How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Huba]

2 hours ago, sburke said:

You may see a couple duplicates, there were a couple guys who got posted more than once as additional info came in but only a couple.  Still a work in progress... I mean by me, not that the UA keeps adding to it, but there is that as well.  

VDV/SpetsNaz/Airborne

Guards Colonel Konstantin Zizevsky commander of the 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment 
Colonel Sergey Karasev, Commander, 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade (Ulyanovsk) (Killed Mar 11)
Colonel Sergey Sukharev, commander of 331st Guards Airborne Regiment (of the 98th VDV Division)
Colonel? Denis Shishov, the commander of the 11th Air Assault Brigade
Col. Alexey Vasilyev, commander 137th Guards Airborne Regiment, 106th Guards Airborne Division Rumored (The Sun, so awaiting confirmation) death by GMLRS
Colonel Andery Vasilyev, deputy commander of 106th Guard VDV division (Tula), VDV Command, Western Military District
Colonel Maksim Kudrin, Deputy Commander for Armaments 106th Guards Airborne Division
Col. Alexei Smirnov, Chief of Communications for 98th Guards Airborne Division
Col. Sergei Kuzminov 106th Guards Airborne Division Kuzminov was "zampotyl" - brief name of duty "zamestitel' po tylu" - commander's deputy of rear. He responses for supply and logistic of unit

Lieutenant Colonel Okruzhnov Alexander Nikolaevich, Head of Artillery, 104th VDV Regiment, 76th Airborne Division (killed Mar 7)
Lieutenant Colonel Vitaly Slabtsov The Deputy Commander of the VDV's 83rd Air Assault Brigade
lt.colonel Alexandr Okruzhnov, artillery chief of 104th Guard air-assault regiment of 76th Guard air-assault divosion
Lt. Col. Albert Karimov, GRU Spetsnaz
Lt. Col. Alexander Dosyagaev, commander 2nd Airborne Battalion, 104th Guards Airborne Regiment, 76th Guards Air-Assault Division
Lt. Col. Pavel Kislyakov, Deputy Chief of Staff, Head of Operations, 11th Guards Separate Air-Assault Brigade
Lt. Col. Alexander Smirnov, Deputy Commander of the 11th Guards Air-Assault Brigade.  Says he was killed at the CP of the 6th Separate Cossack Motor Rifle Regiment “Matvey Platov,” 2nd AK, LPR on the night of June 30-July 1.
Lieutenant Colonel Denis Glebov, Deputy Commander of the 11th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade (killed Mar 5, given Order of Courage)
Lt. Col. Alexander Stefanov, commander 1st Battalion, 104th Guards Air-Assault Regiment, 76th Guards Air-Assault Division:
Lt. Col. Ivan Pozdeev, commander (?) 31st Guards Air-Assault Brigade: This Ukrainian article says he was killed by a sniper on the 28th of July, but IDs him as commander of the 331st Airborne Regiment in the “88th Airborne Division”.  While the unit ID is clearly confused, given the previous casualties (brigade commander Colonel Sergey Karasev and battalion commanders Major Alexey Oskin and Lieutenant Colonel Denis Yagidarov) in the 31st Air-Assault Brigade, it is possible he was the Brigade commander at this time.
Lt.colonel Anatoliy Vasin, 16th Guard Spetsnaz brigade, Western Military District
lt.colonel Igor Zharov a VDV officer and RVVDKU graduate, was killed in Ukraine. He was the chief of staff for a regiment
Lt. Col. Denis Sorokin, air-assault battalion commander, 11th Guards Air-Assault Brigade 
Lt. Col. Aleksey Afonin, a deputy commander in 234th Guards Air-Assault Regiment, 76th Guards Air-Assault Division
Lt. Col. Pavel Krivov, battalion commander, 137th Guards Airborne Regiment, 106th Guards Airborne Division, killed in an ambush near Izium on Sept. 9th

Major Dmitri Semenov, chief of staff / deputy commander of ?? Spetsnaz Detachment, 16th Separate Spetsnaz Brigade
Major Alexei Ilnitsky, deputy battalion commander, VDV 11th Air Assault Brigade (Ulan-Ude) (killed, given Order of Courage)
Major Sergey Vladimirovich Kashansky, GRU/GU 24th SpetsNaz Brigade? (killed)
Major Patskalev Oleg Mikhailovich, Deputy Commander, 2nd Battalion, 331st VDV Guards Airborne Regiment (Kostroma), 98th Guards Airborne Division (killed)
Major Sergei Krylov, Deputy Commander, 331st VDV Guards Airborne Regiment (Kostroma), 98th Airborne Division (killed Mar 17)
Major Alexey Osokin, the commander of the VDV's 31st Air Assault Brigade's 1st battalion
Major Oleg Patskalev, deputy battalion commander, 331st Guards Airborne Regiment, 98th Guards Airborne Division.
Mayor Denis Yagidarov, commander of airborne battlion of 31st separate air-assault brigade
Major Vorsyuchenko Alexey Vasilyevich, VDV Unit #81430 HQ, 76th Airborne SAM Regiment (killed)
Major Ruslan Leonov, Spetsnaz company commander (killed Mar 10)
Major Alexandr Lyubanov. VDV.
Major Azamat Alinov, company commander in 3rd Spetsnaz Brigade 
Major Alexey Dineka, 247th Air Assault Regiment, 7th Air Assault Division
Mayor Vasiliy Tynnyi, deputy of company comamnder of Spetsnaz. unit unknown
Mayor Andrey Kunakov, chief of the staff, 153rd separate SOF detachment of 346th separate SOF brigade, Special Operations Command.
Mayor Azamat Alimov, company commander of 3rd Special forces brigade
Maj. Anton Morozov, air-assault company commander, 542nd Separate Air-Assault Battalion
Mayor Sergey Borisenko, 106th guard airborne division
Maj. Sergei Borisenko, 106th Airborne Division
Major Yuri Melekhin, commander 1st Spetsnaz Detachment of the 16th Separate Spetsnaz Brigade
Maj. Ivan Budkin, chief of staff of 2nd Airborne Battalion, 234th Airborne Regiment, 76th Air-Assault Division
Maj. Alexander Denisov deputy of battalion commander of 137th guard airborne regiment of 106th guard airborne division
Major ??? Kuzmin, commander 2nd Company, 2nd Separate Spetsnaz Brigade
Major Alexander Indrikov, VDV, unknown unit
Major Alexey Kalmykov, deputy commander of a Spetsnaz unit (22nd Spetsnaz Brigade detachment?
Maj. Kalmykov was Deputy Commander - Chief of Staff for the 16th Spetsnaz Brigade
Mayor Aleksey Kalmykov, deputy commander of spetrnaz detachment
major Sergey Kononov (probably), commander of mixed unit, created on 18th July from spetsnaz company of 331st VDV regiment of 98th VDV division and PMC. I wrote that Russians as far as after Popasna seizing operated with mixed groups of VDV and PMC. Looks like they desided as experiment to form mixed special purpose units under VDV command instead just combined units of VDV and PMC acting together, but with own commanders.
Major Evgeny Sulokhin, deputy commander of 331st Guards Airborne Regiment, 98th Guard Airborne Division
Major (recently promoted) Alexander Shishkov, commander 1st Company, 3rd Airborne Battalion, 31st Separate Air-Assault Brigade (may have taken on higher command duties with promotion)
Major (posthumous promotion) Denis Nosenko, unknown unit (maybe 24th Separate Spetsnaz Brigade in Novosibirsk?)
Maj. Pavel Shtepa was GRU Spetnaz, but specific unit still unknown
Maj. Igor Voloshkin, deputy commander of an air-assault battalion, unknown unit
Maj. Vladimir Chilin, deputy battalion commander in 83rd Separate Air-Assault Brigade
Maj. Ruslan Kononovich, unknown VDV unit
Mayor Sergey Gorin, VDV
Mayor Gennadiy Khalcheko, probably VDV
Major Anton Kuznetsov, deputy battalion commander, VDV, he is from Tula, so likely served in 106th VDV division.

Captain Alexey Glushchak, GRU/GU 22nd Spetsnaz Brigade (killed, given Order of Courage)
Captain Ilya Kuptsov, VDV 76th Air Assault Division, Intelligence Department (Pskov) (killed)
Captain Alexander Vladimirovich Shokun, Chief of Communications, VDV 11th Guards Air Assault Brigade (Ulan-Ude) (killed)
Captain Nikitin Alexey Nikolaevich, 1141st Guards Artillery Regiment, 7th VDV Guards Mountain Air Assault Division (Novorossiysk) (killed)
Captain Eduard Gilmiyarov Rinatovich, Commander, 5th Airborne Assault Company, 31st VDV Separate Guards Airborne Assault Brigade (Ulyanovsk) (killed)
Captain Aleksey Aleksandrovich Chuchmanov, GRU/GU 3rd SpetsNaz Brigade (Tolyatti) (killed Mar 3, 2022)
Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, platoon commander, Russian 247th Guards Assault Caucasian Cossack Regiment (killed)

Senior Lieutenant Nurmagomed Gadzhimagomedov, company commander, 247th Guards Air Assault Regiment (killed, given Hero of Russia)
Senior Lieutenant Aleksey Aleshko, Platoon Commander, VDV, RVVDKU graduate. (killed Feb 25, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Symov, 331st VDV Airborne Regiment (Kostroma), 98th Airborne Division (killed)
Senior Lieutenant Sukhovskoy Semyon Mikhailovich, Company Commander, 234th Air Assault Regiment, VDV 76th Guards Air Assault Division (killed Mar 5)
Senior Lieutenant Ilya Sergeevich Chernyshev, Commander, Armored Battery, 331st Guards Airborne Regiment (Kostroma), 98th VDV Guards Airborne Division (killed, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Nikita Samoilov, Deputy Commander, VDV Reconnaissance Company (killed)
Senior Lieutenant Andrei Shamko, VDV, GRU/GU 2nd Spetsnaz Brigade (Pskov) (killed)
Lieutenant Stanislav Olegovich Kutelev, VDV, RVVDKU graduate (killed)
Lieutenant Alexander Osipov, VDV (killed)
Lieutenant Georgy Alexandrovich Dudorov, Deputy Commander, Military-Political Affairs, Recon company, 137th Airborne Regiment, 106th VDV Airborne Division (Tula) (killed March 6)
Lieutenant Dmitry Chernyshev, VDV 247th Air Assault Regiment (killed, given Order of Courage)
Lieutenant Georgy Dudorov, Deputy Commander, Reconnaissance Company, 137th VDV Airborne Regiment, 106th Guards Airborne Division (Tula), son of Alexander Durorov, the Deputy Governor of Nenets Autonomous Okrug (killed Mar 6)
Lieutenant Ovchinnikov Lev Aleksandrovich, VDV 331st Airborne Regiment (Kostroma) (killed)

