Ukraine Invasion: Part 29

[MagicFox]

Welcome all, part 29

Here's some more info about the airfield attack.

www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/08/16/7363483/

I've also seen a video on Reddit of Russians queuing at a railroad station trying to get out of Crimea. It must be a shock to discover that you've taken your holiday in a war zone.

I have been wondering how active the partisans are in Crimea. Friends who escaped via Crimea have said that many people there are as frightened of speaking out as they are in Russia.

Hillsmakeyoustrong · Today 19:57
I have been wondering how active the partisans are in Crimea. Friends who escaped via Crimea have said that many people there are as frightened of speaking out as they are in Russia.

It looks lovely there in the pictures of Russians who had to leave their holidays in shock and tears, but it is interesting to hear the people cannot speak out here either.

Hills do you know if before the annexation the majority of the population, who were ethnic Russians I think, wanted to be Russian? Or did they think of themselves as Ukrainian/wanting Ukrainian government?

I'm sure some Russians are probably fleeing Crimea, but whilst I hate to put a damper on things TBH having looking at some of the footage doing the rounds claiming to show a mass evacuation by rail I'm not convinced all is as advertised and I know others have similar concerns.

Certainly looking at one video on reddit of a queue at a railway station I got the impression by how people are behaving (bored, calm) what is being carried (not a lot, mainly small bags) and what is being worn ( often sandals, shorts, summer clothes) that it shows holiday makers leaving a resort at the end of their holidays...now whether they are leaving ahead of schedule or not is another matter but I've see similar crowds on Skegness station in summer...

Maybe there's more compelling stuff out there I'm missing..

Yeah, it's August and I think people are probably doing holiday stuff. Though I doubt they feel quite as secure as they once did ...

ISW Key Takeaways

Russian forces conducted ground attacks across the Eastern Axis but failed to advance northwest of Slovyansk and east of Siversk.

Russian forces are launching offensive operations around Bakhmut, southwest of Avdiivka, and southwest of Donetsk City.

Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations in northern and northwestern Kherson Oblast.

The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Ukrainian forces in Nikopol are preparing to conduct provocations at the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, possibly setting information conditions for further shelling of Nikopol or provocations of its own.

Chechen units are reportedly relocating to Kherson Oblast to police Russian military deserters.

Russian forces struggle to recruit soldiers even for safe, prestigious jobs.

also ..
The Kremlin continues efforts to misrepresent its likely maximalist goals in Ukraine. ISW assesses that Russian strategic objectives remain unchanged: changing the regime change in Kyiv and securing territorial control over most of Ukraine

+++

⚔️ Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: Russian troops continue to attack along the entire front line. At the same time, Russians shell the Ukrainian positions about 700-800 times every day using from 40,000 to 60,000 rounds of ammunition.

📌 The Kremlin is friends with the Taliban terrorists
The Talibs are ready to supply the Russian Federation with captured American weapons and send its fighters to the war against Ukraine.
The Kremlin plans to supply Afghanistan with oil, grain, and sunflower oil. Moreover, part of the promised food may be stolen from the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.

❕The authorities urge residents of Enerhodar to evacuate due to Russia’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

📌 The Armed Forces of Ukraine control almost 50% of the Donetsk region — head of the Regional Military Administration Pavlo Kyrylenko

🔗 When one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council commits aggression on the territory of another UN member state, and international mechanisms were unable to respond to this due to the existing veto right, then such a situation is unacceptable, – former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

📍A massive Russian offensive is underway in the Donbas, the military repelled attacks three times

💡The United States will contribute $68 million to the World Food Program to buy Ukrainian wheat to address the food crisis, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted.

⚡️ Less than half of Ukraine’s educational institutions ready to resume instruction.

Many Jewish people are leaving, up to one in 8.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62564122

Anton Geraschenko Twitter.

38,297 cars have crossed the Crimea bridge on 15th August, Russian state media TASS reports, citing the local department of road management.

This is a record amount of cars to cross the bridge in one day.

I wonder whether the record will be beaten today.

I think people are fleeing Crimea.

Tbh @ScrollingLeaves I don't know. And depending on who you ask, you can get a different answer. I think there have been significant numbers of pro russian people in the controlled areas. From what I am told by people on the ground.

I think perhaps people in Crimea were not so much pro-Russia as anti-Ukrainian-government, in 1991 and 1995. Really, people in Crimea wanted to be independently Crimean, going by the polling then.

And until recently the Crimean government was pretty nasty, and pretty corrupt; not wanting it would be understandable. It's just a shame that the only alternative is nastier and more corrupt.

📌 The United States knew about Putin's impending invasion of Ukraine and spent months urging the Kremlin to abandon such plans

This follows from the materials of the investigation conducted by The Washington Post.

