https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-admits-thwarting-ukraine-attack-not-activating-starlink-satellites-2023-9
He didn't think Starlink would be used for military purposes? Man is either deluded or a liar. Or a deluded liar.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-admits-thwarting-ukraine-attack-not-activating-starlink-satellites-2023-9
He didn't think Starlink would be used for military purposes? Man is either deluded or a liar. Or a deluded liar.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-admits-thwarting-ukraine-attack-not-activating-starlink-satellites-2023-9
He didn't think Starlink would be used for military purposes? Man is either deluded or a liar. Or a deluded liar.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-admits-thwarting-ukraine-attack-not-activating-starlink-satellites-2023-9
He didn't think Starlink would be used for military purposes? Man is either deluded or a liar. Or a deluded liar.
The one simple trick to understanding Musk is that he will do whatever he perceives to be in his self interest. Obviously, letting Ukraine use Starlink endeared him to the US government...upon whose contracts several of his companies depend. But he also has large Tesla manufacturing interests in China and that government was expressing strong concerns about Western aid to Ukraine at that time. Much of his wealth is tied to Tesla and it wouldn't take more than a Russian interlocutor mentioning Putin's conversations with Xi to put a deep chill into him.
The situation now, as I understand it, is that the USG locked him in contractually to avoid this sort of thing reoccurring but I would imagine the scrutiny of who at Starlink knows what about Ukrainian operations and who they may then be talking to will be going into overdrive. Musk's wealth is a pretty big vessel but in the end, the USA is the world's biggest glacier. He avoids running against it or he sinks.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-admits-thwarting-ukraine-attack-not-activating-starlink-satellites-2023-9
He didn't think Starlink would be used for military purposes? Man is either deluded or a liar. Or a deluded liar.
Worth to remember this short clip- Mordvichev is trying to position himself as hardliner and distance from putchists. But sole fact that this new narration of "collecting Russian lands" as historical mission is gradually being accepted by top muscovite militaries and wider society (and not just state propagandists) is telling by itself. Year after year it will become less fake and more genuine, even if they lose this war.
So it was just about time to start arming ourselves on Eastern NATO Flank.
I am just going to walk past without getting involved in this but, should I drop any thing over my shoulder as I go maybe it can go towards drawing a line under this whole sub-thread?
...
Whoops!
Clumsy me!
First evidences of Challenger 2 in action. But from what tanker told it becomes clear, why these tank were in the shadow.
This guy (he served on T-64, T-72, T-80) says, Challenger has very accurate gun and targeting system, which allows to hit enemy targets from very big ranges. This is tracked "sniper rifle", So, Challengers don't use like other tanks for "сarousel" and infantry support with HE shells. Challengers have a task to hit enemy armor from big distance in shoot&scoot way. Tanker also praises easy of service and repair works in comparison with Soviet tanks as well as these tanks give more chanses to survive after hit or even several hits.
Tanker also told about tanks increadibly raise infantry morale and if these are western tanks, morale increasing more high, so infantry then is ready to follow them and just kick off the enemy from the trenches with a legs.
I do have all the pre-2014 documents, both originals and digital backup scans in the cloud.
But it doesn't matter, because I have reasons to believe I may not reach your side of the border. Not particularly fond of the idea of figuring if I am wrong or not. I am 95% sure it's not gonna end well. So I stay put for now.
Uhm. I was born in Crimea ('89), so as my mother and grandparents. My father is originally from Russia, but came here also during Soviet era and was registered here with Ukrainian documents before 2014. I do have all the old documents, but I never left Crimea to renew them after 2014. It costs money, and there's always something more important, like dental, or clothes, or broken boiler. I was going to when I felt comfortable to properly resettle. But who cares? I've never collaborated nor commited any crimes. Those who did know it and take their own risks by staying.
I do get your point about documents disappearing when things blow up and burn, and it's a good one, but it's not like someone intends to repeat Soviet style deportations in the middle of the night with freight trains. Not the country commited to join the EU, at least. Ministry of reintegration and other state services have a lot of experience with this sort of thing by this point, I'm sure.
The ethnic hatred, on the other hand, is something to watch out for, definitely. I've identified myself as ethnically Russian my whole life. I speak Russian in my head 75% of the time. 20% my thoughts are in English, and sometimes I think like 5% in Ukrainian (mostly Poderev'yansky memes ;D).