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Regular Army

Andrei Sukhovetsky, Deputy Commander of the 41st Combined Arms Army Confirmed
MG Vladimir Frolov, deputy commander of 8th Guard CAA, Southern military district Confirmed
LTG Kutuzov. He was shadow commander of DPR "army" (1st Army Corps of DPR People's miltia)  Confirmed

MG Andrey Kolesnikov, Russia’s 29th Combined Arms Army commander Claimed
Major-general Oleg Mitiayev, commander of 150th motor-rifle division Claimed
LTG Yakov Rezantsev, Russia’s 49th CAA commander, in Chornobaivka near Kherson. Claimed
Major General Simonov Deputy chief of Electronic Warfare Troops of Armed Forces of Russian Federation Claimed
Major-General Nasbulin, Chief of Staff of Russia’s 22nd Army Corps Claimed

Lieutenant General Roman Berdnikov Commander of the Russian Federation’s 29th Army

Colonel Andrei Zakharov, Battalion-tactical group Commander, 6th Tank Regiment (Chebarkul) , 90th Tank division (killed Mar 10) (given Order of Courage in 2016)
Colonel Alexander Vladimirovich Zakharov, 6th tank regiment commander
Colonel Yuryi Agarkov, the commander of 33rd motor-rifle regiment (Kamyshyn, Volgograd oblast) of 20th Guard motor-rifle division
Col. Alexey Gorobets, commander 20th Guards MRD
Col. Aleksey Avramchenko (a Crimean defector) Deputy Commander for Military-Political Affairs (Zampolit) 20th Gds MRD
Col. Nikolai Kornelyuk artillery chief  20th Gds MRD
Colonel Igor Nikolaev Commander of 252nd Motor Rifle Regiment, the 3rd Motor Rifle Division.
Colonel Alexander Bespalov, commander of 59th Tank Regiment, 144th Motor Rifle Division Lublin
Colonel Alexei Sharov, commander of the 810th Marine Brigade
Col. Sergei Kens, commander 810th Seperate Naval Infantry Brigade - Possibly - Chief of Staff - Deputy Commander of the 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division?
Col. Denis Kurilo commander of the 200th infantry brigade (detachment #08275, Pechenga city)
 twice Red Banner, the Order of Suvorov and Kutuzov Regiment
Colonel Ivan Grishin, the commander of Russia's 49th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade (1st Tank Army)
Colonel Mikhail Nagamov, commander of 6th engineer-sapper regiment of 1st Guard tank army of Western military district.
Colonel Sergei Porokhnya commander of the 12th separate guards engineering brigade
Col. Denis Kozlov 12th Guards Engineering Brigade’s (Central Military District) commander This is the second loss of a commander for the Brigade
Colonel Nikolay Ovcharenko  commander of the 45th Engineer-Sapper Regiment a part of the 1st Guards Tank Army
Colonel Viktor Ivanovich Isaikin (killed Mar 2)
Colonel Vladimir Ivanov, unit unknown
Col. Vladimir Ivanov was a press officer for the MoD.
Colonel Ruslan Shyrin, chief of the staff of 336th Guard naval infantry brigade, Baltic Fleet
Col. Kanat Mukatov, Deputy Commander for Combat Training for the Division (confirming that basically the entire senior command staff of the Division was killed in the HIMARS strike on July 9th)

Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Agarkov, Commander, 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment. (killed Mar
Lieutenant Colonel Renat Ravilovich Gaisin
Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Sofronov, Commander of the 61st Separate Marine Brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, (killed Mar 5)
Lt Colonel Mikhail Orchikov was deputy commander of a motor-rifle brigade 19th motor-rifle division
lt.colonel, Ruslan Gashiyatullin, but only motor-rifle battalion commander. Odd.
According to Russian media, he lived in Dagestan, so probably he is from 136th Guard motor-rifle brigade of 58th CAA.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Kornik, head of the HQ for 40th Engineer-Sapper Regiment (but I can’t find a reference to this unit, so I wonder if it was actually 45th Engineer-Sapper Regiment
Lt.colonel Dmitriy Dormidontov, MLRS battalion commander 20 of March Ukrainian mortar shell directly hit Russian blindage. Three officers were killed
    - battalion commander (probably motor-rifle, so mayor or lt.colonel too)
    - forward air-controller (usually lt. or captain)
Lieutenant Colonel Georgy Petrunin, the military commandant of Samara
Lt.colonel Dinar Khametov, MLRS battalion commander of 200th motor-rifle brigade of 14th Army Corps of Joint Strategical Command "Northern Fleet".
Lt.colonel Dibir Dibirov, 291st motor-rifle regiment of 42nd MRD, 58th CAA
Lt.colonel Viacheslav Savinov, deputy chief of the staff, chief of artillery recon of 49th CAA 
Lt.colonel Miras Bashakov, commander of 133th separate guard tank battalion of 138th separate guard motor-rifle brigade
Lt.colonel Denis Mezuyev, commander of 1st Guard motor-rifle regiment of 2nd Guard "Tamanskaya" MRD.
Lt.colonel Eduard Dmitriev, senior officer of combat training department of 2nd guard CAA, Central military district, killed 24th of April.
Lt.Colonel Grigoriy Tarasenko.
Interesting person. He already participated in the war on Donbas during 2016-2019 probably as a shadow comamnder and even was wounded in 2019. Then participated in Syria operation. 
Lt.colonel Alexandr Blinov, senior officer of combat training of 150th motor-rifle division, Novoherkassk, Rostov oblast, 8th CAA
Lt. Col. Denis Sukhanov, artillery officer for unknown unit
Lt. Col. Valentin Kuzmin, HQ staff of 2nd Guards Motorized Rifle Division
Lt. Col. Sergey Nikitin, 74th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade
Lieutenant Colonel Zaur Dimayev, the deputy commander of the 4th battalion of the Akhmat Kadyrov special forces regiment
Lt. Col. Vladimir Nigmatullin, artillery officer unknown unit
Lt. Col. Oleksandr Kuvshinov, 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade
Lt.colonel Sergey Moskvichyov Head of the Armored Service (начальник бронетанковой службы) for the 155th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade
Lt. Col. Yegor Meleshenko  He was killed on 24th of June on Chuhuiv direction, Kharkiv oblast when Russian command post was hit by UKR artillery.  PS. Thanks to @akd "targeting" we can find his unit - 11th separate tank regiment of 18th guard motor-rifle division, 11th Arme Corps, Coastal troops of Baltic Fleet. Dislocation - Gusev, Kaliningrad oblast.
Lt. Col. Alexander Sorochinsky 4th Guards Tank Division
Lt. Col. Valentin Danilov RAV chief (missile and artillery ammunition service) of 58th CAA
Lt. Col. Dmitry Orekhov, regimental artillery chief, 291st Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division
Lt. Col. Sergey Mikhailov
Lt. Col. Artem Kormilitsyn, commander of 1st Training Battalion (probably not acting position), 6th Guards Tank Regiment, 90th Guards Tank Division
Lt. Col. Andrey Lutsko Judging by red sripes on shoulder straps he was a serviceman of Ground forces, not VKS. Also about this say motor-rifle signs on shoulder starps. In his biography pointed he served in Stavropol. This could be either 49th CAA HQ, or 66th control brigade of this army. If so, he could be killed in Kherson oblast, where 49th CAA operates.
Lt. Col. Tsikul was a deputy commander in a tank regiment (6th or 80th Guards Tank Regiment) of the 90th Guards Tank Division
Lt. Col. Evgeny Vyrodov, Deputy Chief of Logistics for the 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division
Lt.colonel Vyacheslav Proskuryakov, chief of EW service. Pointed, he served in Karachayevo-Cherkesiya Republic on Caucaus. The single ground forces unit, deployed in this republic is 34th motor-rifle brigade (mountain). So, more likely he was brigade's chief of EW service and got killed in Kherson oblast - Snihurivka, Inhulets bridgehead or Vysokopollia areas - locations were 34th brigade was involved in different times.
Lieutenant Colonel Fezul Bichikaev from Vladikavkaz was the deputy commander of a regiment in Yekaterinburg, possibly the 288th MRR
Lt. Col. Ruslan Mukhametkhanov, unknown tank unit
Lt. Col. Sergey Koval, Deputy Chief of Staff - Head of Operations Division, 20th Guards Motor Rifle Division 
Lt. Col. (probably) Pavel Apanovich, Deputy Commander for Military-Political Work (Zampolit), 114th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment, 127th Motor Rifle Division
Lt.colonel Dmitriy Golosenko, deputy regimental commander of rear service (supply), 1st GTR of 2nd GMRD "Tamanskaya"
Lt.colonel Igor Yarmanov, artillery, got lost on 1st of Sep.
Lt. Col. Georgiy Khudik, unknown unit
Police lt.colonel (retired) Denis Korostelyov. Probably volunteer unit
Lt. Col. Kirill Evstigneev, Wagner PMC field commander (not sure if rank is within Wagner, or former military)
Lt. Col. Pavel Matashuk, unknown 49th CAA unit In 2003 he was captain of engineer-sapper unit of 42nd MRD. Probably now he could be a commander of some engineer battalion, for example pontoon.
Lt. Col. Dmitry Kochetkov, Commander 1st Motor Rifle Battalion, 70th Motor Rifle Regiment, 42nd Motor Rifle Division

