Richi

First videos of "Artan" volunteer GUR unit of their Crimean raid
 

Wot coastal defence doing?
Sounds like a successful special forces raid.  It's been a bad news week for Russia on all fronts.

You have to love it when the bad guys decide to shoot all the competent people on their own side.

F. What air defense doing?

Lots of possibilities to consider.
A.  the plane crash was an accident.  Least likely possibility in my opinion.
B.  It is Prig doing a ninja vanish as he got word that being near a window as in his future, so it was time to bail and live a quiet life in Africa.  Not likely but possible.  Wouldn't put it past the slippery bastard.
C.  Payback by the Generals affected by the purge.  Possible.  Proof will be seeing what machinations occur in the internal politics of Russian
D.  It was the Ukrainians.   Highly possible, IMO.
E.  Putin ordered the hit. A bomb or Russian AD bought the plane down.  It will be reported as an accident.
I am leaning between D & E, with E topping the list. Putin is hearing people mutter about him being weak and the failed moon landing, which could of buoyed up his standing, sunk that chance.  He senses the knives bring drawn and was forced to act.

Prigozhin will be declared dead and after a few months strange rumours will start circulating about a certain Polkovnik Kurtz in Congo...
EDIT: RU Telegram rumours are that the entire high command of Wagner was aboard the plane.
The fast confirmation makes it all a bit suspicious, a plane crash is a good way to fake someone's disappearance.

Planes also have windows, so let's not loose hope they stayed true to the form in a way   Perhaps it will be official Kremlin explanation .
I am very curious how Wagner employers will react to that. It is still sizeable force, albeit scattered.

They couldn't get Prig to stand near a window. So they put him on a plane.

https://t.me/grey_zone/20163
 

Embraer 600, RA-02795, belonged to Prigozhyn crashed about 30 minutes ago in Tver' oblast, after taking off from Moscow. This businessjet was spotted six times during two months, flying between Russia and Belarus, were PMC wagner were redeploying trhere. But reportedly this jet wasn't main aircraft of Prigozhyn.

Western Crimea, Tarkhankut cape. Olenivka (rus. Yelenovka). No information to this time what's happened.

 

Or the Lieutenant was in the tank he shot at. Nothing like a good fragging.

The Ukrainian response to all of this "advice" should consist of one sentence. "The U.S. Air Force is welcome to show up any time." 

For the sake of curiosity I took a look at that YouTube channel. It seems to be the same two video titles for the last 9 months.
"Ukraine is about to collapse"
"Russian Army destroys Ukrainian Army"
"Ukraine is collapsing now"
"Russian Army annihilates Ukrainan Forces"
etc.
Sounds like the German Wochenschau from the 1940s, just replace Russian Army with Victorious Wehrmacht.
Truly, seems to be another Western guy like Scott Ritter who sold himself, body and soul, to Russian media.
Really not worth to check out.

I have a suspicion that one of the secondary reasons Russia tries to use units to near annihilation instead of rotating them out is fear of mobiks that have done front line service taking about what a delightful experience it is to provide a target for Ukrainian artillery and drones. That is after they tell people they were systematically lied to about where they were going, what they were going to do there, and paid only a fraction of what they were promised. Once tens or hundreds of thousands of men are back home, even on leave, the Russian propaganda machine is going to have a harder time controlling the narrative.

Yea, I think its easy to view the land bridge as a particularly large piece of land but it doesn't take that much to start to cut it by fire. Which I think speaks to the reason for the Russians defending forward so much. Currently they can still traverse the area by rail and can house supply in a fairly concentrated manner throughout the length of the land bridge. But its only a matter of 25-30km for that to no longer be true.

Once Ukraine achieves that the bridge comes under fire of the relatively more numerous HIMARS (compared to Storm Shadow or other options). The marshaling yards at Melitopol come under fire. Even more weight will be placed on Russia's truck fleet. And Ukraine opens up its strategic options.
 
I might be getting too "lines on a map" but compare the option Ukraine had to what it could have if it took Tokmak and solidified lines along natural boundaries. This presumes a certain amount of Russian abandonment of nearby areas as Ukraine gets closer to Tokmak. But Ukraine goes from essentially having a set of "into the teeth" options to being able to put Russia into a defensive dilemma.

Hey, bricks are expensive. You tie a mobik to the gas pedal.

Noone disputes that but barely anyone can agree what that "lightest round possible" actually is.
 

Long time since we left the old country. But that incidence made our blood boil. Hear lots of bad things about Mr Rutte hear he is doing something right. Saw all the funeral parlor limousines
on the way to a town called Hilversum. 42 F16's a small price to pay. 
 
 

But who volunteered to drive the truck?

You're most welcome.

The meme template that keeps on giving:

https://t.me/operativnoZSU/110862