After 24th February 2022, it suddenly became clear that ethnicity and even culture does not define me. I felt it in my gut and still do. Our actions define who we are. But also laws. By international law, and by Ukrainian law, I am Ukrainian citizen. Even if Estonians did not recognize me as such. That's who I am.
I do see your concerns as valid and they are worth the discussion.
What facts? All we have seen so far is opinion. Sure we have Ukrainian posters who assess “zero chance of insurgency” but I think it is fair to say they are not really in an objective position right now…and no one is going to blame them for that.
The only “facts” I can see are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea
This says based on 2014 census that 67.8 of the Crimean population identified as Russian. I seriously doubt that number went down in the last 10 years given the situation. Everything else being posed is pure speculation and opinion. The Russians will all leave. The West will invest billions into what could be a front line region in a hybrid war…hell we will be lucky if we can get countries to invest in western Ukraine if Russia is still being the a$$hats they are likely going to be. The logic of “well all the trouble makers will leave and only the ‘good’ Ukrainians or neutrals will stay while we drop billions into reconstruction is pretty tenuous at best.
This is not over hyping in the least. Overhyping is Tom Clancying the scenario where Russia start to support insurgency with WMDs. As a baseline going in we are talking about “liberating” a region that has been living under Russian governance for a decade. A region where we have seen some actions but no real insurgency or insurrection against Russian occupation for that same decade, even as this war unfolds.
As to previously already re-liberated regions simply rolling over. Well first of all we really do not know what they did [aside: Slovyansk has a population of about 100k, Crimea is over 2.2 million]. We do know LNR and DPR sent tens of thousands to fight the UA and I do not think they all did so at gunpoint. And second, how quickly we forget the problems with Russian sympathizers and actions at the beginning of this war (eg Kherson). And of course we have not discussed Russians simply sending “insurgents” over the border to make lives miserable…like they did the last time.
This is a highly complex situation rooted deeply in the human space and that is never simple or easy by any stretch. We are best prepared understanding the risks up front and ready to deal with them than pretending they can’t possibly happen.
Not so fast. Our TGs write UKR command of advancing brigades concerned with such rapid withdrawal of Russians - this can be a trap with flank strikes and artillery hammering of narrow front from all sides, so UKR troops should to expand own flanks enough in order to not to be cut off and encirlced. I notice, in Novoprokopivka in front of our troops already not Territorial troops mobiks and tired units of 42nd MRD, but fresh VDV units - 108th regimemt and two battalions of 56th regiment of 7th air-assault division. This is serious opponent.
Western partners say to us "Go, go, go! Winter is coming". I wish to our generals big patience and don't command to our troops in own turn "go, go, go!" like in June...
You mean how the Russians underestimated the readiness of Ukrainian local to “resist with their own hands”? Here is something the first month of this war taught us, and we should not forget…it doesn’t take too many enabled and empowered locals to really mess up a conventional military day. And it will be deeply in Russia’s interest to enable and empower them.
I think this assumption that the LNR/DPR citizenry are sheeple who will simply bow to whoever is extremely shortsighted and not supported by the 8 year war that happened before this one. Hey if they do roll over and happily accept reintegration that is great, but to bet the bank on that is not a risk, it is a gamble.
We can debate this round and round, but I simply do not agree that retaking Crimea and Donbas automatically lead to a Ukrainian total victory. In fact retaking would only happen after the decisive collapse of the entire RA in the theatre. Further, at that point the idea that Russia would 1) stop holding a grudge and 2) somehow be incapable of violent action within Ukraine in order to convince itself that the war was still on…are both very weak assumptions. Finally, the root of this war is not addressed by either retaking land or failure of the RA. That resides deeply in Russian conative frameworks that need to be re-wired completely and won’t be under the current regime.
The reason why this thinking on Crimea and Donbas is so wrong, in my opinion, is that if Ukraine does not retake these regions then the narrative quickly becomes one of defeat for Ukraine and that is toxic in western circles because we have backed so many losers in the last 30 years we are spooked by the very idea of it happening again.
Russia needs to negotiate with its own defeat, no one is going to be able to do it for them in this war. We are not in a war where force of arms will get Russia to accept anything. Force of the Russian people is another thing but as we can all see, we are not there yet. My greatest concern is that we are likely going to need a Plan B that includes rebuilding Ukraine and somehow pulling it into a security mechanism even if this war is still going on, which means real risk for the west…something we are not very good at right now. We took them all in the last two decades and got burned.
