Grossman
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Posts posted by Grossman
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6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Thanks for helping us unravel the various threads regarding China and Russia. As the old saying goes, "it's complicated".
From what we can tell the official Chinese position on dealing with Russia is to secure the best deals for China at the expense of Russia. This is not debatable, it is fact. It goes back to 2014 when Russia was desperate to open up new energy markets due to economic pressure from Europe. Russia signed deals which obligated it to pay for all the infrastructure and also give China a price break. Similar deals have been publicly discussed since 2022.
As mentioned, the West gives away billions to Ukraine while China takes billions from Russia. If China believes it is in its best interests to keep Russia strong, they have a funny way of going about it.
Steve
After Biden met Xi in Woodside, California in November, the Chinese backed off their export of technical electronics to the Russia.. I don't know what was agreed in private, or what undertakings were made, but this what occurred. One suspects Biden made an undertaking re Taiwan in return.
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3 views on the Ukraine War 2024
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12 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
You remembered this correctly for sure. I was certainly one of the voices urging caution. Well, except for the very beginning when a coup would likely have resulted in more moderates in power. Then there was a long period where the ultra-nationalists would likely have taken over and that could have been worse for Ukraine.
But now, I think all possible better scenarios we could have realistically hoped for have died. Now we're looking at a Russia that is solidly out to reestablish the old imperial/Soviet order. That's not something the world should tolerate.
The plus side, though, is whomever replaces Putin is likely to be far less skilled at keeping the government functioning. Which will mean, at the least, a quicker path to state collapse. Which then puts us into a scenario where a breakup becomes more likely than not.
I think Russia breaking up is inevitable. It's more inevitable than a positive coup. Because of that, probably the sooner the breakup happens the better.
Steve
It would only happen if the US stays the course. It is unbelievable the Republicans are playing such games on funding
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An angle how things may turn out: 2024 may be a holding year; a year of consolidation. ( although a test may come in January as the Danes are due to inspect Russian oil tankers using the Danish Strait). The US and the EU tighten sanctions, and increase armaments production. Training continues on the F16. Biden and the EU are still able to get substantial amounts of weaponry to UKR but not enough to make a difference. The EU and US harden their position on the war that must be won. The Democrats win big in November, controlling all US arms of government. The US then commits to a major rearming of UKR along with air cover. The big test comes in 2025.
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Maj Gen Vladimir Zavadsky, the deputy commander of Russia’s 14th Army Corps, has been confirmed killed in Ukraine, said the governor of Russia’s Voronezh region, Alexander Gusev. He said Zavadsky had died “at a combat post in the special operation zone”, but further details have not been released. Source: UK Guardian
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It's hard to see how the Russian war will not involve Germany to a much greater extend and increasingly the EU as an existential threat to Europe and its civilisation, the foundation of boundaries etc. Putin has kicked off a war that will have lasting and long repercussions, all not positive to Russia
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Germany’s aid for Ukraine will be “massively expanded” next year, the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has said. She said: “We will not only continue our support for Ukraine, we will continue to expand and increase it, especially on the part of the Federal Republic of Germany, not only with a view to the winter defence for the coming weeks and months, when it is clear that the Russian president will once again exploit the needs of the people in the cold winter. “Our support will also be massively expanded, especially for the coming year.” Source UK Guardian
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10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Holy crap! Talk about not knowing WTF he was talking about at the time. I checked our internal discussion that was following the revolution and the first couple years of the war and his name didn't turn up in it. We pilloried a lot of journalists back then so it looks like we missed one.
Well, the article was pessimistic and grim, definitely a predetermined effort to view the glass as half empty. Other than that, though, I didn't see anything screamingly wrong about it.
It's pretty clear that Ukraine needs to rest, but I agree it can't do so with a cease fire. I think what it is aiming to do, and it is what I'd do in their shoes, is make sure that every day that goes by some number of millions of Dollars of Russia's equipment gets destroyed and its ability to sustain forces at the front degrades. It could be that a sort of hybrid conventional/resistance model might work.
As per the X posting above... I still do not believe time is on Russia's side. I've been making this point since the first days of the war. Russia is an occupation force that is being actively, and effectively, challenged by. That makes it unsustainable and that means time is not on Russia's side. The problem with this is that time is not necessarily on Ukraine's side either. Which is also a point I still believe in.