Major Dmitry Bukatin, 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade (Baltiysk, Kaliningrad) (killed)
Major Alexander Viktorovich Shchetkin, Deputy Commander for Military-Political Work, 1st Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (Sevastopol), 2nd Guards Tamanians Motor Rifle Division (killed)
Major Ratmir Kudayev (Police) (killed, given Order of Courage)
Major Ruslan Vladimirovich Petrukhin, deputy battalion commander in the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade, 35th Army, Eastern Military District (killed Mar 11)
Major Dmitry Toptun motorized rifle battalion commander 488th Motor Rifle Regiment, 144th Guards Motor Rifle Division
Major Viktor Maksimchuk possible deputy commander of a motorized rifle regiment or battalion commander
Marine Major Alexey Sukhanov 177th Naval Infantry Regiment
Major Livoskiy Deputy Commander of 35th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade’s rocket artillery battalion
Major Sergei Panov was reportedly the tank battalion commander in the 21st Motorized Rifle Brigade (other sources say 90th GTD)
Major Alexander Sergeevich Fedorov, Chief of Communications and Deputy Chief of Staff of Unit #47130, 103rd Rocket Brigade (Ulan-Ude, Divizionnaya station) (killed Mar 15)met with our SOF...
Major Ruslan Petrukhin, a graduate of the Kazan Higher Military Command School and a deputy battalion commander in the 38th Motorized Rifle Brigade, was killed in Ukraine.
Maj. Pavel Suslov, Tyumen is his city. 40th engineer-sapper regiment, Ishym town of Tiumen oblast
Mayor Dmitriy Tiunin, commander (?) of engineer-sapper battalion of 136th guard motor-rifle brigade, 58th guard CAA
Captain Timur Suleymanov acting commander for 228th motor-rifle regiment?
Major Dmitriy Stakheev
Mayor Yegor Sannikov. No other info. Probably artillery officer.
Mayor Alexey Martiushev
Mayor Denis Golovko, deputy commander of 2nd motor-rifle battalion of 71st guard motor-rifle regiment, 42nd guard motor-rifle division, 58th guard CAA
Maj. Roman Gribchenko, missile / artillery staff officer, probably 42nd Guards Motorized Division (in Shali)
Mayor Sergey Reznichenko, chief of the staff of some supply battalion.
Mayor Pavel Gareyev, unit and data of death unknown. Judging by the signs on lapels he served in air defense unit and his rank is AD battalion command/staff duty.
Major Artyom Lazarenko was the operations officer for the 439th Rocket Artillery Brigade
Maj. Konstantin Fedorenko, unknown unit
Mayor Alexey Varnavskiy. Data of death and unit unknown. He has signs of signal troops on lapels. His rank corresponds to HQ of divisional level signal unit.
Mayor Nikolay Kolesnikov, unit unknown, signs on the shoulder strips similar to ground forces (except tank trops)
Maj. V.V. Lemesh, unknown unit
Mayor Grigoriy Artemyev, officer of military commandant unit.
Mayor of reserve Valeryi Statilko.
Mayor Sergey Kotelnikov, killed 7th of May, unit unknown
Maj. Dmitry Vostrikov, deputy commander of 810th Naval Infantry Brigade’s air-assault battalion
Major Galiev Artyom Radikovich, KIA
Maj. Ivan Zaika, possibly from 41st CAA headquarters or some subordinate unit
Mayor Ramis Zagretdinov, motor-rifle battalion commader of 35th guard motor-rifle brigade, 41st CAA
Mayor Leonid Sharshukov, unit unknown, likely engineer. Died in hospital on 9th of May
Mayor Viacheslav Karenko, due to anchor signs he served in Black Sea Fleet, but in some coastal unit. He had Ukrainian citizenship, served in Ukrainian naval forces and betrayed in 2014.
mayor Alexandr Shchetkin, 1st GTR of 2nd GMRD
mayor Dmitriy Lytnyev, 423rd GMRR of 4th GTD
mayor Ilgiz Usmanov, 423rd GMRR of 4th GTD
mayor Maxim Khlebko, 7th separate recon battalion of 47th GTD
Major Dmitry Lytnev, 4th Guards Tank Division
Major Gregory Artemiev, head of military commandant’s office in Volsk, Saratov Oblast.
Maj. Roman Sarychev, military commandant
Maj. Valentin Ivanov, unit unknown
Reserve Maj. Denis Sorokin
Mayor Nikolay Kolomoyets, 61st Naval infantry brigade, 14th Army Corps of Norhern Fleet coastal units
Major Roman Khlynovsky, engineering officer (probably) in the 64th Guards Separate Motor Rifle Brigade
Major Vyacheslav Kazakov
Major Alexey Moskovchenko
Mayor Artyom Lazarenko, chief of operative department of 439th Guard reactive artillery brigade (MLRS "Tornado-S"), Southern military district
Mayor Yevgeniy Kushenko, instructor-chief of the staff of training motor-rifle battalion of 467th guard training center
Major Andrey Spirin
Major Maxim Klebko 7th Separate Reconnaissance Battalion, 47th Tank Division
Major Yuri Borisov, Deputy Battalion Commander (for Armament), naval infantry battalion, 155th Guards Separate Naval Infantry Brigade
Mayor of police (retired) Mikhail Goryaynov. He was a member of some volunteer unit
Major Roman Kuznetsov, battalion commander, 39th Motor Rifle Brigade
Major Vladimir Efremo was with the 49th Separate Operational Brigade of the National Guard North Caucasian Regional Command.
Major Alexey Loshkarev, commmander 2nd Motor-Rifle Battalion, 136th Guards Separate Motor Rifle Brigade  "Self-Propelled Artillery Battalion commander (I think)"
Major Andrey Melikhov, senior expert of the Military Scientific Committee of the Airborne Forces of the Russian Federation
Major Aleksandr Kovrikov from the 152nd Missile Brigade head of the command post
Maj. Nikolai Balyatin
Major Oleg Lyamin, unit unknown
Major Tarkhan Khordaev, commander 3rd Tank Battalion, 80th Tank Regiment, 90th Guards Tank Division - battalion chief of staff?
Major Sergei Rzhavin, unit unknown
Maj. Artyom Reutov, artillery officer in a Naval Infantry unit
Maj. Sergey Gorin, unit unknown
Maj. Dmitry Vlasov, battalion commander in 6th Separate Tank Brigade
Maj. Alexander Yusupov commander of the Howitzer Artillery Battalion in the 126th Guards Coastal Defense Brigade
Maj. Beslan Bachaev, 64th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade
Maj. Almaz Agliev (possibly 15th Guards Peacekeeping Motor Rifle Brigade?
Major Vasiliy Lushnikov, tank battalion commander of 291st MRR of 42nd MRD
Maj. Danil Mupkin, Deputy Commander for Military-Political Work (Zampolit), 810th Separate Guards Naval Infantry Brigade (presumably)
Police Maj. Maxim Daibov, unknown unit
Maj. Alexander Telyatnikov, unknown unit
Maj. Dmitry Kopantsev, Chief of Operations for 165th Artillery Brigade, 35th CAA
Maj. Alexander Ananichev, unit unknown
Maj. Vladimir Kholin, unit unknown
Maj. Alexander Starchkov, unit unknown
Maj. German Yudin, deputy battalion commander, unknown unit
Maj. Igor Kaipov, Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, 252nd Guards MRR, 3rd MRD
Maj. Chermen Bagaev was with the 37th Separate Guards Motor Rifle Brigade
Maj. Alexander Nakonechny, unit unknown
”Major” Maxim Sokolov, deputy battalion commander in PMC Wagner
Maj. Tkharo Abataev, battalion commander, (probably) 5th Separate Tank Brigade

Captain Andrey Paliy
Capt. Fakhretin Gasanov, commander 1st MRB, 394th MRR, 127th MRD
Captain Maklagin Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich (killed Feb 25, given Order of Courage)
Captain Sergei Aleksandrovich Visyach (killed)
Captain Dmitry Nikolayevich Chumanov, Commander, MLRS Battery (Ulan-Ude) (killed Mar 4)
captain Aleksey Litvinov, arty battery commander was killed in Nova Kakhovka on 31st of Aug some group  of 146th SP-howitzer regiment of 2nd "Tamanskaya" MRD.

Senior Lieutenant Alexei Aleshko, Military Intelligence Officer (killed Mar 10)
Senior Lieutenant Nikolai Shumitsky, Tank Company Commander, 81st Tank Battalion, 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (killed, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Nikita Ivanovich Perfilov, VKS Russian Aerospace Forces (killed Mar 6)
Senior Lieutenant Lazarenko Alexander Alexandrovich (killed, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Sergey Alekseevich Zuykov (killed, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Vokhmyanin Alexander Viktorovich, Chief of Staff, Artillery Battalion (killed)
Senior Lieutenant Maxim Vadimovich Susloparov, Unit #90600, 15th Separate Motorized Rifle Peacekeeping Brigade of Alexandria (Roshchinsky), 2nd Guards Combined Arms Army (killed)
Senior Lieutenant Maxim Kholkin, Air Defense, 4th Military Base (South Ossetia) (killed March 7, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Anton Volkov, Translator, GRU/GU, (killed Feb 27)
Senior Lieutenant Sergei Chudnik, Commander, Tank Platoon (killed March 16, given Hero of DPR)
Senior Lieutenant Dmitry Vyacheslavovich Vdovin, Company Commander (killed, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Alexei Ivanov, 5th Separate Guards Tank Brigade (Ulan-Ude) (killed)
Senior Lieutenant Khrebet Pavel
Senior Lieutenant Izmailov Ildar

Lieutenant Alexander Lebedev (killed)
Lieutenant Vitaly Olegovich Golub , Platoon Commander, 20th Guards Motorized Rifle Division, 8th Guards Combined Arms Army (Volgograd) (killed, given Order of Courage)
Lieutenant Daniil Dmitreievich Kurin, Reconnaissance Platoon Commander, 34th Mountain Motorized Rifle Brigade (killed, March 3)
Lieutenant Vsevolod Vasilyevich Yaroslavtsev, Commander, Mortar Platoon, Motorized Rifle Battalion, 126th Gorlovskaya Separate Coastal Defense Brigade (Perevalnoe), 22nd Army Corps. (killed Mar 3)
Lieutenant Brian Andrei Yurkov, Ground Forces Air Defense Officer (North Ossetia) (killed)

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SOBR/Rosgvardiya/OMON/FSB

Colonel Konstantin Ogiy, Head of Kemerovo SOBR unit, Rosgvardiya (killed Feb 28)
Col. Evgeny Gerasimenko,Rosgvardiya spetsnaz. He served in 12th sep.special force detachment "Ural" (Nizhniy Tagil). But he got lost early of 8th of April.
Colonel Sergey Savvateeyev, Deputy commander of Rosgvardia SOBR
Colonel Sergey Postnov, Rosgvardia media relations officer
Police Col. Igor Murzin, Deputy Commander, Kuzbass SOBR
Artyom Bardin, colonel, military commandand of Berdiansk. Presumably he is (or already was?) first deputy of Rosgvardiya directorate of Rostov oblast.

