Offshoot
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Posts posted by Offshoot
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5 minutes ago, TheVulture said:
Report on Telegram of (another) Russian Mi-8 helicopter down near Belgorod: https://t.me/bazabazon/17851 (I assume 'DRG' here is the Russian Volunteer Corps, from the context)
Russian helicopters around Belgorod are flying pretty low
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-Russian propagandists acknowledge ammo shortages
-Apparently Russia has had ammo shortages for over two centuries now
-Simonyan suggests people go to the ammo factories for 2 hours after work to help make ammo
-Solovyov stands up for industry and mansplains it is about capacity and not manpower
-The take home message is that good Russians should stop moaning about it and Russia is all alone anywayhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1L_bs4hCOQ&t=2s
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27 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Not having listened to the reasoning, I have to scratch my head on this one. For sure Putin has never truly had a monopoly on violence within Russia any more than the head of a regional organized crime syndicate does. There's still unauthorized violence that is the result of delegated authority and competing interests. That said, the goons acting on their own know there are lines that they shouldn't cross and that there will be consequences if they do unless they have influence proportional to the transgression. Even Mogilevich, considered the most powerful crime boss in the world, knows that if push comes to shove he'll lose. So, in that sense Putin is absolutely at the top.
For context, the statement about having a monopoly on violence in the video I linked pertains to a comment by a Communist Party member of the Duma who had a spat with Prigozhin: "[The state] must possess an absolute monopoly over the formation, development and use of military force. There can be no private military companies."
So I think "violence" in this case applies primarily to warfare and not to off-book assassinations or general state thuggery.
By having Wagner fight in Ukraine, at least the illusion of a state monopoly is broken. -
26 minutes ago, billbindc said:
Just listening now.
"mellifluously functional" is a very good line.
I think he's got an interesting perspective but I think he's pretty seriously wrong in imagining that the Putinist state has lost the monopoly on violence within Russia proper (i.e. not Ukraine or Chechnya). As he notes himself, Prigozhin was allowed to recruit prisoners and then...like a tap being turned off...he was not at Putin's order.
I would say he's interesting but pretty much like the rest of us...folks looking from the outside in and reading the tea leaves.
Maybe there is still a distinction between the Russian state and the Putinist state in that the Russian state is the visible aspect. So the Russian state has lost it's monopoly on violence (as the Communist Party Duma member says, PMCs are still illegal in Russia) but the Putinist state undertook a compelled outsourcing of violence.
He is reading tea leaves like everyone, but I am pleased that he is academically honest and acknowledges this himself by stating how the lack of transparency in the Putin regime makes it difficult to get a picture of what is going on.
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37 minutes ago, billbindc said:
But what has not changed are the essential sinews of power in Russia. Putin essentially owns Wagner. Wagner cannot supply itself as the MoD holds those strings. Putin can make the MoD give or withhold logistics and at the same time Wagner can humiliate and threaten MoD. It's a system designed by Putin to check and balance threats to his power base. It is definitively not politics as we understand it.
On the subject of change, Vlad Vexler has just released a video on the reformatting, some of it semi-reluctant, of Russian political systems and society - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3XyDmR7vXA
This is seen through the lens of the Wagner-MoD tussles and a recent statement by some Russian soldiers who complained about their conditions and asked to be able to leave and join Wagner instead.
He likens it to Putin taking the Russian bus offroad (invading Ukraine) to keep everyone on the bus but running into mud and having to do more reformatting to compensate. He also covers Putin's use of Prigozhin to triangulate the pillars of power and how to use the current events as a window into the stability of the Russian regime.
It's long but the pith is covered in the first half.
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2 hours ago, billbindc said:
Who put Prigozhin in charge of Wagner?
Who controls Wagner's logistics?
Who controls them?
The answers to these questions do not have to be static.
For a long time Prigozhin denied any connection to Wagner but in the past year has become the very public and outspoken face of it, gaining the public political support he lacked and the devotion of his cadre. Also in the past year Wagner have secured income flow from Africa, so theoretically they could be less tied to the MoD for logistics.