Steve
Besides. Europe, Ukraine and the Europeans cannot afford a ceasefire. The invasion is defining the EU border. And no-one can afford to have the Russians in Crimea, dominating the Black Sea and the trade routes. All know this, the Germans particularly. Russia has proven to be a very bad apple, has to be pushed back to its borders and left to rot, it save itself. It will be a long conflict, which will be decided in the end up logistics, economics and men. Russia is not favoured in either.
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Oleg Tsaryov once said to be the potential leader of a Kremlin controlled puppet government in Ukraine shot twice by unknown assailant.
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Russia raises interest rates to 15%, citing high inflation, weak rouble ( the Russian economy is in some trouble)
Russia’s central bank raised interest rates by 2 percentage points to 15 per cent on Friday, higher than the 14 per cent analysts had predicted, citing high inflation and the weak rouble as it hiked for the fourth consecutive meeting.
The bank said inflationary pressure had risen “significantly” to outstrip its forecasts, driven by demand for imports and ballooning spending amid western sanctions over president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has hiked rates by 7.5 percentage points since July, when the rouble briefly weakened beyond 100 to the dollar.
Policymakers have since taken steps to stabilise the currency after calls from Putin, including ramping up capital controls this month for the first time since the war’s early days last year.
Source FT
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8 hours ago, Joe982 said:
I can't read the article, therefore, we have seen fires across Russia in the last 18 months. Does the article imply Ukranian operations?
Here is the piece
KYIV — The cluttered car carrying a mother and her 12-year-old daughter seemed barely worth the attention of Russian security officials as it approached a border checkpoint. But the least conspicuous piece of luggage — a crate for a cat — was part of an elaborate, lethal plot. Ukrainian operatives had installed a hidden compartment in the pet carrier, according to security officials with knowledge of the operation,and used it to conceal components of a bomb.
Four weeks later, the device detonated just outside Moscow in an SUV being driven by the daughter of a Russian nationalist who had urged his country to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians, an explosion signaling that the heart of Russia would not be spared the carnage of war.
The operation was orchestrated by Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU, according to officials who provided details, including the use of the pet crate, that have not been previously disclosed. The August 2022 attack is part of a raging shadow war in which Ukraine’s spy services have also twice bombed the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea, piloted drones into the roof of the Kremlin and blown holes in the hulls of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea.
These operations have been cast as extreme measures Ukraine was forced to adopt in response to Russia’s invasion last year. In reality, they represent capabilities that Ukraine’s spy agencies have developed over nearly a decade — since Russia first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014 — a period during which the services also forged deep new bonds with the CIA.
The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said. The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and shared intelligence on a scale that would have been unimaginable before Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. The CIA maintains a significant presence in Kyiv, officials said.
The extent of the CIA’s involvement with Ukraine’s security services has not previously been disclosed. U.S. intelligence officials stressed that the agency has had no involvement in targeted killing operations by Ukrainian agencies, and that its work has focused on bolstering those services’ abilities to gather intelligence on a dangerous adversary. A senior intelligence official said that “any potential operational concerns have been conveyed clearly to the Ukrainian services.”
Many of Ukraine’s clandestine operations have had clear military objectives and contributed to the country’s defense. The car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, however, underscored Ukraine’s embrace of what officials in Kyiv refer to as “liquidations” as a weapon of war. Over the past 20 months, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia. Those killed include a former Russian submarine commander jogging in a park in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and a militant blogger at a cafe in St. Petersburg, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
Ukraine’s affinity for lethal operations has complicated its collaboration with the CIA, raising concerns about agency complicity and creating unease among some officials in Kyiv and Washington.
Even those who see such lethal missions as defensible in wartime question the utility of certain strikes and decisions that led to the targeting of civilians including Dugina or her father, Alexander Dugin — who officials acknowledge was the intended mark — rather than Russians more directly linked to the war.
“We have too many enemies who are more important to neutralize,” said a high-ranking Ukraine security official. “People who launch missiles. People who committed atrocities in Bucha.” Killing the daughter of a pro-war firebrand is “very cynical,” the official said.
Others cited broader concerns about Ukraine’s cutthroat tactics that may seem justified now — especially against a country accused of widespread war atrocities — but could later prove difficult to rein in.
“We are seeing the birth of a set of intelligence services that are like Mossad in the 1970s,” said a former senior CIA official, referring to the Israeli spy service long accused of carrying out assassinations in other countries. Ukraine’s proficiency at such operations “has risks for Russia,” the official said, “but it carries broader risks as well.”