Lieutenant Colonel Sergey Savvateev, Deputy Commander, SOBR unit (Vladimir), Rosgvardiya
Lt.colonel Ilya Piatkin, 38 years  SOBR
Lt.colonel Roman Ryabov, 50 years  SOBR
Lt.colnel Mikhail Rodionov, senior operative investigator of Vladimir oblast SOBR detachment, 46 years   SOBR
Lt. Col. Dzhabrail Dzhabatyrov, Dagestan SOBR “Yastreb”
Lt. Col. Aleksey Kryukov, possibly FSB Special Purpose Center Alfa group FSB 
Lt.colonel (retired) Dmitriy Savchenko. Veteran of SOBR special police, participated in wars in Chechnya and Dagestan. Last place of the service before retirement - UFSNK (Directorate of Federal Service of drugs control).
Lt.colonel Dmitriy Molchanov, FSB, probably from Krasnodar RSSN FSB (regional "Alfa" special force detachment)
Lt. Col. Oleg Vostrikov Sakhalin OMON officer killed in the HIMARS strike on court house in Lysychansk
Chechen police Lt. Col. Zaur Dimaeva, Deputy Commander, 4th Battalion, Special Police Regiment "Akhmat"
Lt.colonel Aleksey Tikhonov, regiment commander deputy of personnel of 94th operative purpose regiment (Urus-Martan, Checnya) of 46th separate operatrive purpose brigade (Chechnya) of Rosgvardia, Northern-Caucasian District of Rosgvardia.
FSB Spetsnaz Lt. Col. Nikolai Gorban, 4th Branch of the First Department of the FSB Special Operation Directorate
Lt.colonel Sergey Privalov, Privalov was a member of the FSB VOG-9 unit and was killed trying to arrest a drunk 8th Separate Artillery Regiment soldier in Kherson.
Police Lt. Col. Denis Lazutin, commander Samara OMON operational company “Smerch”

Guards Major Andrei Petrovich Burlakov, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Secret Service, Chief of Intelligence of Regiment, Rosgvardia (killed Mar 10)
Major Bezborodov Dmitry Valeryevich, Rosgvardiya battalion commander (killed)
Major Dmity Bezborodov Bezzhizninski, Operational Battalion Commander, Rosgvardia (killed)
Major Andrey Meshcheriakov, SOBR police detachmnet of Khabarovsk region
Mayor Sergey Kashanskiy, 19th separate special force detachment "Yermak" (Novosibirsk) of Rosgvardia, Syberian military district of Rosgvardia
Maj. Shamil Nasrulayev, Dagestan SOBR “Yastreb”:
Mayor Anatoliy Miagkov, last mention of his service - 12th separate special force detachment "Ural" of Rosgvardia, Ural district of Rosgvardia
Maj. Viktor Sluskin, commander 3rd Spetsnaz Group, 25th Separate Spetsnaz Detachment “Mercury,” Rosgvardiya
Maj. Leonid Makhonin, Rosgvardiya Special Purpose Center "Vityaz"
Maj. Alexei Ivanushkin Sakhalin OMON officer killed in the HIMARS strike on court house in Lysychansk
Maj. Dmitri Polyansky Sakhalin OMON officer killed in the HIMARS strike on court house in Lysychansk
Police Major Vladimir Shabalin, Republic of Tuva Rosgvardia SOBR “Ezim”

Police Captain Opatsky Alexei Mikhailovich, Commander, Zyryanin OMON Special Purpose Mobile Platoon, Rosgvardia Directorate, Komi Republic (killed)
Captain Ilya Tsuprik FSB Special Purpose Center Alfa officer 

Senior Lieutenant Sergei Zuykov Alekseevich, Rosgvardia (killed, given Order of Courage)
Senior Lieutenant Sergey Dorokhov, Rosgvardia SOBR team member (Vologda) (killed)

Naval-

Captain of 1st rank (=colonel) Andrei Paliy Deputy of Black Sea Fleet commander

Captain 2nd Rank (Lt. Col. equivalent) Alexander Bobrov, commander 170th Minesweeper Division, 184th Water Area Protection Brigade (Novorossiysk).

Captain of 3rd rank (=mayor) Alexandr Chirva, commander of large landing ship "Tsezar Kunnikov" of 197th landing ship brigade, Black Sea Fleet. Died from wounds 16-17th of April. He was wounded during Uлrainan strike on Russians landing ships in Berdiansk on 24th of March
Captain of 3rd rank (mayor equivalent) Roman Pasynkov, chief of troops service department of Black Sea HQ 810th Naval Infantry Brigade
Captain 3rd Rank Svyatoslav Nizhegorodov
Captain 3rd-rank Alexander Trusov
Captain 3rd Rank Yuri Kukushkin HQ of the 242nd Landing Craft Division, 106th Brigade of the Caspian Flotilla

Aviation -

Major General (*ret.) Banamat Botashev Russian Air Force 

Colonel Ruslan Rudnev was a Su-25 attack aircraft pilot based in the Far East. He was killed in Ukraine and buried on March 1
Col. Anatoly Stasyukevich, (as of 2020) 1st Deputy Commander, 1st Guards Composite Aviation Division
Col. Vasily Kleshchenko, Ka-52 pilot, deputy commander of the 344th Center for Combat Use and Retraining of Army Aviation Flight Personnel (presumably he was with a combat unit at time of death)

Lieutenant Colonel Alexey Narzullaevich Khasanov, Deputy Commander, 31st Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment (pilot, Su-30SM, killed Mar 5)
Lt.colonel Fyodor Solovyov, commander of 872nd SP-howitzer regiment of 127th motor-rifle division, 5th CAA Eastern Military District
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Pozynych, Deputy Commander for Military-Political Work, 14th Guards Fighter Regiment (Kursk) (Pilot, Su-30SM, killed)
Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Chervov, Deputy Commander, Aviation Regiment (Voronezh) (Pilot, Su-25, killed Mar 7)
Lt.colonel Sergey Gundorov, Mi-35M flight or squadron commander of 487th separate helicopter regiment
Lt.colonel Roman Igolnilkov. Until 2021 served in Rosgvardia mixed aviation regiment of Southern District in duty of regiment commader deputy of supply. Dismissed in August 2021, but on 7th Feb 2022 was mobilized in again to RuAF. Probably also was on duty of some aviation unit commander deputy. Got lost on 3rd of July after HIMARS strike on Melitopol airbase
Air Force Lt. Col. Roman Igolkin killed in Jul. 3rd strike on Melitopol 
Lt. Col. Vladimir Strelchenko, Ka-52 pilot / Deputy Commander for Flight Training), 487th Separate Helicoper Regiment
Lt.Col. Vladimir Petrushin
Lt. Col. Viktor Pakholsky, Deputy Commander for Military-Political Affairs (Zampolit), 39th Helicopter Regiment
Lt. Col. Maxim Potemin, pilot in unknown unit

Mayor Yevgeniy Osipov, 18th Guard assault aviation regiment "Normandia-Neman" (Su-25SM)
Mayor Artyom Ogoltsov, 332nd Guard helicopter regiment (airfields Pushkin, Pribilovo, Leningrad oblast) of 6th AF and AD Army, Western militrary district. This regiment is armed with Mi-28N, Mi-35 and Mi-8AMTSh. Google search shows, during maneuvers Zapad-2021 he was a pilot of Mi-28N.
PMC-mercenary mayor (probably retired) Andrey Fedorchukov Captured pilot of Russian Su-25, which was shot down yesterday by 72nd mech.brigade turned out 
Major Nikolai Bugay (or Buhai as @Haiduk writes below), Mi-35 pilot
Major Alexander Shevstov, helicopter unit
Maj. Alexander Saveliev, Mi-28N pilot, 487th Separate Helicopter Regiment
Maj. Nikolai Prozorov, Su-25 pilot
Maj. Nikolay Gorbunov
Maj. Stepan Perminov
Maj. Vladimir Krot
Major Ravil Gattarov, probably Su-34 pilot
Major Alexander Shevstov, helicopter (probably Mi-8) squadron commander
Major Nikolay Prozorov, 18th assault aviation regiment (Chernihivka airfireld, Far East) of 303rd mixed aviation division of 11th AF&AD Army, Eastern Military District  Got lost on 10th of March NW of Kyiv or in Zhytomyr oblast. His Su-25SM (#10, RF-91969) was shot down by 10th mountain-assault brigade. 
Maj. Askar Robortdinov, 319th separate helocopter regiment (Chernigovka airfield, Far East) of 11th AF/AD Army, Eastern Military District
Major Yury Belitchenko, Flight Commander in 55th Separate Helicopter Regiment, SMD 
Maj. Dmitri Runev, Su-34 pilot?

