BletchleyGeek

BARS is acronym for Combat Army Reserve of Country - it is kind of volunteer Territorial Battalions. It is under MO but they consist mainly of RU Nats volunters.  Each BARS unit (ussualy around battalion but in theory could be up to regiment) has a number (hence BARS-13) and name (hence Russian Legion) According to Mashkkovets after retreat from Izum RU tried to build defenses around red lines marked below
Regarding the supposed UKR push at Zaporozhye it is a very strange thing. Realisticaly after Izum UKR were not able to start a third offensive along completly different axis. However, for some reason RU focused on this direction and started to reinforce it while claiming UKR were about to attack there. Information about the current offensive was available all the time. But it was not very popular or much discussed. You need to keep in mind that for RU it was just usual battles around Lyman. For some reason they did not believe something serious could happen. They were fooled by their own propaganda (including RU command). Everybody in Lyman claimed that UKR suffered horrendous losses (see one of the post above about forests full of UKR dead soldiers). So, RU lived in the fantasy world where UKR almost ran out of steam and its North grouping is about to collapse due to the huge losses. And when RU were given the topic of Glorious Referendums, they stopped thinking about Lyman front at all. Untill it was too late.

Not a friend and I do appreciate your contempt for a certain kind of think tanker apparatcik. But I think he's really on to something about the choices and mistakes of the Russian elite. We can read his book when it comes out and see if "pants" is the right term. 
Fiona Hill is, here, quite on point: 
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/what-if-were-already-fighting-the-third-world-war-with-russia?mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=twitter&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social
 

There is no sign of that here in the UK. 
The UK Government currently seems to want to mess up the UK economy allegedly without a moment's thought, but support for Ukraine has never been questioned.  I don't see that changing as it's widely seen as the right thing to do.

Yeah, ok. Sure. Glad you aren't in charge of any big red buttons. Another to add to my ignore list before I say something I'll regret.

Putin will be dead in a few years. 10 tops. I can live in that world.
A nuked patch of ground will be wrecked for decades, along with the health of everyone downwind. I don't want to live in that world.
(Yes, I am currently geographically very far away. But that cuts both ways - I don't have to live with Putin as a neighbour, but I also wouldn't be /directly/ affected by any buckets of instant sunshine being splashed around. Also also, my partner is from the Baltics, and her family still lives there. I have been made *very* clear on how much it sucks to have Russia as a neighbour/overlord/coloniser)

It's like the Vietnamese who had to surrender to Dr. Manhattan personally...

Like it wasn't obvious who is on the Light Side here
 
 

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Frankly, I'd just ignore it. I mean if the West wants to send more weapons, let's do that, it shouldn't depend on this ridiculous annexation. Sure, it's a big deal for Russia internally but beyond that what is really going to change? The annexation is worth nothing if the Russians can't hold the ground and if they can it effectively doesn't matter if they formally annexed it. Crimea isn't in Russian hands because everyone accepted Russian claims but because there are Russian soldiers occupying it.
By reacting we give Putin the satisfaction of taking this nonsense serious.

That's honestly a rather strange analysis Steve.
All the - I'd say - "solid success" stories are to no small part a result of their integration into the Common Market and etc. provided by the European Union. I think that this thread has gone in quite a few orbits around how wrong/right was the Ostpolitik that the EU implemented to integrate, in some sense, the Russian Federation. Something that if anything, after recent events, seems to me way, way far removed from what will be possible in the near future.
Vietnam as you say is an interesting case study where making amends on past misguided, ideologically-driven political-military interventions and the existence of a common enemy/rival (China, which let's remember, invaded Vietnam too, in an example of "big fish eats eat small fish" international relations) has certainly resulted in a non-alignment and economical partnership that has greatly benefited Vietnam. Still, I would say that nobody would say that Vietnam is a democratic country, and questioning the Party line in any way - even if you happen to be a double citizen from a Western country - gets you thrown into a dank dungeon in Hanoi.
South Korea wasn't occupied, but I think it is fair to say that it is sovereignty was kind of "closely monitored" for decades, until the corrupt military dictatorship there collapsed in the late 1980s. So not really a beacon of freedom and liberty because of good relations with the West, but rather in spite of. Hence the rather - at times - dubitative approach of South Korea to jump ship with the USA and Japan (with whom South Korea still has some beef to cut).
Can't say much about Mongolia, to be honest.
And regarding Serbia... not only was bombed by NATO (and the aerial campaign of 1999 is matter of great debate how effective was at actually destroying the Serbian army capabilities) but the West changed de facto the recognised international borders and still has, what I can't help describing as a garrison on Kosovo. The process of integration with European Union requires nation states to trade off sovereignty for prosperity (and I would argue future liberty and freedom too, thinking that also Spain and Greece had military dictatorships in place which were great friends of the USA, at least after 1956 in the Spanish case).
Another interesting case study is Iraq (or Afghanisthan)... probably as providing a counterexample to the kind of political-diplomatic engineering that I was referring to in my post.