This is why how the coup went down made zero sense. How did Prog think this was going to end? He chases Putin out of Moscow and nearly made it to the gates. No way he gets to live after that. Some weird Belarusian drug deal with a Putin puppet was never going to work and everyone knew it.
I am back to the love affair theory. Putin helped Prig fake his death so they could get him out of the game. Putin knows Prig is really at the lake house and they plan to retire together there…kinda sweet except for the part of killing 10 other people.
Wonder if this might be why Girkin was picked up.
"Igor, I have a little job for you. You'll like it. It's right up your alley".
If not, I imagine by now Girkin is probably wishing he had turned himself in to the Hague when he still had the chance.
The cult of brutal force, which can establish some "order and rightness" always was popular among Russians long time ago. That's why important to beat Russians on battlefield and force to sign capitulation (any peace agreement on terms of Ukraine will be capitulation for Russians). This nation like a thugs understands only the language of violent beating up and humilitation. All other they will assume as a weakness of the opponent.
Ok, I think this is a a pretty common misconception. Yes, there was a smaller chance that Guardsmen both Army National Guard (ANG) and Air National Guard being activated and sent to Vietnam, it wasn’t a sure thing. The Air National Guard actually mobilized 11 units on January 25, 1968, a week before the Tet Offensive. Three more ANG units were mobilized on May 13. ANG units deployed to Vietnam and South Korea. Also on May 13, 34 Army National Guard units were mobilized, with many of their 12,234 members levied to active-duty units. Eight Army Guard units deployed intact to Vietnam, with the first arriving in August of 1968. That was just a few of the deployments.
There were other, less sure ways to avoid being sent to Vietnam, but it came down to being in the “right place at the right time.” Personal example; in 1969, I enlisted just before High School graduation, in the Marine Corps for four years (with an Aviation Guaranty as I had passed the entry tests with a high enough score) so I wouldn’t be drafted into the Army Infantry for two years which would have guaranteed being sent to Vietnam. In Recruit Training at Paris Island, S.C., my general college test scores were high enough to qualify for Aviation and for Marine Officer Candidate School. When I was offered OCS (without aviation) and a two-year extension of active duty (six years), I weighted my options and remained enlisted because I felt sure that I would graduate as a Second Lt. Rifle Platoon Leader and be sent straight to Vietnam, do not pass go, do not collect $200. When I was sent to Fleet Marine Corps, Western Pacific, I received orders in Okinawa. We were in a long line to receive orders and the orders were Chu Lai for about five sets, but mine were for Iwakuni , Japan. Our Phantoms were F-4 J models that were too new to be allowed to deploy to a war zone, so we never were. I simply lucked out on that one even though I tried to transfer to Chu Lai, but didn’t succeed because they stopped split tours.
I personally take exception to the concept that joining an “alternative” Service of any type was done simply to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Anyone could join the Guard if they tested high enough. So the politicians who spouted the “he joined the Guard to avoid Vietnam” were just spouting BS.
For what it’s worth, I actually researched the history of the region, and our involvement there, and will completely agree that the whole thing was a complete travesty and lie fostered by our top politicians.
Sorry for the wall of text Steve, but those types of “observations” tend to infuriate me.
Whoa, there buddy.
Both my wife and I are lifelong runners. She once described my legs to someone else as dangerously sexy. The same can be said of her. Even today at age 68, she has the legs of a 30 year old. (I'm 66 and we both still run). Last week I was halfway through a 5 mile run, passed a lady on the sidewalk, as I moved out into the street to pass her (I don't like brushing past people as they seldom here you coming and you can scare them half to death by saying "On your left"). Got about 50 feet past her, hopped back on the sidewalk, and she yells out "Great legs!!!"
Still got it. 🙂
So, engineers CAN be sexy. Even retired ones.
Funny thing was I was right near my turnaround point so I got to run back past her face-to-face this time. She did not seem embarrassed in the least, just smiled and waved.
Dave
PS - Our first date was a lunchtime run. We worked at adjacent companies. I ran to her front gate, we went for a nice run down by Long Island Sound, and chatted a lot along the way. Very public, so very safe.
