Ukraine Invasion: Part 21

[MagicFox]

Another thread, thank you to all

Hadn't seen your post but was just going through to see if there has been any territory gains today.

I can't see any from either side being reported.

Russia have lost two planes and a helicopter today I believe, which is important.

@Ijsbear

They do at least have each other. I imagine tempers are frayed and there are some very bad moments but they -will- be pulling together. Humans are desperately pack animals and when surrounded by enemies and severe trouble ... they cling together and draw some degree of comfort with each other. And mothers will be trying to look after their children and keep some sort of structure to the day going and regularity. These are not people who are falling apart, no matter how great the danger they are in.

I saw someone from Khakiv talking about this. They'd spent weeks holed up in a basement room with all their neighbours plus a menagerie of animals. All differences, squabbles and feuds disappeared and were replaced with absolute determination to hold each other together. It was very moving.

Anxiously waiting for the latest on the Donbass battle. Hoping and praying for miracles for brave Ukraine

2 mins ago on Sky News - Russia has captured 42 villages in eastern Ukraine today.

I saw someone from Khakiv talking about this. They'd spent weeks holed up in a basement room with all their neighbours plus a menagerie of animals. All differences, squabbles and feuds disappeared and were replaced with absolute determination to hold each other together. It was very moving.

MMbaranova I cannot imagine what your relatives are going through. I truly hope they can get out soon and that they have each other to keep strong in the meantime.

US intel says Putin believes he is winning the Ukraine war and the West will give up on trying to isolate him, report says

According to the assessments, reported by The Times, Putin questions the long-term resolve of the West and believes that with the help of China, India, and other Asian economies, he can avoid full international isolation and the worst consequences of Western sanctions.

And

One senior US intelligence official told the Times that Putin's isolation may prompt him to lash out at the West in unpredictable ways.
"We have been so successful in disconnecting Putin from the global system that he has even more incentive to disrupt it beyond Ukraine," the official said. "And if he grows increasingly desperate, he may try things that don't seem rational."

And

Kremlin insiders told Bloomberg in a Wednesday report that Putin was not listening from warnings about the political and economic cost of the conflict and regarded himself as being on an historic mission in waging war in Ukraine.

Oooh feck, he has had a revival of his spinal cancer from 2014. That slump. Probably needs a neck brace when not on telly. Two to three months max.
So, who is next? Shoigu, who is looking marvellous after the premature announcement of his fatal heart attack?

The Times AT thetimes
Barotrauma, the damage caused to the brain, lungs and stomach of soldiers by the blast pressure of exploding shells, is one of the most common injuries among Ukrainian soldiers the team are sent to treat on the eastern front

Other soldiers suffer vomiting “so bad that they can’t even keep a sip of water down”, Tyshenko said. The worst are in a state of confusion and pain, unable to balance, sometimes bleeding from their ears and noses, deafened and unaware of time

While Russia announced its eastern offensive this week, there has been no change in tempo for the cas-evac, or wounded transportation, team since the Kremlin began its invasion of Ukraine in February

Keen to emphasise their own missions as being geared to saving life rather than taking it, they described the importance of recovering their dead from the battlefield at all costs, something they said Russians so often neglect to do

“Sometimes we go to get a casualty and, if there is a body of a soldier lying there whole, we’ll take that back to a morgue too,” said Tyshenko. “The Russians don’t seem to bother. Sometimes they hold a position for considerable time and leave without carrying away their dead”

Young medics in Donbas confront horror of artillery war

It was only when they began to describe the wounds of the soldiers who they recovered from the battlefield that the true ghastliness of eastern Ukraine’s artillery battle emerged, in which men and women are mulched by blasts and flying metal miles from the range of any assault rifle or grenade.

“We don’t often see bullet wounds on this front, it’s an artillery war here,” Tyshenko said. “It is one side pushing another from points at range using tanks, rockets, howitzers, cluster bombs. It’s smashed and severed limbs and bits of bodies in bags.

And

“Sometimes we get sent to a position that has been under intense Russian bombardment and find that almost everyone has a degree of barotrauma injury,” she added. “We can’t evacuate everyone and most want to stay and fight anyway. Sometimes even those with barotrauma and broken bones want to stay and fight and are unwilling to leave their unit.”

And

She paused once more. The guns had stilled and the front was suddenly silent.
“I’ve learnt to hate the quiet moments almost worst of all,” she said. “Quiet moments allow my mind to wander. I start predicting things I can’t answer. Are the Russians regrouping? Will they attack on the left or the right? It is as if the last two months of war have made our moments of peace the hardest to bear.”

RedToothBrush, that is horrific. I want so much for this war to stop and help to get to these brave soldiers.

