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Ukraine Invasion: Part 45

981 replies

MagicFox · 26/09/2023 20:14

Thanks to all: contributors, lurkers and those in-between

**
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398
blueshoes · 30/10/2023 09:17

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 09:13

UNITED24 Media Telegram Highlights

Details of the execution of 9 people by Kadyrov’s men in a private house in occupied Volnovakha
There were 2-3 well-equipped military men, who went into action with night vision devices and machine guns with silencers.
We are talking specifically about cleanup: all nine bodies are riddled with bullets and most of them were hit in the heads. Relatives who were allowed into the execution site noted that the usual order in the house was not disturbed, and valuable things remained in place — nothing went missing.

Full list of killed residents of the house:
▪️Kapkanets Mykyta born 2018
▪️Kapkanets Anastasia born in 2014
▪️Khatinsky Dmytro born in 2003
▪️Kapkanets Oleksandr born in 1998
▪️Kapkanets Ekaterina born 1996
▪️Kapkanets Natalia born in 1994
▪️Kapkanets Andrii, born in 1992
▪️Kapkanets Tatiana born 1972
▪️Kapkanets Eduard born in 1970

Once it was the village of
Klishchiivka, and at least 500 people lived in it…

This is horrific. One of the victims was only 5 years old. This is what Russian occupation means. They will never get justice.

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 09:23

The pic below is encouraging.

But the situation is very very sad in Ukraine. The counteroffensive hasn't worked. The West has helped Ukraine keep 80% of its land free but the lack of consistent military aid, the slowness of commitment and delivery, has given Russia a gift of time to create defenses and I can't see how they can be dislodged now.

Why, why, why, why didn't the West start the early training on aircraft, send the long range missiles earlier, the tanks? Why not Ben Wallace for NATO sec general?

God.

Ukraine Invasion: Part 45
blueshoes · 30/10/2023 09:33

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 09:23

The pic below is encouraging.

But the situation is very very sad in Ukraine. The counteroffensive hasn't worked. The West has helped Ukraine keep 80% of its land free but the lack of consistent military aid, the slowness of commitment and delivery, has given Russia a gift of time to create defenses and I can't see how they can be dislodged now.

Why, why, why, why didn't the West start the early training on aircraft, send the long range missiles earlier, the tanks? Why not Ben Wallace for NATO sec general?

God.

I hear you. Always grateful for all the support from US and Ukraine's allies, and I appreciate some things cannot happen overnight but but ...

US House Speaker Mike Johnson to support https://kyivindependent.com/us-house-speaker-mike-johnson-to-introduce-defense-funding-for-israel-excludes-ukraine/ defense funding for Israel but not Ukraine.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson will support a standalone bill that includes defense funding for Israel but not for Ukraine, Johnson said in an interview with Fox News on Oct. 29.

This is also not good news.

blueshoes · 30/10/2023 09:37

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-29-2023

Key Takeaways:

  • Ongoing antisemitic demonstrations in the Republic of Dagestan and elsewhere in the North Caucasus are highlighting heightened interethnic and interreligious tensions in Russia.
  • The Kremlin has yet to respond and appears to have left regional authorities to make an official response to the demonstrations.
  • The Kremlin will likely struggle to reassure constituencies that the situation is under control and convince Jewish audiences that Jewish minorities are safe in Russia despite its efforts to present Russia as a religiously tolerant country.
  • Russian ultranationalists expressed concerns that antisemitic demonstrations will spread from Dagestan and the North Caucasus elsewhere in Russia.
  • Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Head Alexander Bortnikov and Russian Investigative Committee Head Alexander Bastrykin may be attempting to capitalize on heightened ethnoreligious tensions in Russia to regain favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
  • Russian milbloggers claimed on October 29 that Airborne Forces (VDV) Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky replaced Colonel General Oleg Makarevich as the commander of the Russian “Dnepr” Grouping of Forces operating in the Kherson direction.
  • Ukrainian forces advanced near Bakhmut amid continued offensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 29.
  • The New York Times (NYT) reported that US officials will send Ukraine hybrid air defense systems in fall 2023.
  • Unspecified actors may have purposefully conspired to shut down a prominent Russian Airborne Forces (VDV)-affiliated milblogger.
  • The Russian information space continues to debate the future of the Wagner Group’s remaining personnel.
  • Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line, near Bakhmut, near Avdivvka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced west of Donetsk City.
  • Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces have begun deploying a new electronic warfare (EW) data station system in Ukraine.
  • Russian military personnel continue to commit violent crimes in occupied Ukraine.
Ukraine Invasion: Part 45
Coughingdodger · 30/10/2023 09:53

A bit off topic

I’ve read that there’s a large Russian and Ukrainian demographic in Israel because Russian/Ukrainian Jews can’t return to Russia/Ukraine whereas many American and European Jews leave Israel after a few years to return to Europe/US.

