Seatbelts posted:

it might as well be; this is Andrew Taint's personal shitter

3 posted:

the submunitions not only stick around for a while undetonated sometimes as mentioned, but for a while they were also the exact same color as US humanitarian rations that were being dropped into the exact same areas for bonus fun points

3 posted:

the submunitions not only stick around for a while undetonated sometimes as mentioned, but for a while they were also the exact same color as US humanitarian rations that were being dropped into the exact same areas for bonus fun points

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1631284166707892224

wait i thought cluster munitions were an evil weapon that only the russians use because theyre bad

3 posted:

the submunitions not only stick around for a while undetonated sometimes as mentioned, but for a while they were also the exact same color as US humanitarian rations that were being dropped into the exact same areas for bonus fun points

supersnowman posted:

I understand the ration pack being yellow because you want people to find them easily so they can eat but why the submunition? Even if we forget the fuckup of it being misidentified for ration packs, why would you make those yellow?

supersnowman posted:

I understand the ration pack being yellow because you want people to find them easily so they can eat but why the submunition? Even if we forget the fuckup of it being misidentified for ration packs, why would you make those yellow?

Nonsense posted:

I thought it was a goons renovated bathroom?

Danann posted:

_{(from t.me/intelslava/45310, via tgsa)}

North hasn't gotten much attention but Ukraine's been advancing westwards for a while.

Seatbelts posted:

now i'm confused and its' seemingly become impossible to find pictures of the insides of his embarrassing house in Romania

Upon further investigation you are correct; I must have seen that posted as a joke and took it for serious

Best Friends posted:

though note that all explosive projectiles have a dud rate. anywhere getting shelled is also going to have a lot of unexploded ordinance sinking into the mud as a gift for future generations.

quote:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-03/adelaide-anti-vaccination-protest-used-for-russian-propaganda/102040148

Anti-vaccination protesters say an event held in Adelaide was "hijacked" by pro-Russia demonstrators and misrepresented by Russian news websites — turning a "day of remembrance" for people they say have been injured by COVID-19 vaccines into "a rally in support of Russia".

A member of South Australia's Ukrainian community told the ABC she attended part of the rally and noticed "fewer than 10" people holding Russian flags.

"I went and saw what was an anti-vaccination rally that was commemorating vaccine injury," Stefania* said.

"Speakers spoke about their experiences with vaccine injury … I saw a couple of hundred people who looked like your average, everyday Australians, and I also saw a handful of people with Russian flags.

"What I then saw online was a completely different picture. I saw numerous articles in Russian language and English language.

"What really concerned me were the direct quotes [used by Russian websites] … about children in Adelaide being persecuted and bullied for speaking Russian … this is a very familiar narrative that was used before Russia's invasion.

"This made me feel quite unsafe, how far Russian propaganda and how far the Russian state can reach."

supersnowman posted:

I understand the ration pack being yellow because you want people to find them easily so they can eat but why the submunition? Even if we forget the fuckup of it being misidentified for ration packs, why would you make those yellow?

supersnowman posted:

I understand the ration pack being yellow because you want people to find them easily so they can eat but why the submunition? Even if we forget the fuckup of it being misidentified for ration packs, why would you make those yellow?

Endman posted:

You’d think they’d at least print the universal hazard sign for “explosive” on them:

Slavvy posted:

I would simply draw a skull on the cluster bomblets, that's a pretty universal symbol for bad

Some Guy TT posted:

https://twitter.com/officejjsmart/status/1631128685397921795

very nice

Germany: How does its Kazakh oil deal benefit Russia? posted:

Ashutosh Pandey
03/01/2023March 1, 2023

Germany has said it wouldn't be buying Russian crude oil this year as it weans itself off its erstwhile biggest energy supplier. But an oil deal with Kazakhstan means Moscow would continue to hold some sway over Berlin.

This week, Kazakhstan shipped the first batch of crude to Germany through the Druzhba pipeline system as the German government looks to shore up supplies for a key refinery in Eastern Germany that until the turn of the year was fed almost exclusively by Russian oil.

