Machor

Ahh I see. As in Leo Tolstois world classic "Special Operation and Peace" which he published 1863.

This is my job and my headache %) 

The Russian Liberation Army returns. 🙂 This Russian captain volunteered to serve with the Legion "Liberty to Russia":
 

@LongLeftFlank
"Russia will become much poorer but its rulers might even like that. Consider this paper by now Deputy PM Belousov. The growth of middle class is problematic:
- they buy expensive imported goods
- they increase cost of labor, demand more labor rights
- they try to emigrate"
This was quite literally what Erdoğan's pundits and lackeys were saying after the latest Turkish Lira crash. There's a Marxian analysis waiting here (and yes, there's tons of stupid Marx, but you can also have smart Marx, e.g. Moishe Postone) about the 'enemies of the middle class.'
...
More footage from the Beeb. I was amused by the BTR that tried to drive over a BMD, but I have to remind myself that young people died here ... a lot of young people died here, and ultimately one person gave the order for this, even though I wish to avoid a 'reverse-personality cult' of Putin. Just from the wrecks, one can imagine how desperate those last moments were:
"War in Ukraine: Evidence grows of civilian killings in Bucha"
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60968546
 

Disquieting thread from Kamil Galeev.
Kamil is far from infallible and paints with a very large brush, but like James Burke ('Connections') he does make me think in a way that more erudite and focused 'experts' miss. In short, he synthesizes, concisely (too much sometimes, sure) and tells intriguing stories. Stories (myths, etc.) are what drive action in the nonacademic world, as he himself notes.
Anyhoo, Galeev is deeply worried that in order to have a victory to show on Victory Day, May 9th, Putin will need to 'escalate' the war, although in what manner nobody yet knows.
P.S.  For those interested, here is his 'Russia as North Korea?' thread as well. It's one of the readings that got me thinking about how Ukraine might (in sharp contrast to Russia) reinvent itself postwar....
...Kind of a Miltonian ('better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven!') take on society. It's like serfdom never really left.
And living here in a deeply caste ridden society (the Philippines), one can see a certain appeal to having 'people for that'. So long as you're one of the masters....
Viktor Suvorov's 'The Aquarium', sadly out of print now, explored some of these same issues from the viewpoint of a nomenklatura functionary living in faction-riven 1970s Soviet society.  Here too, I don't honestly care how much of it was fiction; Razun told a great story!

Reportedly Russian Mi-28N shot down two days ago it's first victory of StarStreek

Yes I think this was a quid pro quo situation and as I alluded to in my post earlier this morning, I suspect a mutual commitment was agreed in Istanbul along the lines of effecting a rapid Russian withdrawal for a UKR guarantee not to instantly advance on Ivankiv and kettle in Russian forces. I just don't see why the Kremlin would have made this withdrawal public knowledge without something in return - it would have otherwise been a cataclysmic own goal inviting huge military losses.

Also for UA, those forces around NW of Kiev (being mostly militia units) don't appear well equipped for a mobile op, so on UKRs part, they probably didn't consider it realistic to advance and seize ground in the manner that would be required.

This feels very much like a deliberate "golden bridge" strategy by the UA.
The NW forces could have theoretically been trapped harder & sooner south of Ivankiv, but this would have trapped them in with all the civilians, still in range of Kiev, turning the area into their own Mariupol.
I think the UA made certain to keep a golden bridge through Ivankiv, for humanitarian reasons (to shorten their peoples suffering, not the Russians), to avoid a large scale "classic" kettle which would have required heavy investment (and inevitable losses) and to shut the attack down sooner.
"Letting" them leave frees up UKR forces sooner, conserving their own combat power, which is strategically more useful than a bunch of dead Russians from already beat up and mentally defeated formations.
Those units are not going to be rushing back into contact with the UA.
====
Despite our collective dismissal of Russian combat effectiveness the UA is very much treating them as a highly dangerous foe.
The battles for Bucha/Irpin were not easy and despite every single negative the Rus forces came awfully close to Kiev. Now, I'm not saying they would have been a real danger (Kiev is huge and eminently suitable for defence) but still - they got pretty damn far.
There is still significant planning and command capabilities at certain levels of the RA, certainly enough to execute a covered retreat, repo forces and attack elsewhere. They're not done yet.

UKR mobile group of MANPAD. Crowdfunded pick-ups turned out more useful for AT/MANPAD-teams, than statuatory armored vehicles 

 

Heavy clashes around Izium, when both sides suffered big losses. Izium battle probably will most significant in hystory of this war, but all development we will know much later... 
Ukrianian lost vehicles probably in the town area, which uder Russian control (we still control southern part): 4 BTR-4E1 of 92nd mech.brigade and armored car Triton, captured by Russians (already with Z) - experimental vehcile, which was produced in very small number and served in State Border Guard Service. It have to be equipped with surveilence cameras (i.e. thermal), raising on the mast.
 



And decapitated Russian tank also from there

I go way back to CM:BO but haven't been around for years. I knew this group would have interesting ideas and comments about Ukraine. Haven't been disappointed.
The scale of Russian losses at Trostyanets is staggering. This video is more on the topic with a good interview of a Ukrainian soldier talking about the tactics they use. Adding 130,000 Russian conscripts alone won't change anything but the body count.
 