“If Ukraine’s intelligence operations become even bolder — targeting Russians in third countries, for example — you could imagine how that might cause rifts with partners and come into serious tension with Ukraine’s broader strategic goals,” the official said. Among those goals is membership in NATO and the European Union.
This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Ukrainian, U.S. and Western intelligence and security officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity citing security concerns as well as the sensitivity of the subject. The pressure on Kyiv to score victories against Russia and find ways to deter further aggression create incentives to exaggerate the record and capabilities of Ukraine’s services. The Post vetted key details with multiple sources including Western officials with access to independent streams of intelligence.
The CIA declined to comment.
CIA-Ukraine partnership
SBU and GUR officials describe their expanding operational roles as the result of extraordinary circumstances. “All targets hit by the SBU are completely legal,” the agency’s director, Vasyl Malyuk, said in a statement provided to The Post. The statement did not specifically address targeted killings but Malyuk, who met with top CIA and other U.S. officials in Washington last month, said Ukraine “does everything to ensure that fair punishment will ‘catch up’ with all traitors, war criminals and collaborators.”
Current and former U.S. and Ukrainian officials said both sides have sought to maintain a careful distance between the CIA and the lethal operations carried out by its partners in Kyiv. CIA officials have voiced objections after some operations, officials said, but the agency has not withdrawn support.
“We never involved our international partners in covert operations, especially behind the front lines,” a former senior Ukrainian security official said. SBU and GUR operatives were not accompanied by CIA counterparts. Ukraine avoided using weapons or equipment that could be traced to U.S. sources, and even covert funding streams were segregated.
“We had a lot of restrictions about working with the Ukrainians operationally,” said a former U.S. intelligence official. The emphasis was “more on secure communications and tradecraft,” and pursuing new streams of intelligence inside Russia “rather than ‘here’s how you blow up a mayor.’ I never got the sense that we were that involved in designing their ops.”
Even so, officials acknowledged that boundaries were occasionally blurred. CIA officers in Kyiv were made aware of some of Ukraine’s more ambitious plans for strikes. In some cases, including the bombing of the Kerch Bridge, U.S. officials registered concerns.
Ukraine’s spies developed their own lines about which operations to discuss and which to keep under wraps. “There were some things that maybe we wouldn’t talk about” with CIA counterparts, said a second Ukraine security official involved in such missions. He said crossing those boundaries would lead to a terse reply from Americans: “We don’t want any part of that.”
The CIA’s deep partnership with Ukraine, which persisted even when the country became embroiled in the impeachment scandal surrounding President Donald Trump, represents a dramatic turn for agencies that spent decades on opposing sides of the Cold War. In part because of that legacy, officials said, it was only last year that the CIA removed Ukraine from the agency’s “non-fraternization” list of countries regarded as such security risks that contact with their nationals for agency employees is forbidden without advance permission.
The CIA-Ukraine collaboration took root in the aftermath of 2014 political protests that prompted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych to flee the country, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its arming of separatists in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The initial phases of cooperation were tentative, officials said, given concerns on both sides that Ukraine’s services were still heavily penetrated by the FSB — the Russian agency that is the main successor to the KGB. To manage that security risk, the CIA worked with the SBU to create an entirely new directorate, officials said, one that would focus on so-called “active measures” operations against Russia and be insulated from other SBU departments.
The new unit was prosaically dubbed the “Fifth Directorate” to distinguish it from the four long-standing units of the SBU. A sixth directorate has since been added, officials said, to work with Britain’s MI6 spy agency.
Training sites were located outside Kyiv where handpicked recruits were instructed by CIA personnel, officials said. The plan was to form units “capable of operating behind front lines and working as covert groups,” said a Ukrainian official involved in the effort.
The agency provided secure communications gear, eavesdropping equipment that allowed Ukraine to intercept Russian phone calls and emails, and even furnished disguises and separatist uniforms enabling operatives to more easily slip into occupied towns.
The early missions focused on recruiting informants among Russia’s proxy forces as well as cyber and electronic eavesdropping measures, officials said. The SBU also began mounting sabotage operations and missions to capture separatist leaders and Ukrainian collaborators, some of whom were taken to secret detention sites.
But the operations soon took a lethal turn. Over one three-year stretch, at least half a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking separatist commanders or collaborators were killed in violence that was often attributed to internal score-settling but in reality was the work of the SBU, Ukraine officials said.