The shipment of 20,000 tons, or about 145,000 barrels, is part of Germany's broader plan to cut its dependency on Russian oil. Europe's largest economy stopped buying oil from Russia this year even as pipeline crude oil remains exempt from a European Union embargo on Russian oil prompted by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Kazakhstan, a Russian ally, aims to transport 1.2 million tons of crude oil to Germany this year. The country's state-run pipeline operator KazTransOil has already received approval from its Russian counterpart Transneft to deliver 300,000 tons through the Druzhba pipeline this quarter.

Druzhba, which means "friendship" in Russian, is one of the largest oil pipeline systems in the world with the capacity to carry 2 million barrels per day.

Why Germany is buying oil from Kazakhstan

The Kazakh oil is headed to Germany's PCK refinery in Schwedt, located 120 kilometers (74 miles) northeast of Berlin. The refinery was until this year supplied with oil from Russia.

The Schwedt refinery — which provides 90% of Berlin's fuel and is a key employer in an already economically backward region — has been on a sticky ground ever since Germany decided to halt piped oil imports from Russia.

Germany — which relied on Russia for more than a third of its oil needs before the war in Ukraine, importing 687,000 barrels per day of crude in November 2021 most of it via the Druzhba pipeline — has managed to replace most of the Russian supplies in a relatively short space of time. However, it has struggled to find alternatives for Schwedt, which is not connected to the Western German pipelines and supply routes. That has left the refinery working at just 60% of its capacity.

The supplies from Kazakhstan would ensure the refinery works at a higher capacity utilization level so that it remains economically viable.

The refinery, which was partly owned by Russia's Rosneft until the German government took control last year, is currently being primarily supplied with crude from global markets, including the United States, through a pipeline leading from the Baltic Sea port of Rostock.

What's in it for Russia?

Russia stands to collect additional revenue in the form of a transit fee that Transneft would earn for allowing the oil to be shipped through its pipeline network — a welcome source of cash for Moscow at a time its oil revenues have been hit by Western sanctions and price caps.

Moreover, the oil must be transported through thousands of kilometers across Russian territory, putting the supply at the mercy of Russian goodwill.

"We have to observe how Russia acts regarding the flow through the Druzhba," a spokesperson at the German Economy Ministry said on Monday, adding that it was difficult to predict Russia's actions as shown by last year's gas supply freeze.
Does the deal breach EU or German oil embargo?

Oil from Kazakhstan is not subject to the EU embargo, nor does it fall foul of Germany's voluntary ban on pipeline oil from Russia.

Oil from the country is first pumped to Russia where it is blended with Russian crudes before being exported from Russian seaports. Last year, Kazakhstan rebranded its cargo as KEBCO to dissociate it from Russia's REBCO (Russian export blend crude oil), or Urals, to avoid falling in the crosshairs of Western sanctions.

However, the blending of crudes in Russia has raised concerns, especially in Poland through which the Kazakh oil will flow to Germany, that it would be difficult to ascertain the origin of the oil.

The German Economy Ministry says while it's unavoidable that some Russian oil will end up in Germany, it's important that no money would be flowing to Russia as the oil supplies would be bought not from a Russian firm, but a Kazakh one.

mlmp08 posted:

those poor gamers

Salean posted:

They're both clearly labeled bomb and humanitarian aid

Tankbuster posted:

Huh? I thought ukraine wasn't on the offensive.

3 posted:

the submunitions not only stick around for a while undetonated sometimes as mentioned, but for a while they were also the exact same color as US humanitarian rations that were being dropped into the exact same areas for bonus fun points

mlmp08 posted:

those poor gamers

Endman posted:

I mean you definitely shouldn’t drink those

mlmp08 posted:

those poor gamers

Spergin Morlock posted:

its a good thing afghanistan has a 37% literacy rate so at least some people can read those labels

Best Friends posted:

yeah 10%* or so of the bomblets don’t go off and become basically lovely land mines.

*this number is a vague recollection and may be off

Seatbelts posted:

Ukraine begs GDI for use of Ion Cannon to fend off Brotherhood of NOD forces

Egg Moron posted:

mlmp08 posted:

After the US announced any new cluster bomb had to be 1% or lower dud rate 15 years ago, the US has acquired 0 new models of cluster munition. There is development of weapons that would adhere to the convention on cluster munitions (CCM), but between it being hard to make low dude rate weapons that don't adhere to CCM and fear of lack of market for them, I'm pretty sure their development is stalled out in the US. Still manufactured and developed elsewhere in the world.