The investigation says that in October 2021, an urgent meeting was held at the White House with the participation of President Biden and US military leaders and diplomatic missions. Officials told the president about Putin's plans to take over most of Ukraine, and he made the decision to send someone to Moscow to talk about the consequences of the invasion.

This was followed by several meetings between high-ranking Russian and American officials in November-January. However, the Russian side, including Putin personally, reacted to the warnings, declaring the unacceptability of NATO expansion and the illegitimacy of the Ukrainian government.

On February 11, two weeks before the invasion, a meeting took place in Moscow between Sergei Shoigu and British Defense Minister Ben Wallace. According to WP, London wanted to once again try to resolve the conflict through diplomacy, but Russian colleagues did not want to discuss it.

Wallace warned that Russia would face fierce resistance in Ukraine: “I know Ukrainians – I have been to Ukraine five times – and they will fight.” Shoigu reacted to his statements with the words: “My mother is Ukrainian. It's all part of one country." Still, he was wrong.

@Ijsbear thanks for that extract from the Washington Post. I remember the US kept saying that Russia would invade weeks before the actual invasion. I was wondering how they knew. I guess that explains it. UK would know that the Ukrainians will fight. After all the UK had been training them since 2015 (Operation Orbital). I can imagine that even then the UK could tell that the Ukraine soldiers they were training must have been a pretty motivated bunch.

God bless

^www.wsj.com/articles/russia-ukraine-war-american-veterans-volunteers-training-11660743714?mod=hp_lead_pos5^

U.S. Veterans Race to Train Ukrainians as Marines; ‘Time Is Not on Their Side’
Foreign volunteers pay their own way to help prepare civilians for next phase of battle with Russia; ‘many have never held a weapon’

Ukraine’s military suffers from a severe shortage of qualified trainers, because experienced combat troops are needed on the front lines. The active-duty soldiers from the U.K., U.S. and Canada who used to conduct training missions here were pulled out in February, and a new training program on British soil can take up only some of the slack.

That’s where volunteers like Mr. Tomberlin, who used to train Afghan commandos, come in.
…
Older, more experienced volunteers like Mr. Tomberlin felt that they would be far more useful imparting their knowledge to Ukrainian recruits than sitting in a trench—an assessment shared by senior Ukrainian commanders. “Here, there is such a hunger for what we are offering,” said Mr. Tomberlin, who has already trained some 270 Ukrainian troops. “These guys will be better prepared than 75% of the Ukrainian army.”

The unit Mr. Tomberlin joined calls itself the Mobile Assault Training Group, or MATG. It includes around a dozen Americans, plus a few Britons, Canadians and Israelis, assisted by Ukrainian translators and support staff.

The group’s members flew to Ukraine on their own dime, drawn by televised images of destruction, and banded together through informal connections here in Mykolaiv, a southern Ukrainian city that the Russian military failed to capture in March. Mykolaiv remains a dangerous place, subject to daily shelling and rocket barrages.

While the U.S. government advises all American citizens to leave Ukraine, it doesn’t impose penalties on those who travel here to help the Ukrainian military.

“I’ve had a lot of Ukrainian soldiers tell me that this is the most meaningful thing they have done in their lives, and I tell them the same,” said one of the MATG trainers, Brian Bentley, 29, a former U.S. Marine who was planning to take a police academy course in Detroit but decided to come to Ukraine instead.

For Russia, these trainers represent a priority target. …

The fierce nature of the war turns his Ukrainian students into quick learners, he adds. “They have no choice and time is not on their side,” said Mr. Crawford. “In Afghanistan and Iraq, we did have dangers, but here we are sending these guys to full kinetic warfare, not some kind of counterinsurgency.”

The new battalion commander, Capt. Oleksandr Buntov, and many of his men are originally from Kherson. The captain has managed to smuggle out his family, but some other Marines still have spouses, children or parents living under Russian occupation.

“My motivation is ironclad: to liberate my home,” Capt. Buntov said. “I know it will be hard, and this is why we are getting prepared—and why we need these instructors to teach here. Urban close-quarters combat is the hardest kind of combat, no matter how long you train, and offense is much harder than defense.”

blueshoes · Today 22:44
God bless

Yes, indeed.

Thank you for copying that out. It is good the U S veterans are there carrying out training for the Ukrainians and it is generous and large hearted of them to risk their lives for this cause so far away from their own homes. The fact that they are going to share their expertise rather than going for adventure stands out here.

Thank you @Ijsbear for the Washington Post article. I had never realised at the time how much America knew.

Wallace warned that Russia would face fierce resistance in Ukraine: “I know Ukrainians – I have been to Ukraine five times – and they will fight.” Shoigu reacted to his statements with the words: “My mother is Ukrainian. It's all part of one country." Still, he was wrong.

