Ukraine Invasion: Part 20

[HappyWinter]

Thanks to everyone for taking part in the thread.

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@blueshoes

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime that Beau guy is pretty annoying, I'll give you that.

His message seems to be that a special directorate called the 'Fifth service' was set up by Russia in 1998. This directorate was tasked to gather intelligence in former Soviet states, including fund a resistance group within Ukraine. However, the Russian officers siphoned off the money instead and sent fake reports to the Kremlin leading Putin to believe that his invasion would in fact receive support in Ukraine from these large resistance groups. But they did not exist. The Russian war effort which looked so inept at every turn now makes sense because it wouldn't have been had those resistance groups actually existed. He says that these are unverifiable rumours but if they were to be believed, explains a lot of the Russian missteps.

Apparently the head of this directorate is now in 'very bad' prison, which is the Russian equivalent of gitmo and 150 Russian officers fired from service. This seriously hamstrings Russian intelligence because greedy as they were, those officers knew what was going on at least enough to send fake reports

Anyway, this reminds of when the US pulled out of Afghanistan. The Afghanistan army melted away and reportedly probably did not exist anyway in the numbers that were supposed to be there because of corruption and theft.

It's Our Man in Havana Kyiv

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Man_in_Havana

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Shiny on Twitter.

twitter.com/euromaidanpr/status/1514787561541017601?s=21&t=JFC1aaTX47ejNj4WHTJ5fw

Euromaidan PR
@EuromaidanPR
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1h
^Where are these Moskva's nuclear warheads? Where were they when the ammunition exploded? Where is the point on the map? Coordinates? UN Security Council and the IAEA must take actions.
The coastal states of the Black Sea - Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia to join 2/2^

If true, that's worrying.

@ScrollingLeaves

Re refugees on the Homes for Refugees scheme - Do we know if any have got through other than those on the original scheme who have family here? Or is there the possibility that Homes for Refugees is all secretly false?

I have one Ukrainian living with me under the Homes for Ukrainians U.K. scheme (arrived on the 9th April) a further two we're sponsoring are at 'the decision stage'. So not all false but certainly lots of red tape.

god, red tape in these circumstances.

You can't just have an open door policy but the UK has thrown out compassion with the trash hasn't it?

from the ISW:

Key Takeaways

The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet sunk on April 14 following a likely Ukrainian cruise missile strike on April 13. The loss of the Moskva is a significant propaganda victory for Ukraine but will likely have only limited effects on Russian operations.
Ukrainian officials admitted Russian forces captured “some” personnel from Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade in Mariupol despite initial denials, though Ukrainian defenders predominantly continued to hold out against Russian assaults.
Russian forces may have committed damaged units withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine to combat operations in eastern Ukraine for the first time on April 14. Continued daily Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine are failing to take any territory.
Ukrainian partisans have likely been active in the Melitopol region since at least mid-March.
Russian forces continued to redeploy from Belarus to Russia for further deployment to eastern Ukraine.

@ DesdamonasHandkerchief 07:25
Thank you for h your answer about the Homes for Ukraine U.K. relating your own experience that it is not a false scheme though there is a lot of red tape.

The sunken war ship must be the most incredible moral boost for Ukraine!
How many more ship's are there.

I know it's mission impossible but imagine if they could get to mariapol and repel the invaders. the pr would be immense.

I think we all wish that, so much papertyger

Woken up very angry with the sheer arrogance that Putin displays. The malice. Listened to Johnny Dymond's Putin podcast and ok, it's got people on who are not fond of Putin but he really is the most extraordinary ruthless, sly, malicious wreck of a human being.

I too am hoping for a Mariupol miracle but struggling to see what possibilities there are?

Article with the German President, Kyiv didn't want him to visit due to links to Russia, they wanted the Chancellor to visit instead.

German President Steinmeier on the War in Ukraine
"I Still Hoped that Putin Possessed a Remnant of Rationality"

www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-president-steinmeier-on-the-war-in-ukraine-i-still-hoped-that-putin-possessed-a-remnant-of-rationality-a-e82932e0-ba1f-47ca-a65c-b8cd08a99f99

I think we have to continue to be careful of the refugee situation.

a) the majority of the refugees are vulnerable women and children so safeguarding is an issue and one that must be taken seriously
b) I don't think many refugees will return home soon so there must be a long term plan for support for these individuals including social housing
c)These will be traumatised people and there needs to be appropriate mental health support
4)Children need to be integrated into the educational system and the parents may need jobs
5) Ultimately decisions will have to be made about letting the men folk join their partners if the war finishes

I think we need to have fully fledged plans for long term support and I fear a government that historically has not been the mistaken to refugees needs to 'pivot" somewhat to allow the mass immigration of refugees successfully.

Julia Davis @juliadavisnews
Kyiv sank 'Moscow' and the Russians are furious. In response to the sinking of the warship 'Moskva,' state TV pundits and hosts propose bombing Kyiv, destroying Ukraine's railways and making it impossible for any world leaders to visit in the future.

