fireship4

Available from https://chacr.org.uk (The Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research, a think tank established for the British Army) as a .pdf

RDK just published post that they were working on freeing Navalny. 
They described a rather detailed plan. It looks reasonable for me.
 
[EDIT] for example here webcam shots


[EDIT 2] Looks like these guys are more powerful than we thought.
A foreword by RU partisan group
 

That is quite a typical dynamic. Since WWI the tactic of vacating the first line in case of heavy bombardement has been used (although more often in connection with artillery bombardment than air). And the classic attacker's response to this is infiltration. 

RU Nats complain that simple machine gunners using unstabilized mounts are the primary defense of RU Navy warships against drones. These gunners have an effective range of a few hundred meters. So, I think drones imitate attacks but halt outside the effective range of Russian machine gunners. When they find an area not covered by MGs, one goes for a kill while the rest of them transmit the results for BDA.

Regarding fires at RU fuel plants. Below is Milov explanation (from the interview)
The production of RU fuel began to drop. It has already fallen by 4%, with Lukoil production fallen by 8%. It is a significant drop because the RU fuel market is quite delicate. There are two factors here: UKR strikes and a rise in equipment failure due to unknown [to Milov] causes, but most likely due to poor maintenance and repair as a result of sanctions [sanctions work but more slowly than expected]. All of the equipment used to produce high-quality gasoline is Western. The RU has just about two dozen fuel plants. Thus, critical disruption of RU fuel production is possible. It is possible to achieve this by damaging or destroying two types of infrastructure. First, facilities for catalytic cracking which is essential for high-quality gasoline production (Kstovo plant strike). CC facility can be easily targeted, and RU has few of them (and they are all western, so there is no quick replacement or manufacturer assistance).  As result at the moment Lukoil is unable to repair the damaged CC facility in the Kstovo plant. The second type is the Primary Oil Refinery facility (Krasnodar plant strike). The damage to the POR facility interrupts the entire oil production process, but replacements are simpler to find. It's worth noting that only five main fuel plants supply the European part of RU. Other plants are either smaller, older (cannot produce high-quality fuel), or too far away. So, the present UKR campaign of oil plant strikes is smart and sensible. It is already causing problems for RU. The average price has already increased by 30-50 kopeeks [RU cents] per liter. 
 
The Russian government is going to apply significant pressure on oil companies to keep prices from increasing (which may succeed in the near run). However, the RU gasoline market is in a fragile state right now, and if the UKR campaign continues, it will cause major issues.
 

Hey grogs, for the benefit of refuXeniks (like me), it seems that the excellent mirror site Nitter has been killed by another policy change, perhaps for good this time. If you click on a nitter feed you get a 'certificate expired' error message.
Explanation is here (though I'm not a techie and can't verify the details).
"Nitter currently relies on the mass generation of guest accounts, a weird anonymous form of account that was only supported by old versions of the Twitter app. Creation of them was totally disabled today, so every nitter instance will be dead in under 30 days (when they expire). Scrapers apparently also relied on this, as every public nitter instance was being hammered by scrapers earlier. Instances will probably shut down quite soon unless someone finds another way to create tens of thousands of accounts in an automated fashion for free."
That said, there's another mirror site that still seems to work; you can follow the feeds, but can't get to individual posts (or comments):
https://n.opnxng.com/DefMon3
(or whatever handle you're looking for)

This would seem to be a sure-fire way to incite some civil unrest.  Yeah sure, go jail someone's grandmother for 5 years for sharing a post.
Russia Jails Pensioner for Post About Army Casualties (msn.com)
 

Kofman: 
https://warontherocks.com/2024/01/hold-build-and-strike-a-vision-for-rebuilding-ukraines-advantage-in-2024/

Attempt to change direction of thread..
Way back we discussed the striking difference between amounts of Russian soldiers coming from big cities (almost none) and those from rural area's (loads).
And I stumbled on this surprising video from a guy who checked out British Army demographics and recruitment-issues.
Do not be fooled by the title of his video, this is not a crazy rightwing nutcase or woke-hating dumbass.
His research and investigation are quite factual as far as I can see, and the title of his video is based on the fact that the UK government and Army for years and years tried to make the Army as inclusive as possible by making it easier for women, LBTH, minorities etc, ("Woke influence") to join up, but he discovered that it did NOT work out as planned. And partially because of that, the British army has huge problems with getting enough recruits/volunteers.
My understanding is that this problem is also playing up in the Netherlands, and I suspect in more West-European countries. (No idea if it is a problem in the USA). It has a possible profound effect on the near-future strenght of (some) Nato-countries. Which connects this issue directly to the Ukraine-Russo war, because of escalatory possibilities.
If you do think his conclusions are unjust or too far fetched, please let me know.

I'm not a fan of our UK government, but I am a fan of their support for Ukraine and I don't think there's any call in the country for that to change.  For example see PM Sunak's speech today in Parliament, and the agreement of the opposition leader Starmer.  They both mentioned a hope that renewed UK support will become a model for other countries...

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to all!

Merry Christmas gents 

Merry Christmas all! Slava Ukraine!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Thanks for such a civil discussion.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

Neal Stephenson called it a “Chevaline”

There is also the infamous Raccoon Breathalyzer hack....

*****
which is sadly a UL.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/navy-raccoon-breathalyzer/

Ha ha, you ninjaed me by like 30 seconds!!!!
(PS, it is WAY better in German)

Speculation, not obvious, just a statement with no context.
 