Mayor Aleksandr Savelyev, flight commander, pilot of Mi-28N of 487th separate helicopter regiment (Budyonovsk airfield, Stavropol region), 4th AF/AD Army, Southern military district
Mayor Roman Grovich, flight commander ( Mi-26 pilot, wing commander in 17th Guards Army Aviation Brigade), was shot down in Mi-35 on 24th Feb over Kyiv reservoir during approach to Hostomel. In his crew also were lost with him mayor Nikolay Buhai (already posted here) and - Captain Alexey Bel'kov

Captain Ivan Sergeevich Afanasyev (Pilot, Ka-52?, killed)
Captain Radzhabov Rabazan Gasainievich (Pilot, killed)
Captain Emelyanchik Sergei Stanislavovich (Pilot, Mi-28n?, killed Mar 4)
Captain Eugene Kislakov, 14th Guards Fighter Regiment (Kursk) (Pilot, Su-30SM, killed)

lieutenent Dmitriy Yevdokimov

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Separatist Forces -
separatist commander Mikhail Kyshchyk, better known as "Misha Chechen,"
Colonel (DPR-promoted? Or posthumously?) Statsenko Alexey, deputy commander of armament of 1st motor-rifle brigade of DPR. 
"Mayor" (LPR-promoted) Alexzndr Shepel, battalion commander of 2nd motor-rifle brigade LPR. Citizen of Ukraine. Considered as "best battalion comamnder of LPR". Killed 6th of March
"Captain" or even "mayor" (DPR-promoted) Agranovich Sergey, company commander of recon-assault battalion "Sparta" of DPR.
"Colonel" (DPR promoted) Vladimir Kovalenko, chief of "non-departamental security of Internal affairs ministry of DPR" (prisoners guarding service). Citizen of Ukraine. Former officer of Ukrainian 20th separate convoy service battalion of Internal troops (later National Guard), dislocated in Donetsk. After his unit was seized in 2014 by DPR he defected to separs side.
Reserve Lt. Col. Alexander Kalnitsky, presumably with a Cossack volunteer unit from Krasnodar Krai
LNR Police Lt. Col. Denis Babich
Vladimir Zhoga, warlord, Sparta Battalion (Lt Col equivalent?) (killed Mar 5)
Separatist Taras "Clooney" Gordienko, Commander, B-2 Anti-tank group (killed Mar 14)
Major Petr Luzanov, Deputy Battalion Commander of tank battalion, 5th Seperate MRB, 1st AK, DNR
Evgeny “Bullet” Andreev, battalion commander, 1st AK, DNR (as of 2017 he was a company commander in the 2nd Motor Rifle Battalion of the 11th Separate Motor Rifle Regiment, but don’t know if he rose to command same battalion)
Lt. Col. Alexander “Prapor” Pogrebnyak, 5th Separate Infantry Brigade “Oplot,” 1st AK, DNR
Capt. Alexander “North” Miroshnik, commander separate tank battalion (4th Separate Tank Battalion “August”?), 2nd AK, LPR
LNR police Lt. Col. Nikolai Vatsyk, head of Special Purpose Center of the Rapid Reaction Forces
"Colonel" Olha Kachura (callsign Korsa), commander of reactive artillery battalion of 3rd MRB "Berkut" of DPR (deploys in Horlivka). Got lost Aug 3. Because of 3rd MRB fights on Bakmut direction, likely this happened there.
Maj. Andrey Gusarov (Polovnikov), Since he became "major", probably he was regimental cheif of recon or some else. Got lost during assault of Popasna on 1st of March - This article suggests he died still serving as commander of the LPR 6th Cossack MRR’s Recon Company
"Colonel" Dmitry "Korean" Tschke, Chief of Air Defense, 1st AK
Dmitry "Cloud" Oblachkov, unknown rank and position in DNR 1st AK command staff
Col. Eduard Pelishenko Acting commander of DNR 1st Army Corps  seriously wounded
"Lt.colonel" (LPR-promoted) Roman Medvedev, artillery chief of 4th motor-rifle brigade of LPR.
Reserve Maj. Valery Farshatov, volunteer for LNR
Mayor (?) Pavel Yevgkevskyi. Commander of 4th battalion of 105th rifle regiment of DPR's 1st Army Corps
Retired (?) mayor (?) Ivan Kravchenko. Battalion commander. He has a chevron of GRU, but also has a sign of Donbas Volunteer Union, so currently he was not officer of Russian regular troops. Either DPR battalion commander (regular or conscripts), or Russian volunteers battalion commander. 

General of Justice Sergey Gorenko (though he was born in Ukraine and had Ukrainian citizenship, I give his name in Russian spelling), General Prosecutor of LPR. In 2014 he worked in UKR police and had a duty of chief of one of departments. Betrayed and defected to LPR. In 2019 became the chief of LPR Prosecutin Office. In February of 2022 personally on cameras shot with howitzer at UKR positions eliminated in Luhansk Prosecution Office

Colonel of justice Yekaterina Steglenko, deputy of General Prosecutor of DPR. Before 2014 worked in Luhansk oblast Prosecution Office. In 2014 defected to LPR. In 2016-2017 served in MGB of LPR (analog of KGB). Since 2017 appointed on the duty of General Prosecutor deputy   eliminated in Luhansk Prosecution Office

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WIA
Major General Serhiy Nirkov was seriously wounded; Chief of Staff - Deputy Commander of the 35th Combined Arns Army
Major General Andriy Serytsky Chief of Staff - Deputy Commander of the 36th Combined Arms Army was seriously wounded;
First Rank Captain Anton Kuprin, 44, lead Russian warship was fatally hit by Ukrainian Neptune missiles
Col. Yan Sukhanov, acting commander 810th Guards Separate Naval Infantry Brigade - heavily wounded (commander Col. Aleksey Sharov was killed in Mariupol on Mar. 22nd)
Lt. Col. Aleksey Teremkov, commander 542nd Separate Air-Assault Battalion - heavily wounded
Maj. Leonid Smirnoff, acting commander 382nd Separate Naval Infantry Battalion - heavily wounded

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Captured Maj. Pavel Gruzev, 7th Military Base (maybe the interview contains more detail?

Captured, dead or ran away without papers (?) Lt. Col. Sergey Deev, battalion commander, 49th Machine-Gun Artillery Regiment, 18th Machine-Gun Artillery Division:

Lt. Col. Artem Khelemendik from the 18th motorized rifle division with the position of "head of the control/command post" of the military unit 90151

 

Helluva book you wrote there sir! A tad low on action perhaps, but makes it up by having a multitude of interesting characters

Edited September 17, 2022 by Huba

[Letter from Prague]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

NAFO will probably handle it. CIA front or not.

o.O

Maybe I'm misreading you, surely your not suggesting what I think your suggesting? Who would be reading this?

 

I mean this is the best place for analysis of the war in the world.

[TheVulture]

5 minutes ago, Huba said:

but makes it up by having a multitude of interesting characters

Just none of them for very long. 

[Huba]

3 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Looking at a map, it depends on whether the UA flanks and retakes Rubizhne. If they don't, Russia can probably hold the river line at Sieverdonetsk. 

If the Svatovo line does not hold, I'd guess you are right. This line also have all the fortifications built since 2014, so definitely is the best chance to stop the UA. I guess Ukraininas would be happy to stop there too, occupy their old lines with some troops and reposition main forces on the south. I didn't hear a word of RU reinforcing the north with teoops from the south, so IMO that's what going to happen, question is when? Mud might be a problem... 

[Haiduk]

Yesterday UKR troops on Lyman direction liberated villages Shchurove (by unit of 66th mech,brigade) and Dibrova (by National Guard, likely of 15th regiment)

Shchurove:

Dibrova:

Edited September 17, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

Bridge through Oskil in Kupiansk

 

Edited September 17, 2022 by Haiduk

[Aragorn2002]

32 minutes ago, Huba said:

Helluva book you wrote there sir! A tad low on action perhaps, but makes it up by having a multitude of interesting characters

Certainly looking forward to volume 2.

[Haiduk]

UKR BTR-4 destroys Russian command vehicle R-149MA1

 

[Degsy]

Extract from an article (paywalled unfortunately) in the Spectator, based on operational data from the Ukrainian military. The whole article is here:

Article - Why didn't Ukraine fall.

..."However, the operational data reveals that 90 per cent of Ukrainian UAVs flown before July were lost, mainly to electronic warfare. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter was three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed wing UAV was six flights. Surviving a flight does not mean a successful mission; electronic warfare can disrupt command links, navigation and sensors, which can cause the UAV to fail to fix a target. Contrary to the narrative, Russian EW has been successful on the battlefield. Instead, what has proved decisive is the sheer number of drones that Ukraine has been able to deploy. The most useful UAVs, according to the data, are cheap fixed wing models. This is not because they are difficult to defeat but because they are inefficient to target, flying too high for short-range air defences while being too inexpensive to engage with medium or long-range systems."

[billbindc]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

NAFO will probably handle it. CIA front or not.

o.O

Maybe I'm misreading you, surely your not suggesting what I think your suggesting? Who would be reading this?

 

100% this is being read by the relevant state agencies of the opposition. On the up side, most of the things being said here are so unpalatably true to the bosses that it is of little use to them.

[Taranis]

"A Ukrainian tank passes in front of a former Russian checkpoint, around Izium, in the Kharkiv oblast, on September 16, 2022. EVGENIY MALOLETKA / AP"
*captured T-72B3

"A Russian army vehicle parked on a street in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Saturday, September 17, 2022. ALEXEI ALEXANDROV / AP"
*Kamaz-6350

Edited September 17, 2022 by Taranis

[womble]

4 minutes ago, billbindc said:

100% this is being read by the relevant state agencies of the opposition.

This must be true, since we have evidence that they have used BFC product for official purposes in the past, so are aware of the knowledge and effort that hangs about here.

[Haiduk]

27 minutes ago, Degsy said:

Extract from an article (paywalled unfortunately) in the Spectator, based on operational data from the Ukrainian military. The whole article is here:

Article - Why didn't Ukraine fall.

..."However, the operational data reveals that 90 per cent of Ukrainian UAVs flown before July were lost, mainly to electronic warfare. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter was three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed wing UAV was six flights. Surviving a flight does not mean a successful mission; electronic warfare can disrupt command links, navigation and sensors, which can cause the UAV to fail to fix a target. Contrary to the narrative, Russian EW has been successful on the battlefield. Instead, what has proved decisive is the sheer number of drones that Ukraine has been able to deploy. The most useful UAVs, according to the data, are cheap fixed wing models. This is not because they are difficult to defeat but because they are inefficient to target, flying too high for short-range air defences while being too inexpensive to engage with medium or long-range systems."