When first modern western armor became to arrive in Ukraine, I've read some indignant posts of "veterane brigades" representatives, why Bradleys got 47th, which "sit on their asses on Belarusian border, when we barely hold the enemy on donated techniclas"
I wonder, who on Kofman's opinion had to hold frontline, when veteran brigades would be leave Ukraine for training on western vehicles? They gave opportunity to train several other brigades instead. Also what he meant under "veteran brigades"? The same 47th brigade has many brigade level commanders transferred from 93rd brigade. Also, there are problem with many veterans, especialy who fought long time in ATO - they have "old warrior" complex and they have a problems to learn new features. About this wrote Roman Donik, UKR volunteer, who established the center of intensive effective training for infantrimen and squad leaders. He told many of "olds" , arriving to the center believed initially their survival under fire and intuition experience is better than field manual tatic instructions. And not all of them could finish the course and some of them were dropped out. Also German instructors told sometime experienced UKR soldiers don't want to listen them and enter to the disputes (though, after "you should bypass minefield" I not wonder). So, in some aspect will be better to teach a soldier from "zero level civilian", then re-train "old" servicemen.
Economist
1843 magazine | Ukraine
How Ukraine’s virtually non-existent navy sank Russia’s flagship
The Moskva was the most advanced vessel in the Black Sea. But the Ukrainians had a secret weapon, reports Wendell Steavenson with Marta Rodionova
July 27th 2023
On the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, a flotilla of warships from the Russian Black Sea Fleet steamed out of its base in Sevastopol in occupied Crimea towards a small island 120km (75 miles) south of Odessa. This solitary speck of land, known as Snake Island, had strategic value beyond its size. If it were captured, the Russian navy would dominate the west of the Black Sea and threaten Ukraine’s coast. Snake Island housed a radar station and was garrisoned by a few dozen Ukrainian marines and border guards – no match for Russian ships.
Russian jets screamed overhead. A patrol boat began shelling the island, and smaller vessels full of Russian marines approached the jetty. The Ukrainian defenders knew they had little hope of resisting. They were armed only with rifles and a few rocket-propelled grenades. Over the horizon appeared the great shadowing hulk of the Moskva, the Russian flagship, 186 metres long and bristling with missiles. It demanded over the radio that the garrison surrender.
“Snake Island! I, a Russian warship, repeat our offer. Lay down your arms and surrender or you will be bombed. Have you understood? Do you copy?” On a recording of the exchange, one Ukrainian border guard can be heard remarking to another: “Well, that’s it then – or should we reply that they should **** off?” “Might as well,” said the second border guard. The first then uttered the riposte that would become a clarion call of Ukrainian resistance: “Russian warship, go **** yourself!” The Russians stormed the island and all communications with the defenders were lost.
The following day, a medical team set off to the island to retrieve the bodies of the Ukrainian soldiers, all of whom they presumed were dead. As they approached, their rescue vessel was hailed by a Russian ship and ordered to stop. Soon, a dozen members of the Russian special forces boarded their boat and detained those on board. A Russian officer pointed over his shoulder at the dark grey outline of the Moskva in the distance. “Do you see her?” he said. “You see how large she is, how powerful? She can destroy not only Snake Island but all of Ukraine!”
“Do you see her?” he said. “You see how large she is, how powerful? She can destroy not only Snake Island but all of Ukraine!”
Meanwhile the Russian army advanced from Crimea westwards along Ukraine’s southern coast. Everyone expected that the Russian navy would support it with an amphibious landing, either in Mykolaiv, a naval base and shipyard that was now on the front line, or – the great prize – Odessa, which housed the headquarters of the Ukrainian navy. The navy mined possible landing zones. In Odessa volunteers filled sandbags and strung bales of barbed wire to defend the beaches. Russian warships appeared so close that people could see them on the horizon.
In Berdiansk, farther to the east, the Russians had captured a dozen Ukrainian ships. The Ukrainians didn’t want to risk any more falling into the hands of the enemy. With a heavy heart, Oleksiy Neizhpapa, the head of the Ukrainian navy, ordered the scuttling in Mykolaiv harbour of his two largest ships, including his flagship. “This is a difficult decision for any commander,” he told me. The Ukrainian navy was now reduced to around three dozen vessels, mostly patrol and supply boats.