Seatbelts posted:

Ukraine begs GDI for use of Ion Cannon to fend off Brotherhood of NOD forces

Frosted Flake posted:

This is ridiculous considering you and I both know Mk-20s and CEMs are still in service. It doesn't matter if they've acquired 0 new models if they are using Vietnam era munitions. That's a weaselly technicality.

mlmp08 posted:

Yeah, UXO is always a problem, but cluster bombs are far, far more likely to end up unexploded by their design and fuzing in contrast with a howitzer round slamming into the ground. Cluster munitions can be more susceptible to failing to detonate based on landing on softer surfaces like mud, sand, water, thick/tall vegetation, angled surfaces, etc.

Cluster Munition Monitor from last year.

http://www.the-monitor.org/media/3299403/cluster-munition-monitor-2021_web.pdf

In 2008, the US started moving toward strict limitations on what cluster munitions could be retained at all and strict rules about when/where they could ever be used, with an eye toward potentially banning them entirely.

In 2017, the new administration shat on that idea pretty explicitly, calling out the past effort as wrong-headed and stating that cluster munitions are required. Yeah, it had some requirements for lower dud rates, but it was prety clearly a signal that the new admin was doing a 180 on the Obama admins' policies and planning guidance.
https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/DOD-POLICY-ON-CLUSTER-MUNITIONS-OSD071415-17.pdf

quote:

https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/okupant-neminuche-vidchuvatime-nashu-silu-spravedlivosti-zve-81381

The occupier will inevitably feel our strength of justice - address by the President of Ukraine
2 March 2023 - 21:27

…

I held a meeting of the Staff, which focused solely on the frontline and security situation.

The Commander-in-Chief made a general report. There was an intelligence report.

Detailed reports from specific combat areas, from the commanders of our groups of troops.

Khortytsia Operational and Strategic Group of Troops - key attention to Bakhmut.

Tavria Operational and Strategic Group of Troops - discussed the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia directions. General Tarnavskyi delivered a detailed report.

Today's brutal Russian missile attack on Zaporizhzhia will face our military and legal response. The occupier will inevitably feel our strength. The strength of justice in every sense of the word.

And I want to thank all our rescuers who have been clearing the rubble of the house whose block was destroyed by the missile since the night before.

They managed to rescue 11 people, and more than 70 received help.

Two people are currently on the list of those killed. My condolences to the families!

Odesa Operational and Strategic Group of Troops - a report about the situation in the southern direction. In particular, the situation in Kherson and the region.

Of course, we do not ignore the north of our country, the border.

Commanders are well aware that their task is to do everything possible to suppress terrorist fire. And we are constantly working with our partners to increase the range of our capabilities.

…

quote:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing...s-john-kirby-7/

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby
MARCH 02, 2023

...

Q John, with Ukraine preparing for this offensive, are the two leaders going to discuss accelerating military assistance to Ukraine?

MR. KIRBY: I think for — without question, Steve, they’re going to talk about the kinds of capabilities that Ukraine continues to need in the weeks and months ahead.

You’ll see us tomorrow — just unilaterally, the U.S. will have another round of assistance for Ukraine come in tomorrow. And it will include mostly ammunitions and munitions that the Ukrainians will need for the systems that they already have, like the HIMARS and the artillery.

So, I can’t predict a specific outcome tomorrow. I wouldn’t look for that. But certainly, they will be discussing additional support for Ukraine going forward. And we know that —

Q Do you have a number? Do you have a number for tomorrow’s announcement?

MR. KIRBY: Well, just stay tuned. And we’ll have more detail on that later.

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: Go ahead, Justin.

Q Thanks. Just to follow on Steve a little bit, do you expect a discussion of or announcement of Germans moving tank shells or ammunition production to the United States?

That’s been kind of an issue that’s floating out there because it’s more difficult, I think, to produce in Europe because of regulatory and other issues. And so, it might come here. And I’m wondering if —

MR. KIRBY: We’ll have a full readout of the meeting after it’s over. Again, clearly, they’re going to talk about Ukraine and how we can all work together to help support them as quickly as we possibly can with as much as we can.