I read a thread of our UAV operator, which refuted a myth that UAV operator can do without good physical training, because "he just sits and moves a joystick". He told the UAV crews (especially quadcopters) often are forced to use own UAVs either almost from "zero line" or even to sneak to "grey zone" in order to minimize interferences of Russian EW (which set like sectors). So, UAV operators have to be in good conditions to run and crawl in body armor and pulling backpack with UAV and this is good if they have small Mavic or Autel, not fixed wing UAV, which has bigger weight and packed in big containers

Edited September 17, 2022 by Haiduk

[Haiduk]

PzH2000 on Kharkiv front

 

[Haiduk]

It's claimed Russian Ka-52 was shot down near Velyka Novosilka, Donetsk oblast. Allegedly helicopter was hit with Air Defense asset (Buk or S-300), so likely no survivors

 

[CAZmaj]

51 minutes ago, Degsy said:

Extract from an article (paywalled unfortunately) in the Spectator, based on operational data from the Ukrainian military. The whole article is here:

Article - Why didn't Ukraine fall.

..."However, the operational data reveals that 90 per cent of Ukrainian UAVs flown before July were lost, mainly to electronic warfare. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter was three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed wing UAV was six flights. Surviving a flight does not mean a successful mission; electronic warfare can disrupt command links, navigation and sensors, which can cause the UAV to fail to fix a target. Contrary to the narrative, Russian EW has been successful on the battlefield. Instead, what has proved decisive is the sheer number of drones that Ukraine has been able to deploy. The most useful UAVs, according to the data, are cheap fixed wing models. This is not because they are difficult to defeat but because they are inefficient to target, flying too high for short-range air defences while being too inexpensive to engage with medium or long-range systems."

 

Jack Watling
Why didn’t Ukraine fall?
The lessons we can learn from Russia’s failed war
17 September 2022, 2:30am
Why didn’t Ukraine fall?
(Photo: Getty)
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Aweek before Russia invaded Ukraine, expectations varied considerably. The US government was certain the Russians would strike at Kyiv and seize the Ukrainian capital in 72 hours. The Russian presidential administration concurred. In Paris and Berlin, officials were briefing that Anglo-American hysteria was leading the world to another Iraq WMD moment and that the Russians were just posturing.

Views varied in Kyiv, but the government’s assessment was that a period of political destabilisation would be followed by a limited Russian offensive against the Donbas. I thought Russia would invade only to find itself in a gruelling unconventional battle in Ukraine’s cities; the roads west of Kyiv would be severed, cutting off the city from European allies; Ukrainian troops in the Donbas would withdraw owing to shortages of ammunition after about ten days of fighting. All of the above assessments as it turned out were – to varying degrees – wrong.

Ukraine now has a viable path towards bringing about the Russia’s defeat within the next year. It is important to reflect upon why pre-war assessments were incorrect and how these errors can be avoided in the future. I, along with my colleague Nick Reynolds, have worked in Ukraine both before and during the conflict, interviewing senior Ukrainian security and military officials, observing operations, and examining captured Russian equipment. More recently, I’ve been reviewing the operational data gathered by the Ukrainian military. For much of that period, it has not been appropriate to publish detailed information about Ukrainian operations. RUSI, the defence thinktank I work for, has therefore focussed on assessing the enemy’s most likely and most dangerous courses of action, and primary vulnerabilities. Now that the threat of further Russian offensives has abated, however, it is becoming possible to discuss some aspects of the Ukrainian side of the equation.

The data demonstrates that the realities of the war diverged considerably from the public narrative. To take an example, many have speculated that Russian electronic warfare systems – comprising interference with electronic systems – have been ineffective. Just look at the proliferation of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) throughout the conflict: surely Russian electronic warfare and air defences could have neutralised these technologies. Yet UAVs have proven their usefulness. The Ukrainian military would agree that the overview of the battlefield they offer is vital.

However, the operational data reveals that 90 per cent of Ukrainian UAVs flown before July were lost, mainly to electronic warfare. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter was three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed wing UAV was six flights. Surviving a flight does not mean a successful mission; electronic warfare can disrupt command links, navigation and sensors, which can cause the UAV to fail to fix a target. Contrary to the narrative, Russian EW has been successful on the battlefield. Instead, what has proved decisive is the sheer number of drones that Ukraine has been able to deploy. The most useful UAVs, according to the data, are cheap fixed wing models. This is not because they are difficult to defeat but because they are inefficient to target, flying too high for short-range air defences while being too inexpensive to engage with medium or long-range systems.

This is a good example of where having both sides of the equation – Russian and Ukrainian – is critical to identifying the right lessons from Ukraine. Beyond confirming that Russian electronic warfare is effective – and that the lack of NATO investment in this area is a mistake – the loss rate also demands a re-evaluation of how NATO armies think about UAVs. At present, UAVs are treated like aircraft. They come under flight control and in the UK must be assured for flight by the Military Aviation Authority. This means that the force cannot generate large numbers of trained operators and limits how many UAVs can be deployed. UAVs are therefore designed to have higher payloads and longer flight times to compensate, driving up cost. Instead, UAVs need to be cheap, mass producible, and treated like munitions. The regulatory framework for their use should be changed.

The example of UAVs is specific, but it is precisely in these tactical details that the truth about the inaccuracy of pre-war assessments lies. To use my own assessment – that Ukrainian forces would hold their initial positions in the Donbas for a maximum of ten days – this was premised on a calculation of their available ammunition. The assumption was that much of their second line ammunition would be interdicted by Russian air and missile strikes.

The Ukrainian military began to disperse its ammunition from major stockpiles several days before the war as a precaution against widespread strikes. This was noted and tracked by Russian agents. Nevertheless, the Russian military appeared very reluctant to adjust the order of its priority strike list for attacking targets. Some of the targets towards the top of the Russian targeting list hadn’t been military sites for up to a decade.

Even though the Russians observed that the ammunition was being dispersed, they still prosecuted their initial strikes against the ammunition’s original location. Consequently, of the 20 major ammunition stockpiles used by the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russians destroyed significant stocks at only one. Russian strikes often lagged more than 48 hours behind their targets’ movements, not because the Russians lacked new information about the target’s location, but because they still struck its previous position first. Russian forces massively underperformed against their potential, largely for reasons of culture, process and weaknesses in planning.

We are still in the process of conducting our assessment of the operational data, but it is very clear that the gap between Russian success and failure was often narrow, and more often a product of culture, morale, and training than equipment or numbers of troops. It is also evident that the Ukrainians adapted faster in conditions of uncertainty and that it is the capacity of a force to recover from mistakes that often gives it the edge on the battlefield.
WRITTEN BYJack Watling

Dr Jack Watling is Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute

[Grigb]

3 hours ago, FancyCat said:

NAFO will probably handle it. CIA front or not.

o.O

Maybe I'm misreading you, surely your not suggesting what I think your suggesting? Who would be reading this?

 

We are on the watch list of the organization that sometimes called internet Research Agency aka Olgino aka Troll Factory etc. It is part of Prigozhin private empire.

[Battlefront.com]

6 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

Article

Thanks for posting that.  I fixed the formatting to make it easier to read.

Steve

[The_Capt]

7 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

The UA has certainly solved for breakthrough and exploitation now, but their ability to bust (tolerably) well manned prepared defences without taking huge casualties, not so much. Yet....

[glances expectantly over at Steve @Battlefront.comand @The_Capt 

Well here is Perun's spin - have not watched it all the way through but his track record has been solid:

So the question, I think, is - the UA has solved for offence, but have they solved for all offence?

First off I am not sure how many casualties they have taken in Kherson.  Report of "mass casualties" are likely overblown, or very localized, mainly because the offensive itself it continuing.  Sure the UA is taking casualties but I do not think we are talking the opening of the Somme here.

So what about "prepared defence"?  The Maginot Lines that Russia has been able to throw up all over the place?  Thoughts:

- This war is asymmetric, and has been from day 1.  The UA has access to much, much, better C4ISR, and its logistical lines have never been challenged in any meaningful way by the RA. [Aside: I think it is safe to discuss now; however, the only shot Russia had at winning this war was way back in Feb.  IF the RA had made the main effort of the war Lviv, and to cut off the western support corridor by land - I think we would be in a very different reality.]  Russia has had access to mass, beyond manpower - for which there has been rough parity - the RA has significant advantages in just about every other metric of military mass; tanks, IFVs, guns, EW/support vehicles.  The thing is, the UA advantages once they were given access to western smart-weapon systems (by 'smart' I mean weapon systems that can sustain approaching -1:1 shot to kill ratios through a much better organic TA and lethality designed to offset RA protection) and combined it with the C4ISR asymmetry - they effectively dislocated all that RA mass.  And did it with largely 'light' forces - Phase 1 of this war was mind-blowing, frankly, it was far more that 'Russian's suck'.  In reality the UA managed a hybrid distributed defence along ridiculous frontages that made the RA "suck more" - to the point of failure.

- So building on that asymmetry, over the summer the UA were able to expand their options significantly when they gained more access to deep precision strike capability.  I will say it loud and proud - HIMARS were an absolute game changer.  It gave the UA something akin to ersatz airpower without the bother of airfields and infrastructure.  They have employed this system, along with others, in both deep strike and CAS-like roles - there has been hand wringing over the tank but I would think air power advocates should take note of this as well.  With this capability they did pretty much what they did with SOF and Light infantry in phase 1, but much further and faster - they corroded the entire Russian operational system: logistics, C4ISR, EW and morale, to the point that the RA never were able to regain offensive initiative after the summer in the Donbas.     

- Then we saw the very visible result/end-state of this work in Kharkiv, which appears as much about RA taking insane risks to shore up other areas of the front - they did so because their system is in failure.  Kharkiv was "easy" because of this...slow....until it is not.  Kharkiv is an obscenely fast advance and an RA collapse, it will likely be the blueprint for the course of the rest of this war.

"Ok that was great but what about...?!!"  War is not a fast food industry - quick, cheap and tasty; we have become addicted to quick short wars, followed by an insurgency hangover in the west since 1991.  It is dangerous thinking and we needed a lesson on what a real war looks like - brutal, long and all up in your face.  No more of this video-game warfare nonsense.  You want to get into a peer fight?  This is what you get - except now with nuclear apocalypses hanging overhead.  A lesson both China, and I hope the West walk away with.  We have been sold on the idea that war is an inconvenience - to the point that they are teaching this in some academia circles to future policy workers and government leaders.  Some unpleasantness to get over with and then put the military back into a box and get back to the "real business".  Pinker was, and is wrong - this is the business of humanity, history backs me up on that one.

