Ukraine Invasion: Part 28

[MagicFox]

Thread 28 begins, thanks all for the company and resources

I would imagine a massive ‘FUCK YOU’

You giv have a poll today asking if funds gained by previous underspending in certain areas like defence should be used to aid Ukraine or pay for public services here. Ukraine weren’t winning that poll.

as for Liz truss saying ignore the madman’s threats about nato I agree with her. If we back down to his bullying then he’ll just carry on. The only way to stop bullies is to stand up to them and prove they don’t scare you even when the truth is you’re terrified. If we don’t carry on moving forward with Finland and Switzerland joining then he’s already won the war and just has to hang in until we get bored of helping Ukraine then just like Chechnya he can do what he wants there before building up
hia forces again and moving on to Finland then Moldova, Latvia, Poland, and the rest of Europe. He is not going to stop. No its not nice to think of more war or the war spreading, but I’m thanking my lucky stars I get the luxury of being afraid he’ll follow through with one of his threats and am not actually homeless or suffering the loss of my family already suffering at his hands.

on LBC this morning Liz Truss was implying that we are sanctioning sending weapons and military training to Taiwan. She kept saying there’s are systems in place that are ensuring Taiwan gets the weapons they need and the training to use them before it’s to late unlike with Ukraine.

also on lbc today the 1 billion promised today isn’t on the heavy weapons Ukraine need, it’s on other stuff they need but without the weapons they’re fucked anyway no matter how many useful items we send.

there was also a retired army/gov bigwig advisor who basically said that Russia will do what they did in Chechnya if we don’t do something more to stop them. Even if they loose this war (like they lost the first Chechnya war) they’ll just regroup and go again in few years.

He also said that in order to help the rest of the worlds food crisis the UN (one of the bits Russia is No longer a member off as opposed to any of the bits they’re still part of and could thus veto) should declare Odessa, the Black Sea and possibly the nuclear plants in Ukraine as neutral territory and an international navy plus boots if necessary and planes should go in to protect these areas. The forces being contributed to by as many countries of the world as possible would ensure that ships carrying grain and food stuffs and the Odessa port would remain functioning and be able to transport the grain to the rest of the world where it is badly needed.

Odesa has been declared free of Russian occupation!

It was at very high risk early on so this is a real gain.

Also if accurate (again, if) this is one hell of a diplomatic slight to Putin in only his second trip out of Russia this year

twitter.com/Flash43191300/status/1542566371069919232

WarMonitor🇺🇦
@WarMonitor3
·
2h
Biden announced:
50+ countries will provide Ukraine with:

• 140 thousand anti-tank systems

-more than 600 tanks
-500 artillery systems
-600 thousand shells
-MLRS
-anti-ship systems
-air defence systems

Not small stuff.

Jubilation. Great to see combined support from so many nations.

@Ijsbear -19:47

Odesa has been declared free of Russian occupation!

It was at very high risk early on so this is a real gain.

Also if accurate (again, if) this is one hell of a diplomatic slight to Putin in only his second trip out of Russia this year

twitter.com/Flash43191300/status/1542566371069919232

Please would you explain the context for Odesa being free of Russian occupation? I hadn’t realised it had been occupied.

Re: Putin somehow his left leg looks thicker than his right? What could that mean? I noticed it before, and it
really looks that way in this video.

I presume he would have given orders for people not to meet him, let alone give him anything to eat? The others were all tasting the salt ( and maybe the bread).

Just got a bit curious about his walking style and came across this on YouTube. Not sure if it has much truth to it or not but it seems that he's been walking this way for quite some time when you compare it to old footage.

Interesting thread on anti-war protests within Russia: twitter.com/rossman_ella/status/1542567940830158849?s=21&t=atK9DXuMUbMsTaliECV01Q

The Russians were trying to take and hold the whole of the South Coast and link it up with Transnistra in Moldovia, where they fomented separatism. At some points there was a very real risk they'd succeed.

Holding Snake Island made it more feasible to take Odesa. Being driven out of Snake Island means Odesa is safer, to the point they seem to be announcing that it's officially been considered freed.

IN other less pleasant news:

❗️The invaders use torture to force the employees of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to drain cooling pools — Energoatom

The Russians use torture and abuse to force the employees of the hydraulic workshop at the Zaporizhzhia NPP to come up with a justification for draining those cooling pools.

In particular, the Russian military severely beat diver Andrii Honcharuk, a diver of the hydraulic workshop of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The victim was taken to a hospital in Enerhodar with multiple injuries on June 29, 2022.

Interesting video. It says he walks like this with his right arm rigid because it is a 'gunslingers' gait' due to KGB weapons training. It stops short of speculating he has the Parkinson's shuffle. it just said it is a 'serious question for neurological observation'. The news piece is from India Today so I question whether they were unbiased.

Has anyone heard anything of Shoigu and Gerasimov recently?

IN other less pleasant news:

❗️The invaders use torture to force the employees of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to drain cooling pools — Energoatom

The Russians use torture and abuse to force the employees of the hydraulic workshop at the Zaporizhzhia NPP to come up with a justification for draining those cooling pools.