But I don’t have anything specific on that proposal.

...

Q And Ukraine. Ukraine requested arms aid from South Korea. Does the United States want South Korea to provide weapons other than ammunition to Ukraine?

MR. KIRBY: We want all nations to support Ukraine to the best that they can, and we don’t want any nation to help Russia kill more Ukrainians.

...

quote:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-clings-bakhmut-us-readies-400-million-new-military-aid-2023-03-02

Ukraine clings to Bakhmut; US readies $400 million in new military aid
March 3, 2023
By Leonardo Bennasatto and Lisi Niesner

CHASIV YAR, Ukraine, March 3 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces clinging to the eastern city of Bakhmut dug new trenches in an attempt to hold back Russian attackers, as the United States said new military aid for Ukraine would be discussed at a meeting with Germany's leader on Friday.

Russian forces have been attacking Bakhmut in Donetsk province for months, sometimes in waves and the site has become one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

"In the past 24 hours, our forces have repelled more than 170 attacks, an unprecedented number over a 24-hour period for the five principal sectors of the front line," Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said on YouTube on Thursday night.

quote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/02/bryansk-russia-attack-ukraine-saboteurs

Kremlin accuses Ukraine of violent attack in western Russia
By Robyn Dixon, Francesca Ebel and Mary Ilyushina
Updated March 2, 2023 at 3:55 p.m. EST
Published March 2, 2023 at 11:35 a.m. EST

RIGA, Latvia — The Kremlin on Thursday blamed Ukraine for an attack in two villages in the Bryansk region of western Russia, in which President Vladimir Putin said assailants had “opened fire on civilians” and the Bryansk governor said two people were killed and hostages were taken.

An aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied that Kyiv was involved in the incident, which Putin called a “terrorist attack.” Details of the incident were extremely sketchy, and, in an age of ubiquitous cellphone videos, no footage or photos of an attack were circulating on social media, even hours afterward.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, initially issued a statement saying that “measures are being taken to eliminate armed Ukrainian nationalists who violated the state border.”

But two fighters claiming to be members of a far-right Russian anti-Putin nationalist group fighting on Ukraine’s side in the war claimed responsibility, declaring “Death to the Kremlin tyrant” in a video filmed outside a medical clinic in the village of Lyuberchane, near Bryansk, close to the Ukrainian border. The group calls itself the Russian Volunteer Corps.

At 9:30 a.m., Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk, posted a statement on his Telegram channel saying that Ukrainian saboteurs had crossed into Russia and opened fire on a car, killing one person and injuring a 10-year-old child. Later Thursday, he said two adults were killed.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was receiving constant updates. Shortly afterward, the president appeared at a public event via videoconference and said: “They opened fire on civilians. They saw that it was a civilian car and that children were sitting there. These are the kind of people who set out to deprive us of historical memory, history, traditions and language. But they won’t succeed. We will finish them off.”

Putin has previously labeled incidents as terrorism that seemed to be retaliation for Russia’s invasion, including an explosion in October on the Crimean Bridge, which connects Russia to the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula.

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to Zelensky, accused Russia of carrying out a provocation. Ukrainian military officials said the Russian Volunteer Corps was “independent” and that Ukraine’s armed forces do not carry out combat operations in Russia.

“The story about [the Ukrainian] sabotage group in [Russia] is a classic deliberate provocation,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “[Russia] wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and growing poverty after the year of war.”

Putin canceled a planned trip and called an emergency meeting of the Russian Security Council on Friday in response to the attack, Peskov said.

The attack, if confirmed to have been carried out by the Russian Volunteer Corps, underscores the still-escalating danger of a chaotic war with paramilitary groups of disparate ideologies fighting on each side and the lines of command and communication often unclear.

The incident came two days after a series of drone attacks on Russia, including one within about 60 miles of Moscow, which Russia blamed on Ukraine. Podolyak similarly denied any connection to the drones, saying Russia was suffering the consequences of internal strife.

On Tuesday, in response to the drone incidents, Putin ordered the FSB to step up internal surveillance and tighten security along the nation’s borders, and Thursday’s incursion appeared to raise new questions about Russia’s ability to protect its border regions. A number of attacks have been conducted on Russian territory in recent months, including the targeting of a strategic military air base multiple times last year. Putin told the FSB Board on Tuesday that Russia’s border “must be guarded safely.”