So back to Ukraine, well the UA is well ahead of force generation estimates, the double operation Kharkiv-Kherson demonstrates this, so I am not sure where they really are at to be honest but "well ahead" is a good place to be.  The next question is "how far behind is the RA?", and how fast is that getting worse? - it is getting worse.  The UA has been very smart, and they learn faster than the RA - I go on about options being a key indicator of how things are going; however, collective learning has to be another.  Both sides in this war are learning, it is that kind of experience, but the side that can learn faster and more broadly has a clear advantage - that would be the UA.  So the UA will likely go back to slow, until the conditions are ready for them to go fast.  As to Kherson, it does not take a military genius to know that fighting with a river to your back is likely the worst position to be in.  We know the RA supply lines are heavily damaged and the troops in those "hardpoints", know it too.  In the end the Maginot fell with a whimper because it was totally dislocated - RA hardpoints in Kherson will likely go the same way - it is the biggest vulnerability of a 'hardpoint', it cannot move.  However before that happens the RA needs to be further corroded until the holes outnumber the metal and, like Kharkiv the whole rotten house collapses.  

"How long can the RTA hold out" - see my para on real war: no freakin idea.  It is not forever, based on how hard the UA is still pushing, they think the RA will fail before the weather changes.  Does Kherson have the only decent RA General and leadership?  Did they stockpile more than we thought?  How bad is the RA system in that area?

We do not know.  But I will put one thing out there - time is on the Ukrainian side, not Russia.  Which is what this is really about - we need to move past that myth.  The UA could sit back and hammer the RA positions with impunity in Kherson.  They could do it during the muddy season and into the winter - they can find, fix and finish target from well outside of RA retaliation capability.  Precision means they do not need an ocean of ammo to do it either - 1000 rounds equals 1000 effective hits, kind of thing.  Russia could not mobilize anything that looks and fights like a real military on the scale they need for years and western resolve should get us well into 2023, particularly once the Dark Winter is over. 

My guess is that Ukraine wants a short war because their people are dying, but they can win a longer one as well.  They are pushing hard and up-close at Kherson because they are assessing it will fail soon.  Ukraine will likely win this thing enough (all war is negotiation) in 2023 - assuming it does not happen sooner - if the current paradigm holds.  If we get a major strategic shift then we would have to re-asses.  How they are going to do it is to likely stick with the same game they have been playing all along - exhaust the RA operational system and then kick it in the walnuts from multiple directions at once.  Watch the RA collapse - meme the hell out of that, document the war crimes the Russians were stupid enough get into and show them to the world, get more western support while Russia and its cronies make quacking noises and write bad fiction, rinse and repeat until one hits the Russian border or someone finally puts a piece of metal into one 70 year old's brain pan and the Russians leave sooner.  It is the winning recipe so far.

[The_Capt]

13 minutes ago, CAZmaj said:

Even though the Russians observed that the ammunition was being dispersed, they still prosecuted their initial strikes against the ammunition’s original location. Consequently, of the 20 major ammunition stockpiles used by the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russians destroyed significant stocks at only one. Russian strikes often lagged more than 48 hours behind their targets’ movements, not because the Russians lacked new information about the target’s location, but because they still struck its previous position first. Russian forces massively underperformed against their potential, largely for reasons of culture, process and weaknesses in planning.

That is a clear indication of a lagging C4ISR and Targeting enterprise.  Russia should have invested all the money they wasted on the T-14 into their ability to see, understand and hit, in a joint context, faster and better than their opponent.  They were behind at the start of the war and have been falling further back.

This also hints that the UA solved for defence thru dispersed or distributed mass - give your opponent nothing to hit but smoke.  Then we get into metrics of what "10 days ammo" looks like with modern smart weapons.  The author is exactly correct - we need to examine this war very carefully and make sure we see the real lessons, not the ones we want to see. 

[Battlefront.com]

One interesting thing I noted in the Watling article is the first part about incorrectly guessing what the Russians were going to attempt.  My view appears to have been more inline with the Ukrainians, which is that Russia wouldn't be foolish enough to attempt a full scale invasion.  Watling appears to have concluded, at some point, that Russia was going to go for a full invasion and then bog down in a protracted and unwinnable unconventional war.  It was precisely because I had the same concept of how a full scale war would go that I favored the Donbas war vs. the total war.  Well, until about Feb 20, that's when I switched to full scale war guess.

It's interesting to see that Ukraine decentralized its ammo at the last minute.  Obviously very smart.  One thing about Ukraine is thinking Russia knows where their stuff is isn't paranoia, it's prudent thinking.  Even after all the horrors of the war, we just saw yet another example of Ukrainians in trusted positions willingly giving Russia sensitive information (Hrim-2 factory worker cited a few pages ago).  Thankfully, Russia seems inept at using time sensitive information efficiently enough to take advantage of it.  Ukraine, on the other hand, seems able to do it and Russian lethargy ensures they have more time than they otherwise could have.

UAV vulnerability is definitely very interesting and it reinforces what we've been hearing in trickles from the front.  We have to remember that all the wonderful UAV videos we see are the ones that succeeded.  That gives us a false sense of the overall success rate of UAV activity.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

That is a clear indication of a lagging C4ISR and Targeting enterprise.  Russia should have invested all the money they wasted on the T-14 into their ability to see, understand and hit, in a joint context, faster and better than their opponent.  They were behind at the start of the war and have been falling further back.

This is the whole problem with Russian military development strategy... spend on the sexy stuff, scrimp on the nerdy stuff.  Can't parade C4ISR through Red Square on bragging rights day.  Sure, the mobile equipment component can, but that would be a yawner compared to a prototype tank built for parades!

2 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

This also hints that the UA solved for defence thru dispersed or distributed mass - give your opponent nothing to hit but smoke.  Then we get into metrics of what "10 days ammo" looks like with modern smart weapons.  The author is exactly correct - we need to examine this war very carefully and make sure we see the real lessons, not the ones we want to see. 

This is the issue we come back to time and time and time again.  The Russian military structure, from culture to administrative organization, is not just not built for success.  It is built for parades, PR exercises, and squashing small tasks with a hammer.  That's it.  Using it for a real war seems like it wasn't even an afterthought.  I really don't think senior levels cared enough to think about this or, if they did, found it wasn't in their best self interests to try to do anything about it.

Steve

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

That gives us a false sense of the overall success rate of UAV activity.

Yes, but also the way around this now is volume.  We have been saying for years to stop treating UAVs like an aircraft and a munition instead - dear gawd the UAS argument is so insane sometimes.

The obvious answer is to 1) harden against direct EW effects on the vehicle, and 2) make more autonomous.  Both which are very doable with todays technology let alone tomorrows. 

[CAZmaj]

Nick Cohen
Could Putin still trigger nuclear war?
16 September 2022, 6:28am

The world is facing the prospect of its first nuclear attack since the US Air Force dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Yet that horror arouses little fear or outrage. The possibility that a cornered Putin will use ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons to punish Ukraine for humiliating the Kremlin remains a nightmare most can live with.

Paranoia about nuclear conflict haunted the Cold War of the 20th century. Today our tolerance of the intolerable appears higher. The vast mass of people don't care to think about it. Policy elites believe that no one who looks at Ukraine with seriousness and compassion believes that they have done all they can do to avert it.

And so, we belittle threats that terrified our parents and grandparents. Anti-nuclear demonstrators do not disturb the crowds queuing to pay their respects to the late Queen. Fears of radiation clouds do not panic the European public. We comfort ourselves with talk of ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons that sound nasty, no doubt about it, but manageable.

Sensible generals say there is no such thing as ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons. There are just nuclear weapons. The Russian ‘tactical’ weapons that could hit Ukraine are ‘delivered’ by cruise missiles fired from submarines and ships, or from land-based missile launchers. (While we are on the subject of euphemisms, what a genteel understatement ‘delivered’ is. It makes weapons of mass destruction sound like pizzas.)

The bombs they carry have about 10 kilotons of destructive power. To grasp the devastation 10 kilotons can cause, the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons. It killed about 70,000 people, injured another 70,000 and levelled the city for 12 square kilometers around the blast site.

In our time, the explosion that destroyed much of central Beirut in 2020 was less than 1 kiloton. It still stripped steel-framed buildings of their cladding, and left 300,000 people homeless. There’s nothing tactful about tactical weapons.

A possibility is not a likelihood. To say that it is possible that Putin will order a strike is not the same thing as saying that he will probably do it.

The best analysts of the Ukraine war are convinced he is blustering. In an interview with the Economist this week, retired US general Wesley Clark explained that exploding one bomb would be militarily pointless. ‘Would the Ukrainians say “oh my goodness they’ve dropped a battlefield nuclear weapon on Izyum…OK let’s surrender”. No, they’re not going to surrender and Putin knows it.’

Politically, it would turn publics in the global south and parts of Europe that are currently indifferent to Russian imperialism against Putin. The Chinese Communist leadership, which this week was making its displeasure with Putin clear, would find itself bound to a state willing to upturn the taboos that govern warfare and drag it into its failing conflict.

Speaking to Ukrainian journalists this week, Lawrence Freedman, the great British authority on strategy, was equally skeptical. Putin would not dare run the risk that Nato would retaliate in kind, he said. How would he explain to the Russian people and elite that a war he does not even dare to call a war had gone nuclear?

Freedman and others point to red lines the Ukrainians have crossed without nuclear escalation. In the spring, for instance, it was commonplace to hear that an attack on Russia’s prized imperial possession of Crimea would trigger a nuclear response. ‘Now it’s being attacked, in a way that actually makes it very hard for Russia to work out how it’s being attacked, whether it’s some internal sabotage or some clever tricks the Ukrainians are using. And it doesn’t lead to escalation. So, what seems high risk when they start seems modest risk later on.’

I could go on. A ‘tactical’ bomb in Ukraine could kill, main, or poison Russian troops – not that their military or political leaders care overmuch about them. Radiation could spread over Ukraine’s border with Russia.