Granted... I know there are some Mech. forces in the fight... however there must be a pretty healthy reserve waiting in the background... I doubt the whole force, or even most of it, is currently engaged...  
...but we'll see.
Best to you and your family Haiduk.  You are an invaluable link and resource for us during this nightmare going on in your country.
Bil 

It fully involved on Donbas, where the war has more "traditional" form. It involved in Sumy oblast and Kharkiv - Russian BTGs in Trostianets and Rohan' were defeated not with lihgt infantry (though with their assist). Our "line troops" too busy to make footage, also a censorship there is more tough than in volunteers/TD and Azov, which since 2014 have made PR for itself. You can see Oryx about our losses, we lost about 70 tanks. So, they in fight. 
Full picture, how our mech. and tank brigades fought, we can receive only after the war.

Same!

Sorry but this makes very little sense from a couple perspectives.  I am not sure why so many people need to somehow find a dark genius in Putin's actions and strategy.  I guess some have invested so much in making him the boogey-man that their own interests are at stake here while others sound like they are on the Russian payroll.
So internally, starting a war and then losing it has never been a smart path to reinforcing internal control.  The worse one loses the more internal (not less) internal tension it creates.  This reinforces the idea that a quick war may have solved some of those internal issues.  Why try and suppress free press when they are crowing a quick victory parade in Kyiv?  So the idea that this was all a clever ploy to get a better domestic grip does not make a lot of sense unless you can get a quick win, which did not happen.  Every day Russia bleeds in Ukraine makes things worse, not better.
Resource grab.  Well first off, if this was the aim they missed it:

https://www.flandersinvestmentandtrade.com/export/sites/trade/files/market_studies/Ukrainian Energy Market_0.pdf
Russia already had the Crimea.  It might have grabbed that thin sliver in the south and took a few nibbles from that big eastern field but the majority of that field is still in Ukrainian hands.  This might have been a goal on the initial invasion but the debacle we have seen unfold for a month now does not support an oil and gas grab strategy.
Further, resource-wise this makes little sense.  Russia is sitting on 4.8% (ish - number swings around depending where you look), while Ukraine has a whopping .06%.  Gas is even crazier with Russia at 25% and Ukraine at .6% (https://www.worldometers.info/gas/#:~:text=There are 6%2C923 trillion cubic,levels and excluding unproven reserves).
Why on earth would Putin risk the massive sanctions, which further exacerbate his domestic troubles, in order to try and grab a fraction of a ridiculously small share of oil and gas?  There are significant Black Sea reserves (https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/02/28/as-russia-closes-in-on-crimeas-energy-resources-what-is-next-for-ukraine/?sh=5ef9b6d829cd) but why wage a freakin land war all over the place if all you want to do is exploit offshore gas in a region where you already have vast naval superiority?
Finally, how exactly has Putin achieved any of these strategic aims thus far?  He has to try and keep a lid on over 10k dead (and times-3 wounded) to avoid domestic pressures, increasing economic failure due to sanctions - leading to domestic pressure, and zero to show for it in "black gold", that you can only sell to China - who is going to gut you price-wise - thanks to said sanctions.  
There is no master plan here, or at least not anymore.  Being an ex-KGB autocrat, Putin demonstrate acumen at subversion strategies; however, on this one he tried to "go loud" and is likely suffering from Dunning-Kruger shock right now as he slowly realizes that he is nowhere near as smart as his cronies have been telling him. 
 

The fan of Warhammer

And his spoils.... Looks like BTR belonged to some recon unit, armed with Val rifles

"Uganda Finds China’s Leverage Is in the Fine Print of Its Lending"
"A clause in an agreement with the African nation has stirred a flap over whether the country signed away financial control of Entebbe International Airport"
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uganda-finds-chinas-leverage-is-in-the-fine-print-of-its-lending-11640601003
Yoni Netanyahu didn't like this. 😑
All of Turkey's next generation drones are going to use Ukrainian engines. Even more importantly, after failing to secure licensing from Germany for MTU engines for the Altay MBT, Turkey struck a deal with Ukraine to develop an engine using Ukrainian technology.
Fun fact: Erdoğan tried to use his 'personal relationship' with Shinzo Abe to get Mitsubishi engines, but the deal failed. Had it succeeded, the Altay would have been a Korean tank with a Japanese engine. 🙂