Russia being a fairly overtly brutal culture compared to other countries (we’ve had Ukrainian guests who say this applies to Ukraine too), could this explain the currently brutality of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza - while thousands of American Jews shut down Grand Central Station in protest?

Coughingdodger · 30/10/2023 10:09

Clearly not all Russians are brutal. Millions are not. But is there a culture of brutality - my Ukrainian guests say that there is - that is also in Israel?

Anyone who replies will probably say you can’t generalise which is fair enough.

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 12:55

I typed a long and very careful reply and the bloody internet ate it.

Summary was that this isnt so much a hot potato as an exploding one. I have wondered myself whether Israel's cultural meltingpot makeup has had some negative elements as well as more positive ones. But in the end ... I don't want to go there. There's wrongs and rights on both sides in that conflict and it's more sensitive than than a flayed skin atm.

Naem · 30/10/2023 13:31

Coughingdodger · 30/10/2023 09:53

A bit off topic

I’ve read that there’s a large Russian and Ukrainian demographic in Israel because Russian/Ukrainian Jews can’t return to Russia/Ukraine whereas many American and European Jews leave Israel after a few years to return to Europe/US.

Russia being a fairly overtly brutal culture compared to other countries (we’ve had Ukrainian guests who say this applies to Ukraine too), could this explain the currently brutality of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza - while thousands of American Jews shut down Grand Central Station in protest?

As well as being off topic - your assumptions (or worse) are coming through here

This is of the - when did you stop beating your wife? type question.

I could ask (on topic) - is it because Ukrainians have historically had such a brutal culture that they treat and have treated their own people is such an appalling way in Bucha and elsewhere? [for those for whom it isn't obvious, I am parroting Russian propaganda here,I don't personally for a moment believe the Ukrainians massacred themselves in Bucha]

Up until they started doing the same with Ukraine, when the people I know were pointing out that Amnesty International and the UN have in more recent times been unbelievably biased and bring out reports that bear very little resemblance to the truth - pretty much everybody rational struggled to believe it - surely these are organisations dedicated to justice and truth, they couldn't possibly the the dupes (or worse) of propaganda?

But I am afraid while "first they come for the Jews", it never stops there. Then they start coming for others. The reason Russia genuinely has scope to convince people that Ukrainians are Nazis and are doing all these terrible things, is because the ground was already laid by the propaganda of organisations like Hamas (aided and abetted by the same Russian bots who are churning out Ukrainian propaganda now was well)_. Once you start believing all the propaganda that Hamas produces, you are well on the way to believing everything about Ukraine that Russia churns out. And, of course, lies go all the way around the world before truth has time to put its boots on, because proving the truth is hard. Even in cases where it there are videos of rockets firing and trajectories and such. Many people simply refuse to believe it.

Fighting wars, unfortunately, tend to involve civilian casualties - the Israeli army goes to unbelievable lengths to try and minimise them. That is the fact. Not because of what the world says, because the world will insist they drink the blood of children whatever they do, but because of their own, internally driven, moral sense. But if you insist on believing the lies there is nothing one can do, any more that if one insists on believing the lies the Russians are churning out about Ukraine there is simply nothing one can do. Because fighting an avalanche of well financed lies addressed at those who want to hear them is near impossible. Just as Ukraine probably would avoid more civilian casualties by not fighting - despite the odd massacre here and there (they could have rolled over and accepted the invasion when the Russians came in for a start), so too Israel could. But any decent, moral person, with the capacity to see through propaganda, should be able to understand that ultimately evil has to be fought. But unfortunately unless you are very close to the reality, it can be very hard to see through the propaganda.

Our only hope paradoxically is that, eventually, enough people will be subject to the same treatment, that they will start to realise the nature of the scam, and as a consequence we will find some effective way of combating the propaganda. But at this point , I don't know how to achieve that. We are still, only just at the first they came for the Jews, and second they came for the Ukrainians stage in the propaganda stakes. Whatever turns out to be most effective, propaganda wise, about the middle east will be applied in relatively short order to the war in Ukraine. That much I can virtually guarantee.

PerkingFaintly · 30/10/2023 14:16

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 09:23

The pic below is encouraging.

