:



Julian Ropcke is once again in tatters:



Russia is said to be mercilessly pounding Avdeevka, and another recent frontline report confirms that the AFU suffers much higher losses than Russian forces, particularly at the current phase where Russia has shortened the lines and is not currently making huge armored assaults across open stretches of land.

A small glimpse—you can see 6 x Russian Su-25s heading to Avdeevka, a sign of how much simultaneous airpower is being utilized just on this one front: (Video at link.)


This is followed by many attack helicopters as well, which were reported to have made these shots: (Video at link.)


The Russian channel Vozhak Z who has been updating from the front writes another detailed post. By the way, it turns out this fighter is actually an award winning Russian writer named Dmitry Fillipov, who volunteered for the SMO.






Now he fights in the southern quarters of the ‘Royal Hunt’ section of Avdeevka. From today:

DAY SEVENTEEN

There was a thick fog from the very morning and all day. At 50 meters you can no longer see anything. The weather gave us all a break. There was a calm in our area, so unusual that it was a little annoying.

For two weeks in a row, even going to the toilet was an adventure, but then you go out into the street - and there is silence... Only in the north did heavy art continue to work somewhere in the Koksokhim area.

Today was time to think about everything that was happening. Objectively, the situation is such that from the north the railway is in a gray zone. Delivery of BC through it is impossible. The road through Lastochkino is under our fire control.

I think we'll get them. It is already clear to everyone that we will not stop. This is clear to us. This is clear to the enemy. They still have enough strength, the battle will be difficult, but deep down the crests already know that they will lose Avdeevka. And we know that they will not give up, they will not leave on their own. Therefore, we will encircle them and kill everyone who resists. And they will kill us as much as they can. This is how this war goes.

Do I feel sorry for them? No. They killed and injured my friends, they want to kill me every day. I don't feel sorry for them. Although, for the most part, the people who stand against us are not rabid Nazis, but ordinary Hataskrayniks who were forcibly driven to slaughter.

But if you look at everything in its entirety, it was they who brought Ukraine to its current state. That same silent majority who don’t care about Bandera, or the Russians, or the USA - as long as their farm, kindergarten, pigs are not touched, as long as they don’t run out of vodka and lard, and at least the grass doesn’t grow.

They didn’t care about the Maidan, about the shelling of Donetsk and Lugansk, about the genocide of the Russian population, about the murders of children, women and the elderly, about Azov’s torture, about language bans, about the split in faith... And then it turned out that they couldn’t sit it out that you have to take a machine gun and die for the interests and goals of NATO.

And then they hated us, with a fierce, terrible hatred. Because their little farmstead world collapsed. Because this war reminds them every day of their cowardice, weakness and silence. And in their anger they blame us for everything, because they are afraid to look in the mirror and ask themselves uncomfortable questions.

And we, of course, will win. We know that. And they know it. And this makes them hate us even more.

My call sign is Leader!

Victory will be ours!

PS. Frequency 149.200, call Volga, you will stay alive. Otherwise, we will come and kill everyone who holds weapons in their hands.

He confirms that the rail is under fire control, and more importantly that the ‘road through Lastochkino’ is also under fire control. This is the one and only main supply route we’ve seen on so many maps now:



One analyst has written up a detailed deep dive on those actual supply routes, and what can be expected—I encourage you to read it here.

He highlights the following: orange is the main supply route, while brown are the secondary routes:



As you can see, the orange MSR coming from the northern part of Avdeevka toward Lastochkino is the only accessible MSR. This is a paved road which can move much heavier equipment and is not as affected by weather, i.e. sludge and mud.

The brown lines represent small dirt roads which can be used for certain things, but particularly in the wet boggy weather of the present time, they could be impassable.

But one key development I’ve noted is that many of the top Ukrainian accounts are becoming absolutely exasperated and flat out tired of the overly-optimistic pro-Ukrainian cheerleaders, who continue to spout unfounded claims about Russian losses and Ukraine’s ‘easy’ victory in Avdeevka, etc.

Here’s one such long NAFO post, censuring fellow NAFO bots for their constant, exhausting stream of unhelpful positivism. Even big names like AFU reserve officer Tatarigami are sick of it. Here he points to the very real threat of Avdeevka’s MSR being cut:



Another NAFO bot points out the significance of Avdeevka, which in his opinion is even higher than that of Bakhmut:



This highlights something being echoed by other analysts, like Russell Bentley here: (Video at link.)

“Avdeevka is a very strategic position—when it falls, the whole Donbass front will shatter like glass.”

The reason I highlight this is because one thing that must be noted is how significant even psychologically Avdeevka’s fall would be at this very crucial time. Recall that, after the hugely failed summer counteroffensive, Zelensky is now on the ropes. Ukrainian support is heavily waning all around the globe, particularly with the Israeli situation heating up. Zelensky’s own support is now heavily waning, as a new survey showed that Ukrainian citizens no longer support him, though they continue to show heavy support for the AFU military in general.

With elections potentially coming up, and with other key inflection points for Ukraine’s support—like the situation in the U.S. House of Reps, and whether new aid will be decided on, etc.—this is all an extremely critical time for Ukraine. Perception management is at its absolute highest and Ukraine cannot risk even the slightest further degradation of its perception.

Another loss will come as a major blow that will demonstrate to Western audiences that it’s no longer worth it to financially support Ukraine because any long-hoped-for victory is simply impossible at this point.

That’s why I believe the fall of Avdeevka could be a major unraveling blow that will dictate the entire next phase of the SMO, potentially to a catastrophic bent for Ukraine in general.

And the Ukrainian leadership recognizes this, which is why there are repeated reports of Zelensky going ‘all out’ in sending reinforcements there. One report said that the Avdeevka garrison is to be immediately ballooned from around 8-10k men to 30k+. That would be entering Bakhmut levels of troop commitments. But the problem is, the AFU is already in a far more perilous situation here than they were in Bakhmut.

The reason is Bakhmut had two solid MSRs, represented in yellow below:
.


With a few more decent secondary routes in green.

And it took Russian forces a long time before they could get reliable fire control on either of those. But Avdeevka with its single reliable MSR is already in a far more troubled state than even Bakhmut was toward its last month, which is why Avdeevka much more closely resembles Debaltseve, which didn’t last long.

I do think Avdeevka can last a lot longer simply owing to the way it’s fortified and undergirded with subterranean structures, but it will still end up turning into a terrible bloodbath for the AFU.

A last frontline report which emphasizes some of these logistical issues, and how Russian logistics lines are far shorter and more manageable:



***
Elsewhere, Russia has been advancing pretty much on every front. This includes taking back territory in Zaporopzhye, such as Verbove and Priyutne just east of there. The only one area where the AFU continues to have some minor success anymore is in the Klescheyevka area south of Bakhmut, particularly in recent days in Andreevka, where they’ve crossed the railroad tracks.

However, this is made up for by Russian counter-advances in the northwest of Bakhmut, Berkhovka area.

Advances were reported in the Kupyansk direction by Ukrainian accounts themselves:


Rumors continue to swirl of huge Ukrainian losses in the general Kharkov-Kupyansk region, at least 60-100 dead per day. That may not sound like a lot, but that’s just for that one front. If you add Avdeevka, Rabotino, Bakhmut, and Kherson, it’s likely 300-500 per day once again, at the minimum, if not more.

They've disappeared

The Kupyan direction is rapidly becoming a "black hole" for Ukrainian soldiers. Once there, after some time they stop contacting each other - and then their relatives start bombarding the command of their units with questions.

The command does not report their deaths - their relatives simply receive the dry wording "missing in action".

Everyday there are new posts on internal Ukrainian boards about missing relatives in this direction:









In fact there’ve been more and more citizen’s protests. I posted a video of one last time, now there’s another one in Odessa from family members and wives of soldiers who haven’t gotten a rotation since the start of the SMO: (Video at link.)



The rotation problem is confirmed by a new post from the Avdeevka garrison of the AFU. They congratulate their soldiers on their heroism, but in doing so acknowledge they haven’t been rotated once since the beginning of the war:



It’s gotten so bad that today the NYTimes was even forced to finally cover it with an article:


https://archive.ph/jEP9E

This piece revolves around the mass amounts of missing soldiers from the 81st brigade, which happens to be fighting in Belgorovka, right next to Kremennaya, and is therefore part of the larger Kharkov-Kupyansk front.

The one interesting admission in the article is what appears to be the first ever, public and Western acknowledgment of the vast amount of Ukrainian prisoners that Russia holds:



Recall that when Russian sources reported figures from 10-19k, pro-Ukrainian accounts laughed at the “absurdity” of it while simultaneously, several Ukrainian officials released videos admitting that the amount of Russian POWs they hold is so low as to preclude proper exchanges from even being made, with Ukraine often requesting 20 of theirs for a single Russian soldier.

Now we have the first ever “official” and authoritative Western confirmation that Russia holds over 10,000. Recall what I wrote about POW ratios; they scale to other types of casualties/losses. So now that we have confirmation of the vast disparity of POWs between Russia-Ukraine, we can safely conclude that the KIA/casualty disparities are likewise massive.

A last note:

There continue to be reports of clashes in the north of Kharkov. If you’ll recall, Volchansk is the exact route I gave in the last writeup as a potential for Russian incursion for a second front. Now Russia has been shelling it:



Such ‘softening up’ shelling often precedes some type of advance or incursion. It’s interesting given all the rumors of mass Russian troop buildups there. I don’t think we should expect anything quite yet, but it continues to be slightly eyebrow-raising, and we’ll have to keep a close watch on that sector.

(more...)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sit ... -prospects

[blindpig]

Ukraine negotiating with itself
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 10/29/2023



This weekend a new summit is being held in Malta for what Ukraine hopes will be the consolidation of its peace plan as the only possible way to resolve the war with Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky's plan calls for the unilateral withdrawal of Russian troops from the entire territory of Ukraine according to its 1991 borders, that is, including Crimea, as the starting point of a roadmap that also provides for an international court to judge crimes. Russians, protection of Ukrainian energy infrastructure and Russian compensation for all damage caused by the war.

The plan, which calls for a complete capitulation of the Russian Federation even though Ukraine is not militarily or politically in a position to do so, is further proof that it is nothing more than an attempt to force its partners to pressure Russia in such a way that the war cannot continue. The lack of realism, taking into account that Moscow has proven to be neither economically as weak nor politically isolated as Kiev would like, makes Zelensky's roadmap not a proposal for peace, but for war. Ukraine demands that Russia return all territories, not only those captured since February 24, but also those where Kiev denies there is any civil conflict and where it has repeatedly promised the population harsh collective punishment and repression. politics once it regained its control.

Over the 20 months since the start of the Russian military intervention, Moscow has repeatedly shown its willingness to negotiate, even sacrificing part of its initial objectives. In March 2022, just a month after the invasion, Russia was willing to abandon all territories captured since February 24 in exchange for Ukraine's neutrality and the renunciation of Crimea and Donbass. The proposal was rejected since the negotiations broke down in such a way that, since that moment, it has not been possible to resume diplomatic channels. However, even in a position of weakness after the loss of the territories of Kharkiv and the city of Kherson, Moscow once again showed itself open to a negotiation, which was again rejected by Ukraine. Aware that his statements of demanding the complete capitulation of Russia and of the population that, for 9 years, has shown its rejection of Kiev, in many cases with weapons in hand (tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens have fought or are fighting in the Donbass militias or now in the Russian army against the Ukrainian Armed Forces), Ukraine has actively repeated that Russia is not invited to those summits in which it tries to impose an absolutely unviable plan at the international level.

This week's summit has been completely overshadowed both by the situation on the front, where Ukraine is not achieving the position of strength with which it hoped to be able to pressure Russia, and by the international situation. Ukraine is no longer the only priority for its allies and is forced to compete with Israel, a priority ally of the United States, for military assistance and media prominence. Without any possibility of progress towards peace or a path to resuming diplomatic channels, even some countries that had aspired to mediate between kyiv and Moscow have given up attending the summit. This is the case of China, a hard blow for the propaganda of Ukraine, which hoped to show with these meetings the Russian political and diplomatic isolation, but also of Brazil, which will only participate electronically.

In a public relations exercise that is increasingly gaining less media relevance, Ukraine will continue to negotiate with itself a resolution to the war that ignores reality and the internal conflict that sparked the crisis that finally led to the current war. However, the explicit prohibition by Zelensky's decree of negotiating with the Government of Vladimir Putin and the outright refusal to include Russia in the discussions on the peace plan are not incompatible with the contacts that, in the shadows, continue to occur. A few weeks ago, the American media confirmed that communication between Russia and the United States has not been broken either at an official or unofficial level, with contacts between the security services, among other things, to guarantee that the conflict does not extend beyond the Ukrainian territory, possibly the only aspect on which Washington and Moscow agree. Now, The Washington Post focuses on the direct and indirect contacts between the two countries at war, revelations that only confirm what could be recognized with the daily monitoring of the war.

Throughout the Donbass war, direct communication even between commanders in the trenches allowed for prisoner exchanges and deliveries of wounded or deceased soldiers. Aside from these verbal agreements directly in the trenches, several organizations or individual mediators participated in this type of initiative. With former comrades fighting on both sides of the front, in many cases in command positions due to their experience, the Afghanistan veterans' organizations played a relevant although unknown role, which also includes veterans of the wars that have occurred in the area. post-Soviet since the dissolution of the USSR.

The reality of the current war, much broader, more intense and dangerous than the Donbass conflict, demands another type of mediation, although the need to maintain certain lines of communication remains. It is not necessary for an American media to reveal that there are shadow negotiations for prisoner exchanges or deliveries of the bodies of deceased soldiers. The case of the great prisoner exchange, which included the handover of the Azov high command to Turkey - an agreement subsequently broken by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who months later handed over Denis Prokopenko and the rest of his guests to Volodymyr Zelensky - shows that the Communication has not been completely broken, but also that much more powerful mediators are now needed.

“The countries, now declared enemies fighting a bitter war, are managing to negotiate some fundamental humanitarian issues: the exchange of prisoners of war and the bodies of soldiers; the passage of ships from Ukrainian Black Sea ports; and, more recently, the return of Ukrainian children from Russia,” explains The Washington Post . None of those examples should be surprising.

Prisoner exchanges are a common interest of both countries, which do not wish to wait for the end of the conflict, as provided for by the laws of war as an obligation of the parties, for the return of their soldiers, whom they need in the forehead. “The exchanges of prisoners, as well as those of bodies of dead soldiers, take place primarily in the Sumi region of northeastern Ukraine, the only part of the Russo-Ukrainian border where Russian forces are not actively trying to advance,” states the article, which even adds the frequency with which these direct contacts occur in which the Russian and Ukrainian authorities observe while the International Committee of the Red Cross directs the exchange. “About twice a month, refrigerated vans full of bodies are driven to the border by Russian and Ukrainian emergency services personnel, who unload some bodies and reload others,” he explains. The periodicity accounts for the continuous and possibly very high level of casualties.

The case of the few ships that now transit the Black Sea is also an obvious example: no company would risk its ships or its personnel if there were no minimum safety guarantees. Russia has not attacked any of those ships. Finally, there are already known cases of children evacuated from the war zone being handed over to their Ukrainian relatives through international mediation, something that, according to the article, occurs across the border between Ukraine and Belarus, which is safer than the Russian-Ukrainian one, now “on a semi-regular basis.”

The Washington Post mentions the Red Cross - obviously in the case of prisoner exchanges -, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as mediators in these aspects in which it is still possible to dialogue. All of them are, in one way or another, allied countries of the United States, but they have distanced themselves from the official discourse of Washington and Brussels, which qualifies them for the work of contact between the two countries, which is generally referred to, according to the media American, to those issues that Russia and Ukraine have not been able to resolve directly. That is precisely the main revelation of the article: the confirmation that direct dialogue between kyiv and Moscow is maintained, sometimes without even the need for mediation from other countries or international organizations. “There have been some publicized meetings between Ukrainian and Russian officials in Istanbul, but the talks are generally not announced and the total number is unknown,” indicates the outlet, which quotes Mikhailo Podolyak as stating that “if we can't do it ourselves, we will.” "We fix it." Only in that case, the participation of external mediators is necessary.

The conclusion is clear: there is direct and indirect communication between Russia and Ukraine, capable of dealing with economic issues, managing prisoner exchanges and the delivery of deceased soldiers, and also dealing with much more delicate issues such as the return of children to their families. This excludes only political issues from the topics on which it is possible to dialogue. For The Washington Post , which relies exclusively on Ukrainian sources for its article, “given Russia's brutal attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government and steal its territory, there has been little room for negotiation to stop the war.” The media prefers to forget that it was Ukraine and not Russia that used the negotiations to gain time and ultimately reject any agreement and subsequently prohibited the resumption of dialogue. All this with the explicit approval of Ukraine's allies - people like Gerhard Schroeder or Boris Johnson go further and affirm that the rejection of the agreement came from Western countries - and with the consequence of leading the conflict to an eternal struggle that continues and in which there is no end in sight. For Ukraine it is, without a doubt, much more comfortable to continue negotiating with itself and in the presence of its allies instead of seeking a way to resolve the conflict.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/10/29/ucran ... more-28458

Google Translator

******

Chronicle of a special military operation for October 28, 2023
October 28, 2023
Rybar

Large-scale artillery duels are taking place in the vicinity of Avdeevka . The enemy, with the support of aviation, launches massive attacks on Russian positions near the previously occupied waste heap . The Russian Aerospace Forces, in turn, are covering the Avdeevsky coke plant, which is adjacent to the waste heap a little to the south, with fire. Colleagues from the NgP RaZVedka channel report that at night the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine evacuated headquarters from Avdievka in anticipation of active actions by the Russian Armed Forces.

In the Kherson direction, Russian military personnel managed to intercept another boat with a Ukrainian landing force in the Dach area . The Ukrainian Armed Forces also launched another foray towards Peschanivka , but were unsuccessful. At the same time, the enemy continues to hold a small bridgehead in Krynki .

In the Orekhovsky sector, Ukrainian formations attacked the positions of the Russian Armed Forces somewhat west of Rabotino , but retreated under artillery fire. Fighting also continues near Verbovoy , where Russian fighters managed to destroy at least three Leopards in one day.



The situation on the front line and combat operations

In the Starobel direction, the situation has not undergone significant changes: Russian troops continue to attack strongholds of Ukrainian formations along the entire front line, and the enemy is trying to strike back. However, neither side managed to achieve visible success. In addition, the RF Armed Forces worked at temporary deployment points of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Izyum area .


In the Soledar direction, Ukrainian formations reduced offensive activity on the southern flank of the Bakhmut defense . Currently, the baking sheets are being regrouped and rotated. Russian troops are striking places where the Ukrainian Armed Forces are concentrated.


In the Donetsk direction, in the Avdeevsky fortified area , enemy artillery is actively working, which, with the support of aviation, is striking Russian positions in the area of ​​​​the previously occupied waste heap. Following them, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to counterattack, but so far to no avail. The Russian Aerospace Forces, in turn, respond with strikes at the Avdeevsky coke plant right next to the waste heap just to the south.

According to colleagues from the NGP RaZVedka channel , at night the enemy command evacuated headquarters from Avdeevka, realizing that the Russian Armed Forces were only planning to intensify the offensive in this area.


There are no significant changes at the Vremevsky site . Russian military personnel are consolidated in previously occupied positions in northeastern Priyutny . New videos from strongholds of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which the Russian Armed Forces managed to recapture, are being distributed online. Artillery duels continue along the contact line.


In the Orekhovsky sector, the intensity of hostilities decreased somewhat. However, attempts to break through with small forces in certain areas continue. Today, the assault group of the 3rd brigade “Spartan”, which began to be actively used on the front line, tried to wedge into the defense between Kopanya and Rabotino . As a result of concentrated artillery fire and the ATGM crew of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division, the attack was repulsed and one Bradley infantry fighting vehicle was destroyed. One member of the 3rd Spartan brigade was captured.


The Ukrainian Armed Forces' attacks on the Kopani-Rabotino line have been ongoing for several days. In just one area west of Rabotino, three Leopard tanks and four American Bradleys were knocked out in three days. At the same time, to the east along the LBS between Rabotino and Verbovoy, the activity of the Ukrainian Armed Forces continues. During the day, three Leopards were destroyed in landings. One of them was captured by operators of an unmanned rapid reaction unit (RUB) of the Russian Armed Forces.


In the Kherson direction, another group of Ukrainian formations was discovered crossing the Dnieper in the Dach area . Russian military personnel managed to drive away the boat with the next landing, but similar attempts to land reinforcements for the group on the left bank occur regularly. Previously, the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters who had penetrated the left bank again tried to advance to Peschanivka , but were unsuccessful. However, they still manage to hold a bridgehead in Krynki .

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas
In the Kursk region, on the outskirts of the village of Popovo-Lezhachi, a Ukrainian drone with an explosive device crashed. It was destroyed on approach and was unable to cause any damage.

In the Belgorod region, local sources reported an artillery duel in the Shebekinsky district, but any details of the event are unknown.


During the day, Ukrainian formations again fired from cannon and rocket artillery at Donetsk , Makeevka and the Yasinovatsky district. Civilian infrastructure was damaged, but there were no casualties.


Over the past night, Ukrainian formations fired at at least eight settlements on the left bank of the Kherson region using cannon artillery . Nova Kakhovka , Kakhovka , Radensk , Korsunka , Podstepnoe , Krynki , Dnepryany and Gornostaevka were under fire . From morning to evening today, the enemy fired about 40 shells at Gornostaevka alone. At the moment, there has been no information about casualties or damage. Yesterday, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched strikes on seven settlements: in Aleshki , one civilian was seriously injured, and he is receiving all the necessary medical care.

Political events
On the beginning of the summit on the peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian conflict in Malta

Information has appeared online about the start of the next round of negotiations to resolve the Ukrainian conflict. This time the event is taking place in Malta . Previously, similar meetings were held in Saudi Jeddah and Danish Copenhagen . Despite the fact that the summit is presented by its organizers as an attempt to “develop a way to peacefully resolve the Ukrainian conflict,” in fact, the main goal of this meeting is an attempt to join the countries of the Global South to the anti-Russian coalition. In particular, this is indicated by the fact that no one invites the Russian delegation to these meetings. Let us recall that the last summit in Jeddah was remembered for the fact that shortly before it was held, the PRC delegation was invited as a participant , which during the negotiations promoted a relatively moderate version of the peace treaty.

In fact, the previous meeting ended in nothing, and therefore we can hardly expect significant progress in Malta: the Russian and Chinese delegations will be absent from the meeting, and therefore the entire dialogue about peace will be interrupted into a continuous monologue; at the moment, the information background is not the most favorable for any diplomatic breakthrough on the Ukrainian issue - due to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Ukrainian agenda has actually faded into the background, and the image of the West, as the main beneficiary of Ukraine, has suffered greatly in the eyes of the countries of the “Global South” from -for active support of the Israeli side in the current conflict in the Middle East.

On the economic benefits of the United States from participation in the Ukrainian conflict

Previously, we examined an article from the Politico newspaper , which reported that the White House decided to change the rhetoric when justifying new financial spending on the needs of Ukraine. Let us recall that the US authorities, after the failure of the Ukrainian offensive, the gradual loss of interest in Ukraine among voters, the growing anti-Ukrainian opposition in Congress and a number of other reasons, decided to move to a more “rational” explanation of the American benefits from participation in this conflict. Americans are increasingly being promised the resuscitation of the American military industry, the emergence of new jobs and new economic growth. However, NBC News recently aired a story in which it was reported that the billions of dollars invested in the Ukrainian conflict had virtually no economic return. The number of jobs remained relatively small compared to the size of the overall industry. In addition, the process of rehabilitation of the military industry may take several years, which requires: training personnel; restore old production lines, or create new factories and workshops; wait for production to begin to affect the economy. The key problem is uncertainty - at the moment it is unknown how long the Ukrainian conflict will drag on and whether the United States will have requests for a high rate of military production in the coming years. In such conditions, the United States risks investing in “air.”

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 23-goda-2/

(Other images at link.)

Google Translator

*******

GORDON HAHN: ENDING THE NATO-RUSSIA UKRAINIAN WAR, UNTYING THE NATO-RUSSIA KNOT
OCTOBER 27, 2023

By Gordon Hahn, Website, 10/3/23

Introduction

Russia and the West are locked in a scorpions’ embrace in Ukraine that threatens to explode into a major European, even world war. The consequences of such a war would certainly be hundreds of thousands and likely millions of military casualties and civilian victims. Such a war could be easily escalate to a nuclear confrontation that would push the world into disease, starvation, chaos, and perhaps oblivion. Even without a larger war, the presence of five nuclear power plants in Ukraine risks a grave nuclear accident, and there are radicals on both the Russian but especially the Ukrainian side that might seek to construct a ‘dirty’ bomb or some other means for delivering a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon of mass destruction. Given these terrible dangers, there is a striking, criminal level of negligence in the nearly non-existent diplomatic efforts to end the NATO-Russia Ukrainian war.

Yet there are some very feasible ways, some already well-trodden paths, for putting an end to this conflict and restoring peace in Ukraine, Russia, and the West. Some are very simple: for example, talk.

Ceasefire First

The first order item is a ceasefire agreement that will stop the blood letting. An OSCE monitoring agreements and mission would control a no man’s land to create a broad ‘contact line’ separating the sides’ forces. The agreement should include mutual withdrawals in order to separate the forces and allow an OSCE Monitoring Mission to be deployed. All artillery pieces and mortars should be shuttered in OSCE controlled areas. All drone use will be banned, and only OSCE monitoring drones will be permitted to fly.

A more ambitious ceasefire plan could establish a UN peacekeeping force made up of peacekeeping troops from completely neutral countries from outside the region and that are not members of NATO, the CSTO, Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS, the Eurasian Economic Union, or European Union. Mexico, Malaysia, and Indonesia might be examples of candidates for such a mission. These peacekeeping troops would occupy the separation zone and have the right to intercept any diversionary groups sent by one side to attack the other.

Russian-Ukrainian treaty

Now that the Ukrainian Pandora’s box has been opened, there will be no peace in Europe or Russia until the Ukrainian question is resolved. The West has led Kiev down the road to destruction, and in order to save what remains of Ukraine the West, particularly Washington, and Ukraine must engage Russia in peace talks. In lieu of this, there are only two possible outcomes: Russia’s seizure of at least all Ukraine’s lands east of the Dnepr and along the Black Sea coast or a broader European war involving direct fighting between NATO, Russian, and perhaps other forces. The main cause of the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War was Washington’s and Brussels’ insistence on expansion of world history’s most powerful military bloc to Russia’s borders, especially to Ukraine. The Maidan revolt was cultivated by the West in order to achieve NATO expansion to Ukraine. Instead, it predictably sparked a reaction in southeastern Ukraine and Moscow, a civil war, and finally the ongoing larger Ukrainian war in which the West and Russia are poised to enter into conflict with each other, coming ever closer to that fateful day with each month’s escalations to new levels of violence and terror.