Russian warships manoeuvred close to the coast, seeking to draw fire in order to make the Ukrainians reveal their artillery positions. Then they retreated out of range and targeted Ukrainian defences and command posts with missiles. The Moskva, the largest vessel of the Russian attack force, provided air cover which allowed the other ships to operate unmolested. Commercial shipping was throttled by the presence of Russia’s ships and mines. Ukraine, the fifth-largest exporter of wheat in the world, was unable to transport any grain.
Neizhpapa lost a number of officers and men in those perilous days. Crucially, though, radar installations, which allowed the Ukrainians to identify the position of Russian ships, escaped unharmed. Neizhpapa realised that he had one, untested weapon that might drive the Russian threat away from the coast. “We were counting on this being a factor of surprise for the enemy,” he said. “I was very worried that the enemy would know about it. After all, the enemy had a lot of agents on the territory of Ukraine. I was concerned about keeping it as secret as possible – and then, of course, using it.”
The Moskva, launched in 1983 under the name Slava, was one of three warships in her class to enter service. They were built in Mykolaiv in the last decade of the Soviet Union and designed to sink the ships of us navy carrier strike groups. Its American equivalent has a wider array of weapons but the Slava-class has missiles with a greater range, rendering her potentially more dangerous in a duel. The Soviet navy was proud of the Slava-class ships and sailors vied to serve on them. The cabins were comparatively large and there was a swimming pool in which the crew could decompress during the months at sea.
A messy process of disentangling naval assets began after Ukrainian independence. Russia and Ukraine divided the Soviet Black Sea Fleet between them. Russia got 80% of the ships, Ukraine 20%
The Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which welcomed the Moskva, also employed Neizhpapa’s father, who served as an officer on a rescue vessel. Neizhpapa himself was born in 1975 and grew up in Sevastopol. As a child, he drew pictures of warships and dreamed of becoming a sailor too. The Soviet Union was collapsing as Neizhpapa entered adulthood. He chose to stay in Sevastopol for naval school, rather than go to St Petersburg to study. Neizhpapa means “Don’t-eat-bread” in Cossack dialect. The name identified him as Ukrainian at a time when national identities were re-emerging. Ukraine became independent in 1991, and Neizhpapa was certain where his loyalties lay. “I realised that I did not want to serve Russia,” he said.
During Neizhpapa’s first year at naval school, Russians and Ukrainians studied together, but when the cadets were required to take an oath of allegiance, those who chose Russia left for training in St Petersburg. A messy process of disentangling naval assets also began after Ukrainian independence. Russia and Ukraine divided the Soviet Black Sea Fleet between them. Russia got 80% of the ships, Ukraine 20%. The two countries continued to share naval bases and there were even cases of brothers serving on different sides. Relations between the cohabiting fleets shifted according to the politics of the day, becoming more strained in the aftermath of Ukraine’s Orange revolution in 2004 and warmer when Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian president, came to power in 2010. There were tensions over money – salaries in the Russian navy were much higher – and sometimes with the local authorities. (The Ukrainian police would let off Ukrainians for traffic violations but fine the Russians.)
In 2012 Neizhpapa, by then a captain, was invited on board the Moskva, which had become the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. He remembers the imposing size of the vessel, its foredeck canted upwards to attack. It was armed with 16 huge missile-launchers, as large as aircraft fuselages. The command tower was flanked with the domes, curved dishes and antennae of several radar systems, and the deck swooped towards a helicopter pad overhanging the stern.
When he stepped aboard, Neizhpapa “felt pride and tradition and also a certain power in the cruiser. I would have never guessed that within a couple of years my naval forces would sink it.”
On April 13th 2022, Neizhpapa received information that the Moskva had been located 115km off the coast. The vice admiral is tall and imposing with steel close-cut hair and bright blue eyes that seem to reflect some distant, sunny sea. Mild-mannered but military-correct, he would not be drawn on how the Ukrainians found the Moskva. “I can’t answer your question in much detail, but I can tell you that it was identified specifically by the Ukrainian naval forces,” he said.
It’s difficult to find warships at sea, not least because they are designed to hide. A ship can go quiet – turning off communications equipment so broadcasts cannot be intercepted – or use camouflage to make it difficult to see from above. Satellites can spot a ship only when their orbit passes overhead and most of them cannot penetrate cloud cover. Even when skies are clear, large warships are mere mites of grey on a vast grey ocean.
Most radar is limited to a range of 20-30km. It can transmit and receive electromagnetic pulses from objects only in its direct line of sight. Anything below the horizon remains invisible, in the radar’s so-called shadow. The Moskva remained on the other side of Snake Island, over 100km away.
