Still somewhat unbelievable that this is now a confirmed occurrence.
Conspiracy theorists don’t believe in conspiracy theories that involve them.
Best Tim Pool meme so far
Conspiracy theorists don’t believe in conspiracy theories that involve them.
Best Tim Pool meme so far
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Fingers crossed this develops
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Reports from the area describe it as ‘difficult’ or in modern speak ‘dynamic’.
I figure, how it looks today can be very different to how it looks tomorrow. Ukraine being outmanned by a ratio of four to one takes its toll eventually. They’ve done well to halt the Orc advance and extract near surrounded Ukrainian troops.
I also hope the Ukrainians can hold position. It reads as if the approach to Pokrovsk is a killing field. If the Russians want it while the Ukrainians are holding… it appears it’s going to cost them dearly.
Slava Ukraini.
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Official Belarus statement refers to a violation of airspace by drones , which were intercepted and shot down.
( from an unnamed country, but maybe it starts with ‘R’?).
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That was my first thought as well, and is my fond hope.
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I tend to think it is just timidity on this front.
The same as under Obama - wanting to support, but not fully committing to it due to worries over escalation.
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It certainly looks like timidity, but it could also be democracy holding America back. Support for Ukraine has to be approved, and it seems many politicians and their constituents don’t approve the war due to potential escalation.
Adding to that you have influencers like Trump and Musk and Tucker Carlson dominating mainstream and social media and fear-mongering about nukes, not to mention bots and troll farms. So it’s not like the American people are protesting in the streets demanding more support.
I guess that’s the down side of a democracy, voters can be brainwashed and good leaders struggle to get much done.
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The four o one ratio is a worry, because with a population four times that of Ukraine, one would kmagine that the orcs have a four to one advantage everywhere
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Thread on Pokrovsk defences from Clemente Molin
Here is how Ukrainian defensive system was organized after Avdiivka fell in late February.
The 1st and 2nd line fell between june and august. If the first one was very useful, the second line was mainly abandoned.
This happened for one main reason, russian forces managed to push on foot along the railway. They first took Ocheretyne in late may, then Prohres in July, then Zhelanne at the end of July and Novohrodivka at the end of august.
After retreating during 2 months of summer, ukrainian brigades are now defending the 3rd line of defense stopping russian progress for more than a week.
At the same time, engeneering troops are upgrading the 4th line in front of Pokrovsk.
Based on ©Planet Imageries from yesterday, I found a lot of new defensive work for the last 10 days.
Here is a look north of Novohrodivka where the main ukrainian vulnerability is present : the railway.
Russian artillery and FABs air strikes are beginign to pound Pokrovsk and its neighbouring city Myrnohrad.
At the same time, new ditches are being dug between the twin cities.
Yesterday, russian strikes set the fields between the two cities on fire. The fact russian artillery is more present is a proof of ukrainian “controll” over the situation on Pokrovsk axis.
The 3rd line south of the city has been extended to the railway.
For the first time, the ditch does not stop before the railway treeline. This is exactly what cost the loss of Novohrodivka.
A bit north of this position, the 4th line is currently being upgraded at the southern entrance of Pokrovsk city.
Ukrainian forces also dug a long ditch all along the eastern entrance of Myrnohrad. This ditch can’t stop infantry infiltration but it can stop russian mecanized assaults.
We can also see some artillery strikes.
On the T0504 Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka highway crossing, the ukrainian armed forces continued to dig new positions.
However, I’m still asking myself why they arn’t finishing existing ditches like these ones…
Here is a map of where all the Planet images are located. I choose to show the direct Pokrovsk direction. The next image is from the town of Ukrainsk, south of here.
Now, the russian army is trying to move southwards in the direction of Kourakhove. Since a few days, they are trying to enter Ukrainsk from the south-east, while bypassing the town on the road to Hrynk.
Ukrainian forces are now trying to push back russian infantry from Selydove.
New ukrainian units helped holding back the russian advance for the last week on the Pokrovsk direction, while russian army is launching new attacks on the Kourakhove-Vulhedar direction.
According to @UAControlMap new units have been deployed to stop the advance:
2nd “Kara Dog” offensive brigade of the national guard, 93rd mechanized brigade.
And in the last month, 117th and 151st mechanized brigade, 14th NG, 71st Jager replaced other units.
Finally, after 2 months of Russian advances, (13km at least) in a highly fortified area, Ukrainian brigades managed to hold the advance.