Imagine Shoigu saying his mother is Ukrainian, and it’s all part of the same country then being willing to do what he has. This in and of itself proves why it should never be part of Russia.

@Hillsmakeyoustrong · Today 11:18
and @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · Today 11:37

Thank you for your answers about attitudes towards Russian vs Ukrainian rule in Crimea.

@Hillsmakeyoustrong

I think people are fleeing Crimea.

If that was a response to my comment upthread about the railway station footage, I don't doubt that some are...it's the some of the imagery doing the rounds supposedly displaying that fleeing that was the issue.

1/ A 34-year-old former Russian paratrooper, Pavel Filatyev, has published a remarkable in-depth account of his experiences of the Ukraine war. He served with the Feodosia-based 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment and fought in southern Ukraine for two months. A 🧵 follows.

twitter.com/chriso_wiki/status/1560022545356791810?s=21&t=agajoCGXwDSaN6lS97D20g

UK national maritime strategy just published : assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1098583/national-strategy-for-maritime-security-web-version.pdf

@MagicFox MagicFox · Today 07:07
1/ A 34-year-old former Russian paratrooper, Pavel Filatyev, has published a remarkable in-depth account of his experiences of the Ukraine war. He served with the Feodosia-based 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment and fought in southern Ukraine for two months. A 🧵 follows.

twitter.com/chriso_wiki/status/1560022545356791810?s=21&t=agajoCGXwDSaN6lS97D20g

Thank you, Magic Fox, it must be terrible to be a soldier in an army like that.

I wonder if, and how, Ukraine has managed to resolve issues in their army they might have inherited from Soviet times? Was it mainly down to retraining with British and U S help?

Key Takeaways

Russian military leadership is falsely claiming that recent attacks on Russian military objects in Crimea are terrorist attacks to deflect calls to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Russian forces attempted several unsuccessful assaults near the Kharkiv-Donetsk Oblast border in tactically challenging forest areas.

Russian forces continued to unsuccessfully attack settlements southeast of Siversk.

Russian forces launched several assaults northeast and south of Bakhmut, and are likely attempting to improve tactical positions near Horlivka.

Russian forces made limited gains northwest of Donetsk City and near the Zaporizhia-Donetsk Oblast administrative border.

Russian forces are likely preparing to defend their ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the Melitopol-Tokmak-Berdyansk triangle by mining settlements on the eastern Zaporizhia Oblast frontline.

Russian federal subjects are continuing to form new volunteer units and advertise contract service while facing recruitment challenges.

Russian occupation authorities are struggling to increase control measures in occupied territories amidst increased partisan activity.

+++

💵 $54 million from the Aid For Ukraine crypto-fund is used to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine, digital and cyber resistance — Mykhailo Fedorov, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine

🛂 Estonia plans not to let Russians into the country with visas issued in other EU countries — Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu

📣 Lithuania calls on the EU to make a unanimous decision to abolish tourist visas for Russians

🔎 The Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine: The invaders are urgently moving their aircraft deep into the peninsula and to the Russian Federation’s air bases after the explosions in Crimea

📊 Grain corridor: 24 vessels with 600,000 tons of grain have already departed from Ukrainian ports — Ministry of Infrastructure

❗️ The Russian invaders in Melitopol have blocked the exit from the city and are conducting total filtering — Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov

🪖 Ukrainian warriors learn to destroy Russian aircraft with man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS), using virtual reality technology [good idea!]

Denmark is going to limit the entry of tourists from the Russian Federation — Ritzau agency

🤝 Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal: Ukraine will receive $450 million from Canada for gas for a heating season

⚡️Officials in Poland started denying Russians temporary residence and work permits — Trojmiasto

The provision in the law stipulates refusal of temporary residence "when so required for national defense or security, or the protection of security and public order, or obligations arising from ratified international agreements."

🏗 Estonia suffered the largest cyberattacks since 2007, after the dismantling of the Soviet monument in Narva and other Soviet symbols

📌 Politico: The six largest European countries did not offer any new bilateral military commitments to Ukraine during July – the first time since the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation

💡The IAEA Director General is ready to lead a mission to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
It will be recalled that the Russian military seized the Zaporizhzhia NPP on the night of March 4, after which armed provocations began.

⚡️NATO says it will increase presence in Kosovo if tensions with Serbia escalate.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made the statement at a joint press conference with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in Brussels, Reuters reports.

⚡️Energoatom sets up crisis center to respond to potential disaster at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said the center will coordinate between different ministries and departments, working 24/7 to monitor the situation at the plant and prepare for different emergency scenarios

⚡️Zelensky: 55 diplomatic missions have resumed work in Kyiv.

⚡️ Russian media: Russia to appoint Krasnodar mayor as so-called ‘head’ of temporarily occupied Kharkiv Oblast.

