Ukraine Invasion Part 18

[Ijsbear]

Place for information, discussion, points of view, useful links and above all, a hope that this sovereign land can regain its freedom.

@Ijsbear

Place for information, discussion, points of view, useful links and above all, a hope that this sovereign land can regain its freedom.

Echoing those sentiments and thanking you on the new thread as well!

Thanks @Ijsbear

Thanks. Placemarking

Thanks for the new thread

Our Ukrainian gentleman has his 30th birthday today. What a shit situation to celebrate his 30th. He did at least say that his family had got out and were in relative safety in the West of the country.

Thank you for the new thread, and thanks to all those contributing, these threads are my go to place for understanding what’s going on, and why, in this awful war.

Thanks @Ijsbear. I echo your hopes that Ukraine's sovereignty is restored.

It's been very difficult to revive today's message from Odesa. It us like I have personally been addressed about the need for military aid and have been told the consequences of not helping. I was already hawkish but I am positively having to rein myself in today.

Given that someone said on the previous thread that the absolute number of Russian losses is much higher, but in terms of percentages the Ukrainian losses are higher ... it's dispiriting.

Thank you.

Another cat pic:

twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1509935827153035272/photo/1

olexander scherba @olex_scherba
Ukrainian journalist Taras Berezovets: in #Ukraine’s town of Bucha near Kyiv #RussianArmy killed all men between 16 & 60 who didn’t manage to escape.

Unverified but would match with video footage and the sheer number of civilian bodies lying about.

As I said last night twitter has some pretty awful stuff on it atm unfortunately.

Oh jesus. that's truly appalling.

from ISW yesterday:

Key Takeaways

We now assess that Russia has revised its campaign plan in Ukraine after the failure of operations to seize Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities throughout March.
The Kremlin’s claims that Russia’s main objective has been eastern Ukraine throughout the war are false and intended to obfuscate the failure of Russia’s initial campaign.
Russia’s main effort is now concentrated on eastern Ukraine. Russian forces seek to capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
Russian forces will likely take Mariupol in the coming days but continue to suffer heavy casualties.
Russian forces seek to fix in place the Ukrainian forces around Kharkiv.
Russian forces captured Izyum after three weeks of fighting on April 1 and will attempt to advance southeast to link up with Russian forces in Luhansk Oblast in the coming days.
Ukrainian forces recaptured large swathes of terrain both northwest and east of Kyiv in the past 24 hours, but Russia successfully withdrew elements of its damaged forces into Belarus.
The Kremlin will continue to funnel reinforcements (including both low-quality individual replacements from Russia and damaged units redeployed from northeastern Ukraine) into operations in eastern Ukraine, but these degraded forces are unlikely to enable Russia to conduct successful large-scale offensive operations.

This is currently circulating:

Sergej Sumlenny @sumlenny
- Russia planned to easy-take Kyiv within 3 days, following by capitulation of Ukraine;
- Russian army units were followed by thousands of riot police;
- Russian army purchased 45,000 body bags and brought mobile crematories;
- I am sure they planned mass executions for Ukraine.

In September 2021, Russia has adopted a state technical standard for digging and maintaining mass graves amid wartime. It took effect on Feb 1st 2022.

According to experts, the size of mass graves foreseen by this new Russian technical standard, "are thinkable only for a nuclear war or a pandemic". Looks like these graves were also foreseen for Ukrainians, as Russians published on 26th Feb their official article on "victory".

The standard foresaw digging of isolated mass graves for up to 1,000 dead bodies each grave within 3 days. A team of 16 soldiers was responsible for every grave.

Summarising: it looks like Russia planned a fast victory over Ukrainian army, full occupation of Ukraine and a genocide, including mass executions of Ukrainian civil society leaders, politicians, cultural leaders, clerics, etc. The scale of planned genocide was unseen since WWII

For understanding: here are details from the Russian State technical standard for mass graves, it describes with plans and pictures, how the grave should be dug+isolated, how corpses should be covered with chemicals and how the full grave should be trumped by a heavy bulldozer.

Don't forget: on Feb 26th, 4 days after the planned attack on 22/02/22 (and 2 days after the real attack) Russia's biggest state outlet RIA published (clearly out of mistake) an article about the victory over Ukraine and the final "solution of Ukrainian question" by this war.

So there is no surprise, WHY Ukrainians are not happy to listen to German advice (like by @JohannesVarwick and other persons) to "capitulate and save lives". Ukrainian may not know all the details of Putin's plans, but they have all the experience of what Putin and Russia bring.