However, there are still large vulnerabilities on the defensive system: russian forces may advance along the railway to Pokrovsk and russian progress is still ongoing near Ukrainsk where the Ukrainians are currently retreating from Nevelske.
16/16
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Russian Military Could Be Facing 1,000 Casualties a Day in Ukraine War
September 7, 2024 Topic:
It is very likely that the Russian forces will continue to take over 1,000 casualties a day in September. At this rate, Moscow could lose 700,000 men before the end of the year.
Summary and Key Points: The war in Ukraine remains brutal, with both sides enduring heavy losses. Russia is pushing hard in the Donbas, aiming to capture Pokrovsk
-In response, Ukraine launched an ambitious offensive into Russia’s Kursk Oblast, capturing settlements in an attempt to force Moscow to divert forces.
-Despite Ukraine’s efforts, Russia has maintained pressure in both Kursk and Donbas.
-Russian daily casualties in August reached over 1,100, with more than 610,000 total losses since the invasion began in 2022. British intelligence estimates that Russia could lose up to 700,000 men by the end of 2024.
Ukraine Invades Russia’s Kursk Oblast: A Bold Strategy to Defend Donbas
The war in Ukraine slogs, and both sides are trying to wrestle the operational advantage and use it to achieve their operational goals.
The Russian military is pushing very hard in the Donbas, particularly in the direction of Pokrovsk. If the city falls, the Ukrainian logistical lines in the region will suffer, and it will be harder for Kyiv to maintain the contact line.
In August, the Ukrainian military launched a highly ambitious offensive into the Kursk Oblast, Russia, to counter the Russian pressure. The Ukrainian forces have captured scores of settlements. This is the first time the Ukrainians have invaded Russia and held land since the start of the war.
Although the Ukrainian military leadership is diverting important mechanized brigades to support its foray into Russia, Kyiv’s objective is to force Moscow to blink and pull forces from the contact line in Ukraine. In a way, the Ukrainian military is trying to defend Pokrovsk through offensive defense.
However, the Russian military has only diverted forces from other, quieter parts of the contact line. Thus far, the Kremlin has managed to maintain pressure both in the direction of Pokrovsk and contain the Ukrainian offensive into Kursk Oblast.
In the background of all of this fighting, both sides have been taking heavy losses.
Russian Losses in the Ukraine War
As a rule, the Russian military has been taking substantially more losses than its Ukrainian adversary. This is mainly due to Russia being the aggressor—attackers typically take more casualties than defenders—but also because the Russian military leadership doesn’t care about its troops. At least not in the way the Ukrainians do. Kyiv has been cautious about not sacrificing its future by decimating its young male population.
“The average daily Russian casualties (killed and wounded) in Ukraine has increased in August 2024 to 1,187 per day, according to Ukrainian General Staff reporting,” the British Military Intelligence assessed in its latest operational estimate on the war.
Since the start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Russian military, paramilitary units, and pro-Russian separatist forces have taken more than 610,000 casualties, and of course, estimates vary. In comparison, the initial invasion force numbered around 200,000 men.
However, many experts argue Kyiv’s casualty numbers have been entirely accurate, with Western intelligence estimates corroborating the figures in regular assessments.
“The August 2024 increase in casualty rate is almost certainly due to Ukraine’s Kursk operation and continued pressure on the Pokrovsk axis. Russia continues to rely on mass to mitigate its lack of personnel and equipment capability,” the British Military Intelligence added.
Russian commanders have shown a brutal preference for human wave attacks reminiscent of World War One. Understanding that their troops—and them—lack the requisite combined arms and tactical training to be more effective on the offense, Russian commanders have resorted to mindless attacks.
“Although Russian pressure on the whole frontline will continue over the next month, their capability constraints will likely continue to reduce their ability to exploit any tactical successes into wider operational gains,” the British Military Intelligence stated.
Moreover, Russian forces will likely continue to take over 1,000 casualties a day in September. At this rate, Moscow could end up losing 700,000 men before the end of the year.
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Diplomacy Watch: Are Moscow And Kyiv On Collision Course To Talk?
Both sides now appear to be signaling that the war cannot be won outright
SEP 06, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he would be open to peace negotiations with Ukraine.
“Are we ready to negotiate with them? We never refused, but not on the basis of some ephemeral demands, rather on the basis of the documents which were agreed on and actually initialed in Istanbul,” said Putin during remarks at an economic forum with leaders from Malaysia and China.