The video that goes with this is amusing. They are talking about the Mokcva sinking and go "the fact there has even been an attack on our territory is a casus belli. An absolute cause for war. For real. No fooling around. What are we waging right now? Russia's special military operation. The special military operation has ended! It ended last night when our motherland was attacked."

The host then intervenes to clarify and says" you mean the flagship you mean total mobilization?"

Guest then says" i didn't want to talk about the warship, but you bought it up. Its absolutely a cause for war. There has to be a response but what kind? Russia's special military operation has already turned into what we can easily call WWIII. Thats correct we are fighting against NATO if not NATO, NATOs infrastructure. Against the United States of America. They are 24 / 7 supplying via the railways through Poland. Its definitely not a joke that we should seriously think about destroying the railway junctions. But there is an issue. They keep coming, world leaders. Let them sit at home. We should bomb Kyiv. That should happen. What we are seeing on screen now should never happen"

Now talk about the railways is nothing new. Numerous Western figures have been saying this is WWIII for a while so that isn't anything particularly different.

The idea that Russia should now take it seriously and send in the proper forces to sort it out and declare war on Ukraine is where its actually quite funny in a 'which rock have you been living under for the past 50 days' kind of way. And a 'don't you know that at least a third of your whole standing army has been toasted and you are now resorting to civilian trucks for your logistics' kinda way (Trent Telenko has said he hadn't expected to see evidence of this for another 10 days last night). And all those foreign leaders in Kyiv have obviously struck a nerve.

It does point to a slight issue might...

There is now a clear growing awareness that the special military operation is going tits up and the public is demanding that something is done about it.

In hiding a war, Putin has painted himself into a corner...

I wish we would get our refugee scheme sorted. Private Eye says that they are processing visa applications for families separately, not as a family group, so they are being even more delayed as there are situations where two of the group get the visas and are waiting on the third. It's just not good enough.

Another big fire in Belgorod overnight.

Must have been Russians ammunition mishandled in poor weather whilst simultaneously giving them a legitimate reason to declare war on Ukraine.

I think one of my take homes from the tv thing above is the tv pundits didn't believe the official line on the Moskva being the result of an internal fire and thought the sinking was the result of a Ukrainian attack...

@HappyWinter

I wish we would get our refugee scheme sorted. Private Eye says that they are processing visa applications for families separately, not as a family group, so they are being even more delayed as there are situations where two of the group get the visas and are waiting on the third. It's just not good enough.

I think it is important to remember that this may be the consequence of having a government who have cheerfully campaigned to make lives as difficult as possible for those fleeing conflict to come to the UK. Just yesterday they announced some hair-brained scheme to ship them off to Rwanda. Why were they not announcing what they were going to do to make the application process more streamlined?

There is now a clear growing awareness that the special military operation is going tits up and the public is demanding that something is done about it.

The abrupt - and ignominious - US exit from Vietnam came a quite a shock to many Americans.

Ah well, looks like Russian warship went where Ukrainians asked it to go 😂
Lots of memes in Poland about that.
Don’t have much to add to the thread but following closely

Oliver Alexander @oalexanderDK
When you state destroyed tanks and other vehicles in far greater numbers than the Ukrainian military have in service, it might be a sign your "Special Military Operation" is not going great.

TASS @tassagency_en
Russian troops destroy 456 drones, 2,213 tanks in Ukraine special operation, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said.

Haven’t heard much recently about potential Chinese support for Russia, including in evading sanctions. Whilst I see trade has gone up I’d expect that if they lost the majority of their other buyers. Interestingly though I read somewhere that Russia have asked Brazil for help evading expulsion from the IMF so clearly things aren’t going swimmingly.

Russia are claiming this morning that they have bombed the Neptune factory in Kyiv over night.

So they knew where it was, but hadn't bombed it so far because they were too busy bombing civilians?

@Igotjelly

Haven’t heard much recently about potential Chinese support for Russia, including in evading sanctions. Whilst I see trade has gone up I’d expect that if they lost the majority of their other buyers. Interestingly though I read somewhere that Russia have asked Brazil for help evading expulsion from the IMF so clearly things aren’t going swimmingly.

China are currently shitting their pants over Shanghai. Earlier this week there was a Weibo revolt where citizens hijacked a tag about American having the the worst human rights in an ironic fashion to criticise their own government. It went on for several hours before the censors eventually shut the hashtag down. Shanghai's lockdown isn't going well and there are complaints about food shortages.

China is therefore very keen to keep talk of Russia doing badly and committing war crimes out of the news at home.

It also means its unlikely to be wanting to rock the boat too much further cos its got enough on its plate.

Tadeusz Giczan @tadeuszgiczan
Smolensk officials and local activists have brought heavy machinery to the Polish military cemetery in Katyn and threatened to destroy it in response to the "demolition of Soviet monuments in Poland". They've also started a petition to resolve the "Katyn issue" once and for all.

This was a crime committed by the Soviets on Poles in WWII. They blamed it on the Nazis but Yeltsin eventually admitted it was the Soviets in the 1990s.

And now they are threatening to destroy it and I assume, mysteriously find it was the nazis and blame the polish all along in an effort to rewrite their own history.