Throughout Thursday, Russian state media outlets carried an assortment of murky reports of the incident.

The Tass news agency, quoting an unnamed law enforcement official, reported that clashes had broken out between Russian forces and several dozen Ukrainian fighters.

Tass later reported that the armed group had left Russia, quoting unnamed witnesses. The FSB said numerous explosive devices were found in the area and were being defused. The incursion follows an incident in December in which the FSB said four saboteurs, carrying weapons and explosives, were killed by Russian forces after infiltrating into Russia from Ukraine.

In their claim of responsibility, the Russian Volunteer Corps fighters held up a dark flag bearing a shield and a sword.

“We came here not as a diversionary group; we are a liberation army that came to its own land,” an armed man who appeared to be the group’s founder, Denis Kapustin, said in the video. “Unlike Putin’s army, butchers and rapists, we do not fight civilians. We came here to free you. We urge you to take up arms and fight Putin’s bloody regime.”

Kapustin said the group would post a video of “our adventures” in Russia at a later point, without detailing the group’s actions. He could not be reached for comment.

Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev, a political representative of the Russian Legion, a separate group of Russians fighting on the Ukrainian side under the Ukrainian command, said that the Russian Volunteer Corps has contacts with the Ukrainian military but operates in a “gray area.”

“But this definitely was not the operation that was initiated or orchestrated somehow by the Ukrainian military,” he said.

Kapustin is a former mixed martial arts fighter and a far-right radical who calls himself Denis “WhiteRex” Nikitin and built a white nationalist mixed martial arts empire spanning from Britain to Eastern Europe. The Anti-Defamation League describes him as a “neo-Nazi” who lived in Germany for many years.

Kapustin described himself as a “Russian nationalist all my life” during a YouTube interview in November with London-based Russian journalist Oleg Kashin. Kapustin said that the Volunteer Corps consists of ethnic Russians fighting on Ukraine’s side, adding that Russian nationalism “has turned completely the wrong way.”

In April, Kapustin posted a video urging white nationalists from the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries to fight Putin because Russia had turned into a police state. He spoke negatively about Zelensky because he is Jewish and promotes “the worst of liberal values,” but he said Putin is worse.

The group’s ideology focuses on preserving Russians “as an ethnic group” and argues that “Putin and his henchmen are destroying Russians as an ethnic group, replacing them with an artificial concept of a ‘political nation.’”

Andrey Yusov, a spokesman for the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, said the group is independent and that “they are citizens of the Russian Federation, who have the right to defend, liberate their territory from a tyrant and dictator.”

The Russian Volunteer Corps announced its creation in August, with a statement on its newly created Telegram channel: “We Russian volunteers living in Ukraine have decided to take up arms and create a military formation — the Russian Volunteer Corps — so that together with our Ukrainian comrades-in-arms, we can defend their homeland, which shelters us, and then continue the fight against Putin’s criminal regime and its henchmen.”

Referring to the Thursday report of an attack, Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation founded by jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, tweeted that the Bryansk attack “looks very much like a planned provocation.”

Leonid Volkov, another member of Navalny’s team, which operates in exile, expressed doubts about the incident “because it is not clear what happened, there is not a single photo about it, but only conflicting reports from regional officials and anonymous telegram channels.”

Also on Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that the U.S. military did not provide resources to assist in recent attacks outside of Ukraine.

“I can say definitively that the notion of us providing intelligence or information to the Ukrainians to target locations inside Russia is nonsense,” Ryder said when asked about potential use of U.S.-provided drones in bordering Belarus. “We are regularly consulting with the Ukrainians on the appropriate use of the equipment that we provide to them. And all indications are that they continue to stay very focused on defending their homeland and fighting within Ukraine.”

...

quote:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/bakhmut-burning-fires-everywhere-as-russians-close-in-ukraine

Bakhmut burning: fires everywhere as Russians close in on city’s capture
Thu 2 Mar 2023 14.46 GMT
Peter Beaumont in Kramatorsk

In the besieged city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the volunteers collecting the civilian dead risk becoming casualties themselves. “Where? Where?” demands Daniel Wilk, a Canadian driver, in shaky video footage shot recently inside the city and seen by the Guardian.

