Ukraine Invasion: Part 27

[MagicFox]

27th thread, thanks for the continued company and analysis all

"On a different note this just seems unhinged to me..."

t.me/ukrainenowenglish/10598

Singing a propanganda song to a wounded and burned Russian soldier on his hospital bed. You cannot see his head it is all bandaged and he did not even move once. Horrific. What was the point of that? Bet he was thinking of Mother Russia.

Zelensky was speaking at an event for Ukrainian students in the U.K. yesterday. Matt Frei asked him a question. He said that Zelensky himself had said they were losing 100 soldiers a day. At what stage would he decide they must concede territory to Russia? (My paraphrase.)

www.channel4.com/news/zelenskyy-any-war-must-end-at-the-negotiating-table

@blueshoes · Today 23:10
"On a different note this just seems unhinged to me..."

//t.me/ukrainenowenglish/10598

Singing a propanganda song to a wounded and burned Russian soldier on his hospital bed. You cannot see his head it is all bandaged and he did not even move once. Horrific. What was the point of that? Bet he was thinking of Mother Russia.

How dreadfully pointless and upsetting, but they probably believe in it all and think they are sending a message of salvation to their fallen hero friend. They no doubt can’t accept the truth that it was all for nothing but the whim of a dying megalomaniac.

Filming it and posting it seems strange and awful too.

Speculation is that fighting has more or less peaked, but the battle for Severodonetsk is still ongoing, so there will be a fair number of casualties from that still for a while. But there isn't so much fighting going on in other areas compared to a couple of weeks ago. Basically the Russian tactical decision has been to throw everything left that theyve got at capturing Severodonetsk.

Your post that Ukr is losing 200-300 people a day is extremely worrying as Ru is loosing ... well. Less.

As for that clip of the people singing to the wounded soldier, frankly by now Im not sure why people are trying to make any sense of it. It's got nothing to do with real comfort and all to do with 'how wonderful Russian people are'.

I am trying to understand what the mindset is, because the extreme cynicism of the Russian govt and their claims and 180 degree propaganda is something else. The only way I can make sense of it is to literally discount any human empathy, but to consider only land-ownership and a fight to be top dog. By the evidence of the East of Russia, they aren't interested in how people live in terms of life-expectancy or quality of life. It's also very clear they aren't interested in educating people, only in ensuring they do what they are told.

So you're left with a mindset where it's all about coming out on top and you can extend your reach. Any of the 'softer' qualities are seen as weakness. If I'm right, this can't be stated enough. They reach for claims of higher human qualities such as loyalty while not giving a damn about the humans they want the loyalty from.

I think Putin desperately needs conflict. He had it, in his own camoflaged way, all the way up to the top and then when at the top he had the drive to win over any possible competitors. Now he has 'won' in Russia and he needs conflict elsewhere. He's desperate for Russia to win, but he doesn't actually care for the human components of Russia at all. It's all about the conflict.

Something to watch: quite a few pro-Ukraine OSINT Twitter accounts suddenly announced they're taking a break for a few days eg @osintdefender

twitter.com/sentdefender/status/1535452149622231040?s=21&t=sTnltDUq6sPoWqziUR-sMg

Strange. I wonder why.

Unless its sheer coincidence

I can't imagine it's coincidence, nobody can figure out why. Some are suggesting maybe something is about to happen on the Ukrainian side they don't want leaked. Don't know but it's weird

Quite possible. People tend to start feeling fatigued at the same point and the information we are getting from the front lines has dropped off in the last two weeks. Phillips P OBrien has said that the reported losses of equipment has reached a low point too.

