TheVulture

Because I'm procrastinating this evening, I decided to plot the artillery impact points from the farmhouse video on to the google maps that @chrislposted above. Red dots are from the initial zoomed in view, orange dots are from after the camera conveniently zooms out just before the first rounds land outside its previous field of view. The purple circle is an area that is clear on the map, but obviously has some degree of ground 'clutter' in the video, but I can't tell what it is. Might well be some vehicles. Green line is 200m in length. Random observations: The first round is a direct hit on the roof of the farmhouse and is possible the brightest explosion. Different kind of round, or just because it's up in the air rather than half-buried in the ground as it explodes? The center of mass of the red dots seems to be different to the center of mass of the orange dots, which might suggest two different batteries with different central aim points (and the camera apparently knew when to widen its view). Visually (and from watching the video) it seems like there are more rounds close to roads / treelines / buildings than might be expected by chance given the wide spread of impacts, but you'd have to do some kind of statistical analysis to tell really (and I'm only placing the dots approximately by eyeball, so I might be unintentionally biasing them towards roads etc.) Here is the purple area ground clutter, before it all starts, and conveniently illuminated by a shell. Can't tell what it is, but for scale the distance between the two tree lines is about 300m, so we are talking (very approximately) vehicle scale stuff here, rather than pebbles or buildings.

Fire and explosions at military arsenal near Tomarovka, Belgorod oblast. Confirmed by Belgorod governor. https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/11240 На границе трёх муниципалитетов — Борисовского и Белгородского районов и Яковлевского городского округа - произошёл пожар на территории одного из объектов Министерства обороны РФ. Информация о пострадавших и разрушениях уточняется.Все оперативные службы работают на месте, принимаются все необходимые меры для обеспечения безопасности, — сообщил Гладков https://t.me/zhest_belgorod/11246

I'd have guessed that towing it by the barrel is probably better in that regard, since the barrels are pretty long. The strain on the barrel from towing the weight of the gun is relatively small and mostly along the length of the gun, which is the direction it is strongest in. Towing it the other way around would have the gun's wheels close to the towing connection, which means that the barrel could easily swing sideways much wider than you'd expect (unlike towing by the barrel, where the whole carriage will just follow the truck). This could easily lead to the barrel taking hard lateral blows close to the muzzle, which is the situation most likely to bend the whole barrel or flatten the tube out of being cylindrical, both of which could be catastrophic.

Optimistic twitter thread from Dr Mike Martin. Anyone know anything about who he is as to his credentials as a believable analyst? Executive summary - Russian offensive in the east has fizzled and will likely culminate in 2-4 weeks, followed by collapse

The European Comission apparently believes it and has warned the companies that if they do so they might face punishment for breaking sanctions: https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/042722-ec-president-warns-of-high-risk-for-companies-agreeing-to-russian-gas-payment-demands European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned April 27 of the "high risk" to EU companies that agree to new Russian gas payment demands, which she said were in breach of EU sanctions. "To pay in rubles -- if this is not foreseen in the contract -- is a breach of our sanctions. We have about 97% of all contracts that explicitly stipulate payments in euros or dollars," she said. "The request from the Russian side to pay in rubles is a unilateral decision and not according to the contracts," she said. "Companies with such contracts should not accede to the Russian demands. This would be a breach of the sanctions, so a high risk for the companies." ... Von der Leyen was responding to a question related to reports that 10 European companies had already agreed to the new Russian payment system and that four companies had already paid according to the new decree.

And here are your daily air defense missile launches over Belgorod. Possible explanations: Ukraine is running a lot of air sorties over Belgorod Hungry Russian air defense crews are hunting geese for food The town clock is broken so they use this to signal midday Russia is trying to make its population feel under threat Answers on a postcard...

There's logic to your thinking. Taking out a bridge isn't a permanent thing - they can be rebuild and repaired if the engineering facilities are available. So taking out a bridge buys you a window of opportunity where transport and logistics get interrupted, until alternative routes are established or the bridge is back in action. Which suggests it there is a chance that it is something you do when it would have a good effect (assuming you have the chance to be choosy about timings). Either to undercut a Russia attack, or prepare for one of your own.