Among those killed was Yevgeny Zhilin, the leader of a pro-Russian militant group in eastern Ukraine, who was gunned down in 2016 in a Moscow restaurant. A year later, a rebel commander known as ‘Givi’ was killed in Donetsk as part of an operation in which a woman who accused him of rape was enlisted to plant a bomb at his side, according to a former official involved in the mission.
Ukrainian officials said the country’s turn to more lethal methods was driven by Russian aggression, atrocities attributed to its proxies and desperation to find ways to weaken a more powerful adversary. Many also cited Russia’s own alleged history of conducting assassinations in Kyiv.
“Because of this hybrid war we faced an absolutely new reality,” said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who served as SBU director in 2015, when the Fifth Directorate was created. “We were forced to train our people in a different way.”
He declined to elaborate.
Transforming Ukrainian military intelligence
Even while helping to build the SBU’s new directorate, the CIA embarked on a far more ambitious project with Ukraine’s military intelligence service.
With fewer than 5,000 employees, the GUR was a fraction of the size of the SBU and had a narrower focus on espionage and active measures operations against Russia. It also had a younger workforce with fewer holdovers from Soviet times, while the SBU was still perceived as penetrated by Russian intelligence.
“We calculated that GUR was a smaller and more nimble organization where we could have more impact,” said a former U.S. intelligence official who worked in Ukraine. “GUR was our little baby. We gave them all new equipment and training.” GUR officers “were young guys not Soviet-era KGB generals,” the official said, “while the SBU was too big to reform.”
Even recent developments have seemed to validate such concerns. Former SBU director Ivan Bakanov was forced out of the job last year amid criticism that the agency wasn’t moving aggressively enough against internal traitors. The SBU also discovered last year that Russian-made modems were still being used in the agency’s networks, prompting a scramble to unplug them.
From 2015 on, the CIA embarked on such an extensive transformation of the GUR that within several years “we had kind of rebuilt it from scratch,” the former U.S. intelligence official said. One of the main architects of the effort, who served as CIA station chief in Kyiv, now runs the Ukraine Task Force at CIA headquarters.
The GUR began recruiting operatives for its own new active measures department, officials said. At sites in Ukraine and, later, the United States, GUR operatives were trained on skills ranging from clandestine maneuvers behind enemy lines to weapons platforms and explosives. U.S. officials said the training was aimed at helping Ukrainianoperatives protect themselves in dangerous Russian-controlled environments rather than inflicting harm on Russian targets.
Some of the GUR’s newest recruits were transfers from the SBU, officials said, drawn to a rival service flush with new authorities and resources. Among them was Vasyl Burba, who had managed SBU Fifth Directorate operations before joining the GUR and serving as agency director from 2016 to 2020. Burba became such a close ally of the CIA — and perceived Moscow target — that when he was forced from his job after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s election the agency provided him an armored vehicle, officials said. Burba declined to comment for this article.
The CIA helped the GUR acquire state-of-the-art surveillance and electronic eavesdropping systems, officials said. They included mobile equipment that could be placed along Russian-controlled lines in eastern Ukraine, but also software tools used to exploit the cellphones of Kremlin officials visiting occupied territory from Moscow. Ukrainianofficers operated the systems, officials said, but everything gleaned was shared with the Americans.
Concerned that the GUR’s aging facilities were likely compromised by Russian intelligence, the CIA paid for new headquarters buildings for the GUR’s “spetsnaz” paramilitary division and a separate directorate responsible for electronic espionage.
The new capabilities were transformative, officials said.
“In one day we could intercept 250,000 to 300,000 separate communications” from Russian military and FSB units, said a former senior GUR official. “There was so much information that we couldn’t manage it ourselves.”
Troves of data were relayed through the new CIA-built facility back to Washington, where they were scrutinized by CIA and NSA analysts, officials said.
“We were giving them the ability — through us — to collect on” Russian targets, the former GUR official said. Asked about the magnitude of the CIA investments, the official said: “It was millions of dollars.”
In time, the GUR had also developed networks of sources in Russia’s security apparatus, including the FSB unit responsible for operations in Ukraine. In a measure of U.S.-Ukraine trust, officials said, the CIA was permitted to have direct contact with agents recruited and run by Ukrainian intelligence.
The resulting intelligence windfall was largely hidden from public view, with intermittent exceptions. The SBU began posting incriminating or embarrassing communications intercepts, including one in whichRussian commanders were captured discussing their country’s culpability in the 2014 shoot-down of a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet.