It doesn't necessarily mean that Prigozhin is trying to be a player and make a tilt for power. He could be doing what Putin is doing and carving out a more secure space for himself so that Putin cannot just easily replace him. From lap dog to guard dog.
EDIT: OK, I didn't read far enough before posting. I see you have talked about Prigozhin "making a splash".
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As a flip side to the discussion on the rebuilding of Ukraine, this is an interesting article on the current situation in Mariupol:
‘It’s like the USSR’: residents on life in Mariupol a year since Russian occupation - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/18/its-like-the-ussr-residents-on-life-in-mariupol-a-year-since-russian-occupation
And some before and after aerial photos of Bakhmut:
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40 minutes ago, sburke said:
saw a post of a woman who got nose surgery because she wants her children to have smaller noses.
Lysenko would be proud - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
And to stir the pot a bit, don't forget about epigenetics and the genetic transmission of trauma - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6127768/
If it is an actual phenomenon in humans, I would say it plays a far greater role in the outlook of Russian society than the underlying gene pool.
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38 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Who knows when the second pic was taken, and where...
The original source, who actually took the photos
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1 hour ago, MikeyD said:
Awhile back on this site there was video of Ukraine testing a landmine kamikaze UGV. I reminded me of nothing so much as the old WWII Soviet 'dog mine', a pooch with a vest that they trained to run underneath tanks.
A "light" article on the development of this FPV UGV with a few details - https://mil.in.ua/en/articles/army-of-ground-drones/
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8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Holy crap! There was at least a dozen guys in that one bunker.
I'm not sure there were that many in the bunker. At about the 2:36 mark you see a guy running from right to left on the screen and a couple of guys already in the scrub under the power pole where they meet. I think half of the dozen had come from another position to reinforce or help with evacuation. These guys certainly weren't like the ones robbing their comrade.
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55 minutes ago, Haiduk said:
Russians "cossackship" in Australia %)
There is a group in Australia called the Australian Cossacks. Their leader has been hiding in the Russian consulate since December to avoid criminal charges and asked Wagner to organise a prisoner swap, exchanging him for a future captured Australian volunteer in Ukraine - https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hiding-in-the-russian-consulate-for-months-aussie-cossack-demands-a-prisoner-swap-20230405-p5cyb5.html
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An article about the expected Ukrainian offensive based mainly on the thoughts of Roman Kostenko, a special forces colonel and chair of the Kyiv parliament’s intelligence and security committee - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/12/ukraine-prepares-to-take-back-territory-from-russia-step-by-step-roman-kostenko
Nothing surprising here, but it does stand in contrast to a lot of expectations.
-"Ukraine’s long-anticipated push should be understood as a rolling “spring-summer campaign” against an entrenched and powerful adversary" that will proceed in stages
-First stage: strikes against logistical targets (started)
-Second stage: strikes against command and control centres (likely started)
-No major frontal offensive until these stages weaken Russia's capabilities
-On locations: Dnipro is a grey zone where it is difficult to hold positions; the distances and fortifications involved in Zaporizhzhia are formidable and the region is heavily mined; favours attacking Bryansk -
3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Denys Davidov now predicts the offensive will begin on May 15.
Zelensky is pouring cold water on this or dissimulating - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65550427
"Speaking at his headquarters in Kyiv, President Zelensky described combat brigades, some of which were trained by Nato countries, as being "ready" but said the army still needed "some things", including armoured vehicles that were "arriving in batches".
"With [what we already have] we can go forward, and, I think, be successful," he said in an interview for public service broadcasters who are members of Eurovision News, like the BBC. "But we'd lose a lot of people. I think that's unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.""
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11 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
Sounds like a premise for a first person narrative book 5 years from now. I will copyright that now: "How Narrow Views win at war, business and life."
Thanks for the tip.
I'm sorry, I didn't realise my purpose here was to win the Ukrainian war.
I will copyright my own book: "How posting on forums wins wars, but only if you have a high horse"
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7 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
Then why look through the keyhole in the first place. Warfare Porn?
