The debate has started about the use of drones for surveillance of citizens and their use as a control in crowd protests. It’s the further step from CCTV surveillance of the public.
IIRC a French Court ruled that it was lawful to use them in the recent strikes there. At the same time, undue force by the police in protests is at issue, including their use of drones to identify individuals in protests and then use excessive force.
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Scholz rebutting a rally that was demanding Germany stop sending weapons to Ukraine. Calls out Putin for being a mass murderer. Damn good stuff.
https://twitter.com/fatassinari/status/1665001940382621697?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
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Warehouse gone. Satellite before and after of recent strike in Berdyansk.
https://twitter.com/bradyafr/status/1665040760675115010?s=46&t=A5S-z5IJslFoC5SVN0Jodg
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Do we know what hit it? Storm Shadow?
Almost certainly storm shadow, but Ukraine did launch a Tochka U at the same city yesterday, which Russia shot down.
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Yep. He and Germany are fully on board. Same with Macron and France.
There was a LOT of uninformed twittering against both countries a year ago. Some of it was legitimate criticism often poorly expressed. Some of it may have been Russian infowar trolls trying to discredit the legitimate criticism and stir things up as is done from all sides on other topics (eg some of the more lunatic tweets from “MAGA” and “woke” are actually from their opponents). Some of it may have been from people pushing “US leadership”. It certainly was not actually helpful to Ukraine, including when done by Ukrainians.
Here’s the actual Scholz, not the impression of him created at the time, taking much the same position confronting a much less dispirited hostile crowd a year ago. Noticed via one of several comments in the thread pointing out that he had been speaking like that a year ago. The video scrolling commentary is from ShanghaiEye, a chinese site with a slant to support the opposition to Germany assisting Ukraine.
PS Re Macron and France my impression is that most of the hostile tweeting was milder and more just uninformed or pushing “US leadership” than deliberately hoping to disrupt unity against Russian fascism.
Strikes on Russia | Is Ukraine Riding the Momentum (English subtitles)
In recent weeks, Ukraine delivered a series of unexpected strikes. Financial Times military experts called these “shaping operations.”
Good overview of what’s happening now, based on 30 May FT article (unpaywalled):
Military briefing: Ukraine’s daring ‘shaping operations’ stretch Russian defences
Attacks such as the Moscow drone strikes seen as ‘magician’s sleight of hand’ that deceives the Kremlin and derails its plans
Worth also reading the article, though followers of this Blitz thread will be familiar with the basic explanations in it quoted by Katz eg:
Ukrainian social media lit up with memes that proclaimed the establishment of the “Belgorod People’s Republic”. In Russia, by contrast, the raid dismayed hardline military bloggers, and led to heated criticism of the defence ministry by Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner paramilitary group that has spearheaded Russian attacks in the Donbas city of Bakhmut.
In an hour-long video, Prigozhin lectured locals on how to set up better defences and said Russia needed to beef up its military presence on the border. After the region was reportedly hit by Ukrainian shelling on Monday, Belgorod’s governor said “we are living in a de facto state of war”.
“The idea is to create a lot of dilemmas for the Russian command structure,” said Mike Martin, a former British army officer and author of How to Fight a War. “Problems — such as a breakthrough of the front line — focus attention. Dilemmas, by contrast, paralyse action.”
The shaping operations seem to have had some psychological effect in Moscow. Commenting on the Belgorod incursion, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the war required “very difficult and tense work” that “constantly created questions”.
Following the drone attack on Moscow on Tuesday, Rybar, a popular pro-war Russian blogger, commented on social media app Telegram: “If the goal of the assault was to stress out the population, then the fact of Ukrainian drones appearing in the skies over Moscow has done enough of that already.”
Katz adds more detail and commentary about the effects on what is, after all, the “Center of Gravity” of the war - Russian people responding to its impact on them. Link above is to the portion of a Youtube link on side panel I found interesting. I got distracted to it from those words in the title. Near the start there is also a section highlighting likely impact of prospective Lukashenko death detonating uprising in Belarus. Rest not worth watching.
Among the comments by Katz I noticed passing reference to the “popular pro-war Russian blogger” as “the General Staff’s mouth piece, Rybar”
Also, Prigozhin demanded that the government build up military presence along the border.
The Belgorod governor said, “De facto, we are at war.”
So what does it all make the viewership think?
The shaping operations made a psychological impact on the Kremlin.
Addressing the Belgorod raid, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, dodged the question and commented that the war
“warrants complex and harrowing efforts” that lead to “constant questions.”
