dan/california

Lead paragraph of a longer piece.

We are flying blind without information about how this is being received in the Tajik community and broader Central Asian community. Twitter seems to hate me more by the day, has Kamil Galeev checked in on this? I seem to recall he is Tajik, albeit not exactly typical.

But in Beirut, and even Chechnya, the Russians only had one goal, to pacify their problems with the situation. They absolutely did not care about how much collateral damage they did, AT ALL. They have a different problem now with the economic dependence on Central Asian labor that their economy has developed. The war in Ukraine of course has made this dependence much worse. Probably the Russians usual brutalist approach can put the lid back on, but it is not a guarantee. Smoking accidents in unfortunate places have already had a real effect on the Russian war effort in Ukraine, a whole new source of such problems could matter.

Just trying to step back and understand the problem a little bit, Tajik language is very closely related to both Dari and Persian. These languages have been relevant to the Western intelligence community for a while now. That is probably why the U.S. seems to be at least as aware of what is happening in Russia as the FSB is. That said, what are the publicly available Tajik language sources we ought to at least be aware of? Are there Tajik Telegram accounts with some history being reality adjacent? How have those accounts responded to this whole thing so far? I mean press freedom in Tajikistan is not even a concept, so all that is going going to give you is the government line. I keep coming back to big intelligence mistake at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. We had clearly penetrated the Russians communications more or less completely, but we believed the Russians own assessment of how the war was going to go. At least until the Russian army got stuck in around Kyiv, and then they and we, realized that what it was stuck into was meat grinder. I assume we still have pretty good insight into the Russian assessment of this whole thing, the private assessment, not the the propaganda BS, but do we understand how good that assessment is? It turned to matter quite a lot the last time the Russians got high on their own supply, are they about to repeat the mistake?

All details aside, the most important thing is that Putin is losing control of the narrative. That could matter.

Perhaps, but it is the Russians who are getting bleeped.

What does it say?

This happened a couple of weeks ago, about the time of the first U.S. warning, and barely made a ripple. Clearly the theater was the second shoe that got through. Who knows what else ISIS-K has planned? It isn't like they have a shortage of very unhappy muslims inside Russia to recruit from. Who knows if Russia can roll up this network in time? Are there seven more? It is the down side of running the country on badly abused Central Asian labor.

Yeah I remember that vid. Looking out five years, drone with specific functionality to go after helicopters are going to make helicopters not a thing. All the pieces are out there, they just haven't been put in a nice package yet. This set up for hunting tracking drone for instance should be able to flag low flying helicopters instantly. I see no reason that you couldn't scatter sensors to do the same basic thing well into the bad guys guys rear areas by either MLRS, or Baba Yaga type drones type drones. They would be passive sensors so they would not have emit a single peep until they heard one of the audio/vibration signatures they had been programmed for.

There is video in the link

If the guys they are parading around with missing bits, broken bones, and worse are in fact the guys that did it? Then my only question what were they thinking letting themselves be taken alive? The scary thought is that the guys they are more or less publicly torturing to death are four random guys they grabbed off the streets who had the misfortune o resemble the guys in the video. That would be uhm...BAD. That said the treatment these guys are getting in Russian detention is no different than what they have done to tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of of thousands of others in both Ukraine and Russia. They are just posting video of it in real time. That of course is the reason why Russia is going to get to pay a thousand casualties for every square kilometer of Ukraine they even temporarily occupy. Because the Russians have demonstrated beyond clearly that giving up is just not an option. Edited: for clarity

I think there is vast potential or a fixed wing suicide drone just big enough to carry the efp from that program, perhaps with some the type of modifications. The_Capt discussed a page or three ago. Better computer modeling improves almost everything after all. It just flies over the vehicle five or ten or twenty five meters up, and fires an EFP that penetrate anything except the front armor of an Abrams straight down. The Germans given have given Ukraine an artillery shell that deploys more or less the same tech by parachute. A drone just seems like a far better, far cheaper way to deliver it in most cases. Edit: Cross posted with Carolus.

This prompts my semi-regular reminder that for all that drones dominate the battlefield, we haven't seen anything yet.

Gallioti goes over the theater attack as well as it can be done. Short version, ISIS-K did it, and the rest of it is various bits of the Russian state either trying to cover their a$$es or take whatever advantage they can

I wonder if the Tajik in question had anything to do with the attack? Or was just in jail for something random, and drew a very short straw? I have the strongest possible feeling that the Russians are making this up as they go along, and making any investigation into what actually happened impossible in the process. In a decade or so maybe we will at least find out what was the U.S. intercepts that prompted the warnings

Apparent Ukrainian strikes against multiple targets in Crimea, plus Belgorod. The actual war is not taking a pause because of the unpleasantness in Moscow.

At least the press is doing an above average job of explaining what is going on.

Whatever the Russian regime knew, whenever they knew it, and whatever they had to do with it, this is the same regime that managed to turn a three day coup attempt into the biggest mess since AT LEAST the Iran/Iraq war. What ever happened it is being responded to by the same incompetents who made the rest of this fiasco. Just because blame it on Ukraine is what their vodka soaked, cocaine damaged, brains came up with doe NOT mean what they are doing now makes any sense. We are trying MUCH to hard to make it make sense. And that is true regardless of who actually did the attack on the theater.

Join the Imperial horde, you get to loot and rape to your hearts content is one thing. Join up to become a chew toy for a truly nasty robot does have the the same ring.

Really good ISW today, but the most interesting part is quoted above. It quotes several sources about Russian recruiting issues, and highlights several issues that might occur if Russia conducts another mobilization.

The Russian security forces are massively distracted crushing the last of Nalvany's movement, and ensuring no one raise in his place as the face of the Russian opposition. The guys who attacked the theater were probably at more risk of being randomly shanghaied into the Russian army than they were of actually get caught.

I can't get it to copy and paste to save my life but Medvedev just did a Telegram post that seemed to imply the Russians are going to blame it the Ukrainians regardless of what happened, and then go full Reichstag Fire with it. Of course it is Friday night in Moscow, and Medvedev may simply have already been to drunk/high to check what the party line actually is supposed to be.

It is not Mike Johnsons week. It remains to be seen if Gallagher wants to take a parting shot on the way out. There are scenarios where one vote could matter, a lot. Edit: The sheer volume of news today is overwhelming. I hope nobody that matters in DC had weekend plans...

FSB is perfectly capable of arranging corpses for the final presentation that are not the people who did the attack. They would just have the propaganda machine say any video to the contrary was fake. The "investigation" will have about as much integrity as the "election" that was just concluded. Which is to say both were dictated in advance.

I would agree with that, mostly. But I have read several things I don't have time to go looking right now for about his approach to Ukraine in spring 2022 that set a trajectory I think we have been on ever since. Then there was his little faux pax in the Atlantic a week before Hamas kicked off that mess.