No doubt for some they are just war porn, but also:
Because no matter how narrow, it can still be a view of reality.
Because multiple narrow views of reality can be compiled to provide a wider view.
Because there is more to war than just strategic, operational and even tactical views, such as the personal view. The videos can provide a view into the personal experiences of people directly involved in the war. -
A longer, more complete video of the Russian surrendering via drone. It looks like this happened while combat continued, unless the Russians were prepared to spend shells to try and kill the surrendering guy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/13e9b7g/a_longer_video_of_the_russian_surrendering_to_a/
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41 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
The parade was like a funeral. The lone T34 was like the Riderless Horse, Black Jack, at Kennedy's Funeral. In 1963 it was symbolic and hopeful for the US. In 2023, it's symbolic and dreadful for Russia.
It depends on what it symbolises. Vlad Vexler discussed the parade and noted that it was disgusting because it highlighted how Putin has co-opted or privatised the Great Patriotic War myth, equating himself as an individual with it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APGtuQ7JAFs&t=278s
It's likely they couldn't get the usual number of tanks, so rather than have a diminished parade they cut it down completely to have just the traditional and symbolic T34. In this case, however, it could symbolise for them the solitary Putin, the embodiment of the Russian state, standing heroically and by himself against the rest of the world.
It does look bad to the rest of the world but Putin is already "at war" with them, so he doesn't care. It was all for domestic purposes.
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Russia deporting ships from Sevastopol too, according to Ukrainian intelligence - https://www.kyivpost.com/post/16651
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25 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
So, what does a dictator do when he has nobody to parade and doesn't want anybody to know about it? False flag attack that both makes the cancellation seem reasonable and at the same time gets people fired up for revenge. It does make sense.
Just to add, the Kremlin is claiming it took out the drones, thereby making out that their air defences are not suspect or weak:
"“Two unmanned aerial vehicles were aimed at the Kremlin. As a result of timely actions taken by the military and special services with the use of radar warfare systems, the vehicles were put out of action,” the Kremlin press service said. It said that debris from the drone “fell on the territory of the Kremlin”." - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/03/russia-accuses-ukraine-of-trying-to-kill-vladimir-putin-with-kremlin-drone-strike
Of course, it is the sort of excuse you would expect them to use in the case of either a real or a false flag attack.
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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:
At 00:10 he throws a grenade into a foxhole and the Russian reaches out to throw the grenade out again, but the clip then for some reason cuts and there's an explosion but it seems to be in a different place? Lots of trickery going on in some of these videos.
That was just the beginning "trailer", which shows some very short clips from the longer video. The actual sequence of events is shown clearly later with an explanation.
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Prigozhin threatens to pull Wagner out of Bakhmut if not given munitions - https://kyivindependent.com/prigozhin-threatens-to-pull-wagner-out-of-bakhmut-if-not-given-munitions/
"Prigozhin reportedly told Telegram-based outlet WarGonzo that he sent a letter to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu with his ultimatum, supposedly giving Shoigu until April 28 to decide.
The mercenary chief reiterated his frequently-voiced concern that Wagner might be seeing its final days as a company."
Just normal agitating?
A legitimate issue?
Setting up excuses before a collapse? -
21 minutes ago, Vanir Ausf B said:
We now have the point of view from the FPV drone. Crazy war.
It's interesting to see the video feed from the FPV drone in this case and how it breaks up before contact because we know the FPV successfully hit the target and exploded. Earlier in this thread comments were made that maybe this video effect was added to the video to hide a miss by the FPV. It seems, however, like it is an integral aspect of at least some FPVs.
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A long but more complete view of combat in Bakhmut involving border guards. It has a bit of everything: command center, a foot patrol, drone operators working with mortar crews, manpad air defence hunters, wounded retrieval and evacuation, discussion of the quality of the Russian soldiers now and their new tactics, personal accounts, and some stunning views of destroyed Bakhmut. The closed captions work well.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
DeepState has it marked as well - https://deepstatemap.live/en#11/50.4468/35.5984