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

That's honestly a rather strange analysis Steve.
All the - I'd say - "solid success" stories are to no small part a result of their integration into the Common Market and etc. provided by the European Union. I think that this thread has gone in quite a few orbits around how wrong/right was the Ostpolitik that the EU implemented to integrate, in some sense, the Russian Federation. Something that if anything, after recent events, seems to me way, way far removed from what will be possible in the near future.
Vietnam as you say is an interesting case study where making amends on past misguided, ideologically-driven political-military interventions and the existence of a common enemy/rival (China, which let's remember, invaded Vietnam too, in an example of "big fish eats eat small fish" international relations) has certainly resulted in a non-alignment and economical partnership that has greatly benefited Vietnam. Still, I would say that nobody would say that Vietnam is a democratic country, and questioning the Party line in any way - even if you happen to be a double citizen from a Western country - gets you thrown into a dank dungeon in Hanoi.
South Korea wasn't occupied, but I think it is fair to say that it is sovereignty was kind of "closely monitored" for decades, until the corrupt military dictatorship there collapsed in the late 1980s. So not really a beacon of freedom and liberty because of good relations with the West, but rather in spite of. Hence the rather - at times - dubitative approach of South Korea to jump ship with the USA and Japan (with whom South Korea still has some beef to cut).
Can't say much about Mongolia, to be honest.
And regarding Serbia... not only was bombed by NATO (and the aerial campaign of 1999 is matter of great debate how effective was at actually destroying the Serbian army capabilities) but the West changed de facto the recognised international borders and still has, what I can't help describing as a garrison on Kosovo. The process of integration with European Union requires nation states to trade off sovereignty for prosperity (and I would argue future liberty and freedom too, thinking that also Spain and Greece had military dictatorships in place which were great friends of the USA, at least after 1956 in the Spanish case).
Another interesting case study is Iraq (or Afghanisthan)... probably as providing a counterexample to the kind of political-diplomatic engineering that I was referring to in my post.

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Thanks for saying out loud the bit part, Allen.
The last few days in this thread have made me quite uncomfortable as folks were fantasizing about breaking up the Russian Federation as if if they were playing Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis, where you invade a country like France and partition it into bits like the Duchy of Brittany and the Principality of Burgundy to ensure that it doesn't come back to eat you... or giving a nation the treatment of vampires in the traditions of the Southern Balkans, where vampires are gone only when you pretty much cut them up into teeny tiny bits and set them of fire. All this talk of obliterating this and that without even pausing 1 second to consider the enormity of what is being proposed and the means necessary to carry it out may be okay for a couple posts, but after days of writing in circles, honestly it is a bit tiring.
Hobbesian man-eats-man anarchy isn't a good state of affairs in international relationships (I think).