Contrarian take, FWIW. I do at least agree with the last paragraph I'm quoting below - all opposition in Russia has been crushed for good:
"What if Putin Didn’t Miscalculate?"
By Bret Stephens
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/ukraine-war-putin.html?referringSource=articleShare
"The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated."
"The conventional wisdom is entirely plausible. It has the benefit of vindicating the West’s strategy of supporting Ukraine defensively. And it tends toward the conclusion that the best outcome is one in which Putin finds some face-saving exit: additional Ukrainian territory, a Ukrainian pledge of neutrality, a lifting of some of the sanctions."
"But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong? What if the West is only playing into Putin’s hands once again?"
"When Western military analysts argue that Putin can’t win militarily in Ukraine, what they really mean is that he can’t win clean. Since when has Putin ever played clean?"
"Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine: that, from the beginning, his real targets were the energy riches of Ukraine’s east, which contain Europe’s second-largest known reserves of natural gas (after Norway’s)."
"Combine that with Russia’s previous territorial seizures in Crimea (which has huge offshore energy fields) and the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk (which contain part of an enormous shale-gas field), as well as Putin’s bid to control most or all of Ukraine’s coastline, and the shape of Putin’s ambitions become clear. He’s less interested in reuniting the Russian-speaking world than he is in securing Russia’s energy dominance."
"“Under the guise of an invasion, Putin is executing an enormous heist,” said Canadian energy expert David Knight Legg. As for what’s left of a mostly landlocked Ukraine, it will likely become a welfare case for the West, which will help pick up the tab for resettling Ukraine’s refugees to new homes outside of Russian control. In time, a Viktor Orban-like figure could take Ukraine’s presidency, imitating the strongman-style of politics that Putin prefers in his neighbors."
"If this analysis is right, then Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be."
"It also makes sense of his strategy of targeting civilians. More than simply a way of compensating for the incompetence of Russian troops, the mass killing of civilians puts immense pressure on Zelensky to agree to the very things Putin has demanded all along: territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality. The West will also look for any opportunity to de-escalate, especially as we convince ourselves that a mentally unstable Putin is prepared to use nuclear weapons."
"Within Russia, the war has already served Putin’s political purposes. Many in the professional middle class — the people most sympathetic to dissidents like Aleksei Navalny — have gone into self-imposed exile. The remnants of a free press have been shuttered, probably for good. To the extent that Russia’s military has embarrassed itself, it is more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below. Russia’s new energy riches could eventually help it shake loose the grip of sanctions."
 
 

Machor, thanks for your thoughts.  I was NOT in any way sending any shade your way.  It's always good to question our narratives.
I am always looking for an excuse to pee on Bret Stephens, though.  He has written some unbelievably stupid s--t and every time I see one of his pieces I consider cancelling my NYTimes subscription.  In this he comes up w a hypothesis that doesn't even fit the known facts.  It's astonishing.
An intelligent version of the article would have been "Putin can still pull a pyhhric victory out this by taking the natural gas fields and further emasculating his opposition".  But that's a long way off from being so stupid as to even dream this was some brilliant scheme.  This is a flaming fiasco but he still could end up taking things from Ukraine.  At great cost, insane cost.

Edit: I was recommended to ignore Bret Stephens after posting this; leaving the post up for the sake of my replies to danfrodo and Fenris.
I am not out to defend the article; my take from it is that the Kremlin may not be in such a bad place as we take them to be. The next stage of the war, and whether Ukraine will be able to liberate territories in the east and south (BBC live just writing Mariupol is about to fall) will be decisive.
A clamp down like the one that exists now would've been unthinkable before the war - even ordinary people are now afraid to voice dissent, certainly in public. That wasn't the case before; 'they' came after people like Navalny and activists, not Sergei and Lena next door. Of course, the war itself could have been waged differently.
I am reminded of Putin's public 'address' to Greta Thunberg: He's convinced the global South will never move away from fossil fuels, and China is now the top creditor of the global South. I can see how he could count on shifting to new markets.

Edit: I was recommended to ignore Bret Stephens after posting this; leaving the post up for the sake of my replies to danfrodo and Fenris.
I am not out to defend the article; my take from it is that the Kremlin may not be in such a bad place as we take them to be. The next stage of the war, and whether Ukraine will be able to liberate territories in the east and south (BBC live just writing Mariupol is about to fall) will be decisive.
A clamp down like the one that exists now would've been unthinkable before the war - even ordinary people are now afraid to voice dissent, certainly in public. That wasn't the case before; 'they' came after people like Navalny and activists, not Sergei and Lena next door. Of course, the war itself could have been waged differently.
I am reminded of Putin's public 'address' to Greta Thunberg: He's convinced the global South will never move away from fossil fuels, and China is now the top creditor of the global South. I can see how he could count on shifting to new markets.

A couple of things: 

1. Bret Stephens doesn't know anything at all about Russia. Zero. 
2. It's *very* early. The effects on the Russia economy have just begun, the war is still ongoing. 
3. Every war he fought before ended in victory. Not this one.
4. Every war he fought before didn't turn Russia into a pariah state. This one has and will.
5. It's very clear that there are strong divisions between the FSB/MOD/SVR/Presidential office that this war broke open.
6. Cargo 200 has just begun.
 
I could go on and on but you get the point. Stephens is a hack and you're better off ignoring him.

Russia is using area denial to defend. Neither Russia nor Ukraine had signed the Landmine treaty so it is no war-crime per se.

Looks like UKR UKR S-300PT battalion was wiped out on 24th of Feb. All assets destroyed in stowed position. Or this was just a parking for the faulty AD assets
  
 

This guy either immortal, or have steel balls, or just crazy stupid. Kyiv-Warsaw road, Borodianka area.