But the situation is very very sad in Ukraine. The counteroffensive hasn't worked. The West has helped Ukraine keep 80% of its land free but the lack of consistent military aid, the slowness of commitment and delivery, has given Russia a gift of time to create defenses and I can't see how they can be dislodged now.

Why, why, why, why didn't the West start the early training on aircraft, send the long range missiles earlier, the tanks? Why not Ben Wallace for NATO sec general?

God.

Yes, completely with you on the utter frustration about the slowness – rendering the aid so much less effective when it does arrive.

I mean, it's great that the ATACMS have arrived. But it makes me grind my teeth when I think how useful they would surely have been at a much earlier stage.

(Maybe that's just my military ignorance, and they wouldn't really have been.)

Coughingdodger · 30/10/2023 14:20

@Naem
Thank you.
Maybe I should have said “Soviet” instead of Russian/Ukrainian.
My Ukrainian guests are very western in their outlook. As are many others. They are very pro-European - hence, I suppose, why they’re here and why Putin is trying to force Ukraine back to Russia. And being extremely brutal about it.

I was wondering about those of the ex-Soviet countries who are anti-Europe, many of whom now live in Israel.

My feeling is that many of the Western leaders are surprised at how difficult it is to talk to the Israelis and how much of a cultural difference there is. I think it’s taken a few people by surprise.

On another thread someone pointed out that Israel also has a large ME population and has a very ME culture. So perhaps that’s the difference too.

notimagain · 30/10/2023 14:57

@Coughingdodger

With regard to some of the previous posts perhaps I can maybe offer self confessed anecdata based on the multiple short visits I made to Israel over the years.

Yes you'd encounter some very obviously older ex Soviet/Russian emigres who you'd avoid by miles but many of the youngsters I met were often both liberated and relatively liberal in their politics, and probably had much more in common in terms of outlook with, say French or Italian youngsters, than those fresh out of Moscow.

I can't think I ever sensed a cultural difference that was so wide you couldn't communicate as citizens of different countries. Now of course how it works with the older generation and between the pollies, don't know, but what should have been clear to the west is that IMHO if Israel's feel under threat or are under threat they are not going to back down.

Have to say it's been quite sobering to read about what some of the very young IDF conscripts and others did on Oct 7th to defend others, they are a cohort not to be messed around with...

I'm not sure I'd characterise the place to tending towards an eastern European, outlook, I always viewed it as European Mediterranean (obviously) but a bit of ME thrown in.

All, as I say, based on very little data, just an opinion. (and sorry for the thread drift).

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 15:05

I am not sure it's wise to ask this but .. what did they do on 7th?

MissConductUS · 30/10/2023 15:15

PerkingFaintly · 30/10/2023 14:16

Yes, completely with you on the utter frustration about the slowness – rendering the aid so much less effective when it does arrive.

I mean, it's great that the ATACMS have arrived. But it makes me grind my teeth when I think how useful they would surely have been at a much earlier stage.

(Maybe that's just my military ignorance, and they wouldn't really have been.)

They would have been helpful, but last year HIMARS was probably more useful. The Russians had a lot more static targets closer to the battlefield. Those have mostly been moved back from the front, and so they now need a longer range weapon like ATACMS. But yes, having both would have been better.

MissConductUS · 30/10/2023 15:16

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 15:05

I am not sure it's wise to ask this but .. what did they do on 7th?

I'm pretty sure that's a reference to the Hamas incursion into Israel and attacks on civilians.

notimagain · 30/10/2023 15:23

I'm pretty sure that's a reference to the Hamas incursion into Israel and attacks on civilians.

Yep, I've heard through the grapevine of some very impressive stories of acts of heroism and sometimes sacrifice on that day that for some reason don't seem to have made the MSM.

.... I think any arguments about whether females, some as young as 20, can act effectively as infantry have been well and truly laid to rest.

One example from the French press here:

https://www.ladepeche.fr/2023/10/12/attaque-contre-israel-comment-inbar-lieberman-26-ans-a-reussi-a-sauver-son-kibboutz-des-hommes-armes-du-hamas-11513537.php

DdraigGoch · 30/10/2023 15:25

Instead, the head of Dagestan said that the rally was organized and controlled from the territory of Ukraine, and was done by "traitors and Banderites" who "hate traditional things."

I don't suppose that they were arrested for whatever it is that anti-war protestors get arrested for in Russia then? Surely the Russians would want to lock up any fifth columnists. I won't hold my breath.