Neizhpapa and other naval sources were understandably reluctant to furnish details on when and how they found the Moskva. According to their version of the story, low cloud cover that day meant that radar pulses were reflected in such a way that extended their reach far beyond their normal range. “The warship was found by two radar stations on the coast,” an insider told us. “We were so lucky.”
But Chris Carlson, a retired captain in the us navy and one of the designers of the naval-war game, “Harpoon V”, which is used to train armed forces around the world, believes that other methods were employed. “I have a hard time attributing it to just plain old luck,” he told me. He suggested that, even if a coastal radar station managed to ping the Moskva, the information relayed by the echo over such a distance would have been insufficient to identify the ship or target it effectively. Carlson pointed out that in 2021 Ukraine had announced that its advanced over-the-horizon radar system, called the Mineral-U, had completed factory testing. It’s possible that the navy rushed it into active service, even though the Ukrainians – given the need for wartime secrecy – have never admitted that they possess this capability. Neizhpapa said that this was not the first time the Ukrainians had spotted the Moskva and other warships.
The Ukrainians had also deployed Bayraktars – Turkish-made drones that became cult icons in the early months of the war – against the Russian fleet for observation, distraction and attack. It’s possible that a drone may have spotted the Moskva. In private, Western military sources have hinted that the Ukrainians had more help in locating the Moskva than they like to admit. American military sources have confirmed that they were asked to verify Ukraine’s sighting of the Moskva, which they probably did through a maritime-surveillance aircraft. It was clear, however, from the predictable changes of position made by the Moskva, that her crew believed she was invisible.
The Ukrainian navy went into the war with a depleted force. After the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia seized much of the Ukrainian fleet, including 12 of the 17 ships moored in Sevastopol at the time. Training schools, artillery batteries and munition stores were claimed by the Russians. A cohort of Ukrainian naval officers, including three admirals, defected. Neizhpapa, who was at home in Sevastopol, was recalled to Odessa. He made it across the new de-facto border crammed into a car with his wife, two sons, the Ukrainian navy’s head of military communications and all the belongings they could fit. As they crossed to safety, Neizhpapa had a “feeling that I had been in captivity and was free at home”.
The Russians began to modernise their newly strengthened Black Sea Fleet; the Moskva was upgraded and ship-to-ship Vulkan missiles installed. These had a range of over 500km, which allowed them to target cities too. The Ukrainian fleet had been reduced to a handful of ships: one frigate and a few dozen smaller craft. The war in Donbas between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists stagnated into a stalemate and sucked up much of the armed forces’ attention and resources. When Neizhpapa was made commander of the navy in 2020 by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had been elected the previous year, there was no money or time to build new ships. Neizhpapa decided that what he needed most of all were radar systems for surveillance, minefields for coastal defence and long-range missiles, which Ukraine had also lost in Crimea.
The Luch Design Bureau in Kyiv, a state-owned munitions developer since Soviet times, had begun work on the Neptune, a subsonic shore-to-ship missile system, shortly after the loss of Crimea. Based on an old Soviet design, the Neptune would have a range of over 200km. It was ready to be tested around the time Neizhpapa assumed command. A technical expert involved in the design, who didn’t want to be identified, showed me a video on his phone of one of the first live-fire tests. An old rusty tanker had been towed out to sea as a target and a small crowd of engineers and naval officers gathered in a field close to the launcher to await the results. When the news came that the tanker had been successfully hit, they clapped and hugged each other.
Yet the government dragged its feet on funding production and it took an intervention by Zelensky himself for manufacturing to begin. “I was in this meeting,” said the technical expert. “He was intelligent, he understood that we had only three or four [operationally effective] ships in the Ukrainian navy and that it was not enough to protect the coastline.”
Production began in early 2021. The first battery – comprising two command vehicles and four launch vehicles, each able to transport and fire four missiles – had been built in time to join the annual military parade in Kyiv on August 24th, Ukrainian Independence Day. That December, Neizhpapa announced that six batteries would be deployed to the southern coast the following spring.
On the morning of February 24th 2022, the technical expert woke to the sound of “shooting everywhere, helicopter attacks everywhere”. Russia had invaded and the Neptune batteries were still parked near Kyiv; they were in jeopardy from seizure by Russian soldiers. The technical expert’s superiors told him to transport the missile systems to the south of the country. It took three days for the launch vehicles to reach the coast. “We were worried because they were very visibly military vehicles,” said the expert. The missiles themselves were sent later, hidden in trucks.