The genesis of NATO expansion was ‘lone superpower’ America’s unbridled post-Cold War ambitions to establish a U.S.-dominated ‘new world order.’ Moscow views the Maidan regime in Kiev as a dagger pointed by Washington at Russia’s heart. So for Moscow to be willing to engage in any peace talks, especially as Ukraine falters on the battlefield, is for Washington to make the first move and propose to sponsor and engage in ceasefire negotiations with Russia and Ukraine. Moscow will simply not trust or see any prospect for stability through direct talks with Kiev. Russian President Vladimir Putin knows who is calling the shots. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s recent statement that if Moscow proposes talks, Kiev will accept, and the U.S. will be right behind them signaled this dynamic as well as the curious antinomy of hubris and cowardice that prevails in Washington under the present administration. Something that limits hope that escalation of this war can be stopped, but let us forge ahead with the necessary, if misplaced optimism.

It is possible that Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy will balk at the idea of talks with Putin. After all, he is surrounded by ultra-nationalist and neofascist elements that bear a burning hatred for Russia and Russians and great ambitions to master Europe. But if West was able in March 2022 to convince Zelenskiy to end the Istanbul process talks and instead continue what obviously would have to be a supremely destructive war with Russia war, then it certainly can push Kiev to resume talks with Moscow. It is often said that Putin will never negotiate because he seeks restoration of the Soviet empire and domination over all Europe. This is an odd claim. Putin’s troops were with within 50 miles of Georgia’s capitol Tbilisi and had defeated the Georgian army in August 2008 Georgia-Russia Ossetiyan war, and yet he did not even consider taking the far easier opponent down in order to start his ‘rebuilding of the Soviet empire.’ Putin and Russians have neither the desire and know they lack the capability to dominate their neighbors. So talks are possible. The nut to crack is how to initiate them and what sorts of agreements with Moscow and Kiev are feasible.

Since NATO expansion was the cause of the conflict, the issue of NATO and Ukraine will be central to any peace settlement, and Washington calls the shots in NATO. Some noise was made a while back when a NATO official suggested Ukraine might trade Russian-occupied territories for NATO membership. NATO, by itself, will never forego its expansion to Ukraine. That decision can only come from higher up—from Washington. For that to happen it must be realized on the Potomac that Russia will never accept Ukraine in NATO even if it is offered all Ukraine east of the Dniepr. The only way Moscow would accept NATO in Ukraine is for Moscow’s full defeat in the Ukrainian war or an entirely new order having been installed in Moscow. By now it must be becoming clear to some in Washington that this is a bridge exceedingly too far and was never a realistic goal. More likely would be Russia taking all Ukraine east of the Dniepr and then offering all but the four oblasts plus Crimea back to Kiev in return for an international agreement on no NATO membership and Ukrainian neutrality. That level of Russian magnanimity regarding the West and Ukraine is a pipedream.

It is worth repeating: There will be no peace treaty signed by Russia that does not guarantee Ukraine’s neutrality. Therefore, for any proposal of a Russian-Ukrainian peace treaty to be viable it must stipulate that Kiev is a neutral state and will not join any military bloc. Moreover, NATO and the CSTO will be banned from carrying out any activity with the Ukrainian military. This treaty should have international status and be signed by Russia, Ukraine, NATO, and the UN. Regarding Ukraine’s territory and territorial integrity, Russia, should it choose, shall retain all territory it holds as of implementation of the ceasefire agreement. Ukraine’s future territorial integrity and any future exchange of territory agreed upon by Russia and Ukraine will be anchored in a separate treaty signed by both states, the OSCE, and the UN.

There have been some small, stumbling steps towards a framework that might form the foundation for a Russo-Ukrainian agreement. Kiev reportedly was forced to agree unofficially it would have to abandon its position of a withdrawal of all Russian troops from 1991 Ukraine’s territories at Saudi Arabia’s August 5-7 informal peace conference, As a result of its failing counter-offensive. The same day Russia’s presidential spokesman said Russia only “wants to control those territories fixed in its constitution” (“Russia wants to control territories fixed in its constitution — Kremlin spokesman,” TASS, 6 August 2023, https://tass.com/politics/1657225). This means that Ukraine would have to recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 4 October 2022 annexation of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson Oblasts. A further complicating factor is that Russian forces still not occupy all of these latter four regions. A point of compromise could be an agreement by Moscow to retain only the areas in those oblasts whch it occupies as of any ceasefire agreement and the beginning of peace talks. This would require amendments to Russia’s constitution, which is unlikely to be much of an obstacle for Putin to push through Federal Assembly’s two houses just as the amendments stipulating their accession were easily passed.

NATO-Russian treaty

NATO and Russia ought to sign a separate treaty along with Ukraine repeating and thus reinforcing the stipulation of Ukraine’s neutral status contained in the Russian-Ukrainian peace treaty outlined above. Under this kind of a more global treaty or in a separate agreement, Russia, the EU, the US, and the OSCE must hold negotiations on a treaty or set of treaties that would regulate the explosive situation in Moldova and its breakaway region of Transdnestria, including a withdrawal of Russian troops from Moldovan territory. The Moldovan Treaty or Treaties must stipulate Moldova’s neutral status and the Russian troop withdrawal. At the same time, a treaty between Moldova and breakaway Transdnestria and an amended Moldovan constitution should include Kishinev’s neutral and sovereign independent state status and afford Tiraspol and the Gagauz territory broad autonomy within the Moldovan state. After these treaties are signed and implemented, Russia will withdraw all its troops and weapons from Moldova, including Transdnestria. Beyond the more explicit statement on the inviolability of Moldova’s state sovereignty and independence, Kishinev would be obligated to sign a treaty with the OSCE pledging it will not seek to unify with Romania. It cannot be excluded that Russia will demand a treaty clause holding that NATO cannot expand to any more countries directly adjacent to its borders, as the issue is relevant for Georgia especially given August 2008 but also Azerbaijan and Georgia’s breakaway region of Abkhaziya, which Russia recognizes it and North Ossetiya as independent states. Moreover, the U.S. continues to poke around in Central Asia – witness the recent and first US-Central Asian summit – and NATO is establishing an office in Japan.

In addition, there must be a reaffirmation and strengthening of the OSCE’s commitment to the principle of non-interference of the organization’s member-states in the domestic politics of other member-states. Western commentators have made much of Russia’s violation of the Budapest Memorandum when it incorporated Crimea into the federation, as the memorandum had been signed by Moscow, Kiev, and the West as part of a deal exchanging Kiev’s surrender to Moscow of nuclear weapons on its territory inherited from the USSR for Moscow’s pledge to renounce its right to Crimea and honor Ukraine’s territorial integrity. What is lost on those who make such superficial comments is that the West egregiously violated the OSCE Founding Act’s Helsinki Accords’ stipulation that commits OSCE members from interfering in co-members politics. US senators, congressmen, deputy secretary of state, and billions of dollars spent to network anti-Yanukovych Ukrainians in the nurturing of the Maidan revolt committed violation of the OSCE’s mutual non-interference clause.

Reviving the Late Cold War Treaties and Security Architecture

More globally, the perestroika-era arms control and verification treaty architecture must be revived in order to restore strategic stability to Europe and central Eurasia. This would include NEW Start as well as new INF, CFE, ABM, and Open Skies agreements should be concluded and should be signed and adhered to by all NATO and CSTO members. The INF treaty and particularly the CFE treaty will have to be renegotiated and amended given the drastic shifts in the deployments of intermediate range missiles and conventional forces since the early 2000s and even more so since February 2022.

Conclusion

Thus, there is a multi-tier structure for reviving strategic stability in Europe: Russo-Ukrainian agreement, Russo-European agreements for eastern Europe and western Eurasia’s frozen conflicts, Russo-Western agreements on arms and mutual non-interference in domestic politics, and a more global infrastructure of interlocking strategic nuclear and conventional forces treaties for Russia and NATO member countries. These are the basic building blocks for any future stability in Europe, but at some point China will need to be brought into this or a similar understanding and security architecture for Asia.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2023/10/gor ... ssia-knot/

Well, that's nice....but I don't think this ends until there's a clear winner in the field who will then dictate terms.And I do not think that this can nor will drag on for years. It will be over by Spring, and even that's too long. Then perhaps we can get civilized again. And depend upon OSCE, gimme a break, they've shown their colors.

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In Gaza, more civilians died in 3 weeks than in the entire period of the North Military District in Ukraine
October 29, 13:00



During the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, more civilians have already died in three weeks than in a year and a half of the Northeast Military District on both sides of the conflict. In this case, the difference will continue to increase exponentially.

This quite clearly shows that the Russian Armed Forces are waging war very carefully, throughout the war, guided by the principle of minimizing civilian casualties, although the Russian Armed Forces certainly have all the tools to exterminate the civilian population in the style of Ukraine. But Russia does not fight like that, and this is a fundamental political decision that guides the army in its practical activities.

In many ways, these are the reasons for cheap bloody productions like Bucha or Kramatorsk, since in the absence of real war crimes with the mass murder of civilians, they have to be invented or staged independently in order to intimidate their own population and wage a propaganda war against Russia.

“For a world order based on rules,” this situation is typical. The United States tried with all its might to inflate the topic of “Russian war crimes,” while online they themselves are aiding Israel in carrying out the targeted mass extermination of the Palestinian civilian population.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8734174.html

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Who is Killing Foreign Mercenaries in Ukraine?
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 28, 2023
Kit Klarenberg


Daniel Burke, British mercenary in Ukraine.

It is a compelling explanation for why so many are dying far from the frontline, and why authorities seem keen to deceive even families of the fallen about their loved ones’ deaths.

On September 16, the body of Daniel Burke, a 36-year-old British mercenary active in Ukraine, was found just over one month after he vanished without a trace.

In an interview for a local British newspaper, while Burke remained missing, his mother claimed Ukrainian police found his apartment in Zaporizhzhia, where he was last seen, empty with no signs of a break-in, and the front door triple locked. Efforts to trace his movements via CCTV apparently proved fruitless.

Burke, a former British Army paratrooper, was reportedly “experienced in frontline combat, reconnaissance and rescue – skills which he was utilizing in Ukraine.” Following Russia’s operation, he immediately traveled to Kiev and had been in and out of the country ever since. Part of a foreign volunteer group known as the Dark Angels, which has received glowing media coverage and suffered several casualties in recent months, he allegedly only spent “a very short period fighting on the frontline,” before focusing on rescue and evacuation.

Burke’s body was discovered a week after the family of Jordan Chadwick, another British Army veteran active in Ukraine, revealed he had turned up dead in late June. Chadwick’s corpse was found in water, with his arms tied behind his back. An Australian YouTuber who previously fought in the country claims Chadwick drowned after being waterboarded in an initiation ceremony that went wrong. It was apparently devised by a fellow volunteer who was once part of Britain’s elite SAS.

There are indications that Chadwick’s body was moved after his death. Forensic examinations apparently show liquid found in his lungs, which does not match the water where he was found. His remains, like Burke’s, have been repatriated to Britain. Coroners’ inquests will now attempt to ascertain the truth about how the pair died — and why.

These investigations are likely to throw up extremely uncomfortable findings for state and non-state parties embroiled in the Ukraine proxy conflict. As we shall see, there has been a spate of mysterious killings of local and volunteer soldiers lately, which Kiev appears eager to conceal, or at least obfuscate. The question of why is an open and urgent one.

‘Save me’

The Daily Telegraph speculated that Burke and Chadwick may have died due to “vetting for service in Ukraine [being] almost non-existent, allowing a minority of bad actors in.” As such, its foreign legions “have their share of misfits and hot-heads,” some of whom might have murdered them over “petty” disputes. A volunteer told the outlet:

“There are guys who shouldn’t be here – some with criminal records, some with PTSD, and some with drug and alcohol problems or who use steroids.”

This analysis was echoed by a Conservative lawmaker, himself a former Grenadier Guardsman, who met Burke in Ukraine in 2022 and has raised his case in parliament. He told The Telegraph, “Any war can…attract those with psychiatric problems and people who just want to kill,” which “can create a rough, tough culture.”

There is no doubt the Ukraine proxy war is a magnet for violent, unhinged individuals. Investigations by The Grayzone’s Alex Rubinstein into some of these characters have exposed how they are frequently witnesses to if not personally responsible for hideous torture and murder of civilians and Russian POWs alike. It would be unsurprising if this sadistic climate boomeranged on them from time to time. There are reports of disliked foreign volunteers being unwittingly dispatched across minefields by local commanders, among other lethal punishments.

In the wake of Burke’s body being discovered, Richard Woodruff – a self-avowed “British Cossack volunteering in Ukraine” since June 2022 – declared he would no longer “be heading to the front lines.” His contacts in Kiev had warned he was a “target”, who would “turn up dead” if he returned:

“Part of me wants to continue regardless of the threat but I need to listen to the experts on this one and not put [Ukrainian] soldiers / foreign soldiers at risk having to save my ass.”

Woodruff didn’t specify the nature of these threats or who or what was making them. Yet, there have been numerous reports over 2023, universally ignored by the Western media, indicating Ukrainian soldiers on leave are likewise dying in shady circumstances. In April, local news outlets reported that a 22-year-old from Rivne had been killed in battle. Four months later, his family revealed he was in reality found dead on train tracks en route to Zaporizhzhya, where he was posted, after a 10-day leave.

His family expressed frustration that authorities had apparently uncovered no leads or evidence since his burial. They were simply told he fell from a moving train in the early hours, in a manner indicative of premeditated murder. Suspiciously, they were instructed not to open his coffin when it arrived at his home village. They did so anyway, finding he’d been viciously beaten all over, with many bones broken. These injuries are apparently inconsistent with falling from a train while conscious.

Just as dubiously, in June the corpse of a 40-year-old male was found in Kiev’s Kyoto Park, with severe head injuries. At the time of death, he was wearing a Ukrainian military uniform. Police refused to release any information but oddly and repeatedly “assured” local journalists he absolutely was not a soldier, despite his outfit.

Two months later, Vasyl Stetso, of the Uzhgorod military recruitment center, was found at military training grounds outside the city, similarly with fatal head injuries. Authorities have to date remained tightlipped about their investigation, although again, his death is classified as a premeditated murder.

Secret partisan armies?

Leaked documents reported on by The Grayzone indicate that since Russia’s operation in Ukraine, local security services have considered keeping an extremely close eye on the public and private movements and statements of the country’s “pro-Russian contingent” to be a “top priority”. However, the agency had little success in this regard, until British intelligence cutouts provided them with suitable technology. Leaked records of a secret meeting between the Odessa SBU’s deputy director and these cutouts show:

“Tracking and monitoring of devices played a key role in the conversation. [The SBU] have existing methods and capability to track phones but highlighted that they had no way to identify users. They mentioned that their capability often tracked Russian phones that led them to legitimate civilians. This is an area we can support. We discussed…alternate methods to track and monitor such as app-based technology, and they were visibly impressed and excited at the prospect.”

The existence of a “pro-Russian contingent” in Ukraine poses a significant problem for Kiev and its overseas backers, in every way. Such sympathies are so widespread that even the mainstream media has acknowledged the reality on occasion. In January, The Economist recorded how residents of “pro-Russian” Ukrainian territory liberated from Moscow’s control in the much-vaunted September counteroffensive “still miss the Russians.” The outlet forecasted a struggle for Zelensky’s government “to win back hearts and minds” in these areas.

There are multiple reports of civilians in contested territory refusing to flee in advance of Russian forces arriving, and rejecting Ukrainian government evacuation programs. In August, an Italian newspaper spoke to locals in Kupiansk. As one explained, when Moscow’s forces entered the region in 2022:

“More than half of [Kupiansk’s] 25,000 inhabitants went to Russia, or at least to the areas of Donbass dominated by the Russian army…The truth is that no one here intends to leave. Those who wanted to have already done it…There remain the elderly, the poor, the infirm and those who see Russians not as occupiers, but as liberators.”

Mercenaries also testify to encountering pro-Russian civilians in Ukraine. One fighter has said their profusion is “a really serious issue,” as they often assist Russian forces, “passing information to the enemy” and significantly complicating Kiev’s war effort. Whether this assistance now extends to partisan operations, to assassinate Ukrainian soldiers and foreign fighters among other incendiary acts, we do not know.

Nonetheless, it is a compelling explanation for why so many are dying far from the frontline, and why authorities seem keen to deceive even families of the fallen about their loved ones’ deaths. There may be many more examples of this phenomenon, actively concealed. Zelensky’s government is exerting ever-increasing pressure and control over local media. Meanwhile, Western journalists ignore these strange developments, despite their monomaniacal obsession with the war enduring largely untrammeled, which can only be regarded as suspicious.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/10/ ... n-ukraine/

[blindpig]

War, nationalism and the power of the extreme right
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 10/30/2023



On October 17, Sergey Sivojo died of natural causes unrelated to the war, a name that may be unknown, but who in 2020 starred in a significant episode for understanding Ukraine's relationship with Donbass, the real power of the nationalist extreme right and Zelensky's intentions since he came to power. Sivojo, a native of Donbass, where he still had family in 2014 when the war broke out, was known for his anti-war activism, although from the limitations of starting from pro-Ukrainian positions that always ignored the rejection of the population of Donetsk and Lugansk to the Kiev Government. Like much of Zelensky's team, Sivojo also came from show business. From the position of creative director of Kvartal 95, he was briefly appointed advisor to the National Security and Defense Council, a key institution in the context of the war in Donbass and the process of militarization of politics and imposition of nationalist discourse as the only acceptable one. in the country.

It was in his role as an advisor that he wanted to use to present a proposal for national dialogue that would overcome the existing blockage when it came to resolving the Donbass issue. As stated in an article by Nicolai Petro that praises the figure of Sivojo, the advisor to the National Security and Defense Council then stated that “more terrible than the coronavirus is the virus of hate. It is important to change not only the attitude of the State towards its citizens, but also the attitude of people towards each other. What my team is doing is trying to bring the population to a mutual understanding because the peace we are all seeking begins in the hearts and minds of every Ukrainian.”

The point of view, idealistic and deeply naive considering that Donbass was in the seventh year of war and Ukraine flatly refused to implement the Minsk agreements, already considered insufficient by a large part of the population of Donetsk and Lugansk was the starting point of his proposal. In reality, it was a counterproposal to the bill for the reintegration of Donbass prepared by Minister Oleksiy Reznikov and which was a mockery of the agreements that Ukraine had signed. In a similar way to Zelensky's current peace plan , which addresses only Ukrainian demands, ignoring all others, especially those of the population, Reznikov sought to mark Kiev's red lines and impose a path of reintegration that made this process a explicit capitulation.

“The draft law of the Ministry of Reintegration has been written from the point of view of the victors in the war,” Sergey Sivojo, one of the few Ukrainian representatives who observed that detail, accurately stated then. However, he failed to see that this attitude was perfectly consistent with the one that Ukraine, both with Poroshenko and Zelensky, had maintained in relation to the Minsk agreements, of which it only demanded compliance with the points that were completely favorable to it and disowning all others in favor of imposing his will. “Let's answer a question,” Sivojo continued, “who do we want to defeat? To our own citizens who are on the other side of the contact line? Do we want unemployment or reintegration? It's time to make a decision."

Sivojo's counterproposal to resume national dialogue, to put aside the hate speech that had begun in 2014 and that has increased over the years to constantly and completely demonize and dehumanize the population of Donbass lacked a real plan for building a society in which the wounds of the civil war could be healed. But, above all, it could be useful only in a context of political measures that would protect Donbass from the resumption of the Ukrainian war against Donetsk and Luhansk and that would not leave the maintenance of the basic rights of the country at the mercy of Kiev's will. population. Sivojo's speech sought to end hatred as a solution after which the population of Donbass, perhaps magically, would wish to return to Ukraine.

Although deeply idealistic and far from the material realities that had given rise to the war, without taking into account the legitimate social and economic claims of the population of Donbass in 2014 and more than moderate in its points of action, which not only did not go further beyond Minsk but did not even go so far as to demand compliance with those basic points, Sivojo's plan was seen by the most mobilized sector of Ukrainian society as a betrayal. Although the limited electoral claim of the extreme right is often used as an argument for its lack of political relevance, the episode of Sivojo's attempt to present this path of dialogue and introspection towards a future national reconciliation is further proof of the opposite.

At that time, certain sectors wanted to see in the appointment of Sivojo as an advisor and in Zelensky's rhetoric a reason for optimism. After all, the new president had come to power with promises to reduce nationalism in laws such as the use of the language, an important aspect for the Russian-speaking regions, and promising commitments to achieve an end to the war in Donbass. “At the 2020 Munich Security Conference and later at the Mariupol Unity Forum, Zelensky had appealed for a massive national dialogue in which the population could discuss their common future face to face,” Nicolai Petro now writes, ignoring that The new president's words already contradicted his actions. However, “Zelensky supported Sivojo's personal project, a Platform for Reconciliation and Unity, which was formally presented on March 12, 2020. By then, Zelensky had not only not lowered but was in the process of tightening the law on the use of language and had made clear at the 2019 summit before Macron, Merkel and Putin his zero intention to comply with the Minsk agreements. The only unity dialogue that Zelensky could offer was the same one that Yatseniuk had offered in the summer of 2014: one in which only pro-Maidan sectors participated and without any representation of the population of Donbass, to whom the initiative claimed to address.

Even so, the remote possibility that a process could be initiated that would seek to eliminate the numerous manifestations of hatred and contempt towards the population of Donbass was sufficient argument for the extreme right. The movements linked to Azov and Andriy Biletsky had indirectly favored the candidate Zelensky - by sabotaging Poroshenko's campaign, supported by sectors close to Svoboda - and wanted to collect this collaboration by acting as judges to prevent the new president from taking a wrong step. on the issue that they considered most important: the possibility of making concessions to Donbass, which were understood as concessions to Russia. The only concessions made by Zelensky to Russia came in the form of a withdrawal of two square kilometers of territory, made to achieve the holding of the Normandy Format summit.

At that summit, Zelensky would officially notify his disinterest in the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Although he had no intention of making concessions and Zelensky's legislative acts endorsed his nationalist turn, Sivojo's speech, moderate and unviable in the political context in which it was produced, was enough to cause nationalist anger. Sivojo was insulted, threatened and attacked and the presentation of the initiative had to be canceled for security reasons.

The power of the extreme right, as can be seen with the normalization of the existence of several battalions linked to the Azov movement, has increased since the beginning of the Russian military intervention, which has provoked a new nationalist wave in Ukraine. The example of the Sivojo case shows its ability to influence important political decisions. Sivojo did not receive the support of his friend Zelensky, but was dismissed from his duties. His speech could have been an element of propaganda with which Ukraine could argue to its partners that it was trying to win over the population of Donbass. It is likely that this was the reason for his appointment. The reality of the National Security and Defense Council appointed by Zelensky was incompatible with that speech. Oleksiy Danilov, capable of abandoning his nonagenarian mother in Lugansk for not sharing his ideas, was not appointed to the position to seek understanding but to follow Reznikov's path of imposing the will of Ukraine. In that context, Sivojo, who cannot be denied good intentions, was nothing more than the propaganda counterpart of someone who perfectly manages communication to make a discourse of harmony compatible with a policy of imposing his will. But even that, a speech of concord without any possibility of being translated into political measures, was an excessive concession to Donbass and Russia for the extreme right, which attacked Sivojo, and also for Zelensky, who between the appearance of compromise and nationalist politics and belligerently he always chose the second.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/10/30/guerr ... more-28463

Google Translator

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Chronicle of a special military operation for October 29, 2023
October 29, 2023
Rybar

Today, the Ukrainian Armed Forces again attacked Crimea with drones from the Odessa region. Russian air defense, electronic warfare and aerospace forces intercepted at least 35 devices on



Massive drone raid on Crimea


At night, after a long time, Ukrainian formations attacked the Crimean peninsula with drones. At least 36 unidentified UAVs were launched from the outskirts of the Odessa region . As a result of the work of crews from the 31st Air Force and Air Defense divisions, five drones were destroyed over the northwestern part of Crimea . One drone was shot down by a Su-30SM fighter of the naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet over Yevpatoriya .

Another 30 drones were suppressed by electronic warfare units as they approached Crimea. The attack of the Ukrainian formations did not achieve its goal. More than a month has passed since the last massive drone attack - the previous such raid was on September 21 . This gap is due to problems in the procurement of commercial Mugin-5 PRO UAVs due to restrictions by the Chinese authorities. Due to their shortage, the Armed Forces of Ukraine do not have the opportunity to organize massive launches of drones across Crimea with the same intensity as before. Apparently, this “break” in attacks was caused by the need for Ukrainian formations to accumulate drones.

By the way, previously such raids were usually followed by attempts at missile strikes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the peninsula. Therefore, the night launch of drones is a sign that a resumption of combined attacks in Crimea is possible soon.

The situation on the front line and combat operations


Over the past few weeks, the situation in the Soledar direction has not undergone significant changes: positional battles are taking place south of the city, where the enemy is attacking in small groups and trying to storm the positions of the Russian Armed Forces. To the north of the ruins of Kleshcheevka , Ukrainian formations launched another sortie with the aim of crossing the nearby railway. Previous numerous attempts to advance beyond the canvas ended only in losses in manpower for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The enemy is also actively using FPV drones, especially on the road from Gorlovka to Bakhmut , which falls within the area where attack drones operate. With UAV raids, the enemy seeks to impede the movement of troops and the supply of forces of the Russian Armed Forces in the city, including along this route. In general, the plan of the Ukrainian command in the Soledar direction remains the same - a constant onslaught in order to create conditions for enveloping Bakhmut from the south.

As we wrote earlier, such an offensive does not carry any deep tactical meaning for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But it should be considered in the context of actions in other areas: regular attacks in groups of 10-15 people, artillery and drone strikes create tension and can distract the Russian Armed Forces from plans in other areas.


There are no significant changes in the Kherson direction . Russian artillery continues to work on that part of Krynoki , where Ukrainian formations still maintain a bridgehead. In addition, the Russian Armed Forces hit enemy positions in the Gavrilovka area .

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas

Tonight, a Ukrainian drone attacked the Afipsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region. After the strike, a fire broke out on the territory of the facility, which was quickly extinguished; according to preliminary information, there were no casualties or damage to the infrastructure. This is the second drone attack on this refinery: then a fuel oil distillation unit was on fire.