What I think is either Pu is more cynical or deluded or both. And his audience are not well versed in history or maybe they are brainwashed to the degree of no return. From what I know about Peter the Great, is that he was a forward thinker, and moved Russia from medieval times to modern times by building st Petersburg on the marshy lands, and moving the capital there to build closer ties to Europe. He was famous for “carving the window through to Europe”

As far as I can tell, Putin has achieved precisely the opposite. He closed off that window not only to Europe but to the world and isolated Russia.

how can he honestly stand there and compare himself to Peter the Great? Twat

Sorry for the delayed reply @ScrollingLeaves
to answer your question, I believe it a bit of both. We need to go back a bit further in history, to give some context.
Donetsk itself is a relatively new city, and it grew to its size and wealth ( before 2014) due to its rich natural resources. In the early 20th Century it was just a small settlement. A Welsh entrepreneur John Hughes discovered that the area was rich in coal and invested in coal mines to be built there. The settlement was called Yuzovka (from Hughes). To man these mines people from all over the place came, Ukraine was a part of Russian empire at the time. After the revolution of 1917 communists continued to invest in Donbas (maybe invest is not the right word to be honest but the region was important and valuable to them). Donetsk continued to grow and was renamed to Stalino, after Stalin. It was occupied and suffered heavy damages during WW2 but was rebuilt in the 50’s and became a big city in the decades that followed. More and more coal mines were opening and people from all over Soviet Union were encouraged to move there and work there.
The city itself never really felt Ukrainian, not to me at least when I lived there (I left for the U.K. in 2000). In the surrounding villages and small towns the country population was more ethnically Ukrainian and both sets of my great grand parents from small villages in Donbas spoke Ukrainian.

now because of the genetic make up of Donetsk (I can’t speak about Luhansk but I imagine it’s a similar scenario) and so many Russian/ missed Russian nationals in the city itself they were always a bit “special” in their own eyes. what I mean by that is they always carried themselves with a sense of being more superior to Ukrainians and I remember some of my family members and neighbours, being openly critical of Ukraine becoming independent. Donbas was resentful of what they felt them being a “cash cow” - meaning the money from coal mining and other heavy industries being used to support the rest of Ukraine. Honestly they were so full of themselves it was sickening. These attitudes provided a good soil for putins plans when he decided to “take back what is theirs (Russia’s)” … very few people in Donetsk supported the Orange Revolution and the sentiment I remember seeing online and hearing - again from my family members and old friends - was “while Kyiv is protesting we in Donetsk are working hard to feed Ukraine”. They were very very judging. It’s worth remembering that Yanukovich was a governor of Donbas before he became president and when he was overthrown, Donbas people were furious. Ukraine was a very divided nation during those times.
so when Putin finally invaded Donbas in 2014 (which of course he denies even to this day) the population was very receptive to this. They happily went to the “referendum” to proclaim themselves independent from Ukraine - yes I remember the posts in OK (odnoklassniki) and VK ( v Kontakte) - Russian SM platforms of my former friends and relatives I no longer speak to, expressing their joy at finally being free from Ukraine and gleeing about how Ukraine will fall now that “Donbas is no longer feeding Ukraine”.
so here you go, it was an easy win for Pu. And yes I know of many cases where Girkin and his mates brought more of their criminal mates to rule Donetsk. Grabbing land, properties, cars, looting everything. My uncle lost his business because these thugs took everything.
apologies for the long reply. I hope it gives you some perspective.

https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-cities-strain-help-ukraine-refugees/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social
Polish cities feel the strain of helping Ukrainian refugees
Local leaders say they urgently need more funds to address housing crunch and build schools.

Rzeszów has welcomed more than 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, swelling its population by more than half. But with no end in sight to the conflict, the Polish city is now having to work out how to be a home for these new arrivals for the long term.

Since Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, around 1 million people have passed through the southeastern city, which lies just 100 kilometers from the border.

And

Now that the sense of emergency has passed, the city faces a new challenge: how to integrate those who have decided to stay.

While many refugees have since moved on to other cities in Poland or elsewhere in the EU, or decided to go back to Ukraine, those still in Rzeszów have added pressure to an already strained housing market and tight local budgets

Rzeszów is an extreme example of a challenge facing cities across the country. Of the 3.2 million Ukrainians who have fled to Poland, 2.2 million live in cities, according to a report by the Union of Polish Metropolises published last month. The population of Poland’s capital, Warsaw, has grown by 15 percent; in Kraków it swelled by 23 percent; in Gdańsk by 34 percent.