Sorry for interrupting a lovely conversation about a deeply relevant topic but we have an interesting UKR rumor

"Charred Russian military machines are displayed as symbols of a victory of the Ukrainian people over the Russian army. In front of the Monastery of Saint Michael in the Golden Dome, in kyiv, on July 5, 2022. SAMUEL GRATACAP FOR “LE MONDE”"


"During an exhibition of Russian tactical catches organized by Pavlo Netesov at the former nuclear missile launch base in Pervomaisk, July 21, 2022. SAMUEL GRATACAP FOR "LE MONDE""


"During an exhibition of Russian tactical catches organized by Pavlo Netesov at the former nuclear missile launch base in Pervomaisk, July 21, 2022. SAMUEL GRATACAP FOR “LE MONDE”"

I was just referred to this tweet by Madi Kapparov.
Based on my studies of history and years of residing and working in Moscow, St. Peterburg, Budapest, Belgrade, Prague, Warsaw, and Podgorica, and traveled extensively in that region of Central and Eastern Europe, but also in Russian Federation Far East (Tomsk) and Kazakhstan, I would agree with most of Madi’s points in his tweet:
Nazism is mainstream in Russia.
What is Nazism? Abstract away from the distractions of economics and markets. Nazism is a form of fascism founded on the delusional belief of one group of people, generally based on ethnicity, being superior to another group of people. 1/
So too the Russians, who have been absorbed by the culture of their ethnic exceptionalism and historic revisionism promoting their ethnic superiority in all aspects, think that they are more privileged than any other ethnicity or nation. 2/
The Russians think that no rules apply to them. They think that they can do whatever they please because they are exceptional.
When the USSR collapsed the new Russian government fought very hard to become a successor state to the Soviet Union. 3/
Much like the USSR became a successor state to the original Russian empire, the Russian federation had to become a successor state to the USSR. Ideologically it was critical to them to preserve imperial continuity of exceptionalism and cultural and historical superiority. 4/
Without the succession, Russia would have had become equal to the former colonies, such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, etc. That was simply unacceptable to the Russians. They also maintained their centuries-long militarism, as it all feeds into their Russian exceptionalism worldview. 5/
In the 1990s Russia was in dire economic straights and it was completely irrational to maintain a huge military and a large nuclear arsenal. But it was culturally and ideologically of an absolute necessity to the Russians. Why? It is part of their exceptionalism beliefs. 6/
Long before Putin, the war in Transnistria happened. The Russians then had no doubt in the necessity to protect ethnic Russian "separatists" in Moldova, whom the empire moved there over the years. However, just a few years later they went to war with Chechen separatists. 7/
Transnistria was acceptable, while Chechen separatism, a liberation movement, was unacceptable to the Russians. The Russians apply no rules to themselves. You see, they think they are special, exceptional, and superior to the rest of the world. 8/
Chechen independence was absolutely repugnant to the Russians. Negotiations with the Chechens were absolutely unacceptable for an average Russian, until major military defeats and economic strains in 1996. The Russians returned in 1999 to put the "savages" in their place. 9/
Any suggestions for Chechen independence from abroad faced an aggressive push back from the Russians. It is all driven by Russian exceptionalism deeply rooted in their culture. 10/
For the Russians, the protectionism of their empire and their imperial ambitions come naturally. They are an organic part of their individual and national psyche. 11/
Over the years, I have witnessed countless times how aggressively the Russians react to any attempts at an independent foreign policy by the former colonies. Typically, such attempts are called "ungrateful." 12/
The Russians expect their former colonies to be grateful. Grateful for what? In their perverted and revised historical view, they did "so much" for the former colonies, they "civilized" them. 13/
When the former colonies do something independently from Russia, the Russians feel betrayed. “How could they? We did so much for them.” Such Russian behavior is axiomatic. They will hold a grudge and retaliate when an opportunity presents itself. 14/
The reality is that the Russians demand the former colonies to be grateful for the misery, death, destruction, starvation, and sometimes assimilation. Such is the Russian way to “civilize” the “savages.” 15/
The Russians also demand the rest of the world to be grateful to them for the victory over Nazi Germany. In their worldview it is the ethnic Russians *alone* who defeated German Nazism in 1945. “The Great Patriotic War” became one of the pillars of Russian exceptionalism. 16/
Anyone who questions the victory in WW2 the ethnic Russians appropriated will face self-righteous anger and a flurry of insults from them. However, it is unclear why the world should be grateful to them: the USSR was allied to Germany till the very first day of Barbarossa. 17/
Should I even mention the brutal Russian occupation of Eastern Europe following the end of WW2? The Russians expect gratitude for that too. The Russians demand gratitude from the world and from the former colonies, they are special, they are exceptional. 18/
2014 was a point of no return. That year centuries long Russian chauvinism regressed into Russian Nazism. I will ignore Crimea. Russia manufactured oppression of Russian speakers in the Donbas and invaded with “separatists.” That is just a few years after the Chechen Wars. 19/
Again, Russian “separatism” is acceptable, Chechen separatism is unacceptable, because rules do not apply to the Russians. They are exceptional. They allow themselves to do what is unimaginable to them if others do it. That is the essence of Russian Nazism. 20/
I think there are no “good” or “bad” Russians. The distinction is meaningless. There are however sheepishly obedient Russians and zealous z-supporters, averaging out into a regular Russian Nazi. 21/
Germany was zombified by Nazi propaganda for 12 years. The Russians were on their path to Nazism for decades if not centuries. There are no easy fixes. There will be no protests. Changes in the Russian government would solve nothing. The road ahead will be long and difficult. 22/
However Nazi Germany was defeated. So too will be the current version of the Russian empire. Their Nazi worldviews will have to be shattered. The sooner the world realizes it is everyone’s problem, the better.
Ukraine will win as they have no other choice. 23/23
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1574051110654189569.html