Even so, officials said the intelligence obtained through the U.S.-Ukraine cooperation had its limits. The Biden administration’s prescient warnings about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determination to topple the Kyiv government, for example, were based primarily on separate streams of intelligence Ukraine wasn’t privy to initially.
In some ways, officials said, Ukraine’s own collection efforts fed the skepticism that Zelensky and others had about Putin’s plans because they were eavesdropping on military and FSB units that themselves were not informed until the eve of the war. “They were getting an accurate picture from people who were also in the dark,” one U.S.official said.
Targeting Moscow with drones
Russian forces never succeeded in taking Kyiv. But both GUR structures that the CIA funded were among dozens of key installations targeted in Russian strikes in the war’s first days, according to officials who said the facilities survived and continue to function.
Ukraine’s new intelligence capabilities proved valuable from the start of the war. The SBU, for example, obtained intelligence on high-value Russian targets, enabling strikes that killed several commanders andnarrowly missed Russia’s top-ranked officer, Valery Gerasimov.
Over the past year, the security services’ missions have increasingly centered on targets not only behind enemy lines but well into Russia.
For the SBU, no target has been a higher priority than the Kerch Bridge that connects the Russian mainland to the annexed Crimean Peninsula. The bridge is a key military corridor and also carries such symbolic significance to Putin that he presided over its inauguration in 2018.
The SBU has hit the bridge twice over the past year, including an October 2022 bombing that killed five people and put a gaping hole in westbound traffic lanes.
Zelensky initially denied Ukrainian responsibility. But SBU director Malyuk described the operation in extraordinary detail in an interview earlier this year, acknowledging that his service had placed a powerful explosive inside a truck hauling industrial-size rolls of cellophane.
Like other SBU plots, the operation involved unwitting accomplices, including the truck driver killed in the explosion. “We went through seven circles of hell keeping so many people in the dark,” Malyuk said in an interview about the operation, which he said hinged on the susceptibility of “ordinary Russian smugglers.”
U.S. officials who had been notified in advance raised concerns about the attack, officials said, fearing Russian escalation. Those misgivings had presumably dissipated by the time the SBU launched a second strike on the bridge nine months later using naval drones that were developed as part of a top secret operation involving the CIA and other Western intelligence services.
Malyuk’s highly public account of the operation defies typical intelligence tradecraft but serves Kyiv’s need to claim successes and reflects an emerging rivalry with the GUR. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, has made a habit of touting his agency’s achievements and taunting Moscow.
The two services overlap operationally to some degree, though officials said the SBU tends to pursue more complex missions with longer lead-times while the GUR tends to work at a faster tempo. Ukraine officials denied that either agency was directly involved in the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, though U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies have concluded that Ukraine was linked to the plot.
The GUR has used its own fleet of drones to launch dozens of attacks on Russian soil, including strikes that have penetrated Russian air defenses to hit buildings in Moscow. Among them was a May 2023 operation that briefly set fire to a section of roof in the Kremlin.
Those strikes have involved both long-range drones launched from Ukrainian territory, as well as teams of operatives and partisans working inside Russia, officials said. Motors for some drones were purchased from Chinese suppliers with private funding that couldn’t be traced to Ukrainian sources, according to an official who said he was involved in the transactions.
Assassinations in Russia
GUR has also ventured into assassinations, officials said.
In July, a former Russian submarine commander, Stanislav Rzhitsky, was shot four times in the chest and back in Krasnodar where he reportedly worked as a military recruiting officer. Rzhitsky, 42, was known to use the fitness app Strava to record his daily running routes, a practice that may have exposed his location.
The GUR issued a coy statement deflecting responsibility but citing precise details about the circumstances of Rzhitsky’s death, noting that “due to heavy rain the park was deserted” and there were no witnesses. Officials in Kyiv confirmed the GUR was responsible.
Even while acknowledging responsibility for such actions, Ukrainian officials claim the moral high ground against Russia. The SBU and GUR have sought to avoid harm to innocent bystanders even in lethal operations, officials said, while Russia’s scorched-earth raids and indiscriminate strikes have killed or injured thousands of civilians.
Security officials said that no major operation by the SBU or GUR proceeds without clearance — tacit or otherwise — from Zelensky. A spokesperson for Zelensky did not respond to requests for comment.
Skeptics nevertheless worry Ukraine’s use of targeted killings and drone strikes on Moscow high-rises help neither its cause against Russia nor its longer-term aspirations to join NATO and the E.U.