Seriously?
The war warrants efforts, it turns out.
Did the generals ever entertain this thought?
The General Staff’s mouthpiece, Rybar, ventured a blunt statement.
According to the blog, Ukrainian drones in Moscow “contributed to the stressing out of the population.”
Statements like these don’t fuel particular optimism in Russians.
To me that suggests that border regional governors and both Prigohzin and the General Staff are now actively undermining Putin’s grip. Previous video indicated that Kadyrov’s Tik Tok warriors are not much of a force for Putin to rely on. Together with the complete incoherence of State Media this suggests to me there isn’t much time left before either Putin resorts to martial law and mass terror or somebody else does.
Katz concludes:
Over the past month, one thing has become clear.
Russia keeps losing the momentum.
It’s just reacting to Ukraine’s moves.
Certainly, this isn’t getting Russia close to achieving its military goals, however flimsy and limited.
Conversely, it leads to Ukraine’s upcoming win.
This is the logic behind the ongoing combat action.
See you tomorrow!
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“Experts on Russian state TV concluded that Ukraine’s counter-offensive had already started — in Russia. Host Olga Skabeeva said Russia needs the final solution of the Ukrainian question and proposed “destroying every living thing” in the Kharkiv region.”
Can you provide link with any context for the looting?
I’m wondering whether it is actually directed at offices or residences of regime personnel or just random criminality when police busy elsewhere or hiding.
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Agree with these points, but l would say RU has been losing momentum for months, not just the past month.
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I just had a quick look at recent video clips from:
I would say they are gaining angular momentum exponentially…
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Today was more shaping operations. Russia continues to struggle with raids over the Ukrainian border. Reports of Ukraine hitting a Russian airbase in Crimea, taking out a few fighter jets. Russian artillery fire in the south is pretty thin, but the Ukrainians are stepping it up. Few cruise missiles were thrown around by Russia, but the impact was largely to civilians.
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Justto say that llike was for the first part of the post, not the last seven words
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Good statement by Alar Karis, president of Estonia:
“I don’t want to live in the world where one has to negotiate with people who murder children,”
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Thanks. At end of that link this transcript of State TV response is fascinating:
‘We should wipe Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Odessa, Mykolayiv, Kharkiv off the face of the earth, then rebuild it, just tear it down in blocks,’ Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said
'We should not get used to our territory being attacked. They want a war without rules? We can fight back.
'We’re not them, we’ll warn the civilians to leave. We’ll give them six hours to leave quickly.
‘And blow the hell out of these cities. Then we rebuild them.’
I assume the rest from Daily Mail is their own report, not Russian State TV, but it seems relevant background to a total meltdown.
Amid the reported attacks, residents from the hardest hit provincial towns, have poured into the region’s main city, also called Belgorod.
At Belgorod’s sports arena, which has become the city’s biggest centre for displaced people, displaced people were organised to smaller dormitories.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said 2,500 people were being accommodated in temporary shelters, including the sports arena.
‘We have never had a situation like this,’ Gladkov told reporters at the arena.
He said the conditions at the arena were becoming ‘cramped’ and displaced people were being moved to other spots.
Belgorod mayor Valentin Demidov told reporters that a total of 5,000 people had transited through the temporary shelters and registered in recent days, with many then going to stay with relatives.
‘We are trying to re-settle people as quickly as possible,’ he said.
Separately, Russia faced a drone attack aimed at a key oil refinery in Smolensk region.
Earlier on Friday Putin’s occupiers faced a suspected Storm Shadow missile strike on Berdiansk, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov.
I don’t see how they can maintain that level of incoherent hysteria for long. They sound ready to implode completely when the Ukrainian offensive actually starts.
“To be fair” she prefaces it with “Only the Supreme Commander of our country, Vladimir Putin can make these decisions…”
I’ve always assumed her stuff is tightly scripted official talking points. But I cannot tell at the moment whether she has lost the plot or her supervisors have or they are deliberately highlighting the fact that Putin has no response and appears incapable of making decisions.
I would be interested in any articles with considered analysis of whether internal situation is heading towards disintegration or preparing public opinion for martial law crackdown with mobilization.
My prejudice, based on very little, is the latter. But if so, the way they are going about it conveys an incapacity to actually do anything much.
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It sounds like the Kalibr missile is more effective than the Khinzal
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The T80 uses a turbine engine (like the abrams), will be interesting to see how serviceable/repairable they will be.