Didn't Grigb mention up thread that a Wagner unit had disappeared?  This got me thinking, would it be in the realms of possibility that this guy would use his PMC internally if the opportunity for advancement presented itself?  What sort of support base or block does he fall into?
 

This is not realistic. The only possible way for the US (or if you will, US, UK, France) to do this is with ICBMs. Russia is BIG and their nuclear sites are geographically diversified. We (those 3) don't have a bunch of conventional warhead ICBMs, (not any, really) and it wouldn't matter anyway. They could not physically destroy Russia's nuclear capability using only conventional weapons, HOWEVER, Russia would not stand by and watch it happen. They, like us, would interpret a targeted attack on nuclear weapon infrastructure as an existential threat and would have to respond immediately, before our missiles landed, with a full nuclear attack on the west. There's no other optional response. We would do the same. Use it or lose it. There's no way to know that the incoming missiles on a trajectory to eliminate nuclear sites, are "only" conventional, and either way - it's an attack to eliminate a country's nuclear response capability.
Another wild card is that Russia has SSBNs out there too. Not as many, not quite as capable, but that's kind a moot point. Even ONE, is enough to cause catastrophic damage all across the US. Same as with ours. I'd not like to be the Admiral who has to guarantee that our SSNs could sink EVERY Russian boomer before they can fire. Our SSNs are good, but I kind of doubt that we have that guaranteed capability. I have no inside knowledge on that. I just design, build and test them.
Dave

I concur ... My bolds from personal but not well-remunerated experience 😒 at the coal face of PSYOPS and the management level of PSYOPs and Information Ops:
1.  All of our PSYOPs product had to go through the lawyer and to get it through we had to describe the First, Second and Third order effects and then needed command sign-off once the lawyer was happy.  Not only describing those effects was hard work but persuading certain lawyers was a bit of a to-and-fro experience.  That whole process was usually more difficult than designing and putting the product together in the first place.
2.  I was the yeller rather than the yellee by the time I got into the Information Ops game. 😀
3.  Not necessarily lying - our doctrine did allow it, whereas other nations including the US did not.  I can only think of maybe one occasion where we did in my nine months in Afghanistan in the role and that had to be signed off by a two star.  The main reason for not fibbing is that the truth usually catches up with you and then you lose all credibility as a source of information.  You can get it away with it in a fluid tactical situation but not in the insurgency game. but it usually ends up backfiring because inevitably the truth will surface eventually. 

Small update - in latest Rybar English speaking post (cannot post link right now) he says at Ridkodub UKR advancing toward Borove-Svatove highway reached operational space means UKR broke through RU defenses completely and now have freedom of maneuver.