⚡️ Official: Russian forces may postpone sham ‘referendum’ in temporarily occupied parts of Kherson Oblast.

⚡️Investigation: Pro-Kremlin lawmakers live lavishly in France, Monte Carlo.
Vadym Stolar and Ihor Abramovych, lawmakers from the pro-Kremlin Opposition Platform-For Life party, live in France's Cote d'Azur, according to online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.

⚡️Official: Russian occupiers kidnap mayor in Kherson Oblast.
Svitlana Korotun, mayor of the Verkhny Rohachyk village community in Kherson Oblast, was kidnapped from her home on Aug. 16 and taken away in an unknown direction, according to Yury Sobolevsky, first deputy speaker of the regional legislature.
Korotun was kidnapped because she refused to cooperate with the Russians, he said.

⚡️Intelligence: Russia tries to recruit mercenaries from Central Asia.
Russia is conducting a recruitment campaign targeting citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, according to Ukraine's military intelligence.
The Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate also said that discontent is growing in Chechnya because locals are being forced to join Russian troops in Ukraine under the threat of criminal prosecution and torture.

⚡️Defense minister: War won't freeze but intensity of conflict may decrease due to fewer resources

⚡️UN Secretary-General to meet Zelensky, Erdogan in Lviv.

⚡️Chinese troops to participate in Russia's joint military exercises.
China's Defense Ministry said on Aug. 17 that its troops will travel to Russia's "Vostok" (East) exercises set to take place from Aug. 30 to Sept. 5. China said that its participation in the drills is part of ongoing bilateral cooperation with Russia and is "unrelated to the current international and regional situation."

⚡️Russia sets up checkpoint on Crimean Bridge, searches outgoing traffic.
Outgoing vehicles are being searched and individuals' documents checked at the checkpoint, according to Denys Savchenko, coordinator of the human rights organization Crimea SOS.
The move comes as people flee the occupied peninsula following recent explosions (kyivindependent.com/national/explosions-at-ammunition-depot-damage-railway-in-occupied-crimea) at Russian military facilities there.

🔎 This is what the result of the Russian army's "advance" during the month looks like, according to the Pentagon observations [attached map]

Two lines are marked on the map, where the black line is the positions held by the invaders since July 10, and the red line is the result as of August 14.

"No visible progress in a month. The turning point is the first half of September. The end of the active phase of the war with the liberation of the right-bank Kherson region and part of the Azov region is January 2023. Then everything depends on many factors but the initiative of that time will be finally regained by Ukraine. The complete end of the hot phase is the fall of 2023," the Pentagon spokesman.

wow

⚡️Serhii Prytula, a Ukrainian volunteer and TV presenter, reported that a satellite was bought with funds from the "People's Bayraktar" campaign. It provides access to the ICEYE Company’s constellation satellite imagery database. The access was bought for more than a year. Now the Armed Forces of Ukraine will quickly receive satellite images, which will help to destroy the enemy most effectively. It will be recalled that it’s concerned 600 million hryvnias, which the Ukrainians have collected for the purchase of "Bayraktar” UAVs.

🔎 The Alpha Centauri project says that ICEYE Group satellites observe the Earth in the microwave range (SAR) – this allows them to take images of the surface at any time of day and under any weather conditions.
Usually, the data is updated every few hours - it is possible to observe combat operations at a tactical level. Photo resolution is 25 centimeters per pixel.

mobile.twitter.com/JoshNBCNews/status/1560278407954321416 rumours that Russian staff have been told not to go to work at the nuclear power plant tomorrow

But this is an excellent thread about probabilities and what we do and don't need to worry about:

twitter.com/TomMostlyZen/status/1558450535551967233?s=20&t=XTJtHh5OZ4rXz0AqVB3xFw

mobile.twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1560257001636397057 President Zelensky visits wounded soldiers in Lviv

@Ijsbear

The Alpha Centauri project says that ICEYE Group satellites observe the Earth in the microwave range (SAR) – this allows them to take images of the surface at any time of day and under any weather conditions.
Usually, the data is updated every few hours - it is possible to observe combat operations at a tactical level..

FWIW here's more info here,

www.iceye.com/persistent-monitoring

From a reconnaissance POV the ability to get the same imaging from the same ground track every 24 hours or more frequently is a very big deal..

...and if they are admitting in the public domain to a "Photo resolution is 25 centimetres per pixel" ask yourself what the US military/NSA can do.....

Thank you@expandabandband that's a timely reminder

mobile.twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1559991374707101698 Denmark to stop issuing Russian visas no matter what the rest of the EU does

Mind you the second tweet on that thread said the Romania stamped a Russians passport with Russian warship go fuck yourself in Ukrainian and then refused them entry