A recent poll by ARC Rynek i Opinia, an independent pollster, found that 58 percent of Ukrainians in Poland say they intend to stay as long as the war continues, while 27 percent say they plan to stay for good.
^^
That means local governments need to come up with long-term strategies to integrate their new arrivals, including massively expanding schools and creating new jobs, said Marek Wójcik, a regulatory expert at the Association of Polish Cities.

“At the beginning it was about guaranteeing the basic security: aid, food, clothes, flats,” he said. “But now we have moved to the second phase.

Most Ukrainian students are finishing up their school year remotely, but if they stay in Poland, they will have to integrate into the Polish system and learn the language. That means larger classes and more teachers.

“We can make it through the end of [this] school year … but then we will need some real action,” said Fijołek.

Wójcik, from the Association of Polish Cities, said other Polish municipalities are facing similar issues.

“There are cities where there are so many new children that a few or a dozen new schools and kindergartens need to be built,” he said.

In Warsaw, which is home to around 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, “if all Ukrainian kids would like to learn [in person], then we would need four times more infrastructure that we have today for young refugees,” Wójcik said.

The other looming problem is housing. Across the country, Polish people have welcomed around 700,000 refugees into their own homes, and many refugees live in temporary flatshares.

But those short-term solutions paper over a deeper problem: The rental market in most Polish cities is saturated — demand already exceeds supply and prices are on the rise.

Its worth saying that this isn't just a problem for the Polish side of the border. Its also true of the Ukrainian one. We know its true of Lviv but its also true of some of the smaller border towns which aren't getting the publicity of the problem. This is leading to some real social issues at a time when the Ukrainian government, quite frankly has its hands full and there is little money to combat these type of problems.

And of course many families will effectively be mothers on their own at this point for multiple reasons. Typically Ukrainians already lived in overcrowded soviet era flats before the war.

@Mb76 thankyou for your post, it was really helpful. I'm so sorry about your uncle.

I have been trying to understand to what extent citizens in the challenged areas are pro Russia. It's a very sensitive line of questioning, as any answer could never fully explain or begin to justify this despicable war. So it would seem that there was not an insignificant number in Donbas who were glad of Russia's invasion in 2014...but in more recent years had opinion changed? Was this pro Russia movement growing? I have never visited Ukraine but I can't believe that Donbas was the sole bread winner for Ukraine. There are many large cities across the country which in the before pictures look absolutely beautiful with impressive architecture, infrastructure and the most beautiful parks. I wonder if this argument was essentially saying to Ukraine "you're not all that. You stand on the giant shoulders of Russia and if you forget that, we will crush you." Divisions and hate are always most bitter within 'families' in my experience.

Speculation is that fighting has more or less peaked, but the battle for Severodonetsk is still ongoing, so there will be a fair number of casualties from that still for a while. But there isn't so much fighting going on in other areas compared to a couple of weeks ago. Basically the Russian tactical decision has been to throw everything left that theyve got at capturing Severodonetsk.

Unless Belarus enters the fray. There are more sobering reports emerging from there.

A more recent request coming from my contacts in the South are for old cars that can act as missile carriers. Apparently they are life savers.

Firstly apologies for late response, for some reasons I'm not getting notifications.

I'm afraid there's a danger, perhaps cultivated by some in the western MSM of thinking Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) are the be all and end all in modern conflicts, and that using them is somehow very civilised and honourable and OTOH not using them is somewhat backward, automatically illegal, and an indication whoever is using them is losing.

It is not.

I may have mentioned it before but think a lot of this perception in the west started with Gulf War one and nightly videos of the west using PGMs to hit selected targets. TV viewers didn't get to see the rounds that went rogue or missed, and it took a while before the penny/cent dropped that at times the western forces went "non smart" and for example used dumb 30mm ammunition on the Highway of Death.