The Neptunes were first fired in March 2022 at Russian landing craft. In April, they probably targeted a Russian frigate called the Admiral Essen – that month she was retired from service for a few weeks, suggesting that the damage sustained was slight – and at smaller ships threatening Mykolaiv. A number of sources suggested the Neptunes were not wholly successful. The system was untested in combat and there were teething problems: with the radar, with parts failing, with the software for identifying targets. The technical expert told us that the missiles had been launched from the west of Odessa at a high altitude, which would have made them more easily detectable by Russian radar. “We don’t know exactly what happened,” he said, “but it seems the missiles were intercepted.” Engineers were dispatched to fix the problems.
Once the location of the Moskva had been confirmed on April 13th, Neizhpapa ordered two Neptune missiles to be fired at it. The technical expert showed me a video on his phone of what he claimed was the launch of the missiles that day. The launcher truck was parked in a thin line of trees with bare branches. At ignition, the cap of the launching tube, which looks like the lid of a rubbish bin, was dispelled from the barrel and crashed into a field of green spring wheat. A fiery roar and a trail of black smoke followed. Then the second missile was launched.
A fiery roar and a trail of black smoke followed. Then the second missile was launched.
Silence reigned in Neizhpapa’s command centre. The Neptune, which is five metres long, flies at 900km per hour and is designed to skim ten metres above the surface of the sea in order to avoid detection. Neizhpapa watched the clock tick through the six minutes that it was supposed to take to reach the target. For a long time nothing seemed to happen. Then Russian radio channels erupted in chatter. It was apparent that smaller ships were hurrying towards the Moskva. The radio traffic was garbled and panicked. Neizhpapa inferred that the ship had been hit.
It didn’t take long for news to spread. “People started calling me from all over Ukraine,” Neizhpapa said. “There was only one question: ‘Did it sink or not?’ I said, ‘I can’t answer that!’ Hours passed. I was constantly asked the same thing. I joked I wanted to get on a boat myself and go and look. I said, ‘Do you realise that this is a very big ship? Even if it was hit by both missiles, it wouldn’t sink immediately.’”
Some hours later, satellites spotted a large red thermal image in the middle of the sea. Officials from nato phoned Neizhpapa, he recalled, “to say that they saw something burning beautifully”.
The only publicly available film taken of the Moskva after she was hit is three seconds long. The sea is calm, the sky pale grey. The full length of the ship is visible as she lists sharply to one side, thick black smoke billowing from the foredeck. Her life rafts are gone, suggesting that surviving crew members had been evacuated. The camera falls away sharply as a voice is heard saying, in Russian, “What the **** are you doing?”
It’s apparent from the film that the two Neptune missiles struck the Moskva near the foredeck on her port side, just above the waterline. The fire may have been caused by the missiles themselves, or fuel tanks or ammunition magazines in that part of the ship which ignited. We may never know exactly what happened but the attack clearly caused the Moskva to lose power and propulsion. Sometime in the early hours of April 14th she rolled over and sank.
Why had the Moskva, which had capable radar and surface-to-air missiles, failed to detect and intercept the incoming Neptunes? Carlson, the naval expert, has dug into the possible reasons. The ship was in dry dock for repairs several times over the past decade but upgrades to her weapons and operating systems seem to have been delayed or done piecemeal. A readiness report, briefly posted online in early 2022 before being removed from the internet, showed that many systems were broken or not fully functional. “All her major weapons systems had gripes,” said Carlson on a podcast last year. Moreover, the Moskva’s radar and targeting tools were not entirely automated and relied heavily on well-trained operators. But over half the ship’s crew, which numbered 500, were conscripts who served only a year. In consequence, the sailors “had extremely limited training which would be considered woefully insufficient by Western standards,” said Carlson. “The Moskva was not properly prepared to be doing combat operations.” This was yet another example of complacency by the Russian armed forces that has been evident throughout the war. Even so, Carlson was astonished that none of her radars appeared to have spotted the incoming missiles.