To add to this reassurance, those who worry about nuclear escalation must acknowledge that Nato governments and militaries have been worrying for them. Led by the Biden administration, western powers have been careful not to give the Ukrainian armed forces weapons that could threaten Russia. At a cost of thousands of civilian and military lives, Nato is keeping Ukraine on a leash and has done so since the start of the conflict. It will not let the Kremlin believe that it is facing an existential threat by giving Ukraine its most lethal weaponry.

Yet the room for doubt remains. Military analysts who believe we can escape a catastrophe must downplay Russian military doctrine and how it envisages the first use of nuclear weapons in conventional wars. They tell us to wipe from our mind, too, of the jeering bullies of Russian state television who deploy threats to go nuclear against Ukraine and the wider West as a matter of course.

Underlying their arguments is a belief in Putin’s rationality. General Clark says using nuclear weapons would be a totally irrational act: ‘And one thing we have seen about Putin is that he may make mistakes but he is not irrational’. Freedman agrees, ‘I don’t think Putin is impulsive; I think he just got the calculations wrong this time. He thought it was a limited military operation and it turned out it was not, and it dragged his country into a horrible war.’

The questions crowd in. Is a man who locked himself away during the pandemic rational? More pertinently does Putin see any rational difference between his interests and Russia’s interests? There’s no reason to think he does. The existential threat to his autocracy that defeat in Ukraine could bring surely appears to him to be an existential threat to Russia itself. The tsar cannot separate the two.

In these circumstances, we cannot rule out the chance that nuclear terror will return. Neither can we do much to stop it returning.

Betraying Ukraine is the only plausible way to remove the possibility of a catastrophe. If we cut off all weapons supplies and left it at Putin’s mercy, then the threat would recede. There is no way of eradicating the chance of a nuclear war because no major Western government can advocate appeasement on such a scale.

And so, we live with the faint possibility of a European Hiroshima. The carefree do not think about it. The policy makers, who must think about it, believe there is nothing more they can do to avert it.

 

WRITTEN BY
Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen is a columnist for the Observer and author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.

[CAZmaj]

Owen Matthews
More mad than Vlad: Russia’s ultra-nationalist threat
From magazine issue: 17 September 2022

‘Russia without Putin!’ was the cry of Muscovites who turned out to protest against Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency for a third term in December 2011. Crowds 100,000 strong chanted their opposition on Moscow’s Academician Sakharov Prospect – as symbolically named a venue as you could wish for – as riot police stood calmly by. There was anger in the crowd. But there was hope, too, not least because the massive protest was officially sanctioned. One after another, prominent opposition politicians such as Ilya Yashin, Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny denounced Putin from a stage provided by the city authorities.

Today the memory of those protests seems to belong to a different age of Russia. Yashin and Navalny are in jail. Nemtsov was shot dead. Since the beginning of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, street protests by a single person, let alone 100,000, have become illegal. Since 24 February, some 16,000 people have been arrested for protesting – including one woman near Red Square who was detained for holding up a piece of paper reading ‘Two Words’ (implying Net Voine – No War), and another for brandishing a paper that was completely blank.

Russia’s liberal opposition has been completely crushed. But in the country’s new wartime reality the liberals’ main slogan has also come to raise more questions than answers. What would ‘Russia without Putin’ actually look like? If not Putin, then who?

The grim reality is that Putin’s most dangerous potential opposition today comes not from the pro-western liberals but from the nationalist right. Before the annexation of Crimea in 2014, ultra-nationalist ideologues such as Alexander Dugin (whose daughter Dasha was killed by a car bomb in Moscow last month), Christian-fundamentalist TV station-owning billionaire Konstantin Malofeev and paramilitary imperialist and former FSB officer Igor Strelkov were on the fringes of Russian politics. After Crimea, Putin not only brought these orthodox ultra-nationalists inside the Kremlin’s ideological big tent but actively began to model its own propaganda message on their toxic brand of imperial nostalgia.

But there was one problem with riding the ultra-nationalist tiger. While the spin doctors who ran the Kremlin’s ideology and media empire had an essentially cynical, post-modern and consumerist attitude to ideology, the people they had recruited actually believed the message. More, many of these Christian ultra-nationalists were unafraid to bite the hand that fed them and denounce their masters for unpatriotic corruption.

‘Putin and his circle have recently taken steps which I believe will almost inevitably lead to the collapse of the system,’ Strelkov, who had served as the minister of defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told the Guardian as far back as 2016: ‘We don’t know yet how, and we don’t know when, but we are certain it will collapse, and more likely sooner than later.’ Strelkov – who openly boasted about executing his own soldiers for looting – had been instrumental in toppling Ukrainian authority in a series of towns across the Donbas in 2014. And he openly boasted, too, about doing the same in Russia. ‘We do not plan to launch a revolution to depose Vladimir Putin,’ he warned darkly. ‘Having taken part in five wars, I know very well what it is like when authority and social infrastructure collapse in big cities. Nobody wants that, including me. But unfortunately, it could be inevitable.’

Even Navalny, often described in the western media as Russia’s leading opposition figure, clearly recognized that the Kremlin was far more afraid of ultra-nationalists than they were of him. ‘The Kremlin is very scared of nationalists, because they use the same imperial rhetoric as Putin does, but they can do it much better than him,’ he said before his 2020 poisoning.

During the build-up to the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin turned to the ultra-nationalist paramilitary organizations to boost its forces. Chief among them was the Wagner private military company. Its founder, GRU special forces lieutenant colonel Dmitry Utkin, earned the call sign ‘Wagner’ because of his passion for the Third Reich. Photographs published last year showed him sporting a Waffen-SS collar tab and Reichs-adler eagle tattoos on his neck and chest. According to a report in May by Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, leaked by Der Spiegel, numerous other Russian right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis are fighting in Ukraine too. Among them are the Wagner Group contingent Rusich, whose co-founder Alexei Milchakov is infamous for social media videos of himself chopping the head off a puppy. ‘I’m not going to go deep and say I’m a nationalist, a patriot, an imperialist and so forth,’ Milchakov said in a December 2020 video. ‘I’ll say it outright: I’m a Nazi.’ Another is the Russian Imperial Movement, a white supremacist group that was designated a ‘global terrorist organization’ by the United States two years ago. In July the Wagner Group was authorized to recruit prisoners from Russian jails, offering reprieves in exchange for military service.

Such groups may be small and marginal but they have been armed by the Russian military and ideologically empowered by near-hysterical levels of state propaganda. ‘Orthodox warriors – do your work!’ was Kremlin propagandist-in-chief Vladimir Solovyov’s reaction to news of the Bucha massacre in April. Since news broke last week of Ukrainian forces storming through Russian defences in Kharkiv province and retaking 6,000 square kilometres of territory, the levels of hysteria have only grown. ‘There is still civilian infrastructure left in Ukraine?’ RT head Margarita Simonyan asked sarcastically after Russian rockets battered power stations in retaliation for the Kharkiv breakthrough.

With hatred for Ukraine whipped to such levels, the reaction to every defeat by Kyiv’s forces both on the extreme right and in the Kremlin media has been the same: an aggressive search for traitors. ‘I directly accuse [defence minister] Sergei Shoigu of, at minimum, criminal negligence,’ Strelkov posted on his Telegram channel in May. ‘I have no grounds to accuse him of treason, but I would suspect it.’ Russian commanders had been ‘shamefully indecisive’, railed Alexander Sladkov, a military correspondent for state TV. Even Solovyov has vented furiously over the ‘shameful’ time it took for weapon supplies to reach the Russian military in Ukraine.

For the Kremlin, the search for scapegoats and traitors should be a deeply worrying warning sign of the future. As long as the Russian army steamroller was grinding on through Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, and Kremlin officials were busy making preparations for referendums in the occupied territories in June and July, Putin could have plausibly declared victory. But last week, with the collapse of the Kharkiv front, the war turned a corner. ‘The vector has changed,’ said the daughter of one of Putin’s close associates, who herself is a senior media executive. ‘The people are still oblivious; they gobble up the propaganda. But everyone who is paying attention feels it. Putin is not a winner any more.’

Putin is not about to lose the war any minute now: Ukrainians have so far taken back less than 6 per cent of the territory they have lost since 2014. Nor is he about to become the scapegoat for anything. His image as Russia’s good tsar, built up over 20 years of relentless propaganda, means that he will be the last to be blamed by his people. But the question now arises of how he will lose it eventually. Will it be in the form of a slow, attritional stalemate that ends in a truce allowing Putin to stay in power – or a fast and humiliating collapse that could shake his regime to its core?

In part, the outcome is in the hands of the West, with whose arms the Ukrainians are almost exclusively fighting. But many in the West are not so sure that Russia without Putin is a good idea. Keeping an odious regime in power for fear of something even more unstable and dangerous has a long history in western diplomacy. The US strongly desired to preserve the Soviet Union – as evidenced by George H.W. Bush’s notorious ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech in 1991 – for fear of a patchwork of failed nuclear-armed states that might replace it.

And France’s Emmanuel Macron has a ‘strong fear of a Weimar [Republic]-like situation’ if Putin were to fall as a result of the Ukraine war, says a senior European statesman who has spoken to the French President regularly during the crisis. That fear is at the root of Macron’s controversial insistence that ‘Putin must not be humiliated’ in any future peace settlement – and that the EU must not follow the policy of ‘the most war-mongering types’ in Europe since this would ‘risk extending the conflict and closing off communications [with Putin] completely’. Macron’s position naturally infuriated the Ukrainians – and the Poles and Balts, whom he had implicitly accused of being fauteurs de guerre, or ‘warmongers’.

Like the collapse of the USSR, the political ramifications of the Ukraine war may be out of the West’s hands. But what’s for sure is that a humiliating defeat will be seen not only by the orthodox ultra-nationalists but by most Russians as a colossal failure by the whole political elite. They will be angry. And that elite will try to defend itself. How will the men at the top of the Kremlin keep the ultra-nationalists in check, and out of power? By making concessions to the West, releasing political prisoners, paying reparations to Ukraine and all the other humiliations that will be demanded of Russia as the price of removing sanctions and reaching a peace deal? Or by installing someone even more aggressively nationalist than Putin himself, who can attempt to continue to ride the tiger for fear of being devoured by it?

WRITTEN BY
Owen Matthews
Owen Matthews writes about Russia for The Spectator. His latest book Overreach, a history of the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian war, will be published by HarperCollins in November