A senior Ukrainian official who worked closely with Western governments coordinating support for Ukraine said that attacks on noncombatants and bombings of Moscow buildings feed Putin’s false narrative that Ukraine posed a growing danger to ordinary Russians. “It plays into his lies that Ukrainians are coming for them,” the official said.
That view appears to be in the minority. Others see the attacks as boosting morale among besieged Ukrainians and achieving a degree of vigilante accountability for alleged Russian war crimes that many Ukrainians are skeptical will ever lead to adequate sanctions from the United Nations and international courts.
The car bombing that killed Dugina last year continues to stand out as one of the more extreme cases of lethal revenge — one that not only targeted noncombatants but involved a Ukrainian woman and a presumably unwitting pre-teenage girl.
Russian authorities had barely finished clearing the debris when the FSB identified Natalia Vovk, 42, as the principal suspect. She had entered Russia from Estonia in July, according to the FSB, took an apartment in the same complex as Dugina, and spent weeks conducting surveillance before slipping back into Estonia with her daughter after the explosion occurred.
The FSB also identified an alleged accomplice who Russia alleged hadprovided Kazakh license plates for Vovk to use on her vehicle, a Mini Cooper, while traveling in Russia; helped assemble the explosive; and fled to Estonia before the attack.
Ukraine authorities said Vovk was motivated in part by Russia’s siege of her home city, Mariupol. They declined to comment on the nature of her relationship to the SBU or her current whereabouts.
The attack was intended to kill Dugin as he and his daughter departed a cultural festival where the pro-war ideologue, sometimes branded as “Putin’s brain,” had delivered a lecture. The two were expected to travel together, but Dugin stepped into a different vehicle. Vovk also attended the festival, according to the FSB.
At the time, Ukraine vigorously denounced involvement in the attack. “Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state like Russia, or a terrorist one at that,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky.
Officials acknowledged in recent interviews in Kyiv, however, that those denials were false. They confirmed that the SBU planned and executed the operation, and said that while Dugin may have been the principal target, his daughter — also a vocal supporter of the invasion — was no innocent victim.
“She is the daughter of the father of Russian propaganda,” a security official said. The car bombing and other operations inside Russia are “about narrative,” showing enemies of Ukraine that “punishment is imminent even for those who think they are untouchable.”
Shane Harris in Washington and Mary Ilyushina in Riga, Latvia, contributed to this report.
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5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Scratch a Russian Mi-8
Scratch another TOS-1 (I don't think we've seen this one before):
And a good summary of the slag heap battle which Russian bloggers initially claimed they took, then backed off those claims. This guy does pretty good summaries so it's likely his take on the battle is more-or-less accurate:
Steve
Steve. Slightly off topic, but Russia has re-imposed capital controls and other measures.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/12/economy/russia-ruble-surge-export-controls/index.html#
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6 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Well, it is all a guessing game because a) nobody really knows what is going on within an autocratic and deceitful state known for putting out bad data and b) nobody at all knows where Russia's breaking points are because there is no way to predict them.
For example, Tooze states:
Right, but one of the fundamental pillars of support for the Putin regime is NOT returning to the 1990s. So what happens if that does become a reality, along with other major backsliding from previous days of the Putin regime? Nobody knows, however when I see someone use the term "worst case" for a situation that might in fact be "best case", I have to wonder how thoroughly the person understands historical dynamics of regime collapse. "Best case" that I see is Russia becomes another stunted regime, like North Korea, without a regime change like what happened in 1991, "worst case" is Russia 1917.
For sure Russia is managing this economic storm better than the war. Hands down. However, like the war the regime is cutting corners, breaking promises, and running down its options with the economy. It can put off the inevitable, but not forestall it.
Not that this says anything positive about Ukraine's relative economic condition. That's a whole different story. But the author should remember that Ukraine has the backing (at least to some extent) of the richest countries in the world, while Russia does not. It isn't an economic war between Russia and Ukraine, but Russia and the bulk of the world's economic power. It would be good for someone making an economic comparison to factor that into the equation.
Steve
Steve. This link points to potential domestic turmoil in Russia as the economy falters
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US getting closer to a decision on ATACMs.
Given the G20 closing statement, clearly the war won't be won by diplomacy, it has to be won on the battlefield. Hardly surprising to see more hardware support forthcoming.