Bridge destroyed near Melitopol (about 10 miles SW). By the looks of it, a railway bridge. If that's right, it looks like one of the two railway lines out of Crimea is out of action (one line from Crimea runs NW to Kherson, and this one runs NE through Melitopol towards all the front lines in the 'land bridge' area). https://t.me/dvish_alive/13099

There's also the consideration that the parlous state of the Chinese property market has got the Chinese economy on the edge of a significant problem that might just tip it in to a full scale crisis if they aren't very careful. Even if they were inclined to throw financial support at Russia out of the goodness of their hearts to prop up an ally, it's very questionable how much support they are in a position to give right now. And honestly China is rather more likely to use its leverage over Russia to further its own interests rather than hurt itself to help Russia.

Here's an article with a 'view from 30,000ft' on how the USA's strategy in supporting Ukraine has evolved since the start of the war. Nothing new in terms of information, just another voice affirming the view that the US / NATO countries have switched to seeing a straight-up Ukrainian victory as a viable outcome, not merely outlasting the Russians. or making it too costly for them to bother continuing. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-ukraine-war-redefined/

I'm not familiar with any of this stuff, but I'd imagine the "happy path" is quite easy to learn - when all the systems function properly, learning to input a target and fire, and then reload the system is probably pretty simple. Possibly it is the 'troubleshooting' when something goes wrong that is what takes more time. Any complex software has bugs, and a modern artillery system might well have some weird quirks like uncommon sequences of actions that can freeze up the computer, so you have to know not to do that, and how to reset the system if it does happen. And you need to train enough to have muscle memory when working under high pressure so you do the right thing. I know in aviation at least one accident was deduced as being caused by something trivial. A plane in poor visibility (so you can't see the horizon and have to rely on instruments) suffered an engine failure shortly after take-off, and had something else go wrong at the same time which masked the initial problem. Bit of a panic situation, but something the pilot should have been able to handle well enough to get back to the runway to land again. Instead he banked steeply and essentially fell out of the sky. The investigation concluded that one of the contributing factors was because the pilot had thousands of hours of flying experience on Russian / Soviet Tupolev aircraft, and in those aircraft the artificial horizon that shows the tilt of the plane behaves differently to those in western aircraft. I'm sure that sitting in an exam room, or in normal operating conditions, the pilot would have no trouble with the western display (or else he wouldn't have been qualified to fly the plane), but under pressure with multiple things going wrong, it's possible to take a quick glance at the artificial horizon and draw the wrong conclusion about which way the plane is banking if the wrong automatic 'muscle memory' kicks in. (https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/51791/how-is-a-confusion-possible-between-western-and-russian-attitude-indicators) You don't want your guys, under life or death pressure, to fall back on automatic sequences of behaviour from the wrong system. They have to train enough on the new system that everything becomes unconsciously automatic.

Getting back to the sharp end, here's a Russian convoy that got whacked near Kherson. Definitely 5 vehicles present, plus a lonesone turret that doesn't look like it came from any of them. And possibly one or two more dark stains (can't see very well on this screen) that are probably just scorched ground, but might be thoroughly trashed vehicles.

So are you suspicious yet?

Don't know about that - there was a video released yesterday about Kaliningrad agitating for independence from Russia, but it was a deliberate spoof (and says so in the video). It's actually produced by the Ukrainian government (and again, this is clearly stated) to show how you can splice together out of context quotes, unrelated footage etc. to make something superficially convincing. The point they are making of course is that they are using Russia's propaganda techniques to claim support in Donestk, Donbas, Crimea (and probably also Kherson coming soon to a propagana outlet near you), and flipping it around to show how it looks in reverse So the point of the video isn't "Kaliningrad wants independence from Russia". It is "don't believe Russia's claims that Ukrainian oblasts want to become part of Russia".

Not to be too much of a pessimist, but that sounds really implausible unless Russia has just hit staggering new levels of incompetence. That would mean the Russia's Izyum offensive just turned into the Izyum pocket.

