Ukraine Invasion: Part 30

[MagicFox]

We're now on our 30th thread, thanks as usual to all who contribute.

@DesdamonasHandkerchief , can you copy and paste the text of the article from the Times? It's behind a paywall.

The Kremlin is saying that the firefight in Kherson was a "minor terrorist incident", so no mention of a film being made.

Oo it is nice that the Russians are fighting themselves

Bit of analysis here by Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/18/russia-military-underperforming-ukraine

A lot of Russian military units are little more than criminal gangs. So no one should be surprised when they start fighting. Especially in Kherson where it's quite pressured environment I would imagine.

There was a hit on some high ranking official in LPR that Ukraine said it didn't do. The most plausible explanation I've seen was that it was one of the gangs taking him out because they didn't share something or someone owed money. It's still like that in a lot of parts of Russia, modern day mafia, and it is likely to get worse (there's theories that Dugina murder was something along those lines as well).

Here we go MissUSA:

Fear and loathing in the Kremlin, where Putin writhes in his own trap

Ukraine’s recent dramatic successes are a challenge for Russia’s generals. Even more serious, though, is the challenge facing Vladimir Putin.
A man who tends to balk at making tough decisions finds himself confronted with a range of unpalatable options, and seems not to know what to do.
Putin’s humiliation
Ukraine undoubtedly outfought and outthought the Russians on the Kharkiv front. Yet the eye-catching tales of troops fleeing, leaving plates of food behind in their rush, are not the whole story. While there was undoubtedly panic on the part of some soldiers, in the circumstances a headlong retreat was sensible: it was that or be outflanked and likely captured. The real failure did not belong to the men on the ground, who in some places were outnumbered eight to one. It was in Moscow that decisions were taken that left the front woefully undefended in the first place, even though for a fortnight there had been reporting of a Ukrainian build-up.

Given the degree to which he himself seems to have been directly involved in operational decision-making, something that the Kremlin’s own propaganda machine has been hyping, then for all the undoubted failures of Russian intelligence, this is very much Putin’s defeat. The obvious comparison is a devastating one.
Tsar Nicholas II foolishly took on the mantle of commander-in-chief soon after the start of the First World War, thinking the glow of victories would rekindle his faded legitimacy. Instead, he became associated with defeat after defeat in a war Russia could not win. Today the eagerness with which Putinn_ a man with no meaningful military experience beyond some cursory reserve officer training at university asserted himself as the architect of the invasion of Ukraine is coming back to haunt him too.

Vultures circling
There is a spiteful and spirited community of Russian ultra-hawks, especially within the social media “milblogger” [bloggers, often ex-military, focusing on the war] community, whom one would have expected to be up in arms, ranging from Igor Girkin, one of the first insurgent commanders in the Donbas in 2014 under the nom de guerre “Strelkov”, through to “Reverse Side of the Medal”, a mouthpiece for members of the Wagner mercenary group. They have from the first been critical not of the war, but of what they (with reason) see as its amateurish and incompetent prosecution. They are demanding everything from a purge of the high command (including the defence minister Sergei Shoigu) to mass mobilisation, even the use of nuclear weaponss_.
But they have been saying this almost from the start of the war, and have relatively little political traction. What is different now is the emergence of cautious criticism on state TV and in the political mainstream. There is no consensus as to what should be done, but a growing consensus that something needs to change.