The current conflict will be similar, we're generally only getting one sides view of their precision attacks...I'd hope the Ukrainians aren't deliberately targeting areas only containing civilians but if anybody thinks that at least on occasions civilians haven't been killed, albeit probably accidentally, by dumb munitions used by the Ukrainians I have a bridge I can sell them.

As far as the Laws of Armed conflict go AFAIK there's no automatic prohibition on using most ordnance, dumb or smart, on military targets within areas that contain civilians. There are however supposedly all sorts of checks and balances and requirements for proportionality..

On another point (playing catch up because of the lack of notifications) if the Russians are using AS-4 against targets on land you'd need to know the variant used (they have been subject to upgrades to systems such as guidance and in some cases seeker heads over their life), target type/size, accuracy achieved by the missile and the warhead before deciding if the Russian's are desperate and down to their last rounds or if using an AS-4 was actually an appropriate use of that weapons and they are saving more precise systems for other targets.

I'd speculate it's probably a bit of both.

Im so afraid that Russia are going to win this. On news today that they have far more stocks of weapons than any of the other countries supplying Ukraine. Mainly I suppose they have always been preparing for war and Europe hasnt really.

It’s important to remember that, despite what the media would have you believe, Ukraine have always been the underdog in this by a long way. At the same time they’ve done incredibly well so far with far less resources than Russia. It’s not all about numbers of bullets and men.

Yes, and there's also the postwar situation - can Russia really hold what it takes? Ukraine won't ever roll over. Russia will be dealing with an angry and traumatised population

@notimagain thanks for the explanation on PGMs and dumb ordnance. It is good to understand how the picture is not as black-and-white as in one is better than the other.

As for whether Russia has run out of precision missiles, I fear that Russia is keeping back its PGMs to hit the HIMARS once they arrive. Is it possible to transport such big items of kit without being detected by Russia?

mb76 thanks for the fascinating perspective on the history of Donetsk and its Russian roots. I wonder whether its pro-Russian inhabitants are still quite so happy about the Russian occupation and the criminal elements in charge. Sorry about your uncle's business - I hope he is alright.

@blueshoes

As for whether Russia has run out of precision missiles, I fear that Russia is keeping back its PGMs to hit the HIMARS once they arrive. Is it possible to transport such big items of kit without being detected by Russia?

I'd speculate that it would be hard to do so but not completely impossible and increasingly difficult as the equipment heads east...the wraps would have to (almost literally) come off at some point..

I'd guess one of the generic problems the Ukrainians will have is keeping the relatively small amount of new western kit they have unobserved and relatively safe whilst at the same time using it.

@Mb76 · Today 09:19

Thank you very much for taking the time to describe the Donbas region of UKraine based on yours and your family’s personal experience. It is so difficult to really be clear about what has been happening here.

That is awful about your uncle’s business being destroyed by that mafia and I am very sorry.

Based on what you said about how the Russian workers in the industries there had enjoyed prosperity and that they looked down on countryside and other Ukrainians, did this relative wealth continue after the end of the Soviet Union? After the Maidan Rebellion?
Which of these caused the most feeling of discontent? Or was it both?

If they were no longer so well off after either of these phases,, was it oligarch corruption and thievery which lead to Russian workers feeling they had been let down or policies coming from Kyiv?

Has Western UKraine become better off than the self-declared Russian controlled republics in Donetsk and Luhansk since your childhood years?

I realise you may not have time to answer these further questions Thanks so much for all your input already.

@Mb76 · Today 08:53
MagicFox
What do you think of Putin's claims re Peter the great and the idea that this is indeed just all about imperialism. How do we read this? Are we dealing with another Hitler scenario, is he doing a Reagan-style madman thing?

What I think is either Pu is more cynical or deluded or both. And his audience are not well versed in history or maybe they are brainwashed to the degree of no return. From what I know about Peter the Great, is that he was a forward thinker, and moved Russia from medieval times to modern times by building st Petersburg on the marshy lands, and moving the capital there to build closer ties to Europe. He was famous for “carving the window through to Europe”

As far as I can tell, Putin has achieved precisely the opposite. He closed off that window not only to Europe but to the world and isolated Russia.

how can he honestly stand there and compare himself to Peter the Great? Twat

There are some points of comparison between Peter the Great and how Putin thinks and behaves.