DancesWithDucks · 30/10/2023 15:27

Ach. The incursion is burned into our memories, but the date faded for me :/

DdraigGoch · 30/10/2023 15:28

MissConductUS · 30/10/2023 15:15

They would have been helpful, but last year HIMARS was probably more useful. The Russians had a lot more static targets closer to the battlefield. Those have mostly been moved back from the front, and so they now need a longer range weapon like ATACMS. But yes, having both would have been better.

ATACMS would have been useful at the start of the counter-offensive when Russian helicopters were making life difficult. Would have been an opportunity to hit the airfields.

MissConductUS · 30/10/2023 15:32

DdraigGoch · 30/10/2023 15:28

ATACMS would have been useful at the start of the counter-offensive when Russian helicopters were making life difficult. Would have been an opportunity to hit the airfields.

They would have, and the airfields were the first target ATACMS were used on. I think a lot of military planners assumed the Russians would be smart enough to disperse them.

MMBaranova · 30/10/2023 18:53

I have an anecdotal sample of one young adult woman from Russia I have known who emigrated to Israel. Secular, served in the IDF and moved for a better life. I posted about her on here at some point, probably last year.

One of the women in the hostage video Hamas released today is said to be Yelena Tropanov. A quick search turned up over 80 Tropanovs and a slightly higher number of Tropanovas living in Russia with accounts on VK. There's a good chance she's a migrant.

Recent decades' migrants from the FSU clearly play a significant role in Israeli society across the board.

Surplus2requirements · 30/10/2023 19:01

I know there's links between them but I hope this thread doesn't drift too far into the Israel/Gaza conflict else we might attract bad faith actors from other threads

MMBaranova · 30/10/2023 19:12

Correction: seems to be Trupanov. There's a Russian speaking Elena Trupanova with an account that looks like the woman on the left in the hostage video that has not been updated since 2020 online.

MMBaranova · 30/10/2023 19:15

> I hope this thread doesn't drift too far

Agreed. Going back to my delving in the archives a while ago in the 1917-192* era, looking for links between then and now in Ukraine, there's a character I have long been fascinated by. Not as a fan, but what was truly going on here sense.

Ukraine issued a coin in his memory this year.

Ukraine Invasion: Part 45
MMBaranova · 30/10/2023 19:33

What is interesting in current Ukraine's action of issuing a 2 Hryvni coin commemorating Pavlo Skoropadskyi is that his 9 months in power (or illusory power) in 1918 was bracketed by the Petliura associated Republic on either side. His 'coup' toppled the Ukrainian People's Republic and he became Hetman. 'Coup' in that the Germans made it happen (at the time the Central Powers had seemingly won the war and all that was needed was a confirmatory matching collapse of the Allies in the west, which was as we know not to be). Skoropadskyi has often been looked down on as being a puppet with probable accommodation with Moscow leanings if there was a White victory, who, with his German friends, dashed the dreams of a fresh new Ukrainian Nationalist State. But he was head of a Ukrainian something or other, often called the Second Hetmanate. Now in the Zelenskyy era he has to some extent been brought back into the fold.

My interests? Bulgakov's writing and the odd twists in the Skoropadskyi legacy and tale.

Images: he's in the middle of the group one, German officer behind one shoulder.

Ukraine Invasion: Part 45
Ukraine Invasion: Part 45
MMBaranova · 30/10/2023 22:18

'Borys, there's something I have been concealing from you all your life.'

"What's that mother?"

'You are heir to the Ukrainian throne'.

...

One of the strange twists in the Skoropadskyi family saga. Apparently.

You might think that Ukraine is a Republic. There are actually (and at times a fair number in exile) Ukrainian monarchists. King? No, Hetman. When Pavlo Skoropadskyi became Hetman in 1918 his child Danylo became his heir, the hetmanych - a crown prince effectively. The Hetmanate didn't last and Pavlo eventually dies in exile in Germany in April 1945 of all months as he is fatally wounded by Allied bomb fragments while fleeing west from the advancing Red Army. That leaves Danylo as the head of his 'movement', which is run for a while by older female relatives, until he is poisoned by the KGB and dies in London in 1957.

Allegedly a child born in 1956 to his lover Oleksandra (Olesya) Tukhai-Bei / Tuhaibei is his son. Article here, but be aware you need to scroll down beyond the bad coding near the top) and in the conversation they mistakenly call him Pavlo, not a sign of top class journalism:

Skoropadsky successor returns to Ukraine | Газета «День» (day.kyiv.ua)

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