Wilk proceeds quickly, the anxiety of the situation visible in his movements as he is directed to a fence, cutting an uncertain path across the snow as another voice cries “no, no” repeatedly.

The bodies, when Wilk gets to them, have been cut in half by the force of the explosion that took their lives, and still lie where they fell three days before. Quickly they are bundled up in a sheet to be removed.

People who have managed to reach Bakhmut in the past week use the same word to describe what they have experienced: hell.

As flames and smoke ring into the sky from blazing buildings, the city, almost totally encircled by Russian forces, has been raked by constant gunfire and explosions in recent days. With roads leading to the city under constant fire from two sides, and with snipers in the streets, accessing the city has become ever more perilous for rescue teams, as speculation has mounted that Ukrainian forces will have to withdraw.

“We haven’t been able to reach the downtown area in recent days,” said Olha Danilova, who like Wilk works for a Ukrainian NGO, Dobryi Rukh, which has been working in Bakhmut for all of the seven months of the Russian assault.

“The closest we could get was 500 metres from the city centre. It’s very loud. Everything is being shelled with mortars. It’s inaccessible. We were trying evacuate civilian from down by the river last time. We couldn’t even get close.

“The main road we used to use is being shelled constantly. The 27th [of February] was the worst. That was the hell day. It was the hardest day we’ve had since we’ve been working here. It was a wall of fire. Two walls of fire. It was coming from all sides, and aviation was attacking.”

“It was super difficult,” Wilk added. “If you try go down the main road, someone is going to try and kill you. There are snipers in the street shooting civilians. They don’t give a gently caress. It’s complete carnage.

“I’ve been all over the city. There are still some bits that almost look normal for a Donbas town. The rest is completely devastated. The last time I drove in, I counted six plumes of smoke. There are fires everywhere.”

In a week in which the situation for Bakhmut’s defenders has become almost untenable, Danilova and Wilk’s accounts, and those of other civilian volunteers who spoke to the Guardian, paint a vivid picture of a city that many fear could soon fall to the Russians.

A bleak tone has crept into the social media updates of even some of the city’s most unflappable defenders, including “Magyar”, a drone unit commander celebrated for his efforts. “All you need to know is as of 1 March, Bakhmut still stands,” he said, his expression flat and exhausted. “The price of holding it is supreme. And it is getting harder and harder to hold it,” he added, mentioning Russian efforts to cut the last supply lines to the city.

In recent days, even amid reports of a surge of Ukrainian reinforcements to the area, forces have struggled to repel Russian advances to the north and south of the city. With supply roads now under heavy fire by Russian artillery, including phosphorus munitions and anti-tank guided missiles, the long, slow encirclement that has cost the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers is choking the last access.

“Our military is obviously going to weigh all of the options. So far, they’ve held the city, but if need be, they will strategically pull back,” Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said earlier this week. “We’re not going to sacrifice all of our people just for nothing.”


A battle that has come to embody Ukraine’s determination, as the city’s defenders hold out against relentless shelling and Russian troops take heavy casualties, may be winding to an end. Yet even then, while analysts believe the fall of Bakhmut would be a blow for Ukraine – and a propaganda victory for the Kremlin – its capture would offer little real strategic advantage to Russia.

Rodnyansky noted that Russia was using the Wagner group’s best troops to try to encircle the city. The private military company known for brutal tactics is led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire with longtime links to Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin said on Wednesday that he had seen no signs of a Ukrainian withdrawal and Kyiv had in fact been reinforcing its positions. “The Ukrainian army is deploying additional troops and is doing what it can to retain control of the city,” he said. “Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are offering fierce resistance, and the fighting is getting increasingly bloody by day.”

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, said earlier this week that reinforcements had been dispatched to Bakhmut.

Oleh Zhdanov, a Ukrainian military analyst, said the reinforcements may have been sent to gain time for strengthening Ukrainian firing lines on a hill in Chasiv Yar, about 9 miles (15km) west of Bakhmut. He said any possible withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Bakhmut “will not affect the course of the war in any way” because of the firing positions in Chasiv Yar.

Egg Moron posted:

Egg Moron posted:

Egg Moron posted: