cinci zoo sniper posted:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/russia-run-out-of-money-oleg-deripaska

I wonder what's this about, publicly complaining about being shaken down by the Russian government while still in Russia.

quote:

A Russian news outlet reported on January 6 that Russian authorities want to conduct “revenue mobilization” and collect a one-time payment of an unspecified amount from large businesses in order to fund the war and address problems in the state budget.[56]

[56] https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/13647

Belteshazzar posted:

I would guess it's a reference to "revenue mobilization", which ISW has mentioned a couple times:

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-7-2023

quote:

Funds are now running low and “that’s why they’ve already begun to shake us down,” said Deripaska, founder of United Co, Rusal International PJSC, the biggest aluminum producer outside China.

Deripaska’s comments are among the most outspoken by a prominent business leader as the government looks to turn the screws on large companies after ending last year with a record fiscal deficit and the budget still deep in the red to start 2023.

Authorities are already planning to raise additional budget revenue with proposed changes to how they tax oil companies and may wrest more money from other commodity producers by means of a one-time levy.

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.

Eric Cantonese posted:

Ukraine has to withdraw from Bakhmut soon, right? It just seems untenable in the long term and it looks like the forces there have done more than their fair share of attritional damage to the Russians.

Shes Not Impressed posted:

Kofman has a funny way of saying "On one hand, on the other"

https://twitter.com/KofmanMichael/status/1631270936807714816?s=20

quote:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/...cb6d149fe0d1c51

In an Epic Battle of Tanks, Russia Was Routed, Repeating Earlier Mistakes
A three-week fight in the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

KURAKHOVE, Ukraine — Before driving into battle in their mud-spattered war machine, a T-64 tank, the three-man Ukrainian crew performs a ritual.

The commander, Pvt. Dmytro Hrebenok, recites the Lord’s Prayer. Then, the men walk around the tank, patting its chunky green armor.

“We say, ‘Please, don’t let us down in battle,’” said Sgt. Artyom Knignitsky, the mechanic. “‘Bring us in and bring us out.’”

Their respect for their tank is understandable. Perhaps no weapon symbolizes the ferocious violence of war more than the main battle tank. Tanks have loomed over the conflict in Ukraine in recent months — militarily and diplomatically — as both sides prepared for offensives. Russia pulled reserves of tanks from Cold War-era storage, and Ukraine prodded Western governments to supply American Abrams and German Leopard 2 tanks.

The sophisticated Western tanks are expected on the battlefield in the next several months. The new Russian armor turned up earlier — and in its first wide-scale deployment was decimated.

A three-week battle on a plain near the coal-mining town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced what Ukrainian officials say was the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

In the extended battle, both sides sent tanks into the fray, rumbling over dirt roads and maneuvering around tree lines, with the Russians thrusting forward in columns and the Ukrainians maneuvering defensively, firing from a distance or from hiding places as Russian columns came into their sights.

When it was over, not only had Russia failed to capture Vuhledar, but it also had made the same mistake that cost Moscow hundreds of tanks earlier in the war: advancing columns into ambushes.

Blown up on mines, hit with artillery or obliterated by anti-tank missiles, the charred hulks of Russian armored vehicles now litter farm fields all about Vuhledar, according to Ukrainian military drone footage. Ukraine’s military said Russia had lost at least 130 tanks and armored personnel carriers in the battle. That figure could not be independently verified. Ukraine does not disclose how many weapons it loses.

“We studied the roads they used, then hid and waited” to shoot in ambushes, Sergeant Knignitsky said.

Lack of expertise also bedeviled the Russians. Many of their most elite units had been left in shambles from earlier fighting. Their spots were filled with newly conscripted soldiers, unschooled in Ukraine’s tactics for ambushing columns. In one indication that Russia is running short of experienced tank commanders, Ukrainian soldiers said they captured a medic who had been reassigned to operate a tank.

The Russian army has focused on, and even mythologized, tank warfare for decades for its redolence of Russian victories over the Nazis in World War II. Factories in the Ural Mountains have churned out tanks by the thousands. In Vuhledar, by last week Russia had lost so many machines to sustain armored assaults that they had changed tactics and resorted only to infantry attacks, Ukrainian commanders said.


A photo released by the Ukrainian Army last month showed damaged Russian tanks in a field near Vuhledar. Credit...Ukrainian Armed Forces, via Associated Press

The depth of the Russian defeat was underscored by Russian military bloggers, who have emerged as an influential pro-war voice in the country. Often critical of the military, they have posted angry screeds about the failures of repeated tank assaults, blaming generals for misguided tactics with a storied Russian weapon.

Grey Zone, a Telegram channel affiliated with the Wagner mercenary group, posted on Monday that “relatives of the dead are inclined almost to murder and blood revenge against the general” in charge of the assaults near Vuhledar.

In a detailed interview last week in an abandoned house near the front, Lt. Vladislav Bayak, the deputy commander of Ukraine’s 1st Mechanized Battalion of the 72nd brigade, described how Ukrainian soldiers were able to inflict such heavy losses in what commanders said was the biggest tank battle of the war so far.

Ambushes have been Ukraine’s signature tactic against Russian armored columns since the early days of the war. Working from a bunker in Vuhledar, Lieutenant Bayak spotted the first column of about 15 tanks and armored personnel carriers approaching on a video feed from a drone.

“We were ready,” he said. “We knew something like this would happen.”

They had prepared a kill zone farther along a dirt road that the tanks were rumbling down. The commander needed only to give an order over the radio — “To battle!” — Lieutenant Bayak said.

Anti-tank teams hiding in tree lines along the fields, and armed with American infrared-guided Javelins and Ukrainian laser-guided Stugna-P missiles, powered up their weapons. Farther away, artillery batteries were ready. The dirt road had been left free of mines, while the fields all about were seeded with them, so as to entice the Russians to advance while preventing tanks from turning around once the trap was sprung.

The column of tanks becomes most vulnerable, Lieutenant Bayak said, after the shooting starts and drivers panic and try to turn around — by driving onto the mine-laden shoulder of the road. Blown-up vehicles then act as impediments, slowing or stalling the column. At that point, Ukrainian artillery opens fire, blowing up more armor and killing soldiers who clamber out of disabled machines. A scene of chaos and explosions ensues, the lieutenant said.

Russian commanders have sent armored columns forward for a lack of other options against Ukraine’s well-fortified positions, however costly the tactic, he said.

Over about three weeks of the tank battle, repeated Russian armored assaults floundered. In one instance, Ukrainian commanders called in a strike by HIMARS guided rockets; they are usually used on stationary targets like ammunition depots or barracks, but also proved effective against a stationary tank column.

The Ukrainians also fired with American M777 and French Caesar howitzers, as well as other Western-provided weaponry such as the Javelins.

The Ukrainian tank crew that prayed before each battle nicknamed their tank The Wanderer, for its wandering movements around the battlefield. Between missions it remained hidden in trees under a camouflage net, beside a road churned into a panorama of mud by passing tanks, five miles or so from the front line.

During the battle for Vuhledar, Private Hrebenok, the commander, was ordered to drive forward from that spot on dangerous missions, three or four times per day.

Private Hrebenok, only 20 years old, had no formal training in tank combat when the war started. But in the frantic first days of the war he was assigned to a tank, and has fought continuously in them since, picking up tricks along the way.

Training still looms as a problem. Ukraine, too, is losing skilled soldiers and replacing them with green recruits. And many Ukrainian tank crewmen are being trained on Western tanks in countries like Germany and Britain.

“All my knowledge I gained in the field,” he said. The Russian tank crews, he said, are in contrast mostly new recruits without the benefit of any combat to season them.

In ambushes, the crew hides the tank within range of a road that Russian tanks or armored personnel carriers might travel down. Then it waits quietly. As they sit and prepare for ambush, they must keep the engine warm, because restarting it would take too long. Idling would be noisy. Instead, they burn a small kerosene heater beside the motor.

Once, while they were waiting, a Russian armored personnel carrier passed through their sight and they fired but narrowly missed, damaging but not destroying the machine.

In the last major engagement, a week ago, the order came in during the gray pre-dawn to prepare an ambush for a column of 16 Russian tanks and armored vehicles advancing toward the Ukrainian lines. The crew said their prayer, patted their tank and drove forward.

“We hid the tank in a tree line and waited for them,” Private Hrebenok said. “It’s always scary but we need to destroy them.”

In this instance, they stopped about three miles short of the ambush site, just out of range of return fire, and shot in coordination with a drone pilot who called in coordinates on a radio for targets they could not see directly.

The Russian column stalled on mines and, Private Hrebenok said, The Wanderer opened fire. The Russian tank crews had little chance once they were in the kill zone, he said.

“We destroyed a lot of Russian equipment,” he said. “What they did wrong was come to Ukraine.”

Eric Cantonese posted:

Ukraine has to withdraw from Bakhmut soon, right? It just seems untenable in the long term and it looks like the forces there have done more than their fair share of attritional damage to the Russians.

Huggybear posted:

I find Russia's lack of tactics to be increasingly more bizarre. Mass infantry attack? At least pop some smoke; literally not once have I seen an video where they do so.

And if you are assaulting with tanks you clear mines first or find a less likely way to your objective that isn't the main road in - even if it's engineers under cover of darkness or whatever (and from the looks of the helmets most Ukrainian soldiers have IR devices but whatever, try). Mine and obstacle clearing is very unsophisticated, you blow a path open with explosives. Even articulated devices, like that British WWII tank with the drum and flail.

But just watching them trundle towards a crossroads and get ripped to shreds by mines and artillery is beyond stupid. Maybe I have played too much Combat Mission so it seems blatantly obvious, but the last thing you do in a tank assault is drive them blindly at your target on the main road in without combined arms, smoke, engineers and recon.

Huggybear posted:

I find Russia's lack of tactics to be increasingly more bizarre. Mass infantry attack? At least pop some smoke; literally not once have I seen an video where they do so.

And if you are assaulting with tanks you clear mines first or find a less likely way to your objective that isn't the main road in - even if it's engineers under cover of darkness or whatever (and from the looks of the helmets most Ukrainian soldiers have IR devices but whatever, try). Mine and obstacle clearing is very unsophisticated, you blow a path open with explosives. Even articulated devices, like that British WWII tank with the drum and flail.

But just watching them trundle towards a crossroads and get ripped to shreds by mines and artillery is beyond stupid. Maybe I have played too much Combat Mission so it seems blatantly obvious, but the last thing you do in a tank assault is drive them blindly at your target on the main road in without combined arms, smoke, engineers and recon.

quote:

Gen. Mark Milley: The Russians thought that they had an effective competent army to execute combined arms maneuver, which is a very specific thing. The United States military does that very well, a few other militaries. What that means is they could coordinate and synchronize dismounted infantry with mounted infantry, mechanized infantry with armored tanks, with mortars, artillery, close air support, electronic warfare engineers, medical sustainment — you bring it all together in time and space to achieve your desired effect. As it turned out, they couldn’t do it. They stumbled around and they couldn’t pull it together.

Huggybear posted:

I know, I've seen analyses like that multiple times and I agree. There are still enough blatantly obvious and deeply stupid oversights that I think all that is correct, and they're all drunk or hosed up on opiates or both, and that I am vaguely convinced there are Russians high enough up that they want them to fail...

Like that picture in the article about the tank assault. Not one of those tanks attempted to turn its hull towards the ambush, because an exposed flank is far easier to hit and debilitate. That is basic common sense. A couple have thrown tracks but come on. That's battle tank preschool.

I remember the first day of the war and the assault on the airfield attempted without clear air superiority. I just assumed the first thing that Russia would secure is air superiority, because of its effectiveness in the American invasions in the middle east. They must have invaded knowing they wouldn't and still parked thousands of vehicles in a standstill on an open highway as they tried to fix the modern traffic jam. If this were a movie, I would have given up on the ability to suspend disbelief a long time ago.

Huggybear posted:

Mine and obstacle clearing is very unsophisticated, you blow a path open with explosives. Even articulated devices, like that British WWII tank with the drum and flail.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Buddy, when people are actually shooting at you things are a little different from playing Combat Mission. Things that appear to be “just common sense” can be very difficult to do even if you correctly diagnose the situation, which is also difficult.

Young Freud posted:

I think you're not seeing the most obvious explanation: the tank crews are just loaded with conscripts who got maybe a couple weeks training before being shoved into a tank, so they can barely work surplus T-80 let alone incorporate any sort of tactical finesse with them. Then add combat stress on top of that and they're basically driving their own coffins into minefields and ambushes.

Tuna-Fish posted:

Ukraine is making heavy use of German and Polish off-route anti-tank mines. The simpler variants are just EFP:s that they fire on command when they see a tank in the killzone, the fancier German ones can even be aimed. Simply blowing open paths will only clear the dumber kind of mines.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

Buddy, when people are actually shooting at you things are a little different from playing Combat Mission. Things that appear to be “just common sense” can be very difficult to do even if you correctly diagnose the situation, which is also difficult.

dr_rat posted:

Bakhmut is pretty much just a large town at this rate of shelling, how much of the city is there actually going to be left to capture? A field of rubble with a few major roads leading to it?

Huggybear posted:

I know, I've seen analyses like that multiple times and I agree. There are still enough blatantly obvious and deeply stupid oversights that I think all that is correct, and they're all drunk or hosed up on opiates or both, and that I am vaguely convinced there are Russians high enough up that they want them to fail...

Like that picture in the article about the tank assault. Not one of those tanks attempted to turn its hull towards the ambush, because an exposed flank is far easier to hit and debilitate. That is basic common sense. A couple have thrown tracks but come on. That's battle tank preschool.

I remember the first day of the war and the assault on the airfield attempted without clear air superiority. I just assumed the first thing that Russia would secure is air superiority, because of its effectiveness in the American invasions in the middle east. They must have invaded knowing they wouldn't and still parked thousands of vehicles in a standstill on an open highway as they tried to fix the modern traffic jam. If this were a movie, I would have given up on the ability to suspend disbelief a long time ago.

Freudian slippers posted:

Sooo... the men in those tanks got themselves killed on purpose because they were convinced by their superiors to let the invasion fail?

Huggybear posted:

Don't be pedantic. I'm talking about popping smoke and hull facing ambushes. These are very simplistic concepts. The video game reference was tongue in cheek. I was in the military in my distant youth.

I'll drop the topic as it is speculation.

Antigravitas posted:

That's a bizarre post.

The implication is that they are poorly trained. How to react to ambushes gets drilled endlessly and there are videos of Russian tank columns doing it correctly from early in the war.

Our ability to read the, uh, wreck leaves is obviously severely limited, but the ramshackle nature implies that order broke down very quickly.

Nenonen posted:

I'll continue, hope you don't mind, because it needs to be said that 'simplistic concepts' depend on a solid doctrinal training. When vehicles (or infantrymen) move in combat readiness they have assigned sectors to watch. You can't face towards threat if no one in the column even knows what is going on. This in turn takes lots of training to get to the level where crews can detect and react to a missile launch in a meaningful manner, like the Israeli Sagger drill. Just popping smoke everywhere you go might make you feel safer, but then you are in the middle of smoke and for tanks with older optics this makes it difficult to attack because you don't see anything anymore.

Huggybear posted:

I know, I've seen analyses like that multiple times and I agree. There are still enough blatantly obvious and deeply stupid oversights that I think all that is correct, and they're all drunk or hosed up on opiates or both, and that I am vaguely convinced there are Russians high enough up that they want them to fail...

Like that picture in the article about the tank assault. Not one of those tanks attempted to turn its hull towards the ambush, because an exposed flank is far easier to hit and debilitate. That is basic common sense. A couple have thrown tracks but come on. That's battle tank preschool.

Herstory Begins Now posted:

Huggybear posted:

I find Russia's lack of tactics to be increasingly more bizarre. Mass infantry attack? At least pop some smoke; literally not once have I seen an video where they do so.

quote:

...

The website Russkiy Mir posted an article dated February 25, with the headline "Russians in Australia Protest Against Violation of their Rights".
"Several hundred people went to a rally in support of Russia's actions in Adelaide, Australia, RIA Novosti reports," the article stated.
Other Russian news sites, in English and Russia, reported the event as a "large-scale rally for freedom and in support of Russia".
Russia supporters did attend, holding Russian flags, some wearing T-shirts with the "Z" symbol, which implies support for Russian troops in Ukraine.

...

La Trobe University senior lecturer Robert Horvath, an expert in Russian politics, said the misrepresentation of overseas events in Russian media was an established tactic of Vladimir Putin's regime.
"It exemplifies the way that the Putin regime's propagandists are trying to neutralise international criticism of the war in Ukraine by communicating the message that Western governments might be criticising, but ordinary people in the West sympathise with Putin and with the war that Russia's waging," he said.
"It's extremely important because the legitimacy of the Putin regime is challenged by the scale of international criticism, by the sanctions, by the constant series of statements by Western leaders … transforming Russia into a pariah on the world stage."
Dr Horvath said the tactic was an attempt by Vladimir Putin's government to maintain domestic support.
"This kind of propaganda is clearly designed to reinforce the authority and the legitimacy of the regime," he said.
"It's to manufacture an image of the outside world that reinforces the central propaganda narratives of the Putin regime.
"A secondary function is to promote the idea of Russophobia [anti-Russian sentiment] which is quite central to the ideology of the Putin regime."

quote:

...

One of the main issues the community is fighting for is the legal recognition of same-sex couples.
"LGBT people are suffering a lot because we are not recognised in our country, we don't have any civil partnership, we don't have any hate crimes protection, we don't have civil rights," Olena Shevchenko, chairperson of LGBT organisation Insight, told ABC's The Drum.
Under Ukrainian law, if someone in a same-sex relationship dies, their partner cannot collect their body.
Ms Lapina said she knows of many couples who lost partners in the war and faced these difficulties.
"Some were in the military and others died in missile attacks … what if these couples had a child?" she said.
"You need to be legally recognised even to organise your partner's funeral."

...

One of the main roles Cohort has taken on during the conflict is helping trans people access hormone replacement therapies (HRT), which have been in dangerously short supply since the first months of the war.
The costs have also skyrocketed, with some medications tripling in price, Ms Domani said.
Stopping hormone treatment can bring serious physical and mental health impacts, from depression and anxiety to increased cancer risks.
But, with the help of aid and humanitarian organisations, Cohort has been able to gain access to more suppliers than ever.
"At this moment, I have more than 100 items of hormones," Ms Domani said.
"People can contact Cohort with the brand of therapy they need and we are able to send it out."
She said so far the organisation has helped more than 950 trans people.

Deltasquid posted:

I'm starting to wonder if the Ukrainians are ever going to pull back from Bakhmut. I'm no longer convinced they will. Assuming that Bakhmut's main strategic relevance is indeed its ability to tie up Russian troops who cannot be deployed elsewhere, the intention might be to willingly turn it into a second Mariupol that buys time for the Ukrainian counteroffensives later this year (probably elsewhere in the country, but perhaps even a counteroffensive to liberate or envelop Bakhmut before the Russians can properly dig in?) instead of pulling back.

Deltasquid posted:

I'm starting to wonder if the Ukrainians are ever going to pull back from Bakhmut. I'm no longer convinced they will. Assuming that Bakhmut's main strategic relevance is indeed its ability to tie up Russian troops who cannot be deployed elsewhere, the intention might be to willingly turn it into a second Mariupol that buys time for the Ukrainian counteroffensives later this year (probably elsewhere in the country, but perhaps even a counteroffensive to liberate or envelop Bakhmut before the Russians can properly dig in?) instead of pulling back.