That was my immediate thought. Yeah, he may be unwell, but the sheer stress of trying to work through a war that he started, and was quickly shown to be a catastrophic misjudgement, and being in charge as it goes from bad to worse... I'd imagine that stress takes a serious physical toll over the months.

I'm not sure this can be said with 100% confidence, but it's still amazing that it is even something that might be true, given the force disparity at the start of the current invasion.

Now there's something about weapons:

Heart-warming footage of a Russia tank previously from Kyiv area, now burning merrily in Mariupol

Russia plane shot down near Izyum - both pilots ejected.

I was listening to a depressing video this morning from a woman who runs Russian language courses on youtube (she left Russia some years ago). She did a PhD in Russian propaganda in the Russo-Japanese war, so studying how Russian propaganda works is kind of her thing. There was a lot about how Russia has been sidelining and intimidating (and murdering) any semblance of free press and how Russian TV has, in the last 8 years, basically removed any entertainment, so it is now basically propaganda for 23 hours of each day. If you've got the TV on in the background while doing something else, then you get a constant stream of aggressive propaganda. So she describing the Russian propaganda position (which probably won't be news to most of us): * Ukraine and Russia are one people and Russians have a duty to protect their Ukrainian cousins * Maidain in 2014 was an evil Nazi takeover that has destroyed Ukraine and effectively enslaved the Ukrainian population * Russia is therefore fighting to free Ukrainians and is being welcomed as liberators (Then there is a whole load of re-writing history about how the Soviet Union stood alone against Nazi Germany, eventually defeating them, while the west didn't care and didn't help the brave Russian people). You can see why people being fed a non-stop diet of this stuff and being actively denied access to any inconvenient facts that contradict it might end up supporting this war.

https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-world-and-a-small-war/ Interesting article on general realignment in the world as a consequence of the war. Short version: the author predicts that the US will move to a defence alignment with Poland similar to how it used to have with West Germany during the cold war, since the US and Poland now share a common understanding of the Russian threats to their interest. Similarly Turkey, to a lesser degree. While Germany and France are being seen as less reliable partners He's also written a lot in recent years about new strategic partnerships superceding NATO, such as the Quad to contain China, or the 'inter-marium' of the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Ukraine having a common interest in defending against Russia (with US support). We can possibly chalk Finland in to that too. Previously this was viewed in the context (of the last few years) of NATO becoming obsolete, and what would replace it. Which still might be the case, depending on how seriously western Europe continues to view this.

I agree that towed artillery doesn't seem like a whole lot of use in a mobile battlefield, but on the other hand: It's better than nothing and might be quicker to become proficient compared to self-propelled artillery Presumably some artillery has to be kept stationed along currently quiet borders like Belarus and Moldova, so towed guns could be used there to free up better units for more active areas There's been a fair bit of Russian towed artillery seen as well, so it is at least providing symmetric capability Some fronts, like most of the Donetsk-Luhanks 2014 front line has barely moved so far in the war (despite multiple attacks), so immobile artillery in those heavily fortified lines would still be pretty useful.

I don't know of anywhere that has up to date detail, https://www.uawardata.com/ is updated every few days (and there's a toggle on the left side to show approximate Russian BTG locations, although they are going to vary somewhat in combat effectiveness). Last updated 4 days ago now though, so it's not massively current, but BTGs aren't going to move around much in that time span on the front lines. No information on Ukrainian locations for security reasons. https://liveuamap.com/ has much the same indication of who controls what territory - which is of debatable accuracy (in the early days of the war there was a much more useful map that indicated Russian controlled, Ukrainian controlled areas, and areas in which neither side was able to prevent the other operating, which I think was rather more informative. But I've unfortunately not seen any more recent version of that map). Liveuamap has the usual problems of accuracy, rumours, unverified informaion etc., but as a general picture, since you can look at the data for a particular day, it is possible to e.g. look at where fighting has been reported in the last day, 2 days, 4 days whatever and get a general sense of where fighitng is happening and which way it is moving. ISW daily reports do a good job of pulling together the days events and trying to create a plausible, coherent picture. Yesterdays is at https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-18