In addition, the Ukrainian Armed Forces used a drone to attack targets in Rostov-on-Don. The UAV was shot down over the Voroshilovsky district of the city; according to preliminary data, there were no casualties or damage.

Ukrainian formations also shelled the village of Novaya Pogoshch, Suzemsky district, Bryansk region . According to preliminary data, there were no casualties, but no official information has been received yet.

In the Kursk region, the enemy shelled the village of Gorodishche , Rylsky district. There were no injuries; emergency services are assessing property damage.


In the Donetsk agglomeration, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched strikes on Donetsk, Makeevka, Gorlovka, Zaitsevo and Yasinovataya. At least three people were injured of varying severity, and civilian infrastructure was damaged.


Ukrainian formations continue to shell the left bank of the Kherson region every day. The civilian infrastructure of Kakhovka, Gola Pristan, Aleshek, Nova Kakhovka, Radensk Kardashinki and Krynok was under enemy fire. Over the past 24 hours, the enemy fired more than 70 shells in the Gornostaevsky district alone: ​​power lines were damaged, repair and restoration work is underway.

Political events
On structural changes in the RF Armed Forces

The special military operation, which has been going on for a year and eight months, has exposed a huge number of problems both in the structure of the Russian Armed Forces and in the tactics of using troops in the current configuration. Everyone is well aware of these problems, so those at the top make appropriate decisions. And they are dictated primarily by common sense:

In connection with the creation of the Leningrad and Moscow military districts, the United Strategic Command “Northern Fleet” ceases to exist .
Ground units will fall under the control of the Leningrad Military District;
Neither Chaiko nor Dvornikov will be approved for the positions of new commanders: the Supreme Commander-in-Chief decided that the commanders should be “young” and from among “honored generals who have passed the Northern Military District”;
The current commander of the Western Military District, Nikiforov, has a 95% probability of leading the Moscow Military District;
All fleets are withdrawn from the military districts and transferred to the direct subordination of the High Command of the Navy;
The air defense forces will have their own command.
This is not yet a complete list of changes that await the RF Armed Forces: these processes will be launched on December 1, 2023, and personnel transfers will take place in the first quarter of 2024. The need to review the structure and approaches to the use of fleets and air defense forces is long overdue. We will see to what extent such changes will optimize the functioning of the RF Armed Forces and bring them to a new qualitative level next year.

Change of commander of the Dnepr group

More and more information is coming that Colonel General Oleg Makarevich has been removed from the post of commander of the Dnepr group . Rumors about this were circulating last week, and now they have finally received confirmation. The decision, frankly speaking, was long overdue - many of the decisions of the strange military leader in the Kherson direction more than once became known to the general public, such as demands to install tags on positions and make layouts of the area.

Apparently, the last straw was the landing of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the left bank of the Dnieper: although the enemy’s successes were mostly limited to a small bridgehead in part of the village of Krynki, the problems became completely obvious. According to preliminary information, the commander of the Dnepr group will again be the commander of the Airborne Forces, Mikhail Teplinsky: among the troops he has a reputation as one of the most competent generals, so the soldiers in the Kherson region will clearly greet this news with enthusiasm.

Well, the actual leadership of the entire combined group of troops (forces) is currently carried out by Colonel General Alexei Kim , who is also characterized as a competent, honest and experienced commander.

On the suspension of Russian gas transit through Ukraine

The head of Naftogaz, Alexei Chernyshov , said that the company does not intend to renew the contract, which expires at the end of 2024. Now the contract is not being canceled allegedly because European partners need gas during winter and cold weather. According to him, Ukraine allegedly has every reason for early termination, because the Russian Gazprom paid no more than 70% of the transit fee.

At the same time, the European Union itself has not yet announced the need to extend transit beyond 2024. However, a lot can still change in a year, and the rhetoric of the Ukrainian authorities can easily change, based on the “ demands ” of its Western masters, if there is a need for it.

On negotiations in Malta to resolve the conflict in Ukraine

“International consultations ” took place in Malta , where the key principles of peace in Ukraine were discussed . According to the head of the Presidential Office Andrey Yermak , delegations from 66 countries and international organizations took part.

At the moment there is no joint communiqué, no agreements have been ratified. According to Ermak, “at an open and constructive meeting, the participants substantively discussed the key principles on which a comprehensive, just and strong peace for Ukraine should be achieved and based . ” In addition, issues of nuclear, energy and food security in the world were discussed.

In other words, the matter did not go beyond talk, as previously expected. It is not surprising: without the presence of delegations from China , Russia and other countries, it would be foolish to expect a different outcome.

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/

_Other images at link.)

Google Translator

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More Upheaval in German Politics Over Ukraine War, Russia Sanctions and the Heavy Hand of the US
Posted on October 30, 2023 by Conor Gallagher

The German elite’s firewall against the ultra nationalist, anti-EU Alternative for Germany party has begun to crumble. Germany’s business groups were unified in their opposition to the AfD whose immigration stance goes against big businesses’ desire for cheap labor. All of Germany’s main political parties say they are opposed to the AfD and are discussing an outright ban of the party, but last month, the Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats needed votes to defeat a regional government in a crucial budget bill. They turned to the AfD.

Together they were able to push a tax cut through Thuringia’s parliament against the wishes of the left-wing coalition.

Germany’s main opposition leader, Friedrich Merz who leads the Christian Democrats, had ruled out cooperation of any kind with the AfD. Merz, a former corporate lawyer who has sat on numerous company boards including BlackRock Germany, had been heavily criticized for previous comments after AfD election wins in Eastern Germany local elections. He said at the time that they were democratic elections that “we have to accept, and then of course ways have to be sought in local parliaments to organize the town, the countryside or the county together.”


It’s going to be increasingly hard to ignore AfD if they continue to add to their vote share, which they are likely to do should the German political class keep refusing to address Germans’ declining living standards while cutting social spending and increasing militarization.

Elections earlier this month in the two wealthy German states of Bavaria and Hesse showed the AfD continuing its meteoric rise. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD trailed the AfD in both states – an absolutely humiliating outcome for his party and a sign of the unprecedented frustration with the current government.

In Bavaria, the CSU came in first with 37 percent, followed by the Free Voters at 15.8 percent. The AfD was third with 14.6 percent; the Greens fourth with 14.4 percent; and Scholz’s Social Democrats were fifth with 8.4 percent.

In Hesse the vote broke down as follows:

CDU – 34.6 percent.

AfD – 18.4 percent.

SPD – 15.1 percent

Greens – 14.8 percent.

FDP – 5 percent.

Left Party – 3.1 percent.

While the CSU/CDU is in favor of continuing Germany’s bellicose foreign policy, the AfD is the only party drawing connections between the German government marching to US orders and the devastating effect it is having on the German economy – until last week.

One left-wing politician has been making that connection, although her party tried to silence her. Now Sahra Wagenknecht finally announced last week that she is founding her own party, potentially putting a final nail in the coffin of the moribund Left Party she is leaving and posing a threat to claw back voters from the AfD.

The Wagenknecht wing in the Left Party has been a vocal critic of Germany’s submission to US interests, although the party as a whole has failed to adopt this message. Instead it has joined in the attacks from all sides against Wagenknecht. For her pro-negotiations approach she has been labeled a Putin apologist. She has also been targeted for questioning Germany’s immigration policy.

Meanwhile, the Left Party as a whole, which is considered a direct descendant of the Socialist Unity Party that ruled East Germany until reunification, has completely collapsed after abandoning nearly all of its platform in an attempt to appear “ready to govern.” The party’s polling figures have dipped below 5 percent, which would keep it out of the Bundestag should those figures hold in the next national election. Much like the bourgeoisie Greens, the Left increasingly stands for neoliberal, pro-war and anti-Russia policies. But while the Greens have a solid base of upper class support, the Left used to appeal to Germany’s working class, which has increasingly switched to the AfD in response to the Left’s neoliberal drift.

Here is more on Wagenknecht from Tagesspiegel:

Wagenknecht has positioned herself as a sharp critic of the federal government’s Ukraine policy and the energy sanctions against Russia. She is for the import of cheap natural gas and against overly strict climate protection policies . She also advocates limiting migration . She has repeatedly described the Greens as the most dangerous party. Additionally, a poll from Bild am Sonntag that shows 27 percent of people in Germany would consider voting for the Wagenknecht-led party.

Other polling shows Wagenknecht’s yet-to-be-named party already more popular than the war mongering Greens.

More on Wagenknecht’s move from NC reader MD in Berlin:

Out of the Left Party’s 38 Bundestag members, 10 have left to form the new party. They are serious figures. 5 are women.

At least 5 (!) have what Germans call “a migration background”. The new formation rejects IdPol. The residual Left Party (Rest-Linke) slants heavily to IdPol. The composition of the core group will defuse Rest-Linke criticisms, esp on migration policy.

SW has played a blinder tactically. Anti-war demo in Feb planted a flag. Will-she-won’t-she ever since kept question in media. Step is response to a perceived voter demand, but not an activist movement. Enthusiasm for joining and working remains unclear.

Policies essentially left populist. Nothing wrong with that.No visible labour movement connection. Though participating MP Klaus Ernst originates from the IG Metall milieu. Could potentially emerge if labour movement were to awake.

And from Deutsche Welle:

Wagenknecht’s public profile exploded last year when she became the leader of a “peace campaign” demanding that the West stop arming Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. Elsewhere, Wagenknecht criticized her own party leadership for pandering to what she calls “lifestyle leftists,” whose policies of inclusion for marginalized communities, she argues, were themselves marginalizing the Left Party’s core voters, especially the working classes in eastern Germany.

Wagenknecht has grown particularly popular in eastern Germany, and a Thuringia poll by the Insa institute in July found that Wagenknecht’s as yet non-existent party could potentially win an election in her home state — with 25% of the vote, three points ahead of the AfD. Perhaps it is no coincidence that, in the aftermath of her “rally for peace” in February, Thuringia’s AfD leader Björn Höcke — himself no stranger to provocation — invited Wagenknecht to defect to the far-right AfD.

Wagenknecht has ruled out working with the AfD. While the AfD has a small solid base of support from voters with hard right views, they are siphoning off disenchanted voters from elsewhere (especially from the Left Party), many of whom just want to give an extended middle finger to the German establishment.

That’s not surprising considering the German government is doing its best to anger voters and drive them to the AfD. Let’s just take the issue of housing. It is increasingly hard to find and more unaffordable than ever. Details from Deutsche Welle:

Germany is traditionally a nation of tenants. While across Europe around 70% of the population own the house or apartment they live in, only 46% of people living in Germany do so. In major cities, that ratio is even lower.

If you want to rent a nice apartment in a good location in Berlin, you need a lot of money. A “wonderfully spacious 4-room apartment” in Berlin’s upmarket Charlottenburg district: 182 square meters, furnished, the rent is €8,190 ($8,947) per month. Plus heating, electricity and other incidental costs, that amounts to over €50 per square meter.

A so-called rental price cap was included in the German Civil Code in June 2015. According to this, when signing a new rental agreement, the rent may not be more than 10% above the local comparative rent. But in Berlin and other large cities, landlords have found a lucrative way around this: The cap does not apply to furnished apartments and contracts for short rental periods. So now, more than half of all apartments in Berlin are offered as “furnished.”

A rent level of €6.50 to €7.50 per square meter is considered socially acceptable in Germany. But for that price, you can’t even find an apartment on the outskirts of Berlin these days….

In Germany, the average net income — the amount that remains after taxes and social security payments have been deducted — currently stands at €2,165, according to the Federal Statistical Office. Around one-third of this income is spent on rent. But even that is often not enough. In Munich, a square meter now costs €19 in rent, in Stuttgart €18, in Dusseldorf and Cologne €12 to €13 and in Berlin €11.

Yet, at the same time that Germans are struggling to find and afford shelter, the government isn’t just doing nothing to remedy the problem; it is actively making it worse. It continues to embrace a policy of more immigrants who need housing when they arrive in Germany, which increases competition for scarce supply. Simultaneously, the government in Berlin is planning to cut back on housing benefits as part of social cuts across the board in order to increase military spending.

This assault on the working class comes at a time when the prices for everything have gone through the roof causing Germans’ real wages to plummet. But the German government has no plan to deal with this; they only double down, promising the Americans they will lead a more militarized EU against their former supplier of cheap and reliable energy (Russia) that allowed for their export economic model to their biggest trading partner (China) who they are now also getting aggressive with.

Nevertheless, the German government, rather than examine its own failings, is blaming voters for not fully understanding their policies. And the effort to discredit Wagenknecht as a Putin stooge has come roaring back to life following her announcement – this time coupled with charges that her forming a new party is “bad for democracy.”

Waknerfekt has long been pilloried in the media, however, so the fact that 27 percent of the German electorate would still consider voting for her party shows the limits of such propaganda.

The formation of a true party on the left sets up a scenario where the German elite could end up facing a choice: the left or the AfD?

The German establishment has tried everything to stop the rise of the AfD except responding to the economic concerns of voters. They have repeatedly labeled the party a threat, there are constant media stories on their fascist ties and dangerous nationalism, they’ve been placed under surveillance, and there have been growing calls to outright ban the party under questionable legal grounds. In the end, a true party for the working class might do the trick at capping the AfD’s support .

One has to wonder, however, if this is just delaying the day of reckoning. Say the CDU/CSU heads the next government; will much of anything change? If the German establishment continues on its current neoliberal, militaristic path that is subservient to US interests, the prospects for Germany’s working class will only worsen.

The problem for Germany is that its foreign policy and vassalage to the US is inextricably linked to its domestic financialization and economic woes. It is so wholly captured by Washington that none of the major political parties even agitate for a more thorough investigation into the Nord Stream destruction. None of them call for a reexamination of the country’s policy towards Russia (and now China too) and whether following the US/NATO lead is truly in the interest of Germans.

Until Germany is able to thoroughly raise these questions, it’s hard to envision a soft landing for its political system and society at large. For Germany to find a way out of its current decline will likely require the rise of nationalism. As Michael Hudson writes in his The Destiny of Civilization:

There is still a tendency to think of nationalism as a retrograde step. But for foreign countries, breaking away from today’s unipolar global system of U.S.-centered financialization is the only way to create a viable alternative that can resist the New Cold War’s attempt to destroy any alternative system and to impose U.S.-client rentier dictatorships on the world.

As it stands now, Wagenknecht’s new party likely solidifies the CDU/CSU frontrunner status for the next elections.



Federal elections aren’t currently scheduled until 2025 – if Scholz’s coalition survives that long. Its infighting and record unpopularity leave open the possibility of government collapse and early elections. Recent polling shows that two-thirds of Germans want a new government.

Whenever the next national elections occur, they will be followed by the coalition building. The CDU/CSU is already moving towards the AfD on the issue of immigration, although its leaders maintain they are not open to working with the AfD. One has to wonder, though, should it come down to a choice between the left and the AfD, which would the German elite choose?

Reader Matthew G. Saroff predicted the following in a comment on a recent Germany piece here at NC:

The dirty secret here is that the mainstream German politicians will embrace AfD over Die Linke, because they would rather have Fascists in power than Leftists. Why does this sound familiar to me? (1932)

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10 ... he-us.html

[blindpig]

Hypocrisy typical of the European world
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 10/31/2023



Without any relevant results, the summit with which the Zelensky Government intended to continue putting pressure on its allies and neutral countries on the need to invest in the Ukrainian president's peace plan concluded on Sunday in Malta, that is, prolonging the war until Ukraine achieves all its goals. Despite the fact that attendance shows a clear decline in international interest in this initiative, the always triumphalist Zelensky claimed on Saturday to be building a peace initiative “with the Global South.” The low relevance, the lower attendance than at similar previous summits and, above all, the absence of China, one of the most important countries that Ukraine seeks to appeal to, shows that the initiative has no future and that Kiev's credibility beyond of the West has suffered in recent months.

The global geopolitical situation, especially the consequences of Israel's war against Gaza, is an added concern for Zelensky which, as stated in an article published on Sunday by The Washington Post, reflects a delicate moment for the Ukrainian Government. On the one hand, Kiev has wanted to show its support for Israel, not only because of its previous alliances and its desire to become “a great Israel”, but also because of the geopolitical positioning that it implies. The reaction to what happened on October 7 and, above all, to the massive use of force, the complete blockade of Gaza and the absolutely indiscriminate bombings with the aim of doing the greatest possible damage have divided the international political community in two as The war in Ukraine already did it.

For ideological reasons, Ukraine was always going to position itself on the side of Israel, a country with which it has political affinity and a common ally, the United States, the main supplier of military assistance to both. In the past it has been clear that kyiv has seen Tel Aviv and its media as an example to follow, especially when it comes to repressing unwanted populations. The parallel between the contempt that Israel has always shown towards the Palestinian population and that of Ukraine towards the people of Donbass is clear. To this we must add the historical closeness of the national liberation movements, among them the Palestinian, to Moscow, ties that, although weakened by circumstances, have been maintained in today's Russia. Russia must always be the antagonist, so the Ukrainian position with Israel is coherent in this sense.

Since October 7, Ukraine wanted to exploit these Russian ties, always more political than strategic and military, to present the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian factions as another arm of a puppet managed from Moscow. Applying George W. Bush's maxim of “if they are not with us, they are against us,” Kiev has argued since February 24, 2022 that every neutral country was really a useful fool in the service of the Kremlin, an idea that continues using now to try to link both wars and thus avoid losing prominence or financing. For months, Ukraine has been aware that the Biden administration is experiencing increasing difficulties in requesting new funds from Congress, under Republican control and in electoral mode, which implies that these difficulties may increase as the November elections approach. 2024 and even the Republican primaries. Nor does Biden's trick of including funding for Israel, Taiwan and the border wall in the same legislative act - all important issues for the Trumpist wing of the Republican Party, with enough force to make approval difficult - seems to be having the expected result. Yesterday, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who in the past has voted against funding the Ukrainian war effort, stated in statements to Fox News that the issues of Israel and Ukraine must be separated. Johnson insisted on the ease with which the Republican Party will approve the request for funds for Israel, leaving in the air the $60 billion that Biden seeks for Ukraine.

The attempt to link the Ukrainian and Israeli war efforts is not only a risk for Zelensky in terms of obtaining the desired financing from the United States, on which the weapons and, therefore, the ability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to continue fighting, but it puts it in a compromised situation vis-à-vis some of the countries it has tried to approach. The voting pattern in the United Nations and the reaction of the countries to Israel's war correspond, without major differences (one of the exceptions is Morocco, the only African country that has sent weapons to Ukraine but, on this occasion, has not could place itself on the side of the United States) with those countries that have remained neutral in the war in Ukraine. And although the firm positioning of the side of the chosen bloc, the Western one, has been kyiv's tactic to show itself as a relevant country and demand prominence, the contradictions of this position have not gone unnoticed by countries that Ukraine considers significant right now.

This past weekend, Ukraine held its summit for peace - only if that peace occurs according to the terms dictated by Kiev - in a new attempt to get closer to the countries of the so-called Global South, that majority of the planet's population that does not has positioned itself in its favor and that fundamentally seeks to promote a true process that leads to the resolution of the conflict. This group of countries includes not only China and India, but also a wide spectrum of Arab and Muslim countries that have seen the hypocrisy of the European world in the Ukrainian position.

Ukraine has based its insistence on war until the recovery of Crimea on the idea of ​​the right of an occupied people to use weapons against the occupier, where it has repeatedly affirmed that every objective is legitimate. However, in kyiv's opinion, this right does not extend to the Palestinian people, whose armed struggle it has described as terrorism. Furthermore, Zelensky has equated Hamas and Russia, defining both as “the same evil, with the only difference that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel and here there is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine.” Neither before October 7 did Zelensky's Ukraine or Poroshenko's Ukraine offer any words in defense of the rights of the Palestinian people, under Israeli occupation for decades. The rights that Ukraine claims only for itself are denied to other peoples for whom they also offer no signs of mercy.

Kiev has complained for months about the neutral stance of the countries of the Global South and Zelensky even gave a speech before the Arab League, where he demanded that member countries adopt a position openly favorable to his Ukraine. However, on this occasion, and ruining the diplomatic efforts of twenty months of work, kyiv has not only positioned itself in favor of those who oppress, but has done so without fissures. As reported by The Washington Post , “it was not until ten days later when Zelensky, indirectly, referred to the bombing of Gaza, mentioning the need to de-escalate and protect the civilian population. "In this time, Zelensky has avoided criticizing the Israeli bombings despite the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians and at least 21 Ukrainian citizens." Not offending its ally and the United States has been more important than maintaining coherence or seeking rapprochement with Muslim countries, some of which have helped Ukraine militarily or politically or are currently mediating in cases such as the return of Ukrainian children currently in Russia. Not even the constant mention of Iran as a common enemy can compensate for what is being perceived as an inexplicable inconsistency.

However, Kiev's attempt to link the situation in the Middle East with that of Ukraine by placing Moscow at the center of all the conspiracies has had a moment of victory in recent hours. On Sunday, hundreds of people stormed the airport in Makhachkala, Dagestan, looking for passengers on a flight from Tel Aviv. Ukraine and its partners, who have demanded that countries close transport links with Russia, have now taken advantage of the maintenance of flights between the two countries. The chaos created at the airport and on the landing strip itself caused dozens of injuries, several of them seriously (yesterday the death of a woman was rumored, information denied by the president of Dagestan). Despite the delay in action by the authorities, who at one point completely lost control of the situation at the airport, 83 people have been detained. “Majachkala is an absolutely Russian story with a future inevitably full of crises,” boasted yesterday Mikhailo Podolyak, who stated that “as always, the Russians initially broke out another chaos, hoping to gain propaganda dividends and then, upon realizing "Accounting for the barbaric nature of their actions, they began to look for ways to justify the unequivocal display of Russian xenophobia."

Russia has denounced the events as externally instigated and the development of events brings that explanation closer than Podolyak's conspiracy theory. Throughout the day, Russian opposition journalist Leonid Ragozin, whom he cannot be considered a friend of the Kremlin, warned that the Telegram channel Utro Dagestan was instigating a pogrom against passengers on the flight from Tel Aviv. The channel had “published 19-point instructions for anti-Semitic protesters, which it helped assemble at Makhachkala airport, where a plane from Israel has landed.” The manual “includes forcing passengers to publicly denounce the State of Israel.” Later, the journalist added that “the fugitive Russian politician residing in Ukraine Ilya Ponomarev identified himself as an investor in the channel last May. Ponomarev works by creating units of Russian volunteers who fight on the side of Ukraine under the auspices of Ukrainian military intelligence, the GUR.” This Russian story has a spontaneous part, but another that is neither so nor so Russian, but which has served Ukraine to once again insist on the need to defeat Russia to defend Israel. Although even the Western media sees the counterproductive nature of antagonizing Muslim-majority countries, Ukraine has chosen its bloc and will continue to cling to it in search of the help it considers necessary to achieve rights that it demands for itself but denies to others. other towns whose situation is much more precarious.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/10/31/hipoc ... more-28469

Google Translator

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Chronicle of a special military operation for October 30, 2023
October 30, 2023
Rybar

For several days in a row, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been launching combined strikes on the Crimean Peninsula . Storm Shadow and Neptune missiles were shot down over the Sevastopol Bay , the Mekenzi Mountains and the Black Sea .

In the area of ​​Cape Tarkhankut, ATACMS missiles with a cluster warhead could not be intercepted, but no significant damage was recorded; another one fell near Natashino . In addition, the patrol ships " Raptor " and " Kolesnikov " sank two unmanned enemy boats, one managed to escape.

Last night, Russian troops hit the Odessa shipyard and airport with ground-based missiles, the extent of the damage is currently unknown.

Positional battles continue at the front in the Serebryansky forestry area , where the enemy is trying to seize the initiative from the Russian Armed Forces. In the Soledar direction, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were repulsed from the railway at the Kleshcheevka - Andreevka line .

The battle for the Avdeevsky fortified area continues , where Russian troops are gradually moving inland. And in the Kherson direction, the UAF marines are still holding a bridgehead in Krynki ; no significant changes have occurred in other areas.



Combined attack of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Crimea


As we expected after the drone raid on Crimea , the Ukrainian Armed Forces the very next night carried out a combined attack on the peninsula using missile weapons and unmanned boats. First, around 3 am, two ATACMS operational-tactical missiles were launched in the vicinity of Olenevka on Cape Tarkhankut . It was not possible to shoot down the missiles, but thanks to measures taken in advance, no serious damage was caused.

Where the Atakms were released from and their exact type is still in question. There is a version that a modification of the MGM-140A with a cluster warhead was used. The range of this version is limited to 165 km. In this case, the launcher could be located in the Kherson region or in the Ochakov area . It could also be a high-explosive fragmentation version. Recently, 20 MGM-140B Block 1A Unitary units (up to 300 km) were delivered from Poland .

Half an hour later, sailors of the Black Sea Fleet discovered three unmanned boats of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near Sevastopol . One of them was destroyed by the Kolesnikov patrol boat near the city. Two more tried to enter the bay of Chersonesus, where they opened fire on them from the Raptor boat . One BeK was hit and scuttled, the other turned around and left at full speed. The search for him continues. At the same time, a rocket of an unknown type was recorded falling not far from Natashino. According to preliminary data, there is no damage to the infrastructure.

On repelling the second missile attack of Ukrainian formations on Sevastopol


A few hours later, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched eight Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles in the direction of Sevastopol from one Su-24M from the airfield in Starokonstantinov and three Su-27 from the Mirgorod airfield .

And the Storm Shadows were not the only ones: two Neptune anti-ship missiles were also fired from the Odessa region . At the same time, target designation was provided by three UAVs of an unidentified type flying over the city. All eight cruise missiles, two Neptunes and three drones were shot down by crews of the S-400 and the Pantsir-S1 air defense system of the 31st Air Force and Air Defense Division over the coastal waters of the Black Sea, in the Sevastopol Bay and the Mekenzi Mountains . Some debris damaged private infrastructure.

Judging by the geography of the flight, Ukrainian formations tried to hit an ammunition depot , a base of the Black Sea Fleet , as well as a ship repair plant in the Inkerman area . Noteworthy is the combination of weapons to complicate the work of air defense. Another interesting fact is the use of Su-27 aircraft, which were also modernized to carry cruise missiles. This is due to the heavy handling of the Su-24M and their shortage (in the summer there were no more than 10-12 working copies left, and taking into account the recent operation , probably even less).


Despite a series of repelled attacks, one should not relax: Crimea could come under attack again. Especially considering the increased intensity of filming of various objects on the peninsula by Western satellites in the last three days. From October 27 to October 29, 60 sessions were held, of which 24 were yesterday . Particular attention was paid to the Crimean Bridge and Kerch, where 9 photographs were noted. This indicates a possible resumption of attacks on an important facility in the near future.