Edward Stringer AT edwardstrngr (Retired RAF Air Marshall)
Some thoughts on the air war over Ukraine and its implications for air forces in general. I caveat all by stating that we don't know very much about UKR tactics, and if we did we wouldn't want to be too descriptive. But we can pick out some essential observations. 1/11

The first point is that in the eighth week of this war the Russian Air Force (VKS) still shows no sign of running a campaign to gain air superiority. Given the advantages it has in the 'physical component' of air combat power this is truly remarkable. So it probably cannot. 2/11

And that means that the Russian army cannot discount air attack at any time, and UKR can plan to make use of the air environment. This could prove to be the factor that tips the balance in effective overall combat power, and it arises... 3/11

...because the UKR armed forces are clearly leading in the 'conceptual component' of air combat power. They have worked out how to take a massive inferiority in numbers and turn that around by fighting smarter. There are lessons here in Air C2 for all air forces. 4/11

Even, perhaps especially, the dominant ones of high-tech NATO. These have got used to rolling out air dominance since Gulf War 1. Maybe they will always be able to. But repeating a well worn tactical process - albeit a complicated one - has replaced 'Air Generalship'. 5/11

Few senior Western airman have had to work out from scratch how to use air power capabilities in less favourable circumstances to achieve campaign aims. In contrast, the Ukrainian Airforce has had to think around the problem. 6/11

What they seem to have done is used intelligence to selectively attack Russian air raids. These appear to have been relatively effective in kill ratios - but the UKR 'air force' has also achieved many kills from MANPADS missiles, and even artillery shelling airfields. 7/11

Or Bayrakter TB2 v RUS SAMs. This implies good coordination between Air and Land air defence assets. Which RUS has not achieved. Together, this UKR air defence system has achieved a huge 'soft kill' in deterring VKS raids; rarely now do they cross the FLOT. 8/11

In the space created UKR has learnt to use modern, novel tactics of drones and loitering munitions to act as 'poor mans air superiority'. This is not, yet, in the NATO air forces play book. And I would hazard a guess that NATO army/air force coord is not as good. 9/11

So I conclude that NATO air forces should humbly approach the Ukrainian Airforce and offer to share a mission exploitation exercise to find out what worked, what didn't and why. NATO air power has become very good at one thing. It should think on what UKR's Air Generals might teach them. 10/11

But in the meantime UKR's ability to prosecute the war successfully relies on it being able to use the air when and how it wants. We need to do listen to them telling us what they now need, and make sure they have plenty of it in order to prevail. 11/11

Red thank you for posting those. It is truly humbling the spirit of the UKR military and the people. Their determination to survive against absolute terror is, I don't know what to say really.....😢

Their determination to survive against absolute terror is, I don't know what to say really

... shows us a level of determination and effectiveness that we didn't know existed before now?

I could not have imagined a country pullign together so well, so hard and so effectively until now.

I dread to think how many dead :-( last figures I saw for displaced to other countries and displaced within Ukraine was approx 10 million, that leaves 30-35 million people still trying to survive and or defend in their homes. We know about thousands of dead, we suspect thousands have been forcibly taken to Russia, but the rest?

(also has everyone’s notifications broken? I thought it had been strangely quiet all day in this thread as I had notifications this morning but none all afternoon)

Lj I definitely think it's existed before but perhaps been forgotten in recent times as we've taken post war life for granted. I certainly haven't but I'm of a certain generation 😂 and had it drilled into me by my father and grandfather not to forget.

It's certainly been brought back into focus now that in fact, not much has changed underneath it all.

The Wall Street Journal had a good article about the secret of Ukraine's military success being years of NATO training since the 2014 Crimea invasion. As a result the Ukraine military was transformed over 8 years from a rigid Soviet style-force (well, like Russia's) into a nimble fighting force that thinks on the move. Over that time, the Ukrainians developed their own instructors which started to do much of the hands on training themselves instead of NATO, having internalised the NATO teachings, to devolve decision-making as far down the chain of command itself, to individual soldiers. In the end, it became a two-way street in that Ukrainian troops using Western weapons in Donbas would feedback on their performance and arms in combat back to NATO. Ukraine was learning from NATO and NATO was learning from Ukraine.

As someone who has had to train operational teams (non-military), this is amazing progress in 8 years. Total culture and mindset change is very difficult to implement and not everyone is motivated to learn or improve. I think it is the Ukraine sense of nation and identity under threat which has galvanised the soldiers to soak up their training and pass it on.

This is truly inspirational. Something that will be studied for decades to come. Hoping against hope that Ukraine will survive as a nation.

In addition to the massive fire at the Tver aerospace research facility today there was also a massive fire at the Dmietrievsky chemical plant, one of the biggest chemical plants in Russia. Coincidence?

@blueshoes

The Wall Street Journal had a good article about the secret of Ukraine's military success being years of NATO training since the 2014 Crimea invasion. As a result the Ukraine military was transformed over 8 years from a rigid Soviet style-force (well, like Russia's) into a nimble fighting force that thinks on the move. Over that time, the Ukrainians developed their own instructors which started to do much of the hands on training themselves instead of NATO, having internalised the NATO teachings, to devolve decision-making as far down the chain of command itself, to individual soldiers. In the end, it became a two-way street in that Ukrainian troops using Western weapons in Donbas would feedback on their performance and arms in combat back to NATO. Ukraine was learning from NATO and NATO was learning from Ukraine.

As someone who has had to train operational teams (non-military), this is amazing progress in 8 years. Total culture and mindset change is very difficult to implement and not everyone is motivated to learn or improve. I think it is the Ukraine sense of nation and identity under threat which has galvanised the soldiers to soak up their training and pass it on.

