Ukraine Invasion: Part 25

[MagicFox]

Hi all, another thread for supporting and sharing

Could this be true? Or is it an attempt to distance Russia from China to further weaken Russia

@TargusEasting 12/05/2022 21:43
And now is the exact time for the UA with some intel and some strong hearts to provide an assisted breakout. Lives will be lost, but these things have happened before. It’s not crazy.

Out if interest, given it is either being shelled, or surrounded by soldiers how would you do it? Please would you describe a plan? That would be enjoyable to read anyway ( but not if you are too busy).

One worry must be the badly wounded whom they wouldn’t leave. But say those had been rescued. Then how would the remaining 1000(?) do it?

I

They (Stalin) did this following Holodomor in the 30’s, when entire Ukrainian villages were wiped out by starvation. And populations were replaced by Russians from remote parts of Siberia and so on.

It’s quite a distance from the plant to the Ukrainian lines, around 300km at the moment if I recall correctly. That would be very risky by helicopter. While the US would have the capability, the risk is not ameliorated, but of course the US will not participate with crew on or over Ukrainian soil. That leaves the sea, but I’m really not sure what is possible there. The other logistical problem is co-ordination. It’s easier to locate and plan an assassination on a small compound, quite different to do so on a 6,000 acre steelworks. It’s frustratingly near implausible, but not ‘never possible’. These days my thoughts are with those men and women. Whereas once we would ponder in situations “What would Audrey Hepburn do?” these days I likewise ponder “What would Elon Musk do?”

Of course, not an assassination on the steelworks - an extraction!

Targus. I dream of A10s clearing a path and a rescue.

Sigh 😢

I hear what you're saying and I'm the same age as you. The prospect of a nuclear war is terrifying, but I think the prospect of Russia winning and invading more countries on its border is even more so.

I'm a bit older, and well remember being shit scared at intervals as a teenager. I was at school in a garrison town fairly close to some major airbases, so it all felt rather real at times.

But... Since then I have become very familiar with the history of WWII. Appeasement doesn't work. Putin got away with far too much, and it made him overconfident, both of the abilities of his own forces, and of the willingness of the west to let him do as he pleased. He's hit those limits now, some would argue eight years late.

I've also just finished reading a book on the Gulag. Shitting hell. The attempts to decapitate nationalist movements in the Baltic states and the Ukraine, the sheer brutality and neglect and needless suffering. The KGB and its precursors were all caught up in this, and Putin, as we know, is a product of that august institution. It's no surprise that he's like he is, and he has to be stopped.

It's as depressing as hell when there are so many other major issues that need to be resolved.

RedToothBrush’s idea of making washing machine and Nutella lures is something I can’t quite get out of my mind. But you’d need a really big IKEA style warehouse full just outside the steel plant, and get away lorries for them to fill and drive away- to draw of all Russian attention from Azovstal.

I'm reminiscing. When I was little my dad used to take me to Bentwaters and we'd park up on a Sunday morning whilst mum cooked a roast, and watch the A10's take off and land. Not that at my tender age I realised what they were capable of! 😂

@ScrollingLeaves if conditions allow, a counter offensive to suppress and confuse the Russian forces, air or sea link up with the steelworks at a single point of entry, a rescue force to extract those inside to a staging location, then heavier suppression to allow final evacuation. It’s a huge plant and this makes it very difficult to conduct. While reports suggest Russian BTGs have been reduced, this probably reflects the fact it does not need such a heavy presence to take over the plant and given the distance involved, unlikely the UA will be willing to mount such a mission. Negotiations are still ongoing. Civilians are still inside including doctors and nurses who refused to leave wounded soldiers. Unfortunately the Kremlin does not value its own soldiers’ lives and will only exchange land.

CND Aims and objectives

Well meaning, idealistic and sadly outdated.

Try again…

Hmmm..at the moment according to Flight Radar 24, there is a Silk Way West Airlines 747 cruising at 32,000 feet above Kherson!

Surely a software error? Wonder if @notimagain is around to clarify?

censor-net.translate.goog/ua/news/3340906/provodyatsya_peregovory_pro_obmin_38_vajkoporanenyh_biyitsiv_z_azovstali_vereschuk?_x_tr_sl=uk&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Let's hope the negotiations succeed. Trying to get 58 heavily wounded soldiers out of Steelworks

But as the article says there are still at least 100,000 trapped men, women and children in Mariupol.

38* wounded out sorry

I might be being really ditzy, but are there usually so many RAF aircraft around the UK East Coast? I've never noticed before: www.flightradar24.com/WOLF0022/2bd5ba56

Normal For Norfolk..! (Coningsby and Mildenhill, at least I think they are the main bases that fly there).

The plane over south Ukraine is disconcerting. Flying from Amsterdam to Baku, over a war zone where there is limited coordination and control. And of course remembering MH17. Hoping it’s just a software display error.

@TargusEasting · 12/05/2022 22:13
@ScrollingLeaves if conditions allow, a counter offensive to suppress and confuse the Russian forces, air or sea link up with the steelworks at a single point of entry, a rescue force to extract those inside to a staging location, then heavier suppression to allow final evacuation. It’s a huge plant and this makes it very difficult to conduct. While reports suggest Russian BTGs have been reduced, this probably reflects the fact it does not need such a heavy presence to take over the plant and given the distance involved, unlikely the UA will be willing to mount such a mission. Negotiations are still ongoing. Civilians are still inside including doctors and nurses who refused to leave wounded soldiers. Unfortunately the Kremlin does not value its own soldiers’ lives and will only exchange land.

Thank you TargusEasting.
That is something to dream about.

When you say this about land, is that because you know of an Azovstal-evacuation-in-return-for-land deal the Russians have offered?

I'm glad to hear it's normal, slightly further North than Norfolk, but presumably just RAF doing RAF-stuff. Accompanied by a couple of US military jets...

These are strange times, I guess as we all seek to make sense of things, we seek deeper meaning into what we see.

Hoping for software display error too - though the flight seems to have got out the other side of Ukraine, just past Crimea (also Ukraine), and over Russia. It seems to be following a pre-war flightpath:

@Ijsbear · 12/05/2022 22:40
censor-net.translate.goog/ua/news/3340906/provodyatsya_peregovory_pro_obmin_38_vajkoporanenyh_biyitsiv_z_azovstali_vereschuk?_x_tr_sl=uk&x_trtl=en&x_trhl=en&x_trpto=sc

I was not able to open that Isjbear. Please would you give the headline so I can try to look it up?

(I quite like watching the cargo planes, DHL etc. it's the side of aviation that we rarely see)

Talks about the exchange of prisoners for the 28 wounded soldiers from Azovsteel ongoing. if my Ukrainian serves.

@ScrollingLeaves No, I’m not aware of any reported deal. It’s more subtle than that. All wars are ultimately about land. When we are in fear of our neighbour, we are in fear of their religion or their culture. We are in fear that they are not like us and will seek to deprive us of land or natural resources (another type of land) to expand their religions or culture. We want to put space between us and them and the easiest way out is to seek more physical land, depriving them of it in turn. Blood is shed and it is infinite, while land is finite. It’s the shape that causes that - we live on a slightly flattened sphere, so we are all connected with our fears. We do not take mobile crematoria into battle so we just value blood more than the Kremlin.

Robert Frost…

Negotiations currently taking place to extract 38 severely wounded soldiers from Azovsteel Scrolling

🙏