About the large-scale operation of the Russian Air Force and Air Defense to destroy Ukrainian aviation
Early last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, in an interview with the media, announced the destruction of 24 Ukrainian aircraft within five days. Staff correspondents and a pool of government media carried the information further, but among military bloggers and skeptics they reacted coolly to the information: seriously, how many such statements were there, and without providing an invoice it often turns into information support for a “jingoistic” audience.

It’s just that time has passed, which, apparently, has become the best proof that the operation really took place. The operation was carried out with the use of S-400 air defense systems and MiG-31BM fighters , and target designation was carried out by the Russian AWACS A-50U aircraft in several “waves” ( seven aircraft were shot down on October 20 alone ). We don’t know whether they were preceded by the launch of “decoys” at Ukrainian aviation airfields to simultaneously lift planes into the air, but it would be logical.

If at the beginning of October, air defense and air defense systems detected the activity of at least 30 aircraft on the territory of Ukraine, then over the last week there have been no more than 10-12 such one-time marks (even adjusted for bad weather, the number has decreased). As a rule, we are talking about aircraft such as Su-27 and MiG-29 , based at the airfields of Kanatovo , Dolgintsevo , Voznesensk , Mirgorod , Ozernoye . Su-24M bombers also disappeared from radars from the Starokonstantinov airfield . Whether this is due to their loss or an attempt to protect scarce aircraft from attacks remains in question.

In addition, recently Ukrainian formations have been striking mainly with S-200 missiles and ATACMS type missiles (out of 20 missiles received by Ukraine, at least 9 have been used up - the air defense reported the downing of five missiles, another batch with a range of up to 300 km arrived in Ukraine the day before). Let us repeat: so far all confirmations (due to the lack of obituaries from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which can last for months) are indirect. But, in general, a change in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ approaches to fire engagement (even without taking into account the decrease in aviation activity using RER means) is a logical consequence of such an operation.

And there were no attacks with Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles for a long time, which may indicate the success of the operation. But at the same time, we should not exclude the option of simply using up supplies and waiting for new ones. Unfortunately, the Russian Ministry of Defense did not provide any objective control personnel, so the SVO does not immediately believe in such bright victories after a year and eight months.

The situation on the front line and combat operations
At night, Russian troops hit the infrastructure of the Odessa Shipyard with missiles . Local authorities confirmed the defeat of the target, but the publicly available facts of objective control do not provide a clear understanding of the extent of the destruction of the object. In addition, the Odessa airport was also hit, the consequences of the attack are being clarified. During the day, Zaporozhye was attacked : Ukrainian authorities announced the destruction of one of the city's utility companies, but there were no details.


In the North Ukrainian direction, quite interesting enemy movements are observed in the Kharkov and Sumy regions . There are many rumors among members of Ukrainian formations regarding the possible activation of the Russian Armed Forces in this direction, and now the Armed Forces of Ukraine are preparing for this option. In addition to the regular activity of the DRG near the borders with the Belgorod region , MTR units have arrived in the Kharkov region and are conducting reconnaissance of the area north of Kharkov . The air defense system has been strengthened along various settlements: additional mobile air defense units have been deployed on pickup trucks, and the presence of eight anti-aircraft guns and two MANPADS has been noted in Kazachya Lopan .

Also, 250 units of S-5K unguided aircraft missiles were delivered to Russian Tishki , which will be used from homemade launchers based on pickup trucks. And up to 700 people arrived in Tarasovka to complete the units in Kharkov. Among other things, two consolidated formations have been created in the group’s reserve, which includes units of the 3rd brigade, the 1st special forces brigade and the defense unit. They have up to 40 T-72 tanks, MANPADS and ATGMs on their balance sheet. Moreover, the emphasis is on anti-tank weapons.

And the reserves will be in the rear. In this situation, a parallel should be drawn with last year, when Russian troops entered Ukraine, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were expecting an attack, luring the Russian Armed Forces into the depths, and were gradually cut off from supplies. And now, apparently, the enemy is planning similar defense tactics in case hostilities intensify. The emphasis on anti-tank weapons and minefields is proof of this.


Positional clashes continue in the Starobel direction . In the Kupyansky sector , fighters of the Russian Armed Forces methodically destroy enemy heavy armored vehicles with the help of anti-tank systems, which, under the cover of infantry, are trying to advance in the direction of Orlyanskoye , including T-72 and Strv 122 tanks (Swedish version of Leopard 2A5 ).


In the area of ​​Serebryansky forestry , Ukrainian formations attempted an attack by combined detachments of the 14th, 21st, 43rd and 63rd infantry brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the direction of the forward positions of the Russian Armed Forces, but were unsuccessful. The work of the modern Terminator tank support complex was also noted at the site .


In the Soledar direction, fighting continues in the area of ​​the railway between Kleshcheevka and Andreevka . The enemy, without stopping to attack with “ meat ” assaults, is trying to take possession of a lifeless section of the forest belt in this area. Thanks to the active work of artillery and FPV drone operators, the enemy is suffering significant losses without visible success.


In the Donetsk direction, fighting continues in the area of ​​the Avdeevsky fortified area . The enemy attempted a counterattack in the direction of the ash dump, supported by several Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and up to several platoons of infantry. The purpose of this selfless act was to hoist the flag. Having lost at least 1 Bradley and a platoon of infantry, the Ukrainian formations retreated without achieving success. At the same time, there is a transfer of reserves to Avdeevka itself : a video of the arrival of German Leopard 2A6 tanks in the city was published on the Internet. The Russian Armed Forces, in turn, are trying to expand the control zone on the approaches to the coke plant. In the south, according to some reports, Russian fighters occupied a quarry in the area of ​​the settlement. Northern , which will significantly complicate the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in this area.


In the Vremyevsky sector , Russian troops continue to conduct positional battles, from time to time both making attempts to advance and repelling enemy counterattacks. At the moment, the situation has not changed significantly in recent days. At the same time, an increased number of captured members of Ukrainian formations was noted: for example, several soldiers from the 79th Airborne Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces decided to surrender in order to save their lives.


In the Orekhovsky sector at the Kopani-Rabotino-Verbovoe line , after several unsuccessful attempts to break through the defenses of the Russian Armed Forces, Ukrainian formations regrouped, sending additional reinforcements to the contact line. Units of the 33rd mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were deployed to the landings east of Rabotino to assault positions northwest of Verbovoy. Fire support will be provided by artillerymen of the 118th mechanized brigade self-propelled battalion.

Similarly, the forces of the 3rd Spartan Brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine began to move into the forest belts northeast of Novoprokopovka . Formations of the 3rd Regiment had previously unsuccessfully tried to storm Kopani, but now they were sent to attack Novoprokovka. At the same time, the 82nd assault brigade is being re-equipped in reserve, and the Topaz tactical group , consisting of the 78th separate assault regiment and 3 battalions of the 80th assault brigade, is also preparing for battle . And a reconnaissance station for ground moving targets was installed in Malaya Tokmachka to simplify the identification of positions of the Russian Armed Forces.


In the Kherson direction along the Dnieper, the situation remained the same. In Krynki, the forces of the 35th Marine Brigade continue to hold the central part of the village, holed up in several houses. The approaches to them are completely under fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which does not allow Russian troops to clear the bridgehead. At night, after preliminary preparation, three assault groups of the 35th Infantry Infantry Division were transferred to Frolov Island , and then to Krynki to strengthen the group. After this, the Marines began moving westward, slightly expanding their zone of control.

At the railway bridge, units of the 35th and 36th Marine Brigades also densely settled on the existing bridgehead. Yesterday evening, assault groups occupied the area of ​​the small railway bridge, having equipped an additional strong point and almost approaching the Poima . And already at night and in the morning of October 30, Ukrainian formations carried out a rotation of forces on boats. Several groups of marines were transported to Nikolskoye , but one of the vessels was sunk by a drone with FOG.

Similar control remains with the enemy at the Antonovsky Bridge . The tactical success that the enemy achieved comes at a great cost, but he has the resources. And the density of fire from artillery, mortars and UAVs allows us to maintain a small bridgehead near the Dnieper.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas


Ukrainian formations continued to shell border settlements in the Belgorod region . In the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka , one of the shells pierced the roof of a private residential building, and windows were also broken in the house. There were no casualties.


The enemy has somewhat reduced the intensity of shelling of the Donetsk agglomeration and nearby settlements of the DPR . The civilian infrastructure of Gorlovka , Kuibyshevsky , Kievsky and Petrovsky districts of Donetsk , as well as Aleksandrivka and Vladimirovka , was under attack throughout the day , in the latter one person received shrapnel wounds.


The Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to shell settlements on the left bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region . Nova Kakhovka , Obryvka , Podstepnoe , Krynki , Kakhovka , Sagi and New Camps came under fire . According to preliminary information, there were no casualties or injuries.

Political events
About “smart mobilization” in Ukraine

In Ukraine, according to the Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov, they are planning to launch “ smart mobilization ” . A person subject to conscription will be able to choose the specialty in which he would like to serve. Over the next few months, it is planned to launch the project in test mode for those wishing to become drone operators.

“ We will run a pilot on drone operators, and this person chooses that he wants to become a drone operator, or even serve in a company of attack drones. This could be a sapper, a driver, all positions will be available. A person will be able to see what kind of unit or company this is, what obligations, what risks you have, how you will study ,” Fedorov said.

It is assumed that this function will encourage a person to apply for military service without a summons, further education and training in the chosen specialty and serve in the position that he has chosen for himself. They plan to replace military commissars with “recruiters” who will select those interested.

The main goal of the project is to see the real mobilization potential among volunteers, assess their level of motivation and selection conditions. It is assumed that a person, undergoing training and further service with an experienced mentor, will be more highly motivated than the usual “cannon fodder” that is collected on the streets.

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

(Other images at link.)

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RAND report on information warfare in Ukraine
October 30, 17:44



RAND report on information warfare in Ukraine

After Russia launched a military offensive in Ukraine, many Western politicians and major media outlets declared that Ukraine was allegedly winning the information war. However, the reality may be more complex, according to analysts at the private intelligence company, a simulacrum of a thought factory - RAND. To do this, they examined content in Ukrainian, Russian and English created and distributed by official Ukrainian and Russian authorities and associated institutions in the days leading up to and following two incidents: the initial Russian offensive and the Battle of Kiev in February-March 2022 and announcement of partial Russian mobilization in September 2022.

The study showed that the popular discourse about Russia's alleged loss of the information war oversimplifies the problem. According to RAND "experts," the answer to the question of whether Ukraine's information campaigns were more persuasive than Russia's is nuanced: It depends on the audience targeted by specific messages and the broader context in which the audience is situated.

Russia and Ukraine take different approaches to their influence campaigns. “In general, Ukrainian leaders have been outspoken, communicating frequently with their target audiences, using every available tool—from social media to radio—and relying on informal and conversational communication. Russian officials have become more restrained. State television was the central channel of Russian influence campaigns, aimed primarily at the Russian public and military personnel,” the study notes.

At the beginning of the SVO, Russian leaders misunderstood their Ukrainian audience. “Both Ukrainian and Russian influence campaigns may have had difficulty overcoming the deeply held beliefs of adversary audiences, which research shows are resilient and often impervious to new, contradictory information. It was difficult for actors in the Russian information campaign to overcome the entrenched negative perception of the Kremlin among the Ukrainian public,” the study says.

Official communications from the Russian government were "low-key events in the form of press conferences and pre-recorded statements by Putin." “However, this approach stands in stark contrast to the hyperbolic, repetitive and emotionally charged nature of the Russian television programs we examined. While both states used fear appeals, which research shows are generally unconvincing, Ukraine also relied heavily on humor appeals and, to a lesser extent, anger—an approach that research has shown to be effective ", the report notes.

https://t.me/rtechnocom/2452-zinc (you can also download the report itself there)

It is worth remembering that RAND does not produce “formative analytics” in accordance with the parameters of the government order. In this case, the zakah comes from the US government.

It is also worth noting that Russia is waging an information war in Ukraine not with Ukraine, but with the information machine of the United States and NATO; the Ukrainian system itself is only a small appendage of the system that Russia opposes.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8736564.html

Google Translator

*******



The Ukraine and Israeli/Palestine conflicts show the demise of Western imperialism and foreshadow its coming collapse
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on October 26, 2023 by Dmitri Kovalevich (more by Al Mayadeen) | (Posted Oct 30, 2023)

The escalation of hostilities between the Israelis and the Palestinian people (whose historic lands the Israelis occupy) has been met with much irritation in governing circles in Ukraine. Events in and around Ukraine have dominated Western media for nearly two years, but now this has given way to the news of violent conflict by the Israelis, a satellite of the Western powers, against the Palestinian people. The conflict threatens to spread to neighboring Arab countries. All this has Ukrainian authorities fearing a decline in Western attention and support for war against Russia.

Indeed, the Western news outlet Axios reported on October 19 that the U.S. government will divert hundreds of thousands of artillery shells destined for Ukraine to the Israelis. So although Ukraine and the Israelis are each a satellite of the United States and NATO, Ukraine must now compete with the Israelis for the title of the most favored recipient of U.S. weaponry.

When Palestine resistance forces first launched their breakout from the open-air prison of Gaza on October 7, Ukraine president Zelensky called on all Western leaders to fly to the Israeli-occupied lands to show their support. He sought to travel there himself to show ‘solidarity’, but the Israelis told him ‘no’, fearing the political distraction it would cause and also fearing the image of military disaster that Ukraine brings along due to its failing war, in alliance with NATO, against Russia. In Western parlance, there is an ‘image problem’ with Zelensky and his governing regime due to the terrible pounding Ukraine’s armed forces are suffering at the hands of the Russian military.

Former Ukrainian MP and ultranationalist Igor Mosiychuk has recently observed, “For some reason, the Ukrainian government believes that the whole world owes [military and financial assistance] to us, to Ukraine and the Ukrainians.” But he also observes,

The whole world does not think so.

The former MP continued, “President Zelensky thinks the whole world will applaud him all his life, will greet him, hug him, kiss him, and so on,” the former people’s deputy said in an interview with journalist Alexander Shelest. But according to him, Zelensky has already become a “lame duck”.

The Ukrainian government, media, and ultranationalists have been unambiguously supportive of the Israelis in the current conflict (although historically, the far-right ideology of Ukrainian ultranationalists is anti-Jewish). This is due not so much to ideological proximity as it is to a common dependence on the United States. Another factor in support of the Israelis is the common racist trope of protecting ‘Western civilization’ from ‘barbarians’, which in Ukraine means combatting ‘Russian hordes’ while in Palestine it means the Israelis combatting the Palestinian and broader Arab populations.

Discriminatory attitudes towards migrants and refugees have been observed since last year in and around Ukraine. Ukrainian refugees were immediately granted refugee status, protection, health insurance, housing, and allowances in the NATO countries, standing in contrast to the fates of so many refugees and migrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The latter are often routinely refused refugee status, obliged to wait years for residency application cases to be heard, or forcibly deported to third countries, many of whose economies have been destroyed by Western corporations.

Like the Israeli regime in the Middle East, Ukraine has become an outpost in eastern Europe of the Western imperialist world. Since 2014, Ukraine has been used by the West to punish those who stand up to imperialist meddling or domination, such as what happened to the people of Donbass and Crimea following the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

Palestinian journalist Manar Bsoul, who lives in the Russian Federation, writes in the Ukrainian publication Liva (‘Left’) that the ongoing military provocations by Western countries in the Middle East are increasingly aimed at promoting a new regional bloc under the U.S. umbrella that would include the Israelis as well as the monarchies of the Gulf. “This new regional bloc is being created as another ‘watchtower’ against the ‘axis of evil’ (China, Iran, Russia, North Korea), on a par with the imperialist military bloc AUKUS in the Asia-Pacific,” the Palestinian journalist writes.

In her opinion, it is primarily Hamas that stands in the way of the creation of a new U.S. “watchtower” in the Middle East. “The U.S. nuclear umbrella, Israeli technology and finance, oil and gas, and the human resources of the Muslim countries of the Middle East—these are the foundations of the “watchtower” that Washington wants to construct and complete prior to the U.S. presidential election in 2024. The world of big money does not tolerate interference, and interference in the form of Hamas must now be neutralized, despite the enormous civilian casualties in Gaza,” Bsoul writes.

The U.S. has been using Ukraine, among other things, as an instrument of influence on the countries of the Global South. However, promoting Ukraine and the Israelis at one and the same time is an impossible task for the United States and its NATO allies. Without question, most people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America instinctively support the rights of Palestinians, recognizing their own historic longings as similar to those of Palestine.

“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” says one senior G7 diplomat. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost… Forget about rules, forget about world order, they won’t ever listen to us again.” Many developing countries have traditionally supported the Palestinian cause, seeing it through the prism of self-determination and a push against the global dominance of the U.S., the Israelis’ most important backer.

“Some American diplomats are privately concerned that the Biden administration’s response has failed to acknowledge how its broad support of Israel can alienate much of the Global South,” writes an analysis in the Financial Times on October 17.

Moreover, the process of deindustrialization in Ukraine and in the Western countries is calling into question the ability of Western imperialism to supply arms to several of its satellites at once. For this reason, Ukrainian political scientist Ruslan Bortnik says that any shift of attention to other events is dangerous for Ukraine. “For Ukraine, any external global event means a decrease in attention and resources spent on the war in Ukraine. Besides, we can hardly count on deliveries of Israeli weapons in the near future, even hypothetically, and the quality of their use in a real conflict, even with semi-guerrilla units, is questionable today,” the political analyst argues.

Last year, Zelensky pleaded to the Israelis without success that it supplied Ukraine with its ‘Iron Dome’ air defense system. In September of this year, Zelensky told the Israeli prime minister that Ukraine could better protect Jewish (Hasidic) pilgrims if it received the weapon system.

Another Ukrainian political scientist and economist, Oleksandr Ryabokon, warned recently that the shift in military attention away from Ukraine may be followed by a shift in Western financial aid. “Another round of the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict has in a few days completely pushed Ukraine off the front pages of world media. Informational oblivion can be followed by financial and material oblivion. The chief ‘gardener’ of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, is already whining that in the conditions of uncertainty with the American financing of Ukraine, Europe will not be able to do it on its own,” he writes.

In early October, Admiral Rob Bauer, the Dutch chairperson of the NATO Military Committee, commented on the problems with ammunition deliveries to Ukraine: “We started to give away from warehouses half-full or less, and now the bottom of the barrel is visible.” The military depots of another U.S. satellite, South Korea, are also running low. “Ukraine’s counter-offensive relied on a massive infusion of shells from South Korea, and its rate of fire will inevitably fall in the months ahead”, writes The Economist on October 14.

Now the West is demanding that Kiev increase its own arms production. But this is extremely difficult to do after three decades of deindustrialization (since the demise of Soviet Ukraine), propelled by austerity policies imposed by the International Monetary Fund and other Western financial agencies. And that is not to speak of catastrophic shortages of skilled factory workers, engineers, etc. caused by the current military conscription. Millions of Ukrainian women have fled abroad and many skilled men have been forcibly mobilized into the army. There are, quite simply, not enough human resources in Ukraine to maintain critical infrastructure.

It can be added that the only ammunition manufacturer in Ukraine prior to 2014 was located in Lugansk territory, which is today a constituent of the Russian Federation. In 2014, the people of Lugansk rebelled against the coup in Kiev that year. The new, anti-coup governing authority took control of the ammunition manufacturer and nationalized it. Since then, Ukraine has not established its own ammunition production, despite the years of warfare it waged against Donbass (the region consisting of the former Ukrainian territories of Lugansk and Donetsk).

Ukrainian expert Vitaliy Zaitsev observes that Ukraine lacks not only laborers but also skilled workers for the production of weapons.

Our professional schools have been practically lost. In addition, we need to re-establish the production of steel and rolled steel suitable for military production.

Serhiy Bondarchuk, the former head of Ukrspetseksport (state arms exporter), is also quite cautious about the prospects of arms production in Ukraine. “How to organize the logistics of components? Armor, gunpowder, special chemicals, special components—none of this is produced in Ukraine, so we will have to import, while also taking into account national borders and the threat of military strikes [by Russia] along the related transport routes.” And there are further organizational issues of which the former head of arms exports speaks, including whether there can be an uninterrupted power supply.

In other words, Western imperialism cannot yet make its Ukrainian satellite self-sufficient in arms production or even supply. Quite simply, it cannot easily supply several recipients at once.

In this regard, Ukrainian political scientist Kost Bondarenko recently noted in an interview that the strategy of the Kiev regime, which relies so heavily on Western support, will have to change for objective reasons. The political scientist believes that the time of U.S. global omnipotence, coming after its seeming victory in the Cold War, is passing away.

“This era is over. Now it is necessary to find points for a new world order amidst this new world chaos that has arrived. The U.S. is no longer an authority for the whole world; in fact, some two-thirds of the world is today in opposition to the United States.” Bondarenko added that Ukraine is now “among the minority” in its alliance with (subordination to) the United States.

According to Bondarenko, the first task in Ukraine following the end of the current war will be for its people to “dismantle the current state system” in the country. For him, that includes the adoption of a new and fair constitution; creation of a new state on the basis of the current, de facto borders; dismantling of the power of the economic elites; and overall,

the creation of a new political structure that is truly fair and not detached from society, as is the case today.

Other satellites of Western imperialism are pondering something similar for their future development. The Biden administration in Washington is well aware of this and may well embark on further, bloody military interventions and wars to forestall such scenarios.

https://mronline.org/2023/10/30/the-ukr ... -collapse/

******

Time Magazine Shared Some “Politically Inconvenient” Truths About Ukraine

ANDREW KORYBKO
OCT 31, 2023



The most “politically inconvenient” truth of them all is that NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine failed to strategically defeat that targeted Eurasian Great Power, the awareness of which is becoming widespread but it still remains taboo to admit this. Time Magazine’s cover piece comes the closest to doing so out of anything produced by a major Mainstream Media outlet thus far, however, and this might make it easier for folks to admit the West’s own self-inflicted strategic defeat.

Time Magazine’s latest cover story on Zelensky drew attention to a slew of “politically inconvenient” truths about NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine. Titled “‘Nobody Believes in Our Victory Like I Do.’ Inside Volodymyr Zelensky’s Struggle to Keep Ukraine in the Fight”, it contains numerous accounts from his unnamed closest aides and senior advisors that completely contradict conventional narratives. What follows are the top takeaways and their associated excerpts, which will then be briefly analyzed.

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* Zelensky has become physically exhausted after 20 months of begging for aid all the time

- “The reason, he later said, was the exhaustion he felt that night, not only from the demands of leadership during the war but also the persistent need to convince his allies that, with their help, Ukraine can win. ‘Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,’ Zelensky told TIME in an interview after his trip. Instilling that belief in his allies, he said, ‘takes all your power, your energy. You understand? It takes so much of everything.’”

* He said that the West is exhausted too and has started tuning out of the Ukrainian “show”

- “Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened. So has the level of international support. ‘The scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine,’ he says. ‘Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave. You see it in the United States, in Europe. And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them: ‘I can’t watch this rerun for the 10th time.’’”

* Zelensky “feels betrayed by his Western allies”, whom he suspects don’t want him to win anymore

- “Another (longtime member of his team) tells me that, most of all, Zelensky feels betrayed by his Western allies. They have left him without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it.”

* Those close to him worry that he’s become “deluded” with a “messianic” complex

- “His belief in Ukraine’s ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisers. It is immovable, verging on the messianic. ‘He deludes himself,’ one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. ‘We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that.’”

* He correspondingly still refuses to countenance a ceasefire despite it being a pragmatic scenario

- “Zelensky’s stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team’s efforts to come up with a new strategy, a new message. As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo: the possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians.”

* His WWIII fearmongering, arguably a sign of psychosis, has failed to restore Western attention

- “’A third world war could start in Ukraine, continue in Israel, and move on from there to Asia, and then explode somewhere else.’ That was his message in Washington: Help Ukraine stop the war before it spreads, and before it’s too late. He worries his audience has stopped paying attention.”

* Zelensky’s last trip to the US was predictably a failure and he’s becoming toxic to associate with

- “Congressional leaders declined to let Zelensky deliver a public address on Capitol Hill. His aides tried to arrange an in-person appearance for him on Fox News and an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Neither one came through.”

* He candidly admitted that the conflict still continues only because of American aid

- “The Democrats, for their part, wanted to understand where the war was headed, and how badly Ukraine needed U.S. support. ‘They asked me straight up: If we don’t give you the aid, what happens?’ Zelensky recalls. ‘What happens is we will lose.’”

* Ukrainians might turn on Zelensky if more blackouts occur as expected

- “Three of the senior officials in charge of dealing with this problem told me blackouts would likely be more severe this winter, and the public reaction in Ukraine would not be as forgiving. ‘Last year people blamed the Russians,’ one of them says. ‘This time they’ll blame us for not doing enough to prepare.’”

* At least one senior general might soon be fired to distract from the failed counteroffensive

- “Before the winter sets in, his aides warned me to expect major changes in their military strategy and a major shake-up in the President’s team. At least one minister would need to be fired, along with a senior general in charge of the counteroffensive, they said, to ensure accountability for Ukraine’s slow progress at the front. ‘We’re not moving forward,’ says one of Zelensky’s close aides.”

* Some troops have begun refusing Zelensky’s orders to advance because they lack arms and men

- “Some front-line commanders, [one of Zelensky’s closest aides] continues, have begun refusing orders to advance, even when they came directly from the office of the President. ‘They just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,’ he says. ‘But we can’t win a war that way.’ When I raised these claims with a senior military officer, he said that some commanders have little choice in second-guessing orders from the top.

At one point in early October, he said, the political leadership in Kyiv demanded an operation to ‘retake’ the city of Horlivka, a strategic outpost in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have held and fiercely defended for nearly a decade. The answer came back in the form of a question: With what? ‘They don’t have the men or the weapons,’ says the officer. ‘Where are the weapons? Where is the artillery? Where are the new recruits?’”

* Older and less healthy recruits replaced the youth after the latter were culled over the months

- “[The casualty toll] has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. ‘They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,’ says the close aide to Zelensky. ‘This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.’”

* Forcible conscription measures have become increasingly frequent

- “Now recruitment is way down. As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front. Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption.”

* Zelensky’s performative anti-corruption move only worsened Ukraine’s conscription crisis

- “Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on Aug. 11 Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country. The decision was intended to signal his commitment to fighting graft. But the move backfired, according to the senior military officer, as recruitment nearly ground to a halt without leadership.”