A report in the London FT
Joe Biden is nearing a decision on sending long-range missiles to Kyiv, potentially opening another chapter in US military support for Ukraine more than a year and a half into Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. The US has long been wary of Ukraine’s request to supply it with so-called ATACMS, a tactical ballistic missile with a range of up to 300km, over concerns about limited stocks and whether it could be used to strike Russian territory, escalating the conflict. But in recent months, as the war has dragged on and Ukraine has tried to regain territory in the southern and eastern regions of the country, the US has been considering the step. The UK and France have already sent their own long-range missiles to Ukraine this year. “We’re not taking anything off the table. We don’t have a decision to announce on new capabilities but our position all along has been we will get Ukraine the capabilities that will enable it to succeed on the battlefield,” Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters as Biden travelled from New Delhi to Vietnam on Sunday. “A decision could be coming soon,” one senior Biden administration official had said on Saturday.
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Russian economy to be smaller than Indonesia
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/russias-massive-brain-drain-ravaging-203001178.html
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Just now, Grossman said:
And in Normandy the Allies had total command of the air. The Germans had superior battlecraft and equipment, only overwhelmed by airpower. One can sense in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have superior battlecraft, and limited equipment with no command of the air, although command of the stratosphere and eyes over the territory. As with Normandy the strategy is to starve the Russian front lines of reinforcements and supplies, done through targeting with precision targeting and HMARs fire. In Normandy D-Day was June 6, July 25. The Canadians crossed the Seine on Aug 30. The abortive attempt on Hitler was July 20-44 ( we have had a revolt in Russia). Hitler was dead within a year. Normandy was the most intense battle of WW2. There is similar intensity in Ukraine, and it is costly in terms of lives. The strategists are planning for the Normandy scenario to be repeated in southern Ukraine.
Cobra July 25th
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2 hours ago, dan/california said:
I agree it isn't bocage level awful, it is the mines that have slowed Ukraine to a crawl. If Normandy had been mined the way Southern Ukraine is mined the Allies would have taken much longer to break out, if ever. And drones cut both ways for offense and defense. But Ukrainian tree lines just don't have the same absolute impassibility.
Edit: The question is has Ukraine made it through the worst of the mines
And in Normandy the Allies had total command of the air. The Germans had superior battlecraft and equipment, only overwhelmed by airpower. One can sense in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have superior battlecraft, and limited equipment with no command of the air, although command of the stratosphere and eyes over the territory. As with Normandy the strategy is to starve the Russian front lines of reinforcements and supplies, done through targeting with precision targeting and HMARs fire. In Normandy D-Day was June 6, July 25. The Canadians crossed the Seine on Aug 30. The abortive attempt on Hitler was July 20-44 ( we have had a revolt in Russia). Hitler was dead within a year. Normandy was the most intense battle of WW2. There is similar intensity in Ukraine, and it is costly in terms of lives. The strategists are planning for the Normandy scenario to be repeated in southern Ukraine.
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8 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
And so it begins. The first knock-down fight in the US Congress over Ukraine funding is about to start:
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4172076-conservatives-set-to-battle-over-ukraine-funding/
For the sake of non-US posters here, I am going to describe what the situation is without inserting my personal political beliefs. I ask that any responses to this be without political commentary. There is absolutely no need for it and I'm going to be disappointed with anybody who can not refrain from "putting a sock in it" and keeping this thread from going off the rails.
So, on the assumption that this crowd is both mature enough and interested enough in sticking to a fact based discussion...
This is something that many people, including Americans, do not appreciate about the US political system. If the leader of a chamber doesn't want to take up legislation proposed by the other (or the President), things instantly become very, very messy. It doesn't matter if the overwhelming majority of the chamber (all parties) would vote in favor of it, the leader doesn't have to do anything to make a vote happen.
This is especially true of the Republican House which has, for several decades, refused to bring forward legislation for a vote if it can't be passed by Republicans alone. Meaning, if the Republican caucus in the House is 50.00001% not in favor of something, no vote will be called EVEN IF the Democrats and Independents are 100% in favor of it. Actually, especially if they are 100% in favor of it (no Republican leadership would survive such an event). But lately, due to the internal instability of the Republican party generally, and the House caucus specifically, it doesn't even get to that point.
The leadership is vulnerable to being voted out and so all it takes is a solid minority to be opposed to something and the leadership buckles in order to stay in its positions. At the moment there's about 70 (32% of total) House Republicans that are on the record of not being in favor of sending more aid to Ukraine. Of that, a sizeable chunk (unknown, but likely 20%+ of total) are predisposed to threatening to seek new leadership over this and other issues. The last leadership election was the most contentious and prolonged in US history, something that the current leadership is well aware of.