Original thread here:
twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1510168073831165956

The guy seems to be regarded as respected. Fuck knows whether what he's saying has an ounce of truth in it, but I suspect its going to crop on people's radar pretty soon as its getting attention, so thought it best to get it out the way.

Is it propaganda? Hard to tell tbh. Not least because its simply because its so appallingly awful to comprehend as real.

Its hard to ignore though particularly in the light of the images and information starting to come out of Bucha and Irpen

He also talks about how the Russians have left those areas that the Ukrainians have recently liberated. Again not a nice thread.
twitter.com/sumlenny/status/1509911168483311623

I think we are going to see a fair amount on this over the coming days.

The images from Bucha are clear indications of war crimes. I posted at the tail-end of the other thread that some of the men had their hands tied behind the back. Some people are also suggesting that Max Levin was deliberately shot, but that it unconfirmed. Jeremy Bowen's report from outside Kyiv yesterday was also indicative of atrocities.

If you are interested in the genesis and development of the Azov Battalion, here is a YouTube video from Anton Shekhovtsov, a Ukrainian expert on the Far-Right.

If you are interested in cat pictures, I suggest you google Alexei Surovtsev, a man variously described as a Ukrainian actor, reality star and stripper, who has been rescuing pets from bomb-damaged areas.

Entangled elite cats in comfort to PMK

There is also a fair amount of talk about the Russian exit to Belarus from the Chernoybl area. With bridges largely out and the land flooded they've had something of a problem:

I had been reading about it last night, but there now appears to be footage of abandoned equipment in the area:
twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1510241604145238019

It was most definitely not an orderly retreat.

I did speculate several threads back that the mobile crematoria might not just be for Russian soldiers. Jeremy Bowen's report yesterday showed that the Russians had been attempting to burn the bodies of those they had killed, sometimes by piling them up and covering them with burning tyres.

The images from Bucha are terrible. I live in a small town outside a major city of equivalent size and I'm imagining walking through it and seeing murdered people lying everywhere. If Russia wins this war, even if they just hang on to parts of Ukraine, the potential human cost is unthinkable.

Placemark

@RedToothBrush

olexander scherba *@olex*_scherba Ukrainian journalist Taras Berezovets: in #Ukraine’s town of Bucha near Kyiv #RussianArmy killed all men between 16 & 60 who didn’t manage to escape.

Unverified but would match with video footage and the sheer number of civilian bodies lying about.

As I said last night twitter has some pretty awful stuff on it atm unfortunately.

I generally question everything, not just on this war, but most things.

But we do know that humans do horrific things to each other. And have been for millennia. These executions are highly probable. I wonder how many Indian and Chinese politicians will be prepared one day to travel to Ukraine to hear what the Ukrainian people have to say?

Tim White @TWMCLtd
Oops! Amid allegations of ill disciplined retreating Russian troops being drunk, there have been 6 accidents involving Russian military vehicles in 2 days around #Homel in #Belarus.

Two have seen Terrorist trucks overturned.

Has anyone mentioned about the fate of the pregnant woman in Mariupol who was claimed was an actress?

She is now in Russian hands, and has done a video saying there was no air attack on the hospital. Poor woman.

But Russia has Moral Right on it's side, dontcha know>

Mariupol has rather dropped out of the news and someone pointed out that there's no news from Ukrainians holding out in Donbass.

I did wonder if the Russians planned to literally kill everyone in the areas they took over to finally remove Ukrainian wish for independence. That stuff about 45,000 body bags is much too convincing, if it really was 45k of them, given that they expected to waltz in in 3 days.

Sadly mass murder on that scale seems too likely. Either get deported out of Ukraine or get killed. No one left to protest.

The middle-european countries bordering Russia knew Russia under Putin was a deadly threat. We should have listened.

Maybe really daft question but in the grand scheme of how many people live in these areas and the number of soldiers isn’t 45k actually pretty low? If the Russians planned to murder the entire population/ a good portion of it wouldn’t they need a damned sight more than 45k? Assume the plan would just be to mass grave the rest? If so why bother with any body bags at all?

Just trying to understand the logistics and intention.

twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1509968359483445256
Kamil Galeev @kamilkazani
Imperial Reboot

In a previous thread I outlined three scenarios for the Russian future:

1. North Korea
2. Imperial Reboot
3. National Divorce

Last time I discussed North Korea (Putin stays in power). Now I'll reiterate its main points and then outline the Imperial Reboot

Not going to post the whole thing here for a number of reasons but this is the second of Kamil Galeev's thoughts on the future of Russia.

.

Point, 45k is low in terms of 44million people. And total depopulation means no one to work the fields and factories. So as you say it can't have been the plan to kill everyone!

It is an enormous number of people though. Their lists must be very, very long.