Officials from NATO phoned Neizhpapa, he recalled, “to say that they saw something burning beautifully
Once the Neptunes struck, the crew seems, in a panic, to have left watertight doors unsecured. Studying a screenshot of the Moskva on fire, Carlson observed that “you can see smoke coming out of the shutter doors for the torpedo tubes...That tells me that the smoke had a clear path, and if the smoke had a clear path so did water and so [did] flame.”
The Russians have never admitted that Neptune missiles were responsible for sinking the Moskva; they claimed she suffered an accidental fire at sea. But only a few days later, they bombed a Luch Design Bureau facility in Kyiv in apparent retaliation. The Russian authorities have also never been open about the number of casualties, but up to 250 sailors may have died. On November 4th 2022, more than six months after the sinking, a court in Sevastopol declared 17 of the missing dead.
Despite the reports of their heroic deaths, the defenders of Snake Island were in fact alive. They were taken captive and held in prison in Crimea before being transferred to a prison in Belograd, a city near the border with Ukraine. Conditions were brutal. Temperatures fell to -20°C, yet the prisoners were housed in tents for the first few days. Frequently, they were interrogated, beaten and electrocuted. They had no news of the outside world, beyond the names of the cities captured by the Russians, with which the guards taunted them.
One day, the prisoners overheard a news report on the guards’ radio saying that the Moskva “was not floating properly”. The expression puzzled them for a while, before they realised that it was a euphemism for “sunk”. They began to cheer. “The Russians increased our torture,” said one of them, who was later returned in a prisoner exchange, “but this was a great moment of happiness.”
The sinking of the Moskva was a turning point in the war. Neizhpapa said that “our fleet, which was considered non-existent a year ago, is now winning against the larger force, thought to be unbeatable.” nato allies began to take the Ukrainian navy seriously. Ukraine has limited stocks of Neptunes but the Danes and Americans are supplying Harpoon missiles, which are similar to the Neptune but carry a bigger warhead. Previously, Neizhpapa admitted, this kind of weapon and support would have been a “dream”.
Sometime in the early hours of April 14th she rolled over and sank.
Having destroyed the air-defence umbrella that the Moskva provided, the Ukrainian navy was able to harass the Russian navy in the west of the Black Sea with drones and missiles, damaging and sinking supply ships, and destroying air defences and radar stations installed on gas platforms. In June 2022 Ukraine retook Snake Island and the Russian Black Sea Fleet withdrew towards Crimea, leaving the Ukrainian coast safe from amphibious assault. Turkey and the United Nations were able to broker a deal to allow ships into Ukrainian ports to export grain. “Now,” said Neizhpapa, “they keep their ships outside of the range of our cruise missiles” – even state-of-the-art frigates that are armed up to the gunwales.
The Ukrainian coast has been secured. Neizhpapa pointed out an area of 25,000 square kilometres where neither the Russians nor Ukrainians can now operate freely. “There’s a certain kind of status quo that we need to take over,” he said. Neizhpapa maintains that the only way to secure peace in the Black Sea is to throw the Russians out of Crimea. “In imperial times, all of the emperors always said that whoever controls Crimea controls the Black Sea. In Soviet times, they called Crimea the aircraft-carrier that cannot be sunk. Nothing has changed since then.”
I asked Neizhpapa what he missed about his home. He gazed upwards for a moment. “Honestly, I miss the sea near Crimea the most. It’s not the same as here. It’s brighter, more transparent.”
Wendell Steavenson has reported on post-Soviet Georgia, the Iraq war and the Egyptian revolution. You can read her previous dispatches from the war in Ukraine for 1843 magazine, and the rest of our coverage here. Marta Rodionova has worked as a television journalist and creative producer.
If the USA invaded Mexcio to enact regime change and instead suffered a string of embarrassing defeats, lost an aircraft carrier, was forced to rely heavily on Blackwater only for them to attempt a coup and had lost it's military reputation along with international influence, narrative control and huge numbers of men and military hardware...
I don't think anyone would think the US was winning because they were squatting in the northern half of Chihuahua. They've still lost, incurring significant all-spectrum damage in the process.
Of course, Mexico might be unable to regain it's international borders and a frozen conflict might develop... but that isn't going to make the US less crippled and Mexico less undefeated.
Khmelnitskiy military-civil administration claimed Kinzhals, which attacked their oblast and Starokostiantyniv airfield, were shot down. Fragments fell down, damaging private house and several cars. No photos, no AIr Force Commans confimations yet. If it will be confirmed, I will update shot down picture
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