A sign of the times was that Ramzan Kadyrovv_, volatile despot of the Chechen region, acknowledged that “it’s a hell of a situation” and warned that if there was no change in strategy, “I will have to go to the leadership of the Ministry of Defence and the country to explain the situation to them.” One should never take Kadyrov’s statements at face value, but the way the Kremlin quickly and publicly countered that Putin was too busy to meet him suggests he struck a nerve.
Last week the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued a scarcely veiled warning that while “critical points of view are currently within the framework of the law . . . the line is very, very fine”. Those who dared criticise the Kremlin “need to be careful here”.
The trouble is that Russiaa_’s catastrophic performance in Ukraine has given critics and opportunists the chance to attack the government while wrapping themselves in the flag. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov is essentially a Kremlin stooge, happy to play the role of the fake opposition. When he advocated “maximum mobilisation” for a “full-fledged war” last week, he may have been floating a trial balloon for the Kremlin, but he was also taking the chance to outflank it.
A jumpy leader
Opportunists like Zyuganov will try to exploit moments of Kremlin weakness, more than anything else to raise the price of their service. He does not want to bring down the regime, but when it is weak, he knows it will have to offer him more perks and prestige to keep him loyal.
It is a stretch to see Putin yet facing an existential political challenge. There is no obvious focus for resistance, and too many within the elite have too much to lose to risk open opposition, especially as there is still no indication that Putin has lost the loyalty of the security forces.
However, it is worth wondering just how secure the leader himself feels. Peskov’s recent statement suggests that the president and his circle are feeling jumpy and defensive.
In the words of one Russian political analyst with close contacts to Putin’s administration, “At the best of times, he is never able to consider himself truly safe. He knows that the people who praise and serve him today could be the ones to turn on him tomorrow.”
After all, this is a president who had not one, but two seemingly solid authoritarian regimes collapse around him at a formative stage of his life: East Germany, where he was serving as a KGB officer in Dresden, and the USSR two years later.
The recent funeral of Mikhail Gorbachevv_, whom Putin blamed for the collapse of the USSR, must have reminded him of how fast a leader can lose control of events, while the size of the crowds who mourned the reformist Soviet president demonstrated that there remains a large contingent of Russians who believe in a different vision for their country from the one that Putin is offering.

No easy way out
If Putin is getting worried, his particular problem is that there are no good options left for him. This is precisely when, in the past, he has tended to be paralysed. He vacillated over how to deal with mass street protests in 2012, and was equally indecisive in his response to the furore over the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015.
Does he now feel that to wrest back momentum in the war he has to escalate? The current campaign of strikes on Ukrainee_’s power grid is a partial response, but it is eating through his dwindling stock of long-range precision missiles. Only 20% of the Iskander missiles that have been the mainstay of this campaign reportedly remain.
If he declared a mobilisation tomorrow, it would probably take three months before the reservists, many unfit and unwilling, would be deployable – in time for winter, when any major military operations are barely feasible anyway. Such a move would also alarm a population that has been told everything is going to plan. So far, the brunt of the fighting has been borne by ethnic non-Russians, who are largely kept to the political margins, but mobilisation would sweep up many Russians, too.
As for the much-feared threat of firing a tactical nuclear weapon, he could order a demonstrative strike in Arctic waters or hit an isolated target such as Snake Island, off Odesa, with the threat that he would then target Ukrainian cities. This would only be effective if he is genuinely willing to follow through, though. He must know that this would force the West to adopt a strategy of seeking to eliminate or unseat him. China and Indiaa would be angry (Putin acknowledged both countries’ concerns about the war for the first time at a summit in Uzbekistann last week), and it could so alarm his own elite that they felt they had to act. If the generals refused to follow orders on this, where, he must fear, would it end?
Nor is there any real scope for de-escalation. The Ukrainians are on a roll, and unwilling to make concessions. While Putin has some scope to redefine quite what “victory” means, even his most creative propagandists would be hard-pressed to spin the loss of the Donbas, let alone Crimea, as anything more than a humiliating reverse.
Trying to cling on
Putin can continue to hammer Ukraine’s infrastructure so long as he has the missiles. He can amp up the cyberattacks being launched on Ukraine and the West (and there is already some evidence that this is happening). He can try to recruit more soldiers wherever he can, including convicts from prison. None of these will substantively change the situation on the ground, though.
Likewise, he can sack Shoigu and pillory some scapegoats, but it is a little late to think this will have much effect on morale at home, let alone the war effort. Shoigu’s real failing has not been mismanaging the war so much as not standing up for his generals and doing anything to stop Putin and his spook allies from wreaking havoc on Russia’s strategy.
Putin has little choice but to hang on, hoping that somehow Ukraine’s will breaks or, more likely, that the West’s does. For now, this may seem the most rational option, certainly the safest. Yet it does nothing to assuage the hawks or the technocrats, nor does it offer ordinary Russians, who are just beginning to feel the pinch (the majority now have no savings at all) any real hope.
Memories of the Tsar
Instead, there is a desperate offer of bread and circuses. Last weekend’s lavish public celebrations in Moscow for the celebration of its founding saw 30,000 fireworks launched in an unconscious parody of war. The government is offering subsidies for faltering businesses, pensions are being raised and civil servants are getting a 10% pay increase.
All this is just a stopgap, though, and a pricy one, at that. The striking thing is that there seems to be no viable route out of this crisis for Putin, and an awareness of that is growing, at least within the elite.