Putin is referring to negotiations that took place in Istanbul just weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. At that time, Kyiv and Moscow were reportedly close to a deal in which Kyiv would have agreed to reduce the size of its military, refrain from joining NATO but be free to pursue membership of the European Union. Those talks ultimately failed, with continued debate about whether Western countries moved them in that direction.
The Russian president also suggested that Brazil, China, and India could mediate new talks to end the war. His comments come just weeks after Russian officials dismissed limited, indirect talks with Kyiv in response to Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk region last month.
Some observers have questioned whether Putin’s apparent desire for talks to end the war is sincere, but there’s also no reason Western leaders shouldn’t try to find out.
“On a stage with Asian leaders, including from China, he knows it’s important to rhetorically embrace talks no matter his real intentions,” Samuel Charap, a Russia expert and senior political scientist at RAND, told the Wall Street Journal. He added: “Western capitals tend to tune in when he rejects talks and tune out when he embraces them. … But until someone actually tests the proposition we’ll never know what his real intentions are. If it’s a bluff, you only know when you call it.”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced his resignation this week as part of a cabinet reshuffle President Volodymyr Zelensky hinted at last week. Reacting to the news, Zelensky said his country needs “new energy, and that includes in diplomacy.”
It’s unclear whether Kuleba’s departure will result in Kyiv pushing for negotiations to end the war, nor whether Zelensky would now be open to any concessions, including accepting a partition of Ukrainian territory, as part of any wider agreement. He has previously been unwilling to entertain such concessions.
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Ukraine mourns dead from major Russian strike, vows response with underground weapons production
Updated 5:20 AM AWST, September 8, 2024
POLTAVA, Ukraine (AP) — Funeral services were held Saturday for victims of one of the deadliest Russian airstrikes since the war in Ukraine began, as Ukraine’s president vowed to increase domestic military production by creating underground weapons factories.
The funerals took place in the eastern Ukrainian city of Poltava for the victims of a Russian missile attack on a military training facility that left over 50 dead and more than 300 injured.
Hundreds of mourners, including grieving families, local residents, and officials, gathered at the Cathedral of the Assumption in the city, some 350 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Kyiv, for the solemn ceremony. Sobbing relatives, many holding red carnations, stood over caskets placed outside the church, draped in yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags. An air raid siren sounded during the service.
Residents knelt in silent tribute as hearses carrying the victims passed by on their way to a military cemetery outside the city for burial.
Russia has intensified missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities in recent weeks, targeting energy infrastructure across the country and causing deadly strikes in residential areas.
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It’s safe to assume that America has received ironclad guarantees from Russia that foreign national long-range armaments they receive can only be used in self-defense and not fired into a neighbouring state… You know, one, they just happen to be invading.
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Russia’s strategy to rely more China’s yuan is backfiring
September 8, 2024 at 5:12 AM GMT+8
After the U.S. and its allies sanctioned Russia in 2022 for its invasion of Ukraine, Moscow turned away from the dollar and euro in international transactions and relied more on China’s yuan.
That coincided with more trade between the two countries as Russia was largely shut out of Western markets as well as the global financial system.
By June, the yuan accounted for 99.6% of the Russian foreign exchange market, according to Bloomberg, which cited data from Russia’s central bank. And Russian commercial banks ramped up corporate loans denominated in yuan.
But this dependence on the yuan is now backfiring as top Russian banks are running out of the Chinese currency, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“We cannot lend in yuan because we have nothing to cover our foreign currency positions with,” German Gref, CEO of top Russian lender Sberbank, said at an economic forum.
That’s because the U.S. expanded its definition of Russia’s military industry earlier this year, thereby widening the potential scope of Chinese firms that could get hit with secondary sanctions for doing business with Moscow.
As a result, Chinese banks have been reluctant to transfer yuan to Russian counterparts while servicing foreign trade payments, leaving transactions in limbo for months. With yuan liquidity drying up from China, Russian companies have tapped the central bank for yuan via currency swaps.
At the start of this month, banks raised a record 35 billion yuan from Russian’s central bank through these swaps, according to Reuters. And banks were expecting more help.
“I think the central bank can do something,” Andrei Kostin, CEO of second-largest bank VTB, said Thursday. “They hopefully understand the need to increase the liquidity offer through swaps.”
But on Friday, Russia’s central bank dashed those hopes, calling on banks to curb corporate loans denominated in yuan.
The Bank of Russia also said in a report that swaps are only meant for short-term stabilization of the domestic currency market and are not a long-term source of funding, according to Bloomberg. But rather than simply filling the roles that dollars and euros did, yuan loans have expanded.