* The US is reportedly making more aid dependent on Kiev meeting strict anti-corruption conditions

- “In recent months, the issue of corruption has strained Zelensky’s relationship with many of his allies. Ahead of his visit to Washington, the White House prepared a list of anti-corruption reforms for the Ukrainians to undertake. One of the aides who traveled with Zelensky to the U.S. told me these proposals targeted the very top of the state hierarchy. ‘These were not suggestions,’ says another presidential adviser. ‘These were conditions.’”

* Nevertheless, no progress has been made, and corruption continues corroding the state

- “Amid all the pressure to root out corruption, I assumed, perhaps naively, that officials in Ukraine would think twice before taking a bribe or pocketing state funds. But when I made this point to a top presidential adviser in early October, he asked me to turn off my audio recorder so he could speak more freely. ‘Simon, you’re mistaken,’ he says. ‘People are stealing like there’s no tomorrow.’”

* Zelensky is trying to spin corruption-related criticisms as part of a self-interested game by some allies

- “He also suggested that some foreign allies have an incentive to exaggerate the problem, because it gives them an excuse to cut off financial support. ‘It’s not right,’ he says, ‘for them to cover up their failure to help Ukraine by tossing out these accusations.’”

* An allegedly corrupt official claimed that capitulating to such pressure could lead to regime change

- “Perhaps, I suggested, amid all the concerns about corruption in Ukraine, it would have been wiser for Shurma to step aside while under investigation for embezzlement, or at least sit out Zelensky’s trip to Washington. He responded with a shrug. ‘If we do that, tomorrow everybody on the team would be targeted,’ he says. ‘Politics is back, and that’s the problem.’”

* Zelensky admitted that the latest Israeli-Hamas war takes attention away from his cause

- “’It’s logical,’ Zelensky tells me. ‘Of course we lose out from the events in the Middle East. People are dying, and the world’s help is needed there to save lives, to save humanity.’ Zelensky wanted to help. After the crisis meeting with aides, he asked the Israeli government for permission to visit their country in a show of solidarity. The answer appeared the following week in Israeli media reports: ‘The time is not right.’”

----------

To summarize the “politically inconvenient” truths shared by Time Magazine:

1. Zelensky’s physical exhaustion has led to him becoming mentally exhausted, which resulted in messianic delusions and psychotic WWIII fearmongering, and all of this makes him look like a fool.

2. Ukraine is losing the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, some troops have even refused to follow suicidal orders despite coming from Zelensky himself, and the West’s attention is waning.

3. Out-of-control corruption and the latest Israeli-Hamas war provide Ukraine’s patrons with the “publicly plausible” pretexts for gradually disengaging and negotiating a “new normal” in their ties.

All of this will now be briefly analyzed to help the reader understand where everything is headed.

Simply put, the failure of Kiev’s ultra-expensive and over-hyped counteroffensive decisively shifted popular Western perceptions about the conflict, particularly the impact that any further funding could have on changing the status quo. It’s now becoming toxic to associate with Zelensky because he represents an increasingly lost cause into which over $160 billion worth of Western taxpayers’ funds were invested to no avail. Few politicians want to risk the public’s wrath by continuing to promote him.

There are more urgent financial priorities for the West nowadays anyhow, first and foremost domestic ones followed by aid to their bloc’s Israeli ally (though some prioritize Israel over their own country), which make the Ukrainian cause even more unappealing than before. That’s not even mentioning the influence that upcoming elections are expected to have as politicians make demagogic pledges about where they’ll redirect potential Ukrainian aid in exchange for the public’s vote.

The most “politically inconvenient” truth of them all is that NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine failed to strategically defeat that targeted Eurasian Great Power, the awareness of which is becoming widespread but it still remains taboo to admit this. Time Magazine’s cover piece comes the closest to doing so out of anything produced by a major Mainstream Media outlet thus far, however, and this might make it easier for folks to admit the West’s own self-inflicted strategic defeat.

Upon this finally happening, and it’s arguably inevitable no matter how long it ultimately takes, meaningful discussions can then be held on negotiating a ceasefire with a view towards freezing the conflict like President Putin indicated he’s been interested in doing since the summer as proven here. The devil is in the details, some of which the reportedly ongoing Track 1.5-2 talks are trying to hammer out, but it’s better to publicly confirm these talks and make them official sooner than later.

Ukraine is struggling to hold the Line of Contact, and with dwindling Western aid as earlier earmarked items are urgently redirected to Israel instead, this might become impossible. From the West’s perspective, a potential Russian breakthrough would be among the most realistic worst-case scenarios right now since it would force them into a dilemma between Ukraine and Israel. For this reason, it’s in their objective interests to formally initiate peace talks, which Time Magazine’s piece facilitates.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/time-mag ... olitically

I have always taken the rumors/Russian propaganda that Zelensky was a coke head with a large grain of salt. Perhaps a casual user like many in his line of work, but the pressure of diminished prospects could result in serious consumption, the delusional nature of his behavior highlighted above gives that some credence.

[blindpig]

“Lonely” fight
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/01/2023



In need of publicity to regain the prominence lost due to war fatigue, the lack of victories and the shift of international interest towards Palestine, the Ukrainian president has obtained this week the great report he was looking for. “No one believes in the victory of Ukraine like I do. Nobody,” states this month the cover of the influential Time magazine , which dedicates an extensive report to Volodymyr Zelensky. The Ukrainian president's phrase can be understood both as a show of confidence towards his country and its armed forces and as a sign of a certain loneliness of the head of state, isolated in a belief that no one shares. Much has changed since last December, when the close-up of a smiling Zelensky on the cover of “Man of the Year” was surrounded by images of Ukrainian men and women in the euphoria of war. The subtitle, “The lonely struggle of Volodymyr Zelensky”, also offers no doubts and is consistent with the body of Simon Schuster's article, written from following the president and his entourage and based on conversations with the circle closest to the Head of State of Ukraine.

Schuster's story shows two sides of the situation that the Ukrainian leadership currently faces, under constant pressure from its allies to deliver results, but with the need to also convey the security of those who believe in their certain victory. This contradiction is manifested in the statements of the members of the President's Office, who officially show their support for Zelensky and the Ukrainian strategy, but who, unofficially, guaranteed anonymity, point to some of the most commented topics of recent months. The proliferation of corruption, especially around recruitment offices, generally to flee the country and avoid enlisting, accusations that imply the discredit of one of the most important sectors of the State, is just one of the complaints expressed by people defined by the American journalist as close advisors to Zelensky. Schuster also mentions something that Ukraine tried to deny and that the press has hidden for months: forced recruitment by chasing recruits on the street, at bus stops or in supermarkets. Both aspects reinforce the growing certainty that one of Ukraine's great problems is not the lack of weapons but the lack of trained personnel.

The only comments from kyiv on the military casualties of the war continue to be the periodic - and crazy - figures of Russian casualties, which yesterday, according to the magical realism of the Ukrainian Government, exceeded 300,000. For a long time now, not even the most loyal Western press has taken these obviously false data into account. However, at the moment there has been no pressure on Ukraine to know the level of casualties of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Still, some details are indicative of the situation. Schuster again repeats the figure of 100,000 deaths and injuries as the one given “a long time ago” by the United States for each of the sides. That figure, which was used last April, first as a death toll and later qualified to also include wounded - which makes the figure absolutely implausible - has necessarily had to become outdated after six months of hard battle. But regardless of the specific figures, the American journalist affirms that the average age of the Ukrainian troops is around 43 years, a figure that can only point to a very high level of casualties and the difficulties in recruiting younger soldiers. “Now they are grown men and they were not so healthy to begin with,” adds Zelensky himself, who says that “this is Ukraine, not Scandinavia.”

Ukraine's problems in completing mobilization, recruiting and training enough soldiers to break the Russian front and replenish casualties have been a constant theme throughout recent weeks. The courtesy truce that Kiev received from the press and Western countries in February 2022 has gradually ended and information that doubts both Ukraine's ability to defeat Russia and the development of the current counteroffensive is becoming more common. .

In a few days it will be five months since the start of the great operation for which Ukraine had prepared at least four brigades of 12,000 men who had to, using their brand new Western tanks, but without the air cover that this type of land movement requires, quickly break through. the Russian front in its most sensitive area. As Russia had predicted since Ukraine announced preparations for the offensive with which it was going to recover its territory to fight for the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov and force Russia to withdraw from Crimea, these brigades broke into the open field of Zaporozhie in the direction of Melitopol and Bersyansk. Geography and distances made a surprise effect impossible. In those days, given the proliferation of images recorded with drones showing armored vehicles burning abandoned in minefields, Russia considered the attack a failure. Although such a sentence was premature, since, over time, Ukraine adapted and returned to previous tactics that gave it some pyrrhic results, such as the capture of the destroyed village of Rabotino, weeks ago it has ceased to be bold to affirm categorically that Kiev has not achieved any of its objectives.

Faced with Russia, which has never fully defined its objectives in Ukraine, Kiev has marked as the only acceptable resolution the recovery of all its territories according to the 1991 borders. This insistence implies the obligation to continue fighting until the capture of the regions. They consider Crimea more important. Ukraine not only has not managed, nor is it in the process of achieving, reaching the gates of Crimea as Kiril Budanov joyfully promised a year ago. Kiev's troops have also failed to capture or besiege Melitopol, the main military objective of this campaign, which would have made it possible to hinder Russian logistics to the maximum on the entire southern front, compromising, above all, the troops in the Kherson region, but also to those of Crimea. What's more, Ukraine has not even managed to build on its great victory at Rabotino to put pressure on the Russian first line and advance to Tokmak. That was the consolation prize that was set as the goal to achieve before the autumn rains gave way to bad weather, which evidently favors the troops defending themselves in the trenches and not those trying to advance through the muddy fields. Nor in other areas of the front is the situation excessively different, with Russia pressing in the Kupaysk sector, Kharkiv region, in an attack possibly more designed to stretch the front and hinder Ukraine's ability to focus on Zaporozhie than to recapture the territories. lost in September 2022. The limited Ukrainian success is also evident in the Artyomovsk area, where last May Commander Syrsky assured that Russian troops were under siege and where great Ukrainian advances are periodically announced that do not usually correspond to the facts. Yesterday, Reuters reported Ukraine's statements stating that it will be able to repel Russian attacks, an implicit admission that its troops are no longer on the attack but on the defensive.

Beyond the changes on the front, few so far although Zelensky promises that the offensive will continue, the main argument for describing the current counteroffensive as failed is not purely military but also political. The sum of sanctions, military and diplomatic pressure on Russia has not managed to put Moscow on the ropes and force the Russian Federation to negotiate in a position of weakness. The Kremlin has recently stated that Ukraine's funding problems are only temporary, making clear that it is aware that American support for kyiv will continue. However, it is also evident that Joe Biden's difficulties in obtaining the necessary funds will increase in the pre-election period. Hence, Russia understands that time is on its side and Ukraine is aware that it needs new arguments to achieve its objectives. The insistence on obtaining aviation and, above all, long-range missiles is due to the certainty that only by putting control of Crimea at risk can it really put pressure on Russia. Moscow, for its part, appears to have understood the strategy, which explains the impetus for the destruction of Ukrainian aviation infrastructure. Several media outlets, including Le Monde and even the Kyiv Independent, seem to consider the current counteroffensive exhausted. However, and despite the loneliness of the only man who believes in victory, calm before the arrival of winter is not foreseeable. Everything indicates that both sides are preparing to move the main theater of war from the front line to attacks to undermine the enemy rear using weapons for which the autumn mud is not a determining factor. This could be seen yesterday in Donetsk, where a Ukrainian attack caused a large fire in a fuel warehouse. It is not surprising that it was now that Kiev has begun to receive the ATACMS missiles that it had been demanding for months from its American partners that, despite the disappointment of the counteroffensive, the difficulties in obtaining financing and the need to also supply Israel's war, has not lost interest in the war in Ukraine.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/11/01/lucha ... more-28475

Google Translator

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Chronicle of a special military operation for October 31, 2023
October 31, 2023
Rybar

The Russian Armed Forces retain the initiative in the Donetsk and Starobelsky directions . Today's battles for the Avdeevsky fortified area were remembered for the destruction of the Leopard 2A6 tank , as well as repelling enemy attacks at Krasnogorovka and the waste heap.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are taking the most active actions on the left bank of the Dnieper : the enemy is still gathering fresh forces to Krynki , trying to hold a bridgehead. At the same time, Ukrainian formations did not conduct active offensive operations in the Orekhovsky sector .

After a long period of relative calm, the Ukrainian Armed Forces massively attacked the border regions of Russia . During the day, local authorities and the Russian Ministry of Defense provided information about interceptions of Ukrainian UAVs and shelling of populated areas. The Bryansk region came under the most intense fire .



The situation on the front line and combat operations

In the Starobelsky direction, fighters of the Russian Armed Forces continue a gradual offensive against the positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Fighting was reported in the Torskoye area : tanks were deployed by Russian troops in this area. In the Serebryansky forestry, the Russian Armed Forces occupied an enemy stronghold: judging by the information, the Ukrainian units were demoralized and hastily retreated after the first losses.

In the Soledar direction, the enemy continues to make suicidal attacks on the fangs of Bakhmut . One of these attacks was repelled by soldiers of the Russian Armed Forces near the railway near Kleshcheevka . In addition, battles were reported near Berkhovka in the northern sector.


In the Donetsk direction, fighting for the Avdeevsky fortified area continues . On the northern flank, the same situation remains: fighters of the Russian Armed Forces are gradually moving towards Keramik, artillery and aviation are destroying enemy positions. At the same time, information was received about the control of a quarry in the Severny area by Russian troops . Unable to make full use of the railway, the main supply of the Ukrainian Armed Forces goes through Orlovka . The enemy is throwing fresh reserves into the battle, transferred from other directions. This is evidenced by the use of Leopard 2A6 tanks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine during today’s attack on the waste heap. It is noteworthy that during this attack, the modern Leopard was destroyed by a shot from a Soviet T-72.


In the Orekhovsky sector , the Ukrainian command continues to regroup and bring new units to the contact line to replace those that were previously transferred to Avdiivka . In turn, Russian troops are strengthening their defenses and striking at places where Ukrainian forces are concentrated.


In the Kherson direction , the enemy continues to try to increase the group on the left bank of the Dnieper , Russian troops are making efforts to suppress these attempts. In addition, assault groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces retain control over the central region of Krynok - the clearing of the bridgehead by military personnel of the Russian Armed Forces is complicated by the dense fire of enemy artillery and the work of enemy electronic warfare equipment. Also, Russian air strikes do not stop on exposed deployment sites and Ukrainian Armed Forces facilities on the opposite bank.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas


Ukrainian formations again attacked the border territories of the Bryansk region . The village of Aleynikovo came under fire : three administrative buildings, two cars, two residential buildings and outbuildings were damaged. There were no casualties. There were problems with power supply in the village. In addition, the village of Belaya Berezka came under mortar fire : several shells fell near the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. According to the head of the region, the village of Sushany , Klimovsky district , came under enemy fire . In turn, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported the downing of a Ukrainian UAV in the sky over the Starodub municipal district . According to Mash, the Ukrainian Armed Forces also fired at Lomakovka and Kurkovichi from tanks : official authorities did not comment on these incidents.


In the neighboring Kursk region, the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled the border village of Troitskoye . No civilians were harmed. The water tower was damaged, leaving about 300 people without water supply. In addition, the villages of Nikolaevo - Daryino and Daryino came under enemy fire .


In addition to the Bryansk and Kursk regions, Ukrainian formations also attacked populated areas of the Belgorod region . The city of Shebekino came under fire : there were no casualties, arrivals were recorded in the area of ​​the industrial zone. Local sources write about a similar shelling of the village of Vyazovoe . In addition, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported at least two episodes of the destruction of enemy UAVs in the skies over the region.


In addition, the Ukrainian Armed Forces continued to shell populated areas of the Donetsk People's Republic . Gorlovka , Golmovsky , Donetsk and Novoluganske were under fire from Ukrainian formations . In the last settlement, a woman was wounded. Around lunchtime, information was received about an enemy UAV attack on the building of the Staromikhailovskaya village administration : as a result of the release of an explosive object, one man was wounded.

In the evening, a fire was reported at an oil depot in the Budennovsky district of Donetsk. Shortly before this, the city was shelled from RZSO cluster munitions. The attack killed one person and injured seven others. An emergency services employee was killed in the line of duty and two more were injured. In addition, three journalists were injured.


Ukrainian formations continue to shell settlements on the left bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region using cannon artillery . Those that came under fire included Novaya Kakhovka , Kakhovka , Staraya Zburevka , Peschanivka , Krynki , Podstepnoye and Golaya Pristan . In addition, information has emerged about the death of one civilian and the injury of four more civilians as a result of yesterday's enemy strikes in the region.

Political events
Transformation of the Ukrainian conflict in the Western information field

Following the American and French media, the Spaniards actively joined in criticizing the Ukrainian offensive . Recently, several publications were published in major Spanish media, including information about the failure of yesterday's missile attack on Sevastopol .

Of course, for Western readers, accustomed to broadcasting mostly victorious reports or, at a minimum, reassuring analytics, even the dry presentation of reports on Russian successes or failures of the Armed Forces of Ukraine looks quite contrasting.

However, we will once again repeat that such a coordinated media campaign (as well as pumping up the heroic image of Ukraine at one time) is necessary to create an appropriate information background for future political decisions.

The West is still interested in continuing arms supplies, but if previously they were justified by the “imminent defeat of Russia” and the future successes of the Ukrainian offensive, now taxpayers will be convinced that without help Ukraine will not last long and, in general, this is beneficial for the American / European industry.

What they write about Zelensky in the West

But the main material of this week about fatigue from the Ukrainian conflict in the Western media, of course, was an article from Time . They believe that the recent visit of President Vladimir Zelensky to the United States did not bring significant results . Kyiv’s allies stopped believing in the possibility of a Ukrainian victory amid a failed counteroffensive and a decline in the level of public support for military and financial assistance to Ukraine.

President Zelensky’s mood has also changed significantly: optimism has disappeared in his eyes, and the desire for victory is beginning to take on a manic form . The last statement is a significant moment . The phrase hints at the inadequacy of the Ukrainian leader, which lays the foundation for future excuses by Western leaders and will allow, at the right time, to disown the situation in Ukraine, as well as its consequences. Of course, the Ukrainian leader will cling to the war to the last, since after its completion the West is unlikely to remember his existence.

Currently, the standard of living of the population continues to fall, and war fatigue continues to accumulate, so it is necessary to remind citizens of the reasons for the current situation. Such articles will accelerate the formation of a negative attitude towards Ukrainians, and, ultimately, will prepare the ground for blaming them for all internal political failures. At the same time, the war “until the last Ukrainian” will continue.

On the decline in trust in the Ukrainian authorities

Against the backdrop of news about the changing image of Ukraine and Zelensky in Western media, the results of a survey by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) about the level of trust of Ukrainians in the authorities appeared . The data obtained show a significant decrease in Ukrainians’ trust in the president (from 91% to 76%), as well as in the parliament (from 58% to 21%) and the government (from 74% to 39%). It is noteworthy that the decline in support occurred against the background of the failures of the Ukrainian offensive. Previously, similar data on the decline in trust in the Ukrainian authorities were conducted by another sociological group, Rating . It is worth noting that Time , in the previously mentioned material , noted that the winter period of 2023-2024 could become a new challenge for Zelensky’s team: it is expected that the Russian Aerospace Forces will again launch massive attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure.

About the real role of “Bayraktars” in the Ukrainian conflict

Colonel of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine Vladimir Valyukh spoke impartially (in fact, he stated the obvious) about the role of Turkish Bayraktar drones in the modern conflict:

“ As for the Bayraktars, I don’t want to use the word “useless,” but now it’s difficult to find situations for their use in the conditions of layered air defense of the Russian Armed Forces .”

The words of the Ukrainian colonel are far from news for analysts and observers of the progress of the special operation in Ukraine. We have noted more than once that after little success in the first months of the conflict, the Bayraktars became one of the most delicious targets for air defense. And the situation has not changed: the Ukrainian Armed Forces use them at a great distance from the front line only for reconnaissance and target designation, but in the strike version they have not been used for a long time. As soon as they get closer, they are immediately shot down . Their “toothlessness” can be confirmed by statistics - from five to nine UAVs fly in the air every day along the LBS, but they all operate at a distance of more than 100 km .

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 2023-goda/

Google Translator

(other images at link.)

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Changed sides
November 1, 9:40



Former soldiers of the 36th and 93rd brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who defected to the Russian army.
Not so long ago it was announced that they had finally reached the point of creating an entire battalion of former Armed Forces officers.

(Video in Russian at link.)


How effective this work with prisoners of war and defectors will be will be shown by the further course of the war.
It is necessary to work in this direction.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8739457.html

Google Translator

The Russians hardly need this battalion but the propaganda value is priceless.

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MICHAEL BRENNER: DEFEAT
OCTOBER 31, 2023 NATYLIESB


Photo by Gladson Xavier on Pexels.com
By Michael Brenner, SheerPost, 9/21/23

The United States is being defeated in Ukraine. One could say that it is facing defeat – or, more starkly, that it is staring defeat in the face. Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn’t look reality squarely in the eye. We prefer to look at the world through the distorted lenses of our fantasies. We plunge forward on whatever path we’ve chosen while averting our eyes from the topography that we are trying to traverse. Our sole guiding light is the glow of a distant mirage. That is our lodestone.

It is not that America is a stranger to defeat. We are very well acquainted with it: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria – in strategic terms if not always military terms. To this broad category, we might add Venezuela, Cuba, and Niger. That rich experience in frustrated ambition has failed to liberate us from the deeply rooted habit of eliding defeat. Indeed, we have acquired a large inventory of methods for doing so.

DEFINING & DETERMINING DEFEAT

Before examining them, let us specify what we mean by ‘defeat.’ Simply put, defeat is a failure to meet objectives – at tolerable cost. The term also encompasses unintended, adverse second-order consequences.

1.What were Washington’s objectives in sabotaging the Minsk peace plan and cold-shouldering subsequent Russian proposals, in provoking Russia by crossing clearly demarcated red lines, in pressing for Ukraine’s membership in NATO; in installing missile batteries in Poland and Rumania; in transforming the Ukrainian army into a potent military force deployed on the line-of-contact in the Donbas ready to invade or goad Moscow into preemptive action? The aim was to either pin a humiliating defeat on the Russian army or, at least, to inflict such heavy costs as to cut the ground from under the Putin government. The crucial, complementary dimension of the strategy was the imposition of economic sanctions so onerous as to implode a vulnerable Russian economy. Together, they would generate acute distress leading to the deposing of Putin – whether by a cabal of opponents (disgruntled oligarchs as the spearhead) or by mass protest. It was predicated on the fatally ill-informed supposition that he was an absolute dictator running a one-man show, The U.S. foresaw his replacement by a more pliable government ready to become a willing but marginal presence on the European stage and a non-player elsewhere. In the crude words of one Moscow official, “a tenant-farmer on Uncle Sam’s global plantation.”
2.The taming and domestication of Russia was conceived as a vital step in the impending great confrontation with China – designated the systemic rival to American hegemony. Theoretically, that objective could be achieved either by enticing Russia away from China (divide and subordinate) or totally neutralizing Russia as a world power by bringing down its stiff-backed leadership. The former approach never went beyond a few desultory, feeble gestures. All the chips were placed on the latter.
3.Ancillary benefits for the United States from a war over Ukraine that would bring Russia low were a) to consolidate the Atlantic alliance under Washington’s control, expand NATO and open an unbridgeable abyss between Russia and the rest of Europe that would endure for the foreseeable future; b) to that end, the termination of the latter’s heavy reliance on energy resources from Russia; and c) thereby, substituting higher-priced LNG and petroleum from the United States that would seal the European partners’ status as dependent economic vassals. If the last were a drag on their industry, so be it.

The grandiose goals stated in (1) and (2) manifestly have proven unreachable -indeed, fanciful – a blunt truth not as yet absorbed by American elites. Those in (3) are consolation prizes of diminished value. This outcome was determined in good part, albeit not at all entirely, by the military failure in Ukraine. We now are about to enter the final act. Kiev’s vaunted counter-offense has gone nowhere – at an enormous cost to the Ukrainian military. It has been bled white by massive losses of manpower, by the destruction of the greater part of its armor, by the ruin of vital infrastructure. The Western-trained elite brigades have been mauled, and there no longer are any reserves to throw into the battle. Moreover, the flow of weapons and ammunition from the West has slowed as American and European stocks are running low (e.g. 155mm artillery shells). The shortage is being aggravated by newfound inhibitions about sending Ukraine advanced weapons which have proven highly vulnerable to Russian firepower. That holds especially for armor: German Leopards, British Challengers, French AMX-10-RC tanks as well as Combat Fighting Vehicles (CFV) like the American Bradleys and Strykers. Graphic images of burnt-out hulks littering the Ukrainian steppe are not advertisements for either Western military technology or foreign sales. Hence, too, the slow-walking of deliveries to Kiev of the promised Abrams and F-16s lest they suffer the same fate.

The illusion of eventual success on the battlefield (with its envisaged wearing down of Russia’s will and capacity) is founded on a mistaken idea of how to measure winning and losing. American leaders, military as well as civilian, are stuck to a model that emphasizes control of territory. Russian military thinking is different. Its emphasis is on the destruction of the enemy’s forces, by whatever strategy is suited to the prevailing conditions. Then, in command of the battlefield, they can work their will. The aggressive tactics of the Ukrainians entails the throwing of its resources into combat in relentless campaigns to evict the Russians from the Donbas and Crimea. Unable to achieve any breakthrough, they invited themselves to a war of attrition much to their disadvantage. It has been succeeded by this summer’s all-out last fling which has proven suicidal. They thereby played into the Russians’ hands. Hence, while attention is fixed on who occupies this village or that on the Zaporizhhia front or around Bakhmut, the real story is that Russia has been dismantling the reconstituted Ukrainian army piece by piece.

In historical perspective, there are two instructive analogies. In the last year of WW I, the German high command launched an audacious campaign (Operation Michael) on the Western Front in March 1918 using a number of innovative tactics (featuring commando squads, stormtroopers, equipped with flame-throwers) to punch holes in allied lines. After initial gains that brought them across the Marne, attended by very heavy casualties, the offensive petered out and allowed the allies to roll over their gravely depleted forces – leading to the final collapse in November. More pertinent is the battle of Kursk in July 1943 wherein the Nazis made a massive attempt to regain the initiative after the disaster at Stalingrad. Again, after some noteworthy success in breaching two Soviet defense lines they exhausted themselves short of their objective. That battle opened the long, bloody road to Berlin. Ukraine, today, has suffered huge losses of even greater (proportional) magnitude, without achieving any significant territorial gains, unable even to reach the first layer of the Surovikin Line. That will clear the road to the Dnieper and beyond for the 600,000 strong Russian army equipped with weaponry the equal of what we have given Ukraine. Hence, Moscow is poised to exploit its decisive advantage to the point where it can dictate terms to Kiev, Washington, Brussels et al.