Peter the Great expanded Russia: he got hold of territory in Estonia. Latvia and Finland; he acquired access to the Black Sea (after wars with Turkey); he got part of Sweden after defeating them and hence the land St Petersburg was built on. He was a tyrant and prone to violence. He had his own son secretly executed.

ISW Key Takeaways

Russian forces continued to conduct ground offensives within the Severodonetsk area, but Ukrainian defenders retain control of the industrial area of the city as of June 11.

Russian forces likely resumed efforts to cut the T1303 Hirske-Lysyschansk highway and launched failed assaults on settlements along the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychank highway.

Russian forces continued assaults on settlements southwest and southeast of Izyum in an effort to resume drives on Slovyansk.

Ukrainian forces likely resumed counteroffensives northwest of Kherson City on June 11, south of their previous operations.

Russian occupation officials distributed the first batch of Russian passports in Kherson City and Melitopol.

+++

[Reports that the Russians have destroyed the 2nd of 3 bridges near Severodonetsk. This is not good news for the Ukr side.

⚡️ Russian troops destroy second of 3 bridges to Sievierodonetsk.
According to Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai, Russian forces are currently shelling the last overpass leading to Sievierodonetsk, aiming to cut the town off.

It's also clear that the Ru regained quite a bit of the centre of Severodonetsk that previously had been retaken]

+++

UkraineNOW

Ukraine NOW [English], [12/06/2022 07:20]
The troops repelled the offensive near Vrubivka. The main thing from the operational summary of the General Staff of the Armed Forces:

🔻The enemy is trying to gain a foothold on Bogorodychnyi, the battles continue.

🔻In the Sievierodonetsk direction, the invaders are conducting assault operations in Sievierodonetsk, to no avail. Fighting continues in the Toshkivka area.

🔻Ukrainian soldiers repulsed the offensive near Vrubivka. The enemy also tried to advance in the direction of Mykolaivka. He received a decisive rebuff and left.

🔻 Ukrainian defenders also successfully repelled an enemy attack in the Vasylivka area, Zaporizhzhia region. The Russian invaders suffered losses and retreated to their former positions.

💪 In response to Ukraine's request, the Singapore government will provide a humanitarian aid package

🔗 German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, along with French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, plan to visit Ukraine ahead of the G7 summit scheduled for June 26-28.

(send them to the front line, let them SEE what's been happening. Might actually get Scholz moving).

🇯🇵 The Embassy of Ukraine in Japan will send 33 portable water treatment facilities in case of emergencies to Odesa in the near future

+++

📌The main conclusions regarding the situation on the front of the Russian-Ukrainian war on June 11 are reported by the Institute for Military Research

(www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-11)Ukrainian defenders retain control over the industrial zone of the city of Sievierodonetsk, and street fighting continues.

Russian troops resumed attempts to cut the T1303 Hirske-Lysychansk highway and made unsuccessful assaults on settlements along the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychank highway.

Russian troops advanced to the southwest and southeast of Izyum, with the aim of attacking Sloviansk.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine resumed the counteroffensive northwest of Kherson, south of the previous operations.

+++

Kyiv Independent (this publication and WarontheRocks are doing amazing work)

⚡️Over 50,000 people came back to Ukraine by train within a month.

⚡️ The Guardian: 'Specialist gang' smuggles Ukraine’s historic artifacts, Scythian gold into Russia.
“There is now very strong evidence this is a purposive Russian move, with specific paintings and ornaments targeted and taken out to Russia,” says anthropologist Brian Daniels as quoted by The Guardian.

⚡️ Russian troops destroy second of 3 bridges to Sievierodonetsk.
According to Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai, Russian forces are currently shelling the last overpass leading to Sievierodonetsk, aiming to cut the town off.