We may be some way from March 1917, when generals and grandees forced Tsar Nicholas II to abdicate, but it is noteworthy that a large part of the reason for that was their sense that the commander-in-chief had nothing to offer beyond a vain hope that “one more push” would somehow turn around a war Russia was evidently losing. One hundred and five years later, Putin seems able to offer nothing more himself.

By Professor Mark Galeotti is the author of Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine, to be published by Bloomsbury on November 10

@Ijsbear I saw that. It gave me a smile.

@MissConductUS the trio of battlefield setbacks for Kremlin was music to my ears.

Thank you, @DesdamonasHandkerchief , that's a very interesting piece.

@notimagain , I agree with most of what was in that article in the Guardian, with one exception. Russian doctrine is not superior to western military doctrine simply because it is incongruent with the capabilities of their forces. It's a fantasy land exercise.

A good half of the problem or more of the problem isn't so much the doctrine (ruinous as that is) as that Russia has apparently no idea of how to build an army that will live up to the doctrine .....

It may be that the Ukrainians don't see that as a problem; from their point of view it's not a bug, it's a feature.

Olena Zelenska has paid her respects to the Queen and has had a private audience with the Princess of Wales at Buckingham Palace ahead of the reception this evening. It’s Catherine’s first solo engagement as Princess of Wales so a historical event and a great way to show solidarity.
Whatever people think of the Royal Family-I love this.

I'm still very very upset about izyum

But even though Twitter is a cesspit most of the time I still find a giggle from Ukrainians

Specifically the good old ministry of defence

twitter.com/defenceu/status/1571559314946506753?s=46&t=xGzUpeBzz-L-ggXax2asBg

I disdain the institution. However, I interpret Olenna's visit as a gesture of friendship with the people of the UK and so like you, I'm pleased she is here. Six or seven months ago her whereabouts had to be a secret, and here she is striding about the global stage representing the Ukrainian people while Putin cowers wherever he's cowering.

@LoveLarry Love that Twitter account. Don't know how Ukraine can see humour in the face of such darkness. They are heroic.

about Izyum. It is not my grief and I cannot talk to anyone in real life about the horrors except warp my feelings in a bubble of hope. Just wanted to show my solidarity with you.

Blue shoes.

ISW Key Takeaways

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be increasingly relying on irregular, poorly trained ad-hoc volunteer and proxy units rather than attempting to rebuild damaged or destroyed conventional Russian ground forces units.

Ukrainian forces continue to consolidate positions on the east bank of the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast despite Russian efforts to contain them.

Russian forces in western Kherson Oblast may be attempting to fall back to more defensible positions in a controlled withdrawal to avoid the chaotic retreat that characterized the collapse of Russian defenses in Kharkiv earlier in September.

Russian forces suffered devastating losses of manpower and equipment in their fight for eastern Ukraine and especially during the Ukrainian Kharkiv counter-offensive. Multiple Russian armored and mechanized units have likely been effectively destroyed according to assessments released on September 18.

+++

Zelenskyy: The Mykolaiv region. At night, a missile fell 300 meters from the Pivdennoukrainsk NPP. There was a short-term power outage.

During a conversation with CEO of the world’s largest investment manager BlackRock Larry Fink, we discussed how to drive public and private investments into our state.

+++

⚡️Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority: Ukraine has exported 3.7 million metric tons of grain under UN-backed deal.