The bottomline here is that the Republican House leadership is in a bind. They either do what the minority of their party wants or get tossed out of their leadership positions. This effectively means about 10% of the membership of Congress control national policy. The Founding Fathers referred to it as the "tyranny of the minority" and they tried to ensure it didn't happen. Obviously there's a few checks and balances missing in order to do that.
Nobody knows what is going to happen next, but whatever it is won't be as beneficial to Ukraine as it has been before. This was predicted as soon as the Republicans took over the previous session (the one that was about to end) in both House and Senate worked together across party lines to buy Ukraine some time. That time, unfortunately, has run out.
Steve
Steve. In my view support for Ukraine (give them all thy need) is solid and enthusiastic among House and Senate republicans. There is a small outspoken minority opposed, however the strength of feeling amongst those in favour will not permit compromise. In other words support for Ukraine is non-negotiable. The big risk in the US is change of President.
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1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:
Not allegience to Putin personally, but to the Russian state.
True. But Putin sees himself as the Russian State as Hitler did with Germany. A sign of insecurity. Putin in my mind is a dead man walking. The Wagner people and the Army will take their revenge. Within 6 months, I'd say, before next Spring, but the plotting will have already started. And by the way this will be a long war.
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Wagner mercenaries must swear allegiance to Putin. Echoes of Hitler
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22 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Ukraine is moving to take back Bakhmut without disrupting fighting in the south or, as it seems, the north. I think they can do it in large part because Russia is overstretched. Ukraine calling off the attacks in the south would allow Russia to shift resources to Bakhmut, making it far harder to take than it currently is.
Aside from this, Ukraine needs to keep the pressure on Russia's capacity to fight this war. The southern front is a perfect way to do that. Stepping back because "it's hard" is akin to giving up on this war altogether because Russia WILL replace its losses eventually given time and opportunity. Not pressing hard in the south gives them both.
That said, at some point Ukraine may conclude that the southern counter offensive isn't worth continuing. I think we are a couple of MONTHS away from that determination.
Steve
Steve. The southern front would appear to be the most strategic, the goal for this year, to reach the Sea of Azov. To cut the land bridge to Crimea, and occupied Ukraine to the west. If achieved it would be a turning point, forcing the Russians to make hard decisions on logistics. Meanwhile the Russians are forced to deploy in the east.
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President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the US was considering sending long-range missiles to Ukraine after France and the UK sent similar systems, a potentially significant shift as Washington alters its risk calculus in Ukraine as the war drags on.
Kyiv has long sought the weapons to better penetrate Russian defences, but Washington has held off out of fears of Russian escalation. France announced this week it would send such weapons and the UK has already sent its Storm Shadow missiles.
“They already have the equivalent of ATACMS now. What we need most of all is artillery shells,” Biden said, using the name for the American long-range missiles as he boarded a plane from Vilnius, where he was attending a Nato summit, for Helsinki Source FT London
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45 minutes ago, FancyCat said:
Regarding NATO, obviously no membership yet or even concretely, but the next best thing is more weapons. Macron has announced France is providing long range missiles. If the EU could get their idiocy regarding ammo production resolved, that would be great. More tanks, more IFVs, more artillery, is a fine apology gift for no NATO membership.
At the moment, without a Russian collapse it look like a protracted conflict where a negotiation is impossible and the the arms build upon the UKR side will gradually shift the balance in UKR's favour. Next of course is the long range Himars and F-16's. Meanwhile pressures grow within Russia. The EU and the West increasingly see this war as a fight to free Ukraine from Russian occupation and establish the EU border along the UKR-Belarus border with Russia. It may take some time; this is where we are headed
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8 hours ago, Bufo said:
It reinforces the fear that the Russians will blow part of the Zaporizhzhia plant. The sniffer would provide the evidence. If the Russians did so, goodness knows what the reaction would be. The sniffer would provide hard evidence so any military intervention would be based on factual data. We'd go into a crisis, but it might crystallise the conflict.
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
I'm waiting for the German leadership to get off its perch. Putin has the watch, Europe has the time. Pressures are on the Russians, Europe sees the invasion as a threat to European security. We'll see more of more EU involvement, arms etc. In the US, the arms manufacturers are screaming at the Republicans to vote funds. This war will run. And there is no way peace can be done with Putin.