This is truly inspirational. Something that will be studied for decades to come. Hoping against hope that Ukraine will survive as a nation.

I've posted this link on previous threads:

medium.com/voices-of-the-armed-forces/operation-orbital-explained-training-ukrainian-armed-forces-59405d32d604

BreadinCaptivity thanks for the link to Operation Orbital. I saw and like it when you posted it before. The Brits are instrumental in the training and upskilling of the Ukraine forces.

I had to google it. The Dmietrievsky chemical plant is a big one just outside Moscow. So I am hoping it is sabotage.

Or could be that fires happen at plants and research centres in Russia all the time. Not beyond the realm of possibility seeing how Russians can be quite accident-prone in handling their own munitions.

@blueshoes I read that WSJ article alongside a Cnn one on the training they received from the UK and not least the Canadians oddly enough, who trained over 30,000 Ukrainians within 5 years.
Great showing by NATO who don't always get an easy ride.

Biden has just announced another $800 million in military aid & more US troops to train on the latest kit.

Aside i couldn't read the stuff Red posted, too horrific.

I think I saw there was a third fire too. Hopefully that’s someone of their ability to make chemical weapons destroyed.

I don't post because I don't have any expertise or insight, but I have been reading and appreciating these threads every day since they began, and today I need to say that it feels like a lot of people haven't a clue about the significance of this war for our present, never mind our futures. Nobody I know is talking about it, and I have a feeling that reflects their avoidance of giving it much/any headspace. On the other hand, I'm depressed by it, and increasingly angry. For me it feels like there's a living hell on the other side of Europe, a dangerously out of control and increasingly paranoid aggressor, and growing alarm and foreboding among Western governments. Not to mention a kind of opportunistic silence across large parts of the East. Germany seems worryingly out of step in its response, which has to be gratifying to Putin who is counting on division in the EU and NATO. Johnson's commitment is somewhat flawed owing to its self-congratulatory tone and lack of attention to detail - he has to big up his involvement because it's just about all he has going for him at the moment, while at the same time presiding over a hideously insufficient programme for helping refugees. I'm looking at my niece and nephew, both primary age, knowing how the last 2 years turned their young worlds upside down, and until a couple of months ago my overriding concern was with how to help them salvage a considerable slice of their childhoods from the Covid social blight. And now this. It feels like I'm lying to them when I don't mention the war and am trying to pretend things are far more 'normal' than they actually are, that recovering from the pandemic is the biggest challenge we face. But it's not, is it? Not now. They have peers in Ukraine whose lives will never be the same, for what should be unimaginable reasons, and in the end will we have to watch our own little ones' lives turn to shit because of monsters in Russia who can't own their shit?!

Sorry, there's nowhere else for me to put this at the moment. and it probably adds nothing, for which I apologise. But I guess some of you will get it.

Professor Olga chyzh AT olga_chyzh
A suicide epidemic among Russian gas oligarchs? 1/4

April 20, 2022--Vladislav Avayev, former Vice President for Gazprombank, allegedly shot his wife and daughter, then himself.

April 19, 2022--Sergey Protosenya, former deputy chairman of Russian gas giant Novatek, found hanged at his house, his wife and daughter dead of stab wounds.

February, 25, 2022-- Alexander Tyulyakov, top-level manager of Gazprom, found hanged in his garage

January 30, 2022--Leonid Shulman, head of Gazprom Invest transport service, slit his wrists.

What is behind the suicides of top managers of Gazprom?

This from 2 months ago before the two recent deaths

In fact, according to rumors, we are talking about some problems in the treasury of Gazprom, which were identified during internal corporate audits that began back in 2021. Everything would be fine, but, as they say on the sidelines, a “hole” in the holding’s budget appeared in the course of recent events. According to people in the know, most likely, Tyulakov’s structure failed to avoid sanctions losses, which divided the life of a top manager into “before” and “after”.

And

It is also known from semi-official sources that at the end of 2021, the security service of Gazprom Invest conducted an inspection of the transport unit due to information about the overestimation of the cost of repairing the fleet. Namely, the purchase of parts at the competition exceeded the average price for these same parts. The servicemen of the holding were looking for whom and where considerable kickbacks go. Leonid Shulman, in view of his position, simply had to be aware of all ongoing purchases.

And

Suicides of large businessmen or top managers are quite rare. There have been only 4 such cases in the last 12 years.

And

As we can see, the majority of businessmen tragically ended their journey exclusively with the help of firearms. In this regard, two deaths in a row of top managers of Gazprom look even more strange. After all, the ways of leaving the life of Alexander Tyulakov and Leonid Shulman can by no means be called painless. It is very difficult to believe that such high-ranking employees of Gazprom did not have any weapons at home and did not have the courage to take them. Moreover, on the sidelines of law enforcement agencies, they are actively whispering about some kind of check of the special services, which, allegedly, has been carried out very quietly since December 2021. Conspiracy theories and mystery leads are the stuff of action movies. However, given all the nuances, there are more questions in this story than answers.

No idea why thats crossing things out.

Seems a dangerous business