⚡️Forbes: New Russian 3rd Army Corps lasts only few days in Ukraine
After the 3rd Army Corps rushed to Kharkiv Oblast last week, “the corps just melted away” due to the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

⚡️Governor: Ukrainian forces cross Oskil River.
According to Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai, the Ukrainian forces have crossed the river. [confirmed now]

⚡️ Southern Command: Russian forces stage shooting in Kherson to accuse Ukraine of urban warfare and is part of a false flag plot to frame Ukrainian troops and allege that Kyiv is endangering civilians.

⚡️ Biden: 'No indication' that China sends weapons or aid to Russians.

⚡️ Georgian president condemns Russia's war crimes in Izium, calls for justice.

⚡️ Ukraine's First Lady visits Westminster Hall, where Queen lying in state. Zelenska will attend the Queen's funeral, representing Ukraine.

⚡️ Energy Ministry: Power restored to over 18,000 Ukrainians on Sept. 18.

⚡️ Reuters: US General urges vigilance as Russia suffers military losses.
“The war is not going too well for Russia right now. So it’s incumbent upon all of us to maintain high states of readiness, alert,” U.S. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said after visiting a military base in Poland on Sept. 18, Reuters reports.

⚡️ Governor: Explosion in occupied Svatove kills about 200 Russian troops.

⚡️ Ukraine’s military destroys 2 Russian ammunition depots in southern Ukraine.

⚡️ General Staff: Russia sends 400 convicts to fight in Ukraine. [see the ISW report for their views on the effectiveness of irregular and raw recruits]

⚡️McDonald's to resume delivery from restaurants in Kyiv. [normality returns, eh?]

⚡️Governor: Ukraine destroys Russian military base in occupied Luhansk Oblast

🔺 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, during a speech to his supporters, said that the war in Ukraine was "provoked by the West". According to him, it was supposed to be a "local conflict", but due to pressure from the United States and European partners, it turned into a "global one"

❗️ Invaders in Kherson region massively evict residents of private houses
In addition, in the area of the settlement of Chonhar, the invaders threaten people with reprisals and force the local population to participate in the fortification equipment of positions

🖇 Spain will train the Ukrainian military to work with battle tanks, – Infodefense
The first group of 20 soldiers will arrive in Spain early next week.

📌 The European Commission recommends freezing payments to Hungary in the amount of about 7.5 billion euros
The Commission proposes not to allocate 65% of funds for three programs from the key EU fund to Hungary due to a violation of the principles of the rule of law.

📍 Occupied Crimea tests readiness for mobilization — Center for Countering Disinformation of Ukraine
"The occupiers issued a decree banning men from leaving the peninsula from the direction of the Kerch Bridge, but a few days later removed it from the official resource. [it looks like Crimean men will get pressed into service in the future, then]

📣 Business Insider: NATO believes that Russia will attack Donbas regardless of the costs
NATO estimates that Russia will continue its offensive in Donbas, destroying infrastructure everywhere, regardless of the casualties.

🚢 The hull of the future flagship of the Ukrainian Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has been built in Türkiye — Turkish portal TurDef

🔺 Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine: Russians do not accept wounded "LPR and DPR volunteers" in hospitals [fucking hell. These 'volunteers' were given no choice, little training, little armour/weopons and now abandoned without treatment]
The number of conflicts between representatives of the Russian armed forces and those "mobilized from the territory of the "LPR/DPR" is increasing.

Armenia holds rally demanding withdrawal from the CSTO — Armenian media
A rally is being held in the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, on September 18, demanding withdrawal from the military-political Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which also includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. The protesters believe that if Armenia leaves the organization, it may receive military aid from the West.
The rally is taking place in the center of the city. Nancy Pelosi, a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, arrived in Yerevan today amid the escalation of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The protesters took to the street with U.S. flags and placards; there was also a flag of Ukraine.
[this is interesting. Armenia appealed to Putin for help, as is their right, and Putin refused. There has also been at least one extraordinarily appalling video of Azerbijani treatment of deceased Armenian soldiers. So perhaps Armenia is turning to the West now - that should be interesting with Turkey]

‼️ Olenivska colony in the "DPR" was shelled again
As a result of the shelling, one prisoner of war was killed, four more were injured. The invaders are trying to blame the Armed Forces of Ukraine for this.