The Biden administration has made no plans for such an eventuality, nor have its obedient European governments. Their divorce from reality will make this state of affairs all the more stunning – and galling. Bereft of ideas, they will flounder. How they will react in unknowable. We can say with certainty one thing: the collective West, and especially the U.S., will have suffered a grave defeat. Coping with that truth will become the main order of business.

Here is a menu of options for handling it.

1. Redefine what is meant by defeat/ victory, failure/success, lose/gain. There is a new narrative that is scripted to stress these talking points:

· It is Russia that has lost the contest because heroic Ukraine and a steadfast West have prevented it from conquering, occupying and reincorporating all of the country

· By contrast, Sweden and Finland formally have joined the American camp by entering NATO. That complicates Moscow’s strategic plans by forcing a dispersion of its forces across a wider front

· Russia has been politically isolated on the world scene (MB: that is because North America, EU/NATO EUROPE, Japan, South Korea, Australia & New Zealand have backed the Ukrainian cause. Not a single other country has agreed to apply economic sanctions; the “world” does not include China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa et al).

· The Western democracies have displayed unprecedented solidarity in responding as one to the Russian threat

This narrative already has been given an airing in speeches by Blinken, Sullivan. Austin and Nuland. Its target audience is the American public; nobody outside the Collective West buys it, though – whether Washington has registered that fact of diplomatic life or not.

2. Retroactively scale back your goals and stakes.

· Make no further reference to regime change in Moscow, to toppling Putin, to crashing the Russian economy, to breaking the Sino-Russian partnership or to fatally weaken it.

· Speak of safeguarding the integrity of the Ukrainian state by denying that the Donbas and Crimea have been permanently severed from the ‘mother country.’ Emphasize that your friends in Kiev are still titular, legitimate leaders of Ukraine.

· Aim for a permanent ceasefire that would freeze the two sides in existing positions, i.e. a de facto division a la Korea. The Western portion then would be admitted to NATO and the EU, and rearmed. Ignore the inconvenient truth that Russia would never accept a ceasefire on those terms

· Maintain the economic sanctions on Russia but look the other way when needy European partners make under-the-table deals for Russian oil and LNG (mostly through intermediaries like India, Turkey and Kazakhstan) as they have been doing throughout the conflict

· Put the spotlight on China as the mortal threat to America and the West while disparaging Russia as just its auxiliary.

· Highlight symbolic gestures like the strikes by top-of-the-line supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles transferred from the U.S., Britain and France that can inflict damage on prominent targets in Russia itself and Crimea (with crucial technical support from American and other NATO personnel). MB: this act is akin to rabid fans of a football team that just lost to a hated rival who puncture the tires on the bus scheduled to take them to the airport

· Pull out all stops to keep Anna Netrebko – a citizen of Austria – from singing in major capitals. Threaten with heavy sanctions those concert halls which break the boycott – e.g. the Staatsoper in Berlin (ban from visiting Disneyland General Director Herr Matthias Schulz and his progeny unto the fourth generation?)

3. Cultivate AMNESIA

Americans have become masters in the art of memory management.

Think about the tragic shock of Vietnam. The country made a systematic effort to forget – to forget everything about Vietnam. Understandably; it was ugly – on every count. Textbooks in American history gave it little space; teachers downplayed it; television soon disregarded it as retro. We sought closure – we got it.

In a sense, the most noteworthy inheritance from the post-Vietnam experience is the honing of methods to photoshop history. Vietnam was a warm-up for dealing with the many unsavory episodes in the post-9/11 era. That thorough, comprehensive cleansing has made palatable Presidential mendacity, sustained deceit, mind-numbing incompetence, systemic torture, censorship, the shredding of the Bill of Rights and the perverting of national public discourse – as it degenerated into a mix of propaganda and vulgar trash-talking. The “War on Terror” in all its atrocious aspects

Cultivated amnesia is a craft enormously facilitated by two broader trends in American culture: the cult of ignorance whereby a knowledge-free mind is esteemed as the ultimate freedom; and a public ethic whereby the nation’s highest officials are given license to treat the truth as a potter treats clay so long as they say and do things that make us feel good. So, our strongest collective memory of America’s wars of choice is the desirability – and ease – of forgetting them. “The show must go on” is taken as our imperative. So it will be when we look at a ruined Ukraine in the rear-view mirror.

The cultivation of amnesia as a method for dealing with painful national experiences has serious drawbacks. First, it severely restricts the opportunity to learn the lessons it offers. In the wake of the inconclusive Korean War where the United States suffered 49,000 killed in action, the mantra in Washington was: no war on the mainland of Asia ever again. Yet, less than a decade later we were knee-deep in the rice paddies of Vietnam where we lost 59,000 people. After the tragic fiasco in Iraq, Washington nonetheless was gung-ho about occupying Afghanistan in a 20-year enterprise to construct a similar Western-leaning democracy out of the barrel of a gun. Those frustrated projects did not dissuade us from intervening in Syria where we failed once again to turn an intractable, alien society into something to our liking – even though we went to such an extreme as a tacit partnership with the local al-Qaeda subsidiary. As Kabul showed, we didn’t even take away from the Saigon denouement the lesson in how to organize an orderly evacuation.

At the very least, one might have expected that a reasonable person would have come away with an acute awareness of how crucial is a fine-grain understanding of the culture, social organization, mores and philosophical outlook of the country we were committed to reconstituting. Still, we manifestly have not assimilated that elementary truth. Witness our abysmal ignorance of all things Russian that has led us to a fatal miscalculation of every aspect of the Ukraine affair.

NEXT: CHINA

Ukraine, in turn, is not cooling the ardor for confrontation with China. An audacious, and by no means a compelling, enterprise that is ensconced as the centerpiece of our official national security strategy. Senior Washington officials openly predict the inevitability of all-out war before the end of the decade – nuclear weapons notwithstanding. Moreover, Taiwan is cast in the same role as that played by Ukraine in the American scheme of things. So, having provoked a multi-dimensional conflict with Russia which has failed on all counts, we hastily commit ourselves to the nearly exact same strategy in taking on an even more formidable foe. This could be classified as what the French call a fuite en avant – an escape forward. In other words: Bring it on! We’re geared up for it.

The march to war with China defies all conventional wisdom. After all, it poses no military threat to our security or core interests. China has no history of empire-building or conquest. China has been the source of great economic benefit via dense exchanges that serve us as well as them. Therefore, what is the justification for the widespread judgment that a crossing-of-swords is inescapable? Sensible nations do not commit themselves to a possibly cataclysmic war because China, the designated number one enemy, builds radar warning stations on sandy atolls in the South China Sea. Because it markets electric vehicles more cheaply than we can. Because its advances in developing semi-conductors may outclass ours. Because of its treatment of an ethnic minority in western China. Because it follows our example in funding NGOs that promote a positive view of their country. Because it engages in industrial espionage just the way the United States and everybody else does. Because it wafts balloons over North America (declared benign by General Milley last week).

None of these are compelling reasons to press hard for a confrontation. The truth is far simpler – and far more disquieting. We are obsessed with China because it exists. Like K-2, that itself is a challenge for we must prove our prowess (to others, but mainly to ourselves), that we can surmount it. That is the true meaning of a perceived existential threat.

The focal shift from Russia in Europe to China in Asia is less a mechanism for coping with defeat than the pathological reaction of a country that, feeling a gnawing sense of diminishing prowess, can manage to do nothing more than try one final fling at proving to itself that it still has the right stuff – since living without that exalted sense of self is intolerable. What is deemed heterodox, and daring, in Washington these days is to argue that we should wrap up the Ukraine affair one way or another so that we might gird our loins for the truly historic contest with Beijing. The disconcerting truth that nobody of consequence in the country’s foreign policy establishment has denounced this hazardous turn toward war supports the proposition that deep emotions rather than reasoned thought are propelling us toward an avoidable, potentially catastrophic conflict.

A society represented by an entire political class that is not sobered by that prospect rightly can be judged as providing prime facie evidence of being collectively unhinged.

Second, amnesia may serve the purpose of sparing our political elites, and the American populace at large, the acute discomfort of acknowledging mistakes and defeat. However, that success is not matched by an analogous process of memory erasure in other places. We were fortunate, in the case of Vietnam, that the United States’ dominant position in the world outside of the Soviet Bloc and the PRC allowed us to maintain respect, status and influence. Things have now changed, though. Our relative strength in all domains is weaker, there are strong centrifugal forces around the global that are producing a dispersion of power, will and outlook among other states. The BRICs phenomenon is the concrete embodiment of that reality. Hence, the prerogatives of the United States are narrowing, our ability to shape the global system in conformity with our ideas and interests are under mounting challenge, and premiums are being placed on diplomacy of an order that seems beyond our present aptitudes.

We are confounded.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2023/10/mic ... er-defeat/

[blindpig]

The United States and the reorganization of Ukrainian intelligence
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/02/2023



The weight of the SBU, Ukrainian civil intelligence, has been evident since the spring of 2014, when the Government born from the coup d'état of February 22 was reorganized to repress and contain signs of rejection of what happened in Kiev. The Russian military presence in Crimea and the overwhelming majority favorable to Russia made it impossible to resist the holding of the referendum and the subsequent accession to Russia, carried out with such speed and efficiency that Ukraine could only watch in amazement as it lost a part of its territory. In April of that year, to prevent further losses due to the possibility that Russia wanted to annex other Russian-speaking areas of the country - something that Russia did not attempt - he encouraged the then Minister of the Interior, Arsen Avakov to make changes and include among his troops some of the most radical groups of the Ukrainian ultranationalist scene. Avakov, at that time also in command of the SBU, chose to incorporate what would later become the core of the Azov regiment, which together with the Security Service, were to be used as special forces to put an end to the incipient rebellion in Donbass.

Despite the changes in administration and organization, the SBU, which with the arrival of Zelensky became directly dependent on the president, continued to be an important force, especially when it came to maintaining repression against sectors ideologically opposed to the Government in Ukraine and against enemies designated as targets on the other side of the front. In this way, the SBU combined the tactics of placing explosive devices in the homes of journalists, politicians or local activists whom it wanted to arrest for ideological reasons but against whom it had no incriminating evidence with targeted assassinations in the territories of Donbass. Now, through the Western press and with the confirmation of such important people as the former director of the SBU Valentin Nalivaychenko, some more details are known. Not only has the authorship of murders such as those of Alexander Zakharchenko, Arsen Pavlov, Mikhail Tolstij or even the much more recent one of Daria Dugina been confirmed, but it is already known that this tactic was part of a restructuring led by the CIA. Although this American collaboration and direction in the refoundation of Ukrainian institutions does not necessarily imply direct participation in the murders or that the SBU acted on American orders, proximity to Washington is relevant when it comes to transforming Ukraine into a tool against Russia.

As an article published by The New York Times confirmed last week , the United States considered the SBU an institution of Soviet heritage and infiltrated by the Russian secret services, which is why it proceeded to reform it. The article does not focus on the role of Arsen Avakov, Minister of the Interior during most of the years of this project, nor of his close collaborators, people like Anton Gerashenko, another of the architects of the entry of the most extreme right into the structures. officials and also linked to the Mirotvorets project, a list of traitors threatened by the authorities and, above all, by radical sectors. The Western media is willing to implicitly confirm that the proxy war began long before 2022 or that the US presence in Ukraine was much more important than the Washington administrations have wanted to admit at this time, but not the details that could be uncomfortable. It is not just about the direct link with the most radical core of Azov or the creation of harassment lists, but about the halo of corruption that has always surrounded Avakov, in charge of the Ministry.

Although an important part of The New York Times article is dedicated to military intelligence, the rivalry between the GUR and the SBU and the parallel process they have carried out since 2014 to become what they are today, neither Kiril Budanov and his exploits get great prominence. The GUR, initially much smaller in terms of personnel than the SBU, has obtained, in the distribution of the sabotage work carried out since the beginning of the war, more militarized tasks and rapid operations although with a much greater use of troops. The American media article does not reveal anything new about the GUR's responsibility for the drone attacks in different Russian territories, the most spectacular of which exploded over the Kremlin a few days before the celebration of May 9, 2022. Last summer , in an article published in The Times, Mike Galeotti already referred to the attack as “launched by GUR officers on Russian territory or guided by agents with a line of sight to the target. These appear to be the responsibility of Bratstvo, an elite Spetsnaz unit.” The GUR's track record in this war made its authorship of that attack undoubtable, as well as many other raids and acts that it cynically describes as partisan, such as the placing of explosives on railway tracks to cause trains to derail.

“Major-General Kiril Budanov is a former Ukrainian Spetsnaz officer who was wounded three times fighting in Donbass. “Zelensky seems to have given him free rein to cause trouble in Russia, to torment the Kremlin and to make ordinary Russians fear that war is coming to their door,” Galeotti wrote in his article about the use of groups like Bratstvo or Kraken to special forces mode. The laughable denials, the consistency with which the same groups are used in similar actions, the words of the battalion members themselves and even some reports from the international press have made it clear that all types of radical groups operate under the umbrella of the GUR. among which are also Russian partisans , generally far-right militants or even declared neo-Nazis, dressed in Ukrainian uniforms, using vehicles and weapons delivered by the United States and following the orders of Kirilo Budanov. Faced with The New York Times' claim that "in the face of Russia's scorched earth policy", both the SBU and the GUR act trying to avoid harm to the civilian population, serious damage to the villages on the border of the Belgorod region, the usual target of their artillery and raids, refute this propaganda.

It is possible that one of the causes of the low civilian casualties caused by Budanov's operations is precisely his failure or the absurdity of his missions, something that is also not mentioned in Western articles. Budanov also prefers to highlight the feat of landing in Crimea in purely propaganda operations with which the GUR simply seeks to install a Ukrainian flag that he subsequently publishes on social networks. The GUR leader, a born provocateur, never tires of proclaiming his successes, now very focused on Crimea. He forgets, however, to mention his numerous failures, such as the several practically suicidal operations he sent his troops on to try to capture the Energodar nuclear power plant. In one of them, a large part of the expedition did not even manage to disembark from their boats.

Curiously, although Budanov, unlike the SBU leadership, constantly seeks media attention and boasts about his exploits , the New York Times article does not particularly focus on his performance in the war. Of course, he insists that both intelligence services deny having participated in the attack against Nord Stream. Taking into account that Ukraine has been the main suspect in the events for months and that what happened seems to have been prepared by a secret service, it is more than likely that at least one of them is lying. It is also interesting that the media adds that Volodymyr Zelensky must give his approval, tacit or not, to any action by the SBU or the GUR.

This implies that selective assassinations, the covert war in Russia, the infiltration of the GUR into Russian institutions - at least Budanov boasts of this - or the operations in which some of the most radical extreme right groups are used. So Ukrainian special forces have the knowledge and support of Volodymyr Zelensky. These actions also have the support of the United States, at least its secret services, parents of both the current SBU and, especially, Budanov's GUR.

Considered a new institution, with younger personnel who had not been trained in the Soviet Union, and more manageable, The New York Times gives the CIA a much more important role in shaping the current GUR than the SBU. “We figured the GUR was a smaller, more agile organization where we could have more impact,” says a former US intelligence officer who worked in Ukraine, as quoted by The New York Times . «The GUR was our little baby. "We gave them all new equipment and training," he adds, making clear the weight of American intelligence in the creation of the current institution directed by Kirilo Budanov. The article talks about the refoundation of the GUR since 2015, still in Poroshenko's time, with an extensive transformation in which the intelligence officer affirms that "we almost rebuilt it from scratch."

The CIA created military intelligence in Ukraine at its service and now employs units such as Bratstvo, Kraken or militants from the Russian Imperial Movement, classified as terrorist by the United States Congress. In case there was any doubt about whether the United States is satisfied with the outcome, The New York Times states that “one of the main architects of the effort, who served as head of the CIA's Kiev office, now heads the Ukrainian Task Force at CIA headquarters. Although this closeness does not imply absolute control of operations, it is a symptom of knowledge and approval of the tactics and strategy of Ukrainian intelligence in the war.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/11/02/estad ... more-28482

Google Translator

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Chronicle of a special military operation for November 1, 2023
November 1, 2023
Rybar

Russian military personnel continue the operation to cover the Avdeevsky fortified area . To date, the fighters have managed to advance to Novokalinovo and Keramik , crossing the railway tracks. To the south, the Ukrainian Armed Forces tried to attack at Vodyanoy , but were unsuccessful. You can find out more detailed information about the development of the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces near Avdeevka in our new material .

In the morning, the Ukrainian Armed Forces again attacked the south of Russia with British-French Storm Shadow missiles. In addition, two Neptune anti-ship missiles were shot down by Russian Aerospace Forces fighters. The enemy's target was the village of Strelkovoe on the Arbat Strelka : half of the missiles were intercepted by air defense systems, the other half hit one of the local buildings. However, contrary to rumors on social networks, the people who were at the facility managed to leave it and casualties were avoided.

Russian troops, in turn, again attacked the Kremenchug oil refinery and the Mirgorod airfield in the Poltava region. The latter object remains one of the highest priority targets of the Russian Armed Forces: carriers of Western Storm Shadow missiles are actively operating from it. So far, the results of the fire damage remain unknown.



Missile attack of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on Crimea and Kherson region


Two days later, the Ukrainian Armed Forces again attacked Russian territories with Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles. As on October 30, before the raid from Starokonstantinov to Mirgorod , three Su-24M bombers flew in the early morning. Apparently, in Mirgorod, planes are being loaded with cruise missiles before takeoff. In addition, due to the active struggle of Russian air defense units with aviation, this ensures a safe distance from strikes.

At the same time, at the moment of the Su-24M flight at 07.30, a MiG-29 fighter of the naval aviation of the Black Sea Fleet shot down two Neptune anti-ship missiles. Apparently, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were expecting the radar equipment of the 31st Air Force and Air Defense Division to turn on and tried to strike the air defense position at that moment. A few hours after the flight to Mirgorod, Ukrainian bombers took off again. Just south of Pavlograd, six missiles were fired, which, skirting Pologi , flew to the south of the Kherson region.

All six "Storms" flew to Strelkovoy . The village has repeatedly been the target of satellite reconnaissance from Western countries. Two missiles were shot down by crews of the Pantsir-S1 air defense system of 20 anti-aircraft guns on approach to the Arbat Strelka. Another rocket was previously shot down over the village itself. However, three missiles hit one of the objects in Strelkovoe. Considering the size of Storm Shadow's warhead, the building must have taken massive damage, but the people there were aware of the danger and left the area.

Changes in the tactics of using cruise missiles should be taken into account when organizing defense. This is especially true for air defense forces, both in the matter of missile flight routes (a new trajectory through the Zaporozhye region) and countering their carriers. No matter how the Su-24Ms stay away from the S-400 or MiG-31 engagement zone, the Storms are launched from a certain area due to the missiles’ range of 300 km. And at this moment or when refueling in Dnepropetrovsk and Mirgorod they should be caught.

The situation on the front line and combat operations
Today, Russian troops carried out several attacks on Ukrainian Armed Forces facilities in the Poltava region: according to preliminary data, the Mirgorod airfield and the Kremenchug oil refinery were again targeted . Objects are among the highest priority targets, but given their size, strikes must be carried out constantly. So far there is no exact data on the results of fire damage.


In the Kupyansky sector, Russian troops managed to recapture another stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces with the forces of the 1st Tank Army. Meanwhile, Ukrainian formations are concentrating forces along the Svatovo-Kremennaya line, fearing new counterattacks by the Russian Armed Forces. According to some reports, the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is moving its headquarters from Liman closer to Slavyansk , and new fortifications are being built in the vicinity of the city.


In the Donetsk direction, Russian troops continue to carry out the task of capturing the Avdeevsky fortified area. By November 1, the forces of the 1436th Motorized Rifle Regiment and those mobilized from Siberia managed to advance towards Novokalinovo and Keramika , crossing the railway track. Russian units occupied height 178 and gained a foothold at the mark, repelling surge after surge. Ukrainian formations attack with forces of 31 and 47 mechanized brigades both from the north and trying to recapture the waste heap of the Avdeevka coke plant . Attempts by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to restore the tactical position are being made along the railway line, where the defensive formations of the Russian Armed Forces are built. Despite information that has appeared on the Internet about the continuation of the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces against the coke plant, this is not true: the Russian group is focused on inflicting fire damage and destroying reinforcements arriving through Ocheretino .

South of Avdiivka, Ukrainian formations attempted to break through the Russian army's defenses at Vodyanoye . Ukrainian formations with several tanks and armored fighting vehicles intended to occupy the gray zone, but were unsuccessful. At the same time, surges continue along the entire line of contact from Pervomaisky to the Khimik microdistrict . Despite the plans of the Russian Armed Forces to rush to the microdistrict and cut the line of communication in the south of Avdeevka , at the moment Russian units are concentrated on repelling fire raids, counter-battery combat and destroying Ukrainian Armed Forces reinforcements in this area. The anti-aircraft military unit east of Opytny is still under enemy control: Russian troops are carrying out an operation to block it, without wasting resources on storming a fortified facility. The same situation arose on the approaches to the Tsarskaya Okhota recreation center , which they decided to bypass.

The losses of Ukrainian formations reached catastrophic figures. In one 31st ombr, at least 20% irretrievable losses. Almost half of the unit is listed as refuseniks and deserters. Because of this, reinforcements were transferred to the site, first from the Kharkov region , and then from the Soledar and Zaporozhye directions .

Read more about the progress of the Avdeevka operation of Russian troops over the past two weeks in our special material.


In the Orekhovsky sector, enemy units tried to rotate, but the M113 armored personnel carrier that arrived to pick up members of the Ukrainian formations was hit by an ATGM. At the same time, the Ukrainian Armed Forces intensified the number of attacks on Russian positions, but all of them were quickly opened and stopped by artillery fire.


In the Vremyevsky sector, Ukrainian formations attacked west of Staromayorsky and were able to wedge themselves into the defensive lines of the Russian Armed Forces: active artillery and aviation fire is being conducted on the incoming units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. However, the intensity of hostilities has decreased somewhat in recent days, including due to significant losses of Ukrainian forces. To strengthen the grouping in the area, the Ukrainian Armed Forces command is transferring additional forces to the front line. Russian troops, in turn, continue to storm enemy positions towards Rovnopol .


In the Kherson direction, Russian troops are striking Ukrainian formations trying to expand the zone of control on the left bank of the Dnieper . As a result of the fire defeat, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 80 militants and four vehicles. The enemy continues to hold a bridgehead at Krynki , as well as in the Dach area . At the moment, units of the Russian Armed Forces are unable to dislodge the Ukrainian Armed Forces from their occupied positions. At the same time, the Ukrainian command does not stop transferring additional forces to the islands and the coastal zone to increase the grouping in the area.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas
In the morning, the Ukrainian Armed Forces shelled the village of Sverdlikovo in the Sudzhansky district of the Kursk region : as a result of the incident, no one was injured, but five private houses were damaged. Local authorities promised residents to help restore property.


During the day, Ukrainian formations shelled the border town of Shebekino in the Belgorod region three times. Several shells hit the territory of the Biokhimtex industrial enterprise: in one of the buildings the façade, fencing and glazing of the building were cut, and two cars were also damaged by shrapnel. A man was injured: at the time of the shelling he was near his car in the parking lot, but he was promptly provided with all the necessary medical assistance. According to Mash , a woman in the car was also injured by shrapnel. Novaya Derevnya, Poroz and Balki also came under attack , and by the evening the Russian Armed Forces intercepted an aircraft-type drone near Batratskiye Dacha.


Recently, there has been an increase in the intensity of shelling of the Donetsk agglomeration. According to updated information, during yesterday’s attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the Budennovsky district of Donetsk, two people were killed and another 15 people were injured. The attack was carried out using the Himars and BM-27 Uragan rocket launchers using cluster munitions. Today Gorlovka, Donetsk, Lugansk and Yasinovataya are under fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces . In the Petrovsky district of the regional capital, the enemy dropped a FOG from a UAV, resulting in three people being injured of varying degrees of severity.


Ukrainian formations continue to carry out indiscriminate attacks on civilian infrastructure on the left bank of the Kherson region: Nova Kakhovka, Kakhovka, Sagi, Aleshki, Solontsy, Gornostaevka and Radensk also came under fire . No casualties or damage were reported.

Political events
Disgraced Arestovich: the ornate fate of the former adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine


Former adviser to the office of the President of Ukraine Alexey Arestovich has recently become less restrained in his statements about Vladimir Zelensky. In his public speeches, accusations against the Ukrainian leadership of corruption are increasingly heard, and Zelensky and his OP are personally accused of dictatorship and the fight against dissent. Thus, Arestovich called the Ukrainian president a dictator because of his excessive fanaticism on the issue of war, as well as his inability to accept a different point of view. Overall, these accusations are consistent with Time's recent story about the Ukrainian leader and his views on the Ukrainian conflict.

Some Ukrainian media close to Bankova reported that the ex-adviser had a conflict with his boss amid Zelensky’s last trip to the United States in September of this year. It is also said that immediately after this conflict, Arestovich, fearing for his safety, left Ukraine and went to Europe . This explains the boldness of some of his statements. It can be assumed that due to a sharp drop in the level of trust of Ukrainians in government institutions, including the president, the former adviser to the OP will accumulate political capital, luring European sponsors and the Ukrainian opposition to her side. Moreover, for the West, the candidacy of the “neutral” Arestovich at some point may turn out to be a more acceptable option when concluding peace with Russia.

In fact, he published his political program, which touches on a number of problematic topics for Ukraine and, in particular, corruption. He also outlined his version of resolving the Ukrainian conflict: firstly, the Ukrainian Armed Forces should stop offensive actions and go on strategic defense; secondly, when peace is concluded, Ukraine may be satisfied with the “Kissinger formula” - Ukraine’s entry into NATO while refusing to fight for territories controlled by the Russian Federation (while retaining the possibility of returning the territories through political methods). In addition, recently the ex-adviser of the OP has increasingly begun to position himself as a defender of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.

The reaction of the Ukrainian authorities is interesting - one of the key speechwriters of the OP, Dmitry Lytvyn, suggested avoiding mentioning Arestovich’s surname altogether: “First: do not mention the surname. Find a way to show who you're talking about without adding energy or mentioning the last name."