“The increase in yuan lending was partly caused by the replacement of loans in ‘toxic’ currencies, but 41% of the increase was down to new currency loans,” the bank said.
The central bank also released a survey that showed a quarter of Russian exporters had trouble with foreign counterparts, including blocked or returned payments even when dealing in supposedly friendly countries. And about half of exporters said the problems got worse in the second quarter from the prior quarter.
The overall Russian economy has been propped up by the government’s wartime spending as well as oil exports to China and India. But the combination of busy factories and labor shortages due to military mobilizations have stoked more inflation.
Researchers led by Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld warned the seemingly robust GDP data mask deeper problems in the economy.
“Simply put, Putin’s administration has prioritized military production over all else in the economy, at substantial cost,” they wrote. “While the defense industry expands, Russian consumers are increasingly burdened with debt, potentially setting the stage for a looming crisis. The excessive focus on military spending is crowding out productive investments in other sectors of the economy, stifling long-term growth prospects and innovation.”
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Bumpski
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Thank you @Red_Black_Ops
This bloke ‘gets it’. Puck Futin, bullshit artist.
CIA boss says west should not be intimidated by Russia’s nuclear threats
Bill Burns calls Vladimir Putin a ‘bully’ whose ‘sabre-rattling’ should not always be taken literally
Sun 8 Sep 2024 01.40 AEST
Last modified on Sun 8 Sep 2024 06.10 AEST
Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia.
Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.
“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”
The CIA director also said the US was working very hard on fresh proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza with new “texts and creative formulas”. A new plan, being devised with the help of mediators from Qatar and Egypt, would emerge, he hoped, “in the next several days”.
However, it was unclear, Burns added, whether Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and the Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar were willing to strike a deal. It was a question of political will, he said: “Whether or not leaders on both sides recognise that enough is enough and that the time has come to finally make some hard choices.”
Israel had succeeded in “severely degrading” Hamas’s military capabilities over the past 11 months, Burns said, but had not eliminated the movement in a war that had created a severe humanitarian crisis. “It is also a movement and an idea,” the spy chief said, and you could only “kill an idea with a better idea”, meaning there needed to be some long-term hope for Palestinians.
On Ukraine, the veteran spy chief was asked whether there was too much nervousness in Washington and other western capitals about the risk of escalating the war by giving permission for Storm Shadow, a missile with a range of at least 190 miles, to be used inside Russia.
“None of us should take lightly the risks of escalation,” Burns told an audience at a Financial Times event in London – and said there had actually been a belief within the CIA that Russia might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine in the first year of the war.
“There was a moment in the fall [autumn] of 2022 when I think there was a genuine risk of potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” by Russia in Ukraine, Burns said, but he believed such concerns should not be taken too seriously. “I never thought … we should be unnecessarily intimidated by that,” he added.
At the time, Russian troops had been pushed back in northern Ukraine and had abandoned Kherson in the south, prompting a belief that Russia might seek to use a nuclear weapon if a rout developed. In any event, the frontline stabilised shortly afterwards.
Burns said that Joe Biden, the US president, had sent him to pass on a direct warning to Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian foreign intelligence service, at a meeting in Turkey in November 2022 “to make very clear what the consequences of that kind of escalation would be” – and that a similar approach was in place today.
So far, the White House has been notably hesitant about allowing the use of Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles inside Russia, such as the US-made Atacms, despite repeated pleas from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, including one made on Friday.
Burns voiced concern that Iran was considering whether to supply ballistic missiles to Russia, but would not confirm whether the CIA believed it had done so. It would be a “dramatic escalation” of the relationship between the two countries; Tehran so far has supplied only less effective drones for Russia to use in Ukraine.
Burns and his British counterpart, the MI6 chief, Sir Richard Moore, had never appeared in public together before the surprise appearance at the event at London’s Kenwood House in Hampstead. Tight security meant that audience members were told only 15 minutes in advance who would be appearing.
Moore said there were concerns that Russian spies were becoming increasingly reckless in the UK, Europe and elsewhere as the war in Ukraine continues. “I think Russian intelligence services have gone a bit feral, frankly,” the British spy chief said, as shown by a spate of arson attacks in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
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Me: Finds out there is a Ukrainian unit called Gimli’s Killers
Also me: Respect for Ukrainians and AFU increases
They also get around in an F250
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The Eddy Murphy “Good Morning my neighbours!” meme gets another try-out
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