In particular, the Russian military severely beat diver Andrii Honcharuk, a diver of the hydraulic workshop of the Zaporizhzhia NPP. The victim was taken to a hospital in Enerhodar with multiple injuries on June 29, 2022.

This is so horrific and stupid. Poor diver - he was probably just trying to keep the nuclear power plant safe. What could Russia's game plan be? Are they trying to blow up the plant so that they can accuse Ukraine. Why oh why does it ever make sense to have a nuclear incident like Chernoby on the doorstep of Russian occupied territories in the south?

"A mainstay of Putin's inner circle, Sergei Lavrov, has been drawing some historic parallels during a press conference.
The Russian foreign minister said that a new "iron curtain" was being put in place between the West and Russia.
The term was used during the Cold War to refer to the division between Western countries and those with links to the Soviet Union, as relations between the two sides ebbed to an all time low.
"As far as an Iron Curtain is concerned, essentially it is already descending..." said Lavrov.
"The process has begun," he said, adding that Western countries should "just behave carefully"."

Anyone make much of this?^

Shoigu apparently went to the Donbas last week and Minsk on the 26th or 27th.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1540999753785286656
From 27th.

So alive it seems.

I can't find much about Gerasimov single he got injured.

Usial Kremlin waffle. I really wouldn't look too much into it.

Samuel Ramani AT SamRamani2
Russia is warning of a potential suspension of diplomatic relations with Bulgaria over Sofia's expulsion of 70 Russian diplomats

Russia's weaponization of gas exports against Bulgaria is spilling over into a much bigger standoff even as Bulgaria refrains from arming Ukraine

oh so Shoigu at least is still around. Damn.

Kate98 the thing is to remember that KGB training is intensive and a LOT, a LOT of it was to do with manipulation.

He has always had a talent for it but it was honed to extremity in his KGB time and then later.

As far as Lavrov's comments about the Iron Curtain go, I'm afraid that ... ugh ... I agree with him here. I really believe that Putin is trying to recreate his childhood and wants the old USSR back, 21st Century version. It's one of the reasons why I think we have to support Ukraine to the hilt (2nd is the humanitarian cost)

He doesn't want to recreate USSR. He wants to recreate an empire. Two very different things.

I'm going to put a link below. This guy, Ilya Varlamov, is really brilliant. He's a Russian journalist, and he's made several series of videos, one of the series was about each of the former USSR states. He's done Russia last, and it's really interesting. He touches on the USSR nostalgia, but then they sort of move on to imperialism, which I thought was very interesting, given he's made the video about 6 months ago, so before the war.

He's also made videos about various Russian smaller towns/regions. Theu are mind boggling.

I'm not sure the video will come up with English subtitles from the outset, but you can turn them on. I can't vouch for their quality, but I hope they're decent.

Shoigu's Iron Curtain comment may also refer to Russia's increasing isolation. Fewer flights, fewer countries issuing visas, banks cut off from trade, no more international supplies lines and the Baltic Sea is now a NATO lake.

Perhaps that would give them the excuse to pullout, then they can blame Ukraine for destroying the area, add to the rebuilding issues for Ukraine, regroup for a few years and come back stronger.

One 'explanation' of the Russian's wish to drain the pools was to see if weopons were sunken into it.

I don't know if that can possibly be true because ... uh .. where exactly do you start explaining that that's a Bad Idea.

I do wonder in the long run if some of these stories will turn out to be just that, stories.

Frank Gardner's summary of the NATO summit: www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62001165

Overnight strike in Odessa region, 20 people dead, including 2 children. A resort complex was hit.

Quite a bit of commentary on Twitter that Russia withdrawing from Snake Island will free up Ukrainian troops that are currently in Odesa to go into the Donbas or towards any potential counter offensive in Kherson.

@Onceuponatimeinalandfaraway

as for Liz truss saying ignore the madman’s threats about nato I agree with her.

Liz Truss is good with words/PR/Instagram, says the right things...but whilst claiming she wants UK defence spending to increase (ticks the being strong box) she's seems also seems to be have been quite happy to drink the kool aid when it comes to reducing army numbers because (supposedly) according to a R4 interview,"

“We all need to recognise that warfare now is different to warfare as it was 100 years ago, or 200 years ago"....“We need to make sure that the defence capability we have is fit for purpose for the modern world – and we face all kinds of new threats, whether it’s cyber threats, threats in space, new technology, new weaponry, and what’s important is the overall shape of those forces.”

One thing we should have realised by day 100 plus is a lot of the warfare we are seeing now actually is not very different at all to warfare as it was 100 plus years ago....troops on the ground, in trenches, being hammered by artillery/small arms or hammering the opposition in the same way...in many instances high tech drones, comms etc don't provide a new shape or threat, they are the modern version of what used to be done with old fashioned artillery spotting balloons or aircraft, flags and messages dropped in containers..

You need the new capabilities, but you still need a core of the old fashioned stuff, including troops, so I'm not impressed by her seemingly quietly going along with yet another reduction in conventional forces ....