About corruption under the former head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Reznikov

The Accounts Chamber of Ukraine confirmed the already known information about mass thefts in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense during the purchase of food for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The department stated that under the former Minister of Defense of Ukraine Alexey Reznikov , the Ministry of Defense “unproductively used” budget funds amounting to over 7 billion hryvnia : food products were purchased at prices that were 30% higher than market prices; 75% of purchased items have no practical use for preparing food in stationary canteens or field conditions.

https://rybar.ru/hronika-speczialnoj-vo ... 23-goda-2/

(Other images at link.)

Battle for Avdievka: what are the results of the operation by November 1
November 1, 2023
Rybar

Russian troops continue to carry out the task of capturing the Avdeevsky fortified area and destroying reinforcements withdrawn from other sectors of the front. If by October 21 it was possible to complete the task of expanding the bridgehead north of the city with the occupation of the ash dump of the Avdeevsky coke plant , by October 26 - to expand the southern “pincers” and an offensive operation on the Khimik microdistrict, then the task of the current week is to hold the occupied lines and not allow the enemy to restore the tactical position.



Position on the northern flank
Despite the transition to active defense, Russian troops continue positional warfare and offensive in the north: from Krasnogorovka , the forces of the 1436th motorized rifle regiment and those mobilized from Siberia managed to advance towards Novokalinovo and Keramika , crossing the railway track. Russian units occupied height 178 and gained a foothold at the mark, repelling surge after surge.

Ukrainian formations attack with forces of 31 and 47 mechanized brigades both from the north and trying to recapture the waste heap of the Avdeevka coke plant . Attempts by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to restore the tactical position are being made along the railway line, where the defensive formations of the Russian Armed Forces are built.

Despite information that has appeared on the Internet about the continuation of the offensive of the Russian Armed Forces against the coke plant, this is not true: the Russian group is focused on inflicting fire damage and destroying reinforcements arriving through Ocheretino .

Over the past couple of days, the local command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has thrown over two hundred people and more than 20 armored vehicles into battle, ranging from Leopard 2A6 tanks to infantry fighting vehicles. As a result, all attacks were repulsed, and one Leopard was destroyed by a direct shot from a T-72 tank of the 114th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade near the railway track.

Consolidation on the southern flank
South of Avdiivka, Ukrainian formations attempted to break through the Russian army's defenses at Vodyanoye . Ukrainian formations with several tanks and armored fighting vehicles intended to occupy the gray zone, but were unsuccessful.

At the same time, surges continue along the entire line of contact from Pervomaisky to the Khimik microdistrict . Despite the plans of the Russian Armed Forces to rush to the microdistrict and cut the line of communication in the south of Avdeevka , at the moment Russian units are concentrated on repelling fire raids, counter-battery combat and destroying Ukrainian Armed Forces reinforcements in this area.

The anti-aircraft military unit east of Opytny is still under enemy control: Russian troops are carrying out an operation to block it, without wasting resources on storming a fortified facility. The same situation arose on the approaches to the Tsarskaya Okhota recreation center , which they decided to bypass.

Plans for the assault on villages north of Opytny have also been revised for the time being: Tonenkoye , Severny and nearby settlements are being hit with active fire from cannon, rocket artillery and tactical aircraft.

Price of reinforcements and reserves
The losses of Ukrainian formations reached catastrophic figures. In one 31st ombr, at least 20% irretrievable losses. Almost half of the unit is listed as refuseniks and deserters. Because of this, reinforcements were transferred to the site, first from the Kharkov region , and then from the Soledar and Zaporozhye directions .

In addition, the active transfer of the 175th battalion of the 121st brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine began from the Kherson region . A large batch of FPV drones was delivered from Dnepropetrovsk , which have proven their effectiveness against armored vehicles.

Civilians are expelled from nearby villages, where reserves are then pulled in and where they set up strongholds. The main task assigned to the Ukrainian Armed Forces units in the area is to restore control over lost positions.

Moreover, in case of failure, Kiev ordered to prepare for a long defense. The headquarters of the Ukrainian Armed Forces group has already been moved from Avdeevka to Kramatorsk , from where planning will be carried out. And this creates ideal conditions for the activation of the Russian Armed Forces in other areas.

https://rybar.ru/bitva-za-avdeevku-kako ... -noyabrya/

Google Translator

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Monument to Alchevsk workers who died during the Northern Military District
November 1, 23:35



Memorial to the workers of the Alchevsk Metallurgical Plant who died during a special military operation.
Now their names are symbolically immortalized next to the monuments to metallurgical soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War







Eternal memory to the heroes who stood up to defend the Motherland!

https://t.me/zov_lnr/679 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8740787.html

Google Translator

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Finland and US Complete Talks on Defense Agreement


U.S. military. | Photo: X/ @militarnyi_en

The agreement will define the rights and duties of U.S. forces when training or otherwise stationed in Finland, while complementing Finland's NATO membership.


On Tuesday, Finland and the United States wrapped up final talks on a bilateral Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA).

The agreement will be published until its passing by the parliament, the Finnish Foreign Ministry announced. Parliamentary passing is not expected before the end of 2023.

The Finnish parliamentary constitutional committee will decide whether the agreement can be passed by a simple majority or by a two-thirds majority.

The agreement will define the rights and duties of U.S. forces when training or otherwise stationed in Finland, while complementing Finland's NATO membership, Finnish commentators have said.


According to Finnish media, there would be no actual U.S. bases in Finland, but the U.S. forces could be present in the country in some form.

Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) on Monday reported that U.S. troops would be granted access to some undisclosed garrisons and military bases, and exclusive access to sites for storing vehicles, weapons and other materials required to conduct military exercises in Finland.

On Tuesday, Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said that the results of the final talks will now be examined "at the political level." He said the DCA agreement is "crucial to Finland and other Nordics."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Fin ... -0004.html

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IF THE ARMY SAYS FIGHT THE WAR, RUSSIANS AGREE – IF THE KREMLIN SAYS STOP, RUSSIANS AGREE ON CONDITIONS THE ARMY DECIDES



By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Russians have never had a higher level of confidence in the Army since the end of World War II, according to a national poll just published by the independent Levada Centre of Moscow.

This also means a record level of confidence in the General Staff to outwit the principal enemy of the country, the United States, and defeat it and its allies on the Ukrainian battlefield. Most Russians now believe this war will take the Russian Army at least another six months, and more likely a year to finish.

This new poll signals that most Russians believe it prudent not to fight the US with the same intensity in two long wars at the same time – in the Ukraine and in the Middle East — because the Army has decided so. This is despite the overwhelming Russian support for the Palestinians in their fight for survival against Israel. No poll is allowed to measure and publish this support, and the emotional reaction the majority of Russians feels towards the operations of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the US military to destroy the population of Gaza.

“We should not, we have no right and we cannot allow ourselves to be carried away by emotions,” President Vladimir Putin announced on October 30.

“We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organising this lethal chaos and who benefits from it. In my opinion, it has already become clear to everyone, as the masterminds brazenly act in the open. These are the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites who are the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this.”

This is the president running for re-election in five months’ time, speaking directly to Russian voters, reflecting what the polls on his desk tell him they already believe.

The Levada pollsters report there is a small increase in war weariness across the country, with 56% now saying they favour the start of peace talks soon, compared with 48% measured a year ago, in September 2022. This, however, reflects public belief in the success of the Army in defeating the Ukrainian-NATO counteroffensive, and in advancing Russian control of the new Donbass territories and along the front line from Kharkov to Odessa. “In October 2023,” Levada reports, “62% of Russians across the country believe that the special military operation is progressing successfully (12% very successfully, 50% rather successfully), over the past 5 months their number has increased slightly. The opposite point of view is held by 21%.”

The Levada survey reveals also that “Moscow stands out from other localities. Muscovites are less willing to move on to peace talks — only 38% hold this opinion, while in other localities about half of the respondents believe that it is necessary to start peace talks. Among those who approve of Vladimir Putin’s activities as president, there are slightly more supporters of peace negotiations than supporters of the continuation of hostilities — 51% and 42%, respectively. The majority (72%) of those who disapprove of the president’s activities believe that it is necessary to move on to peace negotiations.”

Long war is the assessment of the higher educated, higher class Russian urbanites over forty.

The Levada survey was conducted by face-to-face interview in the homes of a nationwide sample of 1,607. The polling was carried out between October 19 and 25.

Levada’s independence in conducting its polls has drawn the Russian government regulator’s requirement that it publishes the following notice with every report: “This material (information) was produced and distributed by a foreign agent of Levada Centre or concerns the activities of a foreign agent of Levada Centre.”

Levada has not yet published an English translation of the new poll results which were released on October 31. Read the full report in Russian here.

These are the main data result tabulations in English:


Source: https://www.levada.ru/



Source: https://www.levada.ru/


Source: https://www.levada.ru/

Levada also reveals an unusual analysis it has carried out to gauge the nature of Russian sentiment for waging war against the country’s enemies. The result is the first clear signal that most Russians trust the Army to defeat the enemy on the battlefield more than they trust Putin to negotiate an agreement on paper with US and NATO officials.

“An experiment was conducted within the framework of this survey. Using a random number generator, the respondents were divided into two equal groups, each of which was asked a question in one of two formulations. The experiment showed that the majority of respondents (70%) would support V[ladimir] Putin’s decision if the president decided to end the military conflict with Ukraine. However, if Putin decided to end the conflict on condition of the return of the annexed territories, only a third (34%) would support his actions.”


Source: https://www.levada.ru/

No Russian analysis has been published to date to extrapolate from this finding, and its presidential election context, to the way Russia’s General Staff, Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry, and the Kremlin are working on their responses to the war against the Palestinians.

In the special session Putin called on Monday of the major ministries and security chiefs, he began by saying that “the Defense Minister [Sergei Shoigu] is back from his official trip abroad, and he will brief us on its outcomes and report on the progress of the special military operation.” Shoigu had just returned from China. What he said there in public was that Russia was fighting a world war on three fronts. The US-led allies were “covering up the buildup of military force in the Asia-Pacific region with an ostentatious desire for dialogue, imposing alliances and lines of operational interaction on partners…Having provoked an acute crisis in Europe, the West is seeking to spread conflict potential to the Asia-Pacific region, and in several directions.”

The war in Gaza is one of these “directions”, one of the war fronts, Shoigu said in Beijing; and Putin repeated the next day.


Left: Vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, General Zhang Youxia with Shoigu in Beijing on October 29. Right: Putin with Shoigu at extreme right in Moscow, October 30. The lead image is another Kremlin photograph of the same meeting.

“I will repeat again”, Putin said, “the ruling elites of the United States and its satellites are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine, and many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on. This has become obvious to everyone. It is they who install their military bases everywhere, who use military force on every pretext and without any pretext, who send weapons to conflict areas. They are also channelling financial resources, including to Ukraine and the Middle East, and fuelling hatred in Ukraine and the Middle East.”

“They are not achieving results on the battlefield, so they want to split us from within, as far as Russia is concerned, to weaken us and sow confusion. They do not want Russia to participate in solving any international or regional problems, including in the Middle East settlement. They are not satisfied at all when someone does not act or speak exactly as they are instructed. They believe only in their own exclusivity, in being allowed to do anything…I would like to say once again that we must realise where the root of evil lies. We must know where the spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet and the whole world in its cobweb is. It wants to ensure our strategic defeat on the battlefield, and it is using people on the territory of contemporary Ukraine who have been brainwashed by it for decades. I would like to stress once again that, while fighting this enemy in the course of the special military operation, we are boosting the positions of all those who are struggling for their independence and sovereignty.”

“We know and see how the Ukrainian leadership applauds the Nazis of the Second World War, who were guilty of the Holocaust victims, who personally took part in these crimes, and today, under the guidance of their Western patrons, are trying to instigate pogroms in Russia. By the way, I am not sure whether all the leading circles in the same states are aware of this. It would not be a bad idea for those who care so much about the citizens of Israel to investigate what their security services are doing in Ukraine, whether they are trying to instigate pogroms in Russia. Scum, that’s all. There is no other way to put it.”

“But those who really stand up for truth and justice, who fight against evil and oppression, against racism and neo-Nazism, which the West encourages, are now fighting at the front – near Donetsk, Avdeyevka, on the Dnieper. I repeat: these are our soldiers and officers. And the choice of a real man, a true warrior, is to take up arms and stand in line with his brothers, to be there where the fate of Russia and, indeed, of the whole world, including the future of the Palestinian people, is being decided.”

This is the first time in public Putin has linked the war goal of denazification of the Ukraine with the “future of the Palestinian people”. Putin is implying what the unpublished Russian polls show the majority of the country thinks – between the fascist regime in Kiev and the Israeli government in Tel Aviv, there is no difference.

This is as explicitly as Putin has gone since October 7 to rebuff the line in several of the state propaganda organs of Moscow that the Arab war is not Russia’s fight, and that Russia should stay out of it.

“There’s something much bigger left unsaid,” a well-informed Moscow source adds, “which puts the people behind the war effort in the last week, and that is what Israel is doing to Gaza. That is what Brits and Americans did to Dresden and Hiroshima. That is what Germans did to Leningrad and Stalingrad. Russians, accused of anti-semitism and sympathy for Hamas by the usual media mouthpieces put two and two together and understand what awaited Russians of Donbass. They see Gaza and understand the race hatred and cruelty of the western axis. The bombing of Gaza reminds Russians what was done to their grandparents and what would be done to them if they do not win this war.”

What remains secret, Moscow sources caution, is the situation assessment of the General Staff now that the IDF is establishing a massive armoured force across northern Gaza; how Hamas plans to fight on from the tunnels; and how long the Palestinian forces can hold out before Hezbollah, the West Bank Palestinians, and the Arab-Iranian units on the Golan front will launch their promised counter-offensive. That is, if (repeat if) they move as they have been publicly threatening to do.

MAP OF ISRAELI AND PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES, IDF MOVES INTO GAZA


Source: https://t.me/Slavyangrad/71709?single

“The moral high ground is already held by Russia as Putin has just said,” a Moscow source comments, “while the state propaganda line portrays Russia as against ‘terrorism’, ‘genocide’, and ‘fascism’.” On the battlefield, he says, the situation is “far more grim. The satellite pictures show they [IDF] now have about 400 vehicles in total. They will overrun all of North Gaza while flooding or gassing the tunnels.”

For how long can Hamas defend against this without the opening of the other fronts to force the diversion of the IDF, stretch the US rearm and resupply capacities even further, and lengthen the war? There are pro-Russian military veteran sources who believe not long enough. “The Iranians are showing themselves to be blowhards. Hezbollah is afraid of the US response. Both know they risk losing power and position if the war escalates. Israel has called their bluff. Islamic ‘unity’ is proving to be hollow — a dead end.”

The Moscow source concurs. “When this is over, it will take away any chance of change to status quo for at least a decade. The only defeat it appears will still come in Ukraine but not in Palestine.

The Levada poll reveals that Russian public opinion trusts the Army to do what’s best, and Putin to say what’s right.

https://johnhelmer.net/if-the-army-says ... more-88797

[blindpig]

Deadlock
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 11/03/2023



This week marks exactly five months since Ukrainian troops, in armored columns held back by Russian minefields, artillery and drones, began their march from the fields of Zaporozhie toward what they hoped would be a quick breakout of the front. The repetition of the Kharkiv scenario, when the Russian troops were overwhelmed by the Ukrainian ones and the reserves and aviation could not help but cover the withdrawal, was the scenario dreamed of by Ukraine, a naivety that in the first days of the offensive paid with -according to Western sources - the destruction of 20% of the equipment used. Hundreds of millions of dollars and euros later, neither Western tanks have demonstrated, as expected of them, the inferiority of Russian weapons, nor has the courage of the Ukrainian warriors managed to compensate for the obvious deficiencies in areas as important as air cover for inflict a heavy enough defeat on Moscow's troops.

With the situation stabilized in a trench war in which the parties obtain more success in their long-distance attacks than in direct assaults in the hottest areas, it has long been evident that the war was entering the stalemate phase. During moments of defeat, Ukraine has appealed to the moral duty of its Western allies to rescue the country from the risk of falling into the hands of its authoritarian imperial neighbor, while in phases of victory, the argument has generally been the possibility of achieving defeat. strategy of a common enemy, Russia, that went beyond the Ukrainian battlefield. For the first time since February 2022, Kiev now faces a situation of blockade, in which it is not easy to argue that victory is around the corner and nor to demand large quantities of weapons, especially after the months of preparation and generous donations have not produced the results that the donor countries would have desired.

Counteracting this reality is the work of Valery Zaluzhny, who for the first time has used the words “stalemate” to describe the state of the war. He has done so in a column published by The Economist , which has become the most commented topic in recent hours both for what the commander in chief requests from his partners and for what that means about the current state of the war and the future prospects in the short and perhaps even the medium term.

The impasse on the front and the tendency to accept that neither side will be able to achieve a complete military victory - it is not expected that the Russian flag will fly over Kiev nor that the Ukrainian one will do so in Sevastopol - can be resolved in two ways. . The first is the one proposed yesterday by Oleksiy Arestovich who, expelled from Zelensky's circle, seems to be preparing his political adventure alone (perhaps as a soft opposition or even as a controlled opposition). The former advisor to the Office of the President, recognizing that it will be impossible to recover all the territory, but also that there is no risk of major Russian advances, has proposed starting the diplomatic route, yes, with Ukraine in a position of strength. Zaluzhny leads the other path to escape the blockade: that of demanding specific weapons from his allies for the current phase and, above all, for the future.

There is no possibility of a negotiated way to resolve the conflict or intention to seek a ceasefire that limits the suffering of the population in the face of winter in Zaluzhny's speech. Picking up the fallacious idea of ​​unity, which deliberately ignores that thousands of Ukrainian citizens have been fighting for several years against Kiev, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces recovers the argument of the fight for freedom and the will to give everything against the enemy. The data on draft evasion and the problems that Zaluzhny admits in the central part of the article in meeting personnel needs in the army contradict that will to fight until the end that both Zelensky and his foreign partners have maintained until now. However, and despite maintaining the idea of ​​a common struggle of an entire people against the aggressor state, Zaluzhny does admit that Russia has greater room for maneuver in terms of recruitment. Despite the talk of low morale among the Russian troops and the population's disinterest in the war, it is not Russia but Ukraine that has been forced to prohibit the departure of men of military age from the country to prevent the collapse of its armed forces.

Zaluzhny does not insist on the reasons why Ukraine should continue receiving huge quantities of weapons and ammunition. In this sense, he gives a single reasoning at the beginning of his article. Zaluzhny focuses the debate on the “assault on democracy by a morally sick imperial power in the heart of Europe,” which, in his opinion, “has changed the balance of forces in other parts of the planet, including the Middle East and Asia.” Peaceful". Political arguments are not the general's forte, who simply adds that "the failure of multilateral institutions such as the UN and OSCE to maintain order means that Ukraine can only restore its territorial integrity through military force."

To do this, the general presents a list of five elements with which to overcome the current blockade. Zaluzhny demands from his partners the supply of aviation to balance forces in the skies, which in recent months have acquired increasing importance. However, there is no longer any triumphalism about how the arrival of F16 would mean that “the Russians will have nothing to do,” as Zelensky stated. Zaluzhny praises Russia's work in relation to the development and use of drones, especially the Lancet kamikaze drones, which, as has been seen in recent months, have been one of the differentiating elements in Russian defense. The change compared to a year ago has been notable and Russia has gone from requiring the help of its Iranian allies to developing and using drones to replace missiles and aviation at least in the aspect of frontline surveillance. This combined use of drones together with artillery and as an element of guided attack against opposing armored vehicles is, surely, the greatest innovation of this war.

The use of drones and their increasingly sophisticated nature is the reason for the second request: tools for electronic warfare. The objective, here too, is to balance the battlefield to improve own capabilities and try to blind Russian drones, capable of acting at night. In this objective, Zaluzhny also calls for greater intelligence collaboration.

Counter-battery fire, something Russian commanders themselves have admitted they do not have too much of, and demining tools are next on Zaluzhny's wish list, which again mentions Russian capabilities to, for example, counter Ukrainian demining.

Implicitly admitting recruitment difficulties, the general also demands an increase in the training capabilities of new soldiers. The logistical difficulties, the ease that locating the training camps on Ukrainian territory would mean for Russia and the resources involved mean that Zaluzhny demands that his partners continue training the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In practice, this demand translates into asking the West to build a proxy army that it will continue to send to the front until final victory, even if that strategy has not worked in the current offensive. One of the most common complaints of Ukrainian soldiers has been precisely the poor preparation with which they have returned from countries like the United Kingdom, which is perhaps not the most suitable country to instruct Ukrainian soldiers in the reality of trench warfare. . Still, it is the West that Zaluzhny holds responsible for creating a reservation for Ukraine.

These five specific elements, added to the usual request for long-range missiles and ammunition in constant flows, are Zaluzhny's demand to continue the war until a final victory that the general does not promise and for which he does not offer any approximate date. “Russia should not be underestimated,” insists Zaluzhny, who adds, without admitting any losses of its own, that “it has suffered heavy casualties and expended a lot of ammunition. But she will have superiority in weapons, equipment, missiles and ammunition for a considerable time. Its defense industry is increasing production despite unprecedented sanctions. Our NATO partners are also dramatically increasing their production capabilities. But it takes at least a year to do this and in cases such as aviation and command and control systems, two.

The requests, the time that the creation of these weapons, the training of personnel and the formation of a strategic reserve would require for the West, means that Zaluzhny is aware that Ukraine is immersed in a long war. The comparison of it to the First World War and the mention of trench warfare also implies that, somehow, the general no longer seems so convinced that victory is certain. Trench warfare with two armies trying to hurt each other as much as possible from a distance seems to be General Zaluzhny's new plan. At least for a considerable time . Meanwhile, Ukraine demands weapons, ammunition, intelligence, technology and personnel from its partners.

https://slavyangrad.es/2023/11/03/punto ... more-28486

Google Translator

*********

Chronicle of a special military operation for November 2, 2023
November 2, 2023
Rybar

During the battle for Avdeevka, Russian troops managed to gain a foothold near the railway track northwest of Krasnogorovka on the northern flank. The fighters were also able to push through the defenses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces south of Vesyoly . In the south of the city, the Russian Armed Forces are advancing in the vicinity of the fortified area near the “Tsar’s Hunt” . Despite fruitless attempts at enemy counterattacks, Russian troops are gradually tightening their pincers around Avdievka, which is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

In the Kherson direction , the Russian Armed Forces pushed the Ukrainian formations back to the center of Krynoki : previously, the Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to expand the zone of control, but now they have been pushed back to their original positions. There are no changes in the Antonovsky Bridge area : the enemy is setting up new positions on the left bank of the Dnieper near the railway bridge.

Meanwhile, in the Kupyansky sector, the Russian Armed Forces were able to advance southwest of Pervomaisky , clearing the landings in which the enemy was located. In the Vremyevsky sector , the Russian Armed Forces counterattacked west of Staromayorsky and eliminated the wedge that the enemy was able to create some time ago.



The situation on the front line and combat operations


Positional battles continue in the Kupyansky sector . Russian units of the West group of troops are systematically suppressing the positions of Ukrainian forces near Kupyansk , ensuring the advance of heavy losses. The apparent lack of active events at first glance is deceptive. Soldiers of the Russian Army are pushing the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of their positions every day, which is why more and more reinforcements are being transferred to the city. During the last days, the Russian Armed Forces were able to advance south of Pervomaisky , clearing out important plantings in which the enemy had dug in. This simplifies both further defense in the area and advancement to the west.

The number of victims is getting higher every day. In the ranks of Ukrainian units, including the recently deployed 32nd and 54th mechanized brigade, the number of deserters and conscientious objectors is growing. Because of this, three reserve battalions arrived at Kupyansk. At the same time, the supply of the Ukrainian Armed Forces group near Kupyansk was significantly complicated due to the destruction by Russian troops of two pontoon-bridge crossings in Kupyansk. It is, of course, possible to install new ones, but the engineering stock is extremely limited, and with each such blow it becomes less and less. At the same time, the Ukrainian authorities began a new evacuation of populated areas due to the active actions of the Russian Armed Forces.


In the Soledar direction, the Russian Armed Forces near Kleshcheevka continue to repel enemy attacks. Under the cover of bad weather, several infantry groups of the Ukrainian Armed Forces wanted to take several forward strong points on the front line in a swoop, but thanks to timely detected movements, the enemy attack was thwarted. Positional clashes are taking place on the approaches to Kurdyumovka and in the Andreevka area .


In the Donetsk direction, combined units of the Russian army continue the assault on the fortifications of the Ukrainian Armed Forces around Avdeevka . In parallel, the Russian Armed Forces are carrying out tasks to destroy reinforcements withdrawn from other sectors of the front. Let us recall that by October 21, we managed to complete the task of expanding the bridgehead north of the city with the occupation of the ash dump of the Avdeevsky coke plant , and by October 26, we managed to expand the southern “pincers” and the offensive operation on the Khimik microdistrict.

On the northern flank, fighters of the Russian Armed Forces carried out several successful attacks along the railway northwest of Krasnogorovka , as a result of which Russian troops gained a foothold near the railway track. Also, servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces managed to push through the defenses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine south of Vesyoly . This was facilitated by control over the tactical heights on the waste heap , which left the Ukrainian formations at a disadvantage. In the east, the Russian Armed Forces leveled the front line along the H20 highway in the area south of Kamenka . At the same time, fighting continues at the strong point at the Donetsk filtration station .

On the southern flank, Russian units are advancing in the vicinity of the fortified area at the Tsar's Hunt. The Ukrainian Armed Forces formations holding it have been blocked there for many days and are completely cut off from supplies . Similarly, the assault troops of the Russian Army took the territory of the former anti-aircraft unit into a semicircle. Taking it by storm is pointless due to the fortified defense and possible losses. It is much more profitable to hold it without supplies. Over the past 24 hours, the Russian Armed Forces achieved the greatest successes in the Severny direction , where, as a result of a successful assault along the front, they managed to significantly advance both to the Khimik microdistrict and to Severny (1 km remained to the village). At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine , using combined units of various brigades, tried to counterattack both from Pervomaisky and from the southwestern part of Avdievka , but Russian military personnel managed to gain a foothold.

Since the key task of the Russian Armed Forces grouping in the Avdeevka area this week was to gain a foothold in advantageous previously occupied positions, the recent significant advance from both flanks indicates its successful solution and a return to active offensive operations. Despite attempts by the Ukrainian Armed Forces to deliver cutting blows from Novokalinovo , Petrovsky and Pervomaisky , as well as regular reinforcements, Russian troops are gradually tightening their pincers around Avdeevka , which is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

As we reported earlier, the losses of Ukrainian formations have reached catastrophic figures - in some brigades irretrievable losses amount to more than 20%, the number of refuseniks and deserters is growing. Reinforcements are being transferred from the Kherson region , Zaporozhye and Kharkov regions to carry out a counter-offensive and restore lost positions. The headquarters coordinating the defense of Avdeevka and upcoming counterattacks has already been moved to Kramatorsk . The Russian offensive, which has attracted the attention of the Ukrainian Armed Forces command to the Avdiivka fortified area, creates favorable conditions for the activation of the Russian Armed Forces in other directions, where the Ukrainian defense is most depleted.