🔬 Ukrainian scientists have created a hemp variety that can be used to make body armor, parachutes, and gunpowder — press service of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine

🔎 In recent days, Iranian cargo planes have regularly flown to Moscow, Flightradar24 reports
Over the past week, several cargo ships flew from Tehran to Moscow at once.
Given the presence of Iranian Shahed-136 drones at the disposal of the Russian army at the front, such activity of Iranian air cargo transportation to the Russian capital may also indicate that Moscow has expanded the range of its military requests to Tehran [reports are that the new Iranian drones are causing a lot of trouble for Ukraine]

🛂 From today, the Baltic countries and Poland stopped letting Russians in
This also applies to citizens of the Russian Federation who have Schengen visas issued by third countries. In addition, as of today, the simplified issuance of visas for Russians and Switzerland has been suspended. [except for people with family already in the country and if they live their permanently, I believe]

there* not their for the last sentence! Not enough tea in my arteries yet.

The ISW published a lengthy but very worthwhile assessment of how the invasion is going for the Russians yesterday.

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 18

I won't copy and paste the whole thing, as there is no paywall. I did find there assessment of the situation in Kherson quite on point:

Russian forces are likely attempting to conduct a more deliberate and controlled withdrawal in western Kherson Oblast to avoid the chaotic flight that characterized the collapse of Russian defensive positions in Kharkiv Oblast earlier this month. The Russians have heavily reinforced western Kherson Oblast over the past several months including with airborne units and at least some elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army.[11] These ostensibly more professional and well-trained and equipped units are concentrated in a small area in Kherson Oblast and were prepared for the expected counteroffensive. They appear to be performing significantly better than Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast. The Ukrainians destroyed a number of units of the 1st Guards Tank Army in Kharkiv Oblast, putting them to flight and capturing large amounts of high-quality equipment. The worse performance of professional Russian soldiers in Kharkiv Oblast compared with those in Kherson Oblast may be due to the thinner concentration of Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast as well as the fact that the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast appeared to surprise the Russian defenders.

Beautifully, crystal clear from this rep for Estonia: twitter.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1571778702635065345?s=46&t=OMn5a5RV43Lx9g8wQbC5Iw

@MissConductUS thanks for the ISW links:

For those who are still horrified by Bucha (who isn't), I spotted this in the article:

Emerging details about the extent of losses by professional Russian combat units reveal devastating losses rendering elite brigades and regiments combat-ineffective or nearly non-existent. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 18 that the Russian 64th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (MRB) of the Eastern Military District has suffered 90% losses between its fighting around Kyiv and its subsequent operations in eastern Ukraine.[60] The 64th Separate MRB was complicit in war crimes around Bucha and was reportedly sent immediately back into the fight following the Russian withdrawal from around Kyiv to ensure that its personnel would be unable to answer questions about their atrocities. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the Russian MoD had transferred the unit’s remaining equipment to the FSB and was preparing to disband the brigade.

I hope Ukraine finds every single one of the remaining 10% and prosecutes them for war crimes.

@ijsbear thanks for the key takeaways.

It does look like Ukraine will face a tougher fight to regain Kherson. But they would be expecting it since their strategy was to draw the Russian troops into Kherson. Let's hope the different Russian groups in Kherson fight each other like rats in a sack over dwindling supplies and do the job for Ukraine.

Zelenskyy: The Mykolaiv region. At night, a missile fell 300 meters from the Pivdennoukrainsk NPP. There was a short-term power outage.

Utterly reckless and spiteful action. Expecting no less from Russia

I think I am in love.

Who was the Estonian rep talking to?

@blueshoes a Russian journalist who I don't think is actually in Russia, mind

@MagicFox Thanks for clarifying. At one point, the Russian journalist looked like he stuck fingers in both his ears.

"Basically we [Estonia] want you [Russia] to lose this war. We want to weaken your military capabilities for the next decades. We don't want to see you rebuild your economy. We want the opposite."

[all said in an earnest and sincere tone]

I saw the fingers go in his ears, too, @blueshoes. That's a massive case of cognitive dissonance. The Estonian was a cutie and right on point.

I thought there were earplugs for a translation device in his ears? He may have been adjusting them.