Schroeder, Putin's personal friend?  To some extent responsible for Germany's energy dependence on Russia?  And peace on what terms?
 
Nonsense.  They are simply the most capable.  And Israel is dismantling a terrorist junta whose only purpose is to make fat stacks and kill Jews - and they have a decent amount of support both in the middle east and increasingly in the West.  The IDF go to quite some lengths to avoid killing civilians.
Did you see the US parade the bodies of Iraqi teens through the streets of New York?
 
What information?
 
A neocon should want to give Americans something to believe in by fighting for a democratic state abroad if they followed someone like Leo Strauss.
 
In what context?  "We were wrong to help defend this country we promised to defend against an invading force of barbarians"? "Should have just saved the money and let them rot behind a new iron curtain"?
 
In Georgia, Russia moved mostly through two separatist regions which it supported, and has since run directly.  The goverment of Georgia remained intact.
If the men you refer to had changed the government by force, they would indeed have needed an occupation force, to keep order and resist the inevitable efforts of the population and military at reversing such, and then to carry out "de-nazification" (the destruction of Ukrainian national identity, and notions of identification with Western ideals) something that is now obvious.  If they didn't understand that then, it was because they expected Ukrainians to fold like Russians have been taught to, and that their government wasn't real anyway, just a US/Anglo puppet, like the Russians have in their proxies.
 
Your post has unsound reasoning and does not read like the words of someone who knows what they are talking about, rather someone who has a lens they view each event through which you fight for.  It is fine to just use logic or google stuff to -refute- statements, I would say that can work out OK if you did that properly, but you could actually commit yourself to creating some workable models which bear some resemblance to how things actually work in real life and learning some in-depth history on a subject.  What you are doing here is just advocating a straw-man image of the West through cherry-picking and non-arguments.

"Exist" in this case.

"Exist" in this case.

Speculation, not obvious, just a statement with no context.
 
Schroeder, Putin's personal friend?  To some extent responsible for Germany's energy dependence on Russia?  And peace on what terms?
 
Nonsense.  They are simply the most capable.  And Israel is dismantling a terrorist junta whose only purpose is to make fat stacks and kill Jews - and they have a decent amount of support both in the middle east and increasingly in the West.  The IDF go to quite some lengths to avoid killing civilians.
Did you see the US parade the bodies of Iraqi teens through the streets of New York?
 
What information?
 
A neocon should want to give Americans something to believe in by fighting for a democratic state abroad if they followed someone like Leo Strauss.
 
In what context?  "We were wrong to help defend this country we promised to defend against an invading force of barbarians"? "Should have just saved the money and let them rot behind a new iron curtain"?
 
In Georgia, Russia moved mostly through two separatist regions which it supported, and has since run directly.  The goverment of Georgia remained intact.
If the men you refer to had changed the government by force, they would indeed have needed an occupation force, to keep order and resist the inevitable efforts of the population and military at reversing such, and then to carry out "de-nazification" (the destruction of Ukrainian national identity, and notions of identification with Western ideals) something that is now obvious.  If they didn't understand that then, it was because they expected Ukrainians to fold like Russians have been taught to, and that their government wasn't real anyway, just a US/Anglo puppet, like the Russians have in their proxies.
 
Your post has unsound reasoning and does not read like the words of someone who knows what they are talking about, rather someone who has a lens they view each event through which you fight for.  It is fine to just use logic or google stuff to -refute- statements, I would say that can work out OK if you did that properly, but you could actually commit yourself to creating some workable models which bear some resemblance to how things actually work in real life and learning some in-depth history on a subject.  What you are doing here is just advocating a straw-man image of the West through cherry-picking and non-arguments.

Speculation, not obvious, just a statement with no context.
 
Schroeder, Putin's personal friend?  To some extent responsible for Germany's energy dependence on Russia?  And peace on what terms?
 
Nonsense.  They are simply the most capable.  And Israel is dismantling a terrorist junta whose only purpose is to make fat stacks and kill Jews - and they have a decent amount of support both in the middle east and increasingly in the West.  The IDF go to quite some lengths to avoid killing civilians.
Did you see the US parade the bodies of Iraqi teens through the streets of New York?
 
What information?
 
A neocon should want to give Americans something to believe in by fighting for a democratic state abroad if they followed someone like Leo Strauss.
 
In what context?  "We were wrong to help defend this country we promised to defend against an invading force of barbarians"? "Should have just saved the money and let them rot behind a new iron curtain"?
 
In Georgia, Russia moved mostly through two separatist regions which it supported, and has since run directly.  The goverment of Georgia remained intact.
If the men you refer to had changed the government by force, they would indeed have needed an occupation force, to keep order and resist the inevitable efforts of the population and military at reversing such, and then to carry out "de-nazification" (the destruction of Ukrainian national identity, and notions of identification with Western ideals) something that is now obvious.  If they didn't understand that then, it was because they expected Ukrainians to fold like Russians have been taught to, and that their government wasn't real anyway, just a US/Anglo puppet, like the Russians have in their proxies.
 
Your post has unsound reasoning and does not read like the words of someone who knows what they are talking about, rather someone who has a lens they view each event through which you fight for.  It is fine to just use logic or google stuff to -refute- statements, I would say that can work out OK if you did that properly, but you could actually commit yourself to creating some workable models which bear some resemblance to how things actually work in real life and learning some in-depth history on a subject.  What you are doing here is just advocating a straw-man image of the West through cherry-picking and non-arguments.