At the Priyutnoye - Staromayorskoye line in the Vremyevsky sector , Russian units have been conducting a tactical offensive for several weeks, advancing systematically position by position. If last week the control of the Russian Army was kept to the south of the Grushevaya gully , and a significant part of the strongholds in the forest belts were behind the enemy, now the situation has changed.

Servicemen of the 394th Motorized Rifle Regiment of the 127th Division of the Russian Armed Forces were able to squeeze the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of the landings near the ravine and expand the zone of control to the north, significantly improving the situation. After the withdrawal of the Marine Corps from the Vremevsky sector, the position of the Armed Forces of Ukraine became extremely precarious, since the positions were mainly occupied by those mobilized from the military defense. Russian troops took advantage of this.


The excitement in the Kherson direction due to the consolidation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the left bank of the Dnieper has died down. The enemy’s bridgehead has not gone away, and Ukrainian formations continue to try to increase the zone of control. However, the Russian Armed Forces offer them fierce resistance.

In Krynki , a few days ago, Ukrainian marines of the 35th brigade were able to advance from the center to the west, but not for long. The artillery of the Russian Armed Forces again forced the Ukrainian units of the 35th Infantry Brigade to the houses in the central part of the village. From the east, Russian fighters gained a foothold, putting additional pressure on the forward groups of the Ukrainian Navy. Similarly, the Russian Armed Forces are holding lines to the south in landings, which are being massively fired upon by Ukrainian artillerymen with cluster shells. Positions west of the enemy beachhead are in a gray zone due to active fire from the right bank. The Marines themselves, who are still delivered to Krynki via Frolov Island , sit in the basements, periodically trying to carry out forays.

Under the railway bridge on Aleshkinsky Island, the situation remains the same. Marine assault groups are setting up new positions in the area of ​​the small railway bridge, but there have been no attempts to break through to Peschanivka and Poyma yet. At the moment, a certain routine has arisen in the direction, which should not be misleading. Despite the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot advance deeper, the situation on the left bank of the Dnieper remains precarious. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have a significant advantage in counter-battery warfare and unmanned aerial vehicles, which provide an advantage to forward groups due to the lack of electronic warfare equipment among our units on the front line. This allows you to send UAVs deeper, exploiting gaps in air defense and targeting long-range artillery.

Shelling of rear areas and residential areas

During the day, Ukrainian formations once again attempted a raid on the Rostov region. Several air targets were shot down in the skies over Azov , Chaltyr and Bataysk , there was no destruction or casualties.


The Ukrainian Armed Forces have significantly increased the intensity of attacks on the Donetsk agglomeration , firing over a hundred shells at Gorlovka and Donetsk both from artillery and with the help of attack UAVs. Over ten houses were damaged in the Nikitovsky and Tsentralno-Gorodsky districts of Gorlovka. The strikes were carried out in the Kirovsky, Kuibyshevsky, Kievsky and Petrovsky districts of Donetsk - there is destruction of civilian infrastructure. One person was injured in Yasinovataya . In addition, Makeevka and the village of Golmovsky also came under attack - there was no information about the destruction.


In the Zaporozhye region, Ukrainian formations attacked residential buildings and the infrastructure of Energodar with a swarm of drones . The strikes occurred during the next visit of the IAEA mission to the Zaporizhia NPP. The raid lasted more than half an hour, as a result of which two administrative buildings, a hotel and a multi-storey building on Stroiteley Street were damaged, and three drones were shot down.

C A R T O C H A

In the Kherson region, the Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to launch indiscriminate artillery strikes on populated areas on the left bank of the Dnieper. Under enemy fire, as before , Novaya Kakhovka and Kakhovka , as well as Peschanivka , Golaya Pristan , Gornostaevka , Maslovka , Kardashinka , and Korsunka . Despite the blows, restoration work is underway.

Political events
About the arrival of the F-16 in Ukraine

That night, two trucks carrying two dismantled American F-16 fighters entered Ukraine from Poland . As of November 2, five aircraft of this type have already been transported to Ukraine. On the one hand, deliveries of American fighters have been expected for a long time. They talked about coordinating the transfer of the F-16 back in the summer. But on the other hand, Western countries supplied the Armed Forces of Ukraine with what they needed in the quantities that made it possible to maintain the conflict.

Their appearance now indirectly indicates the growing problems of the Ukrainian Air Force in ensuring airspace security. Enemy aviation is becoming less and less, and there is nowhere else to replenish it. And so that the Armed Forces of Ukraine would not be left completely without aircraft thanks to the work of the Aerospace Forces, Air Defense and Black Sea Fleet, deliveries of F-16s began. And their primary goal will be to hunt the most dangerous targets for them - the MiG-31 and A-50. American fighter jets can be equipped with various types of air-to-air missiles of the AIM series. The latest version of the AIM-120D has a launch range of 180 km.

However, despite more modern equipment and weapons than on old Soviet models, this is ordinary equipment (from which there is no need to make some kind of wunderwaffle). Moreover, the radiation emanating from the F-16 is much more powerful. And this simplifies both the search for aircraft through the use of the A-50 AWACS aircraft, and their subsequent fire defeat.

New assistance package for the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Germany

Information about the next package of military assistance for Ukraine has appeared on the Bundeswehr website. It included:

12 armored personnel carriers;
2 TRML-4D airspace monitoring radars;
7 Primoco ONE reconnaissance drones;
5 surface drones,
30,000 sets of winter clothing and other weapons and equipment.

In addition, plans for future deliveries of Leopard 1A5 tanks to Ukraine have changed: if earlier it was about the transfer of 90 tanks in addition to the already delivered 20, now this number has increased to 115. As noted on the website of the German Ministry of Defense, the tanks will be transferred in an unspecified time frame, since some Equipment planned for transfer may still be in production. The cost of military aid transferred from Germany to Ukraine amounted to 7.4 billion euros for 2022-2023, and another 10.5 billion is pledged in the form of obligations for the following years.

In this context, our colleagues from the Ubersicht_Ukraine channel recall the statement of German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who said that in the context of the current situation in the world, Europe should “prepare for war,” which means, of course, allocating even more funds for defense spending.

As we wrote earlier, the plan to transform the German defense industry into a tool for absorbing investments (primarily American) by TNCs continues to prove its effectiveness.

About the existential crisis of the Ukrainian counteroffensive,
the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Valery Zaluzhny, gave an interview and wrote an essay for The Economist, where he described the risks of “trench warfare” for Ukraine , and what his country needs to defeat Russia on the battlefield. The Ukrainian and Russian armies, according to the general, have reached a level of technology that does not give either side an advantage over its rival. It was assumed that the Ukrainian army would “advance at a speed of 30 kilometers per day.” The ability of the warring parties to observe each other's actions and the subsequent fire defeat negates the effect of surprise, which also leads to a decrease in the pace of advance.


According to Zaluzhny, combat operations are turning into positional battles of attrition, like in the First World War, which is a threat to the existence of the Ukrainian state and society as a whole. These conditions, according to the commander in chief, will allow Russia to accumulate a sufficient number of forces and weapons to contain the Ukrainian offensive.
Ukraine is in dire need of combat aircraft, without a sufficient number of which it is impossible to conduct successful ground operations.
In addition, the commander-in-chief complains about the insufficient number of attack drones with which it will be possible to overload Russian air defense. For their effective use, it is necessary to modernize electronic warfare systems, two thirds of which are outdated Soviet-made models. At the same time, the Russian Armed Forces, on the contrary, are successfully hitting enemy artillery installations, primarily thanks to the Lancet drones and the increased production of high-precision projectiles of the Krasnopol type.


The key problem with the slow pace of the Ukrainian offensive is outdated and scarce mine clearance vehicles. Due to deep minefields for tens of kilometers, Ukrainian troops were not allowed to pass the main Russian defensive lines. Another stumbling block is the shortage of personnel, which they plan to solve by expanding the number of civilians subject to mobilization and modernizing the battle planning and control system in order to “make decisions faster than Russia.” Only the transition from positional battles to maneuver battles can theoretically promise Ukrainian formations success on the battlefield.


According to Zaluzhny, you cannot win a war with “weapons of the last generation.” At the same time, modern tanks and aircraft such as the F-16 and Abrams were much more in demand last year, but now the Russian army has qualitatively improved its personnel and put into service the latest S-400 air defense systems. In major Western media, there are increasingly doubts that Ukraine will be able to achieve any significant success on the battlefield, and, perhaps, things are heading towards freezing the conflict and future negotiations.

https://rybar.ru/hersonskoe-napravlenie ... v-krynkah/

(Other images at link.)

Washington Post Lifts the Veil on CIA’s Shadow War Against Russia Waged Since 2014

By Jeremy Kuzmarov - November 1, 2023 4


[Source: survivethenews.com]
In August 2022, Ukrainian security service (SBU) operatives hid explosives in a crate intended for a cat in a car driven by a woman and her twelve year old daughter. After the car passed through the Russian border, the SBU planted the bomb in the SUV of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, the daughter of well known philosopher Alexander Dugin, who was tragically killed.[1]

According to a new exposé in The Washington Post, which is based on interviews with more than two dozen Ukrainian, and U.S. intelligence officials, the Dugina bombing operation was part of a “raging shadow war” in which Ukraine’s spy services have twice bombed the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea, piloted drones into the roof of the Kremlin, and blown holes in the hulls of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea.[2]


[Source: washingtonpost.com]

Journalist Darya Dugina killed in car bombing. [Source: thedailybeast.com]

The key agency helping to run this shadow war—you guessed it—is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which according to The Post, formed, trained and equipped the SBU commando units that were involved in its key operations.

Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed intelligence services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said.

The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine and in the U.S., built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, maintained a significant presence in Kyiv, and shared intelligence on a scale that would have been unimaginable before.

These revelations are not particularly surprising in light of what had already been disclosed. Vasily Prozorov, a former SBU officer who defected to Russia, publicly said that the SBU was advised by the CIA since 2014, and that CIA employees have come to the SBU’s central office to plot secret operations.


Vasily Prozorov [Source: tellerreport.com]

Plausible Deniability and the Birth of a New Mossad

As a key part of the shadow war, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations of Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia. Those killed include a blogger at a cafe in St. Petersburg.

Investigators and members of emergency services work at the site of an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg, Russia on April 2, 2023.


Café in St. Petersburg that was destroyed by a Ukrainian terrorist bomb in a targeted assassination. [Source: cnn.com]
A former CIA official was quoted in the The Post stating that “We are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services that are like Mossad [the Israeli intelligence services known for carrying out assassassination] in the 1970s.”

Another U.S. intelligence official emphasized U.S. operational restrictions, stating that their focus was “more on secure communications and tradecraft,” and pursuing new streams of intelligence inside Russia “rather than ‘here’s how you blow up a mayor.’ I never got the sense that we were that involved in designing their ops.”

These latter comments can be seen as a form of plausible deniability in which the U.S. and CIA distances itself from atrocities that it commits by blaming them on its proxy forces.

The Post is generally known as a platform for “controlled leaks.”

Oleg Tsaryov, a member of Ukraine’s parliament from 2002-2014, said that the U.S. attempt to distance itself from the Dugina car bombing and other terrorist acts was disingenuous. He specified that the CIA and British MI6 ran the coup d’état in Kyiv in 2014, and said that he could name the officials in Kyiv who were in the pay of U.S. intelligence.[3]


Oleg Tsaryov [Source: theguardian.com]

Parallels with CIA Phoenix Program in Vietnam—with a New Twist


[Source: uncensoredhistory.blogspot.com]

CovertAction Magazine has previously reported on a historical parallel with the CIA’s Vietnam Phoenix Program, where the CIA also claimed plausible deniability, blaming terrorist acts committed in an attempt to “neutralize” civilian officials supportive of the National Liberation Front (NLF) on proxy forces—Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), which were known for their brutality.

The CIA provided the PRU’s working under Phoenix—like their modern-day Ukrainian counterparts—with modern police technologies, trained them in intelligence gathering and interrogation techniques, and set up computerized databases of subversives who were targeted for liquidation.[4]


Phoenix Program adviser John Wilbur with a Vietnamese PRU assassination squad. [Source: uncensoredhistory.blogspot.com]

Though the CIA denies it is involved directly in kill-capture missions, it is doing the same things it did under Phoenix in helping Ukrainian intelligence operatives to collate and organize intelligence and to create blacklists and may be giving direct orders.

Civilian officials considered to be Russian collaborators or propagandists are on the blacklists. In a new twist, the CIA and SBU have made the death lists publicly accessible on the Myrotvorets website, which advertises itself as being run out of Langley.


Ukrainian kill list publicly accessible on the Myrotvorets website. [Source: Screenshot courtesy of Jeremy Kuzmarov]


Russian journalist Darya Dugina marked eliminated on the kill list. [Source: twitter.com]

“Our Little Baby”
The CIA’s close relationship with the SBU intensified right after the February 2014 Maidan coup, which resulted in the overthrow of pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych and empowered a pro-Western regime led by Petro Poroshenko and then Volodymyr Zelensky.

Afterwards, the CIA worked with the SBU to create a new intelligence agency that would focus on “active measures” operations against Russia, whose government the U.S. wanted to remove.

Training sites were located outside Kyiv where handpicked recruits were instructed by CIA personnel. The plan was to form units “capable of operating behind front lines and working as covert groups,” said a Ukrainian official involved in the effort.

The agency provided secure communications gear, eavesdropping equipment that allowed Ukraine to intercept Russian phone calls and emails, and furnished disguises and separatist uniforms enabling operatives to more easily slip into occupied towns.

The early missions focused on recruiting informants among Russia’s proxy forces as well as cyber and electronic eavesdropping measures. The SBU also began mounting sabotage operations and missions to capture separatist leaders and Ukrainian collaborators, some of whom were taken to secret detention sites.


Ukrainian terrorist commandos—creations of the CIA. [Source: nytimes.com]

Over one three-year stretch, at least half a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking separatist commanders or collaborators were killed in violence that was often attributed to internal score-settling but in reality was the work of the SBU, Ukraine officials said.

In 2016, Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of a pro-Russian group in eastern Ukraine—whose people had been besieged by Ukrainians bombardment and atrocities since the Maidan coup and looked to Russia for protection—was gunned down in a Moscow restaurant.


[Source: ukrainetoday.org]

The CIA devoted millions of dollars to building up the GUR, a smaller and more nimble organization which had fewer ex-KGB operatives than the SBU. A former U.S. intelligence official said that “GUR was our little baby. We gave them all new equipment and training.”

At sites in Ukraine and, later, the U.S., GUR operatives were trained in skills ranging from clandestine maneuvers behind enemy lines to the use of weapons platforms and explosives.


[Source: globalsecurity.org]

The CIA paid for new headquarters for the GUR’s spetsnaz paramilitary division and helped the GUR acquire state-of-the-art surveillance and electronic eavesdropping systems, as well as mobile equipment that could be placed along Russian-controlled lines in eastern Ukraine, and software tools used to exploit the cellphones of Kremlin officials visiting occupied territory from Moscow.

Ukrainian officers operated the systems but everything gleaned was shared with the Americans. Troves of data were relayed through the new CIA-built facility back to Washington, where they were scrutinized by CIA and NSA analysts.

In a measure of U.S.-Ukraine trust, officials said, the CIA was permitted to have direct contact with agents recruited and run by Ukrainian intelligence.


GUR soldiers [Source: reddit.com]

Framing the Narrative

GUR and SBU agent nets have assisted Ukraine in planning terrorist and drone attacks inside Russia proper, including attacks on the Kerch bridge and a May 2023 operation that set fire to a section of the roof in the Kremlin.


Water being poured over a section of the Kerch bridge between Russia and Crimea that was sabotaged by Ukrainian terrorist commandos trained by the CIA. [Source: nytimes.com]

GUR’s venture into assassination included the murder of a Russian naval commander, Stanislav Rzhitsky whose location was exposed because of a fitness app that he used on his phone (Rzhitsky was shot dead on his morning run).


Stanislav Rzhitsky [Source: gagadget.com]

A Ukrainian security official told the The Post that this and other high-profile murders were “about narrative,” showing enemies of Ukraine that “punishment is imminent even for those who think they are untouchable.”

This explanation fits the classic definition of terrorism: an act of violence targeting civilians with the goal of furthering a political agenda or intimidating a population.

The CIA practiced terrorism routinely in the Cold War, displaying the corpses of dead guerrillas on lampposts in town squares for intimidation purposes under the Phoenix Program, for example.[5]


CIA officer Edward Lansdale, with briefcase center, and members of his secret team arriving in South Vietnam. Lansdale was known for promoting the vampire trick in the Philippines which became a model for the Phoenix Program that he helped oversee. We don’t know who the modern day Lansdale is as the names of the CIA officers involved in Ukraine’s version of the Phoenix program have not been publicly revealed. [Source: ft.com]

The same modus operandi is being adopted today in Ukraine in another dirty war being co-directed by the CIA. This war is even more dangerous than before because it is being carried out on Russian soil in a country that possesses nuclear weapons.


Dugin was branded as a fascist in U.S. media but a review of his writings shows him to have repudiated fascism, and to have developed his own hybrid philosophy. He was primarily a Russian nationalist supportive of a Eurasian Union. ↑

Greg Miller and Isabelle Khurshudyan, “Ukrainian Spies With Deep Ties to CIA Wage Shadow War Against Russia,” The Washington Post, October 23, 2023. ↑

After issuing a public statement, Tsaryov, who served as an adviser to Ukrainian Prime Minister Myloa Azarov in 2014 speaker of the parliament of “Novorossiya,” a short-lived confederation of the Donetsk and Luhansk separatist governments that had been endorsed by the Kremlin and openly sought an annexation into Russia, was the target of an attempted assassination and was shot twice while at a spa hotel in Yalta in Crimea where he lives in the latest Phoenix style attack by Ukraine’s CIA-trained secret services. ↑

See Douglas Valentine, The Phoenix Program (New York: William & Morrow, 1991). For the antecedents of Phoenix and how it evolved out of clandestine police training programs in the Cold War, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, Modernizing Repression: Police Training and Nation Building in the American Century (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012). ↑

This was known as the “vampire trick” and it was earlier promoted in the Philippines against the Huk left-wing rebels. See Jonathan Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). ↑

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/1 ... ince-2014/

"Occupied Crimea"???

I find it noteworthy that in these various articles about Ukraine's assassination operation that while highlighting the deaths of Motorola and Givi those of Batman, Brain and other victims of assassination are never mentioned. Perhaps that is because those guys were 'politicals' and advocated a return to socialist practices. Perhaps they are why Kremlin support for Donbass was initially slow in coming and grudging. And maybe that is another reason for reining in Republican battlefield successes in 2014-15, besides still wishing to accommodate the West. Knowing the Russian people's nostalgia for "the good old days" of the USSR Moscow snuffed out those embers with plausible deniability. Which does condition my support, though not diminish it, for now. But not forgotten nor forgiven.

*********

Ukraine SitRep: Technologies And Stalemate - Zaluzny's Failures
There are three new pieces in the Economist with the Ukrainian General Zaluzny.

The first is an interview:

[/i]Ukraine’s commander-in-chief on the breakthrough he needs to beat Russia - Economist - Nov 1, 2023[/i]

The second is an op-ed written by Zaluzny himself:

The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces on what he needs to beat Russia - Economist - Nov 1, 2023
Technology is the key as the war becomes “positional”, says Valery Zaluzhny

The op-ed is the short form of a longer essay by Zaluzny which is also available at the Economist site:

MODERN POSITIONAL WARFARE AND HOW TO WIN IN IT - Economist - Nov 1, 2023

Zaluzny's central thesis is that the war is currently at a stalemate. It has become positional, with no large maneuvers being possible. He compares it to the war in Europe in 1917. There, he says, a change only happened through the introduction of new technologies (i.e. tanks).

Zaluzny recognizes that the long term winner in a positional war will be Russia:

[D]ue to many subjective and objective reasons, the war at the present stage is gradually moving to a positional form, a way out of which in the historical retrospect has always been difficult for both the Armed Forces and the state as a whole. At the same time, the prolongation of a war, as a rule, in most cases, is beneficial to one of the parties to the conflict. In our particular case, it is the russian federation, as it gives it the opportunity to reconstitute and build up its military power. Therefore, the issues of understanding the causes of such a situation, finding possible ways out of it and changing the nature and course of this war in favour of Ukraine are of particular relevance in modern conditions.
Zaluzny thinks that the way to end the positional warfare stalemate are new technologies. His solution is to ask for, and to heavily invest in, certain fields that might give Ukraine an advantage.

He wants masses of drones, more small electronic warfare systems, better counter-artillery abilities, better and more mine breaching technologies and last but not least more build-up of reserves.

I for one think that Zaluzny is mistaken. The war is not at a stalemate. Russia has clearly the advantage as it is free to maneuver along the whole frontline and to attack wherever it likes. It does not do so in full force because the current situation allows it to conveniently fulfill the order its commander in chief had given to it - to destroy the military capabilities of Ukraine.

None of the technologies Zaluzny has listed are really new. They are capabilities Russia already has, and which the Ukraine clearly lacks - at least in numbers. During the two decades of the war of terror the West has neglected to deeply invest in these fields while Russia had continued to further develop them. It is an advantage that will be hard to catch up with.

One more point on the last change Zaluzny wants to implement - the build-up of reserves.

It is Ukraine's strategy of 'attack everywhere' and of 'never giving ground for lives', that has prevented it from doing that. This may well be because of Zelenski's insistence of holding Bakhmut and currently of holding Avdiivka at whatever the price. Both have cost the Ukraine a huge amount of material and men. Zelenski insisted on attacking and on holding out because he needed to show success to get more money and weapons.

That strategy has failed and it has killed the Ukrainian army:

Since the start of the invasion, Ukraine has refused to release official counts of dead and wounded. But according to U.S. and European estimates, the toll has long surpassed 100,000 on each side of the war. It has eroded the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces so badly that draft offices have been forced to call up ever older personnel, raising the average age of a soldier in Ukraine to around 43 years. “They’re grown men now, and they aren’t that healthy to begin with,” says the close aide to Zelensky. “This is Ukraine. Not Scandinavia.”

It was Zaluzny's task, as the top military leader, to convince the civilian leadership of the right way to fight the war.

One year ago, after the Russian forces left Kherson city, the Ukrainian army should have gone to solely defensive positions along geographic features that give an advantage. Russia would have had to attack and to endure higher losses. But we still do not see even one decently build Ukrainian defense line. Instead reserves still get thrown into failing attacks and to hold on to obviously lost cauldron positions.



During the last days tanks from the 47th brigade (Leo 2) and 10th mountain brigade (T-64BM/BV) have been seen, and were destroyed, near Avdiivka. Both brigades had only recently been mauled during their hopeless attacks at the southern front. It does not make sense to throw what is left of them into another battle without reconstituting them. The whole experience and knowledge these brigades had gained will be lost with them.

Zaluzny shows no sign of acknowledging those mistakes. If Zelenzki did not follow his military advice he should have resigned. If he has agreed with Zelenzki's strategy his judgment has simply failed. It is now far too late to correct for either.

Posted by b on November 2, 2023 at 13:30 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/11/u ... .html#more

********

TIME Magazine Profile Depicts Grim Führerbunker-Stage of Zelensky's Conflict

SIMPLICIUS THE THINKER
NOV 1, 2023
The talk of the blogosphere is the new devastating TIME magazine profile on Zelensky which paints the most grim, 1945 Führerbunker portrait of Zelensky yet. Bernhard covers it well on MoA, but I’m going to retread some of the same points to take the analysis into a slightly different direction of anticipating what comes next vis a vis the current political turmoil in the U.S.

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/tim ... picts-grim

much more at link

Very good, well supported, very long, read it in situ Oughta keep you busy for a while.)

*******

Changes in control of territories in the NWO zone. September-October 2023
colonelcassad
November 2, 19:30



Changes in control of territories in the NWO zone. September-October 2023

01,11,23 Map - NWO Zone - Area

Territorial changes on the map of the War for the Partition of Ukraine ( https://goo.gl/maps/ZB195JxTzBqLkX418 ) related to the conduct of active hostilities for October (September) 2023:

- new ones in the Kupyansk direction positions of the RF Armed Forces at the line Olshana - Pershotravnevoye - Yagodnoye: +17.4 (+0.83) km²
- Svatovskoe direction, increase in the area of ​​control of the RF Armed Forces: +0.5 (+14.32) km²
- Kremenskoe direction, advance of the RF Armed Forces south of the power line: +0.6 (+1.21) km²
- northern flank of Artyomovsk, attacks by the Russian Armed Forces in the area of ​​the Berkhovsky reservoir: +0.13 (-3.33) km²
- southern flank of Artyomovsk, active offensive actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the Kleshcheevka line -Andreevka-Kurdyumovka: -2.66(-6.09) km²
- northern coverage of Avdeevka, attacks by the Russian Armed Forces in the Krasnogorovka area: +5.43(+0) km² -
southern coverage of Avdeevka, attacks in the direction of Avdeevka, Severny and Pervomaisky : +5.8(+0) km²
- Maryinsky direction, attack of the Russian Armed Forces in the direction of Krasnogorovka: +1.3(+0.19) km²
- near Novomikhailovka attacks of the Russian Armed Forces south of the settlement: +15.7(+0) km²
- near Velikaya Novosyolka, clarification of the line of combat contact: +0.22 (-9.2) km²
- in the Orekhovsky direction, the Armed Forces of Ukraine made active attempts to expand the neck of the fire bag against the backdrop of counter attacks by the Russian Armed Forces: -9.74 (-23.7 ) km²
- in other areas, changes in the line of combat contact were made either on the basis of archival data not previously taken into account when constructing the map and not related to active hostilities, or were of an insignificant nature. General territorial

changes for October (September) 2023: +34.68(- 25.77) km²

The general statistics did not include territorial changes related to the fighting in the Dnieper delta due to the peculiarities of the formation of the line of combat contact and the presence of vast areas with difficult-to-control territories. General territorial changes in the Dnieper delta: -78.7 km²

The map was compiled ( https://t.me/creamy_caprice/1761 ) based on objective data based on georeferences published on the Creamy Caprice channel ( https://t.me/creamy_caprice ) from public video and photographic materials, as well as satellite images, excluding unconfirmed and unproven information (rumors, inside stories, text requests).

https://t.me/ChDambiev/26368 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8742570.html

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