How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Haiduk]

UKR TG from Bakhmut (there is opinion this is PsyOps canal controlled by general Syrskiy, but this can't be verified of course)

...Mothe...rs are gradually fading. All what we had, remained under our control [DeepState map shows some other picture, but likely they have "OSINT delay"]. Mothe...rs failed own assaults from outskirts, the battle for Khromove in our favor, for Ivanivske - the same. We stand.

...Today is sunny and mothe...rs shell Bakhmut tough with artillery, slaughter is continuing.  

Edited March 25, 2023 by Haiduk

[Elmar Bijlsma]

What I imagine goes on when a Zoopark is about to get smacked by artillery:

 

10 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Many of us have checked in with Mick Ryan's Twitter account throughout this war as he was one of the earliest voices that "got it".  Good questions too.  Not surprising as the interviewer is a CMer   The result is a nice overview of the upper stratosphere view of how things are going.

Hey, BigDuke6, don't be a stranger, should you happen to be lurking around here.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Elmar Bijlsma

[Haiduk]

UKR 60 mm mortar (M2/M19?) team at the work, Bakhmut area

 

[Battlefront.com]

NY Times has an interesting article today about the various scammers, fraudsters, disorganized, or otherwise harmful individuals who are took advantage of the chaos in Ukraine.  Not surprisingly, Vasquez is one of the people they focused on.  Looks like the NY Times' inquiries to him about his military career is what caused him to delete his Twitter account.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/world/europe/volunteers-us-ukraine-lies.html

It would be shocking if this wasn't happening.  There's a very long history of this sort of thing, especially with conflicts that have an "insurgency" element to them.  Sometimes it actually works out for the better.  Case in point... Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who would not have seen service with the Continental Army if the truth of military service was known, yet wound up professionalizing the forces fighting against Britain and creating the foundation for the US Army to follow:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/baron-von-steuben-180963048/

Steve

[Billy Ringo]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Rare footage of Strela-10 in UKR service

 

The extreme differential between a drone's cost and effort to deploy compared to what it takes to defend against it still amazes me.  And in some ways it scares me.  Can any semblance of cost-effective drone countermeasures protect a target?  And what happens, not if but when, the target becomes a civilian airplane, critical structure, crowd, sporting event, school, etc. 

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

https://tass.ru/politika/17367387

 

Can't imagine thousands of criminals with recent military training/experience being suddenly released into the general population.  This ain't gonna end well...

[cesmonkey]

7 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

NY Times has an interesting article today about the various scammers, fraudsters, disorganized, or otherwise harmful individuals who are took advantage of the chaos in Ukraine.  Not surprisingly, Vasquez is one of the people they focused on.  Looks like the NY Times' inquiries to him about his military career is what caused him to delete his Twitter account.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/world/europe/volunteers-us-ukraine-lies.html

It would be shocking if this wasn't happening.  There's a very long history of this sort of thing, especially with conflicts that have an "insurgency" element to them.  Sometimes it actually works out for the better.  Case in point... Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who would not have seen service with the Continental Army if the truth of military service was known, yet wound up professionalizing the forces fighting against Britain and creating the foundation for the US Army to follow:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/baron-von-steuben-180963048/

Steve

Reading the article, the transgressions of the people don't seem that bad to me compared to what they are accomplishing in helping to fight against Russian's invasion of Ukraine. They are doing more for Ukraine than us armchair generals here.

Vasquez's transgression,

Quote

Mr. Vasquez said he had been misrepresenting his military record for decades. He acknowledged being kicked out of the Army but would not talk publicly about why. 

Quote

In an interview, Mr. Lackey said that he lied about being a U.S. Marine so he could join the Legion.

Ripley's Heroes, "Absent Paper Trail"

Quote

Frontline volunteers said Ripley’s delivered the equipment to Ukraine without required documentation listing the actual buyers and recipients. Recently, federal authorities began investigating the shipments, U.S. officials said.

Quote

Colonel Rawlings has said that his group is awaiting American nonprofit status. But he has not revealed his spending or proof of a nonprofit application to The Times or to donors who have asked.

Quote

Examples of wasted money in the hands of well-intentioned people are common. Mriya Aid, a group led by an active-duty Canadian lieutenant colonel, spent around $100,000 from donors on high-tech U.S.-style night-vision devices. They ended up being less-effective Chinese models, internal documents show.

 

[Haiduk]

9 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

The extreme differential between a drone's cost and effort to deploy compared to what it takes to defend against it still amazes me.

Orlan/Zala class, which can be targeted with Strela-10, Stormer etc are specialized systems, which except a cost of "planes" have cost of control stations and the cost of operators training. Also the cost of damage caused by drone targeting or direct attack can be much more that cost of old Strela-10 or even Osa missile or even newest LMM and Starstreak

[Haiduk]

4 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

Ripley's Heroes, "Absent Paper Trail"

Ripley's Heroes and Mriya Aid are both in black list among UKR civil volunteers. Latter after scandal with Chinnese NV devices even threaten to our volunteers and blamed "Hospitalyers" - volunteer medical unit that they are "neo-nazi"

Edited March 25, 2023 by Haiduk

[cesmonkey]

7 minutes ago, Haiduk said:

Ripley's Heroes and Mriya Aid are both in black list among UKR civil volunteers. Latter after scandal with Chinnese NV devices even threaten to our volunteers and blamed "Hospitalyers" - volunteer medical unit that they are "neo-nazi"

So was the scandal that they wasted money on less effective Chinese night vision devices, are is there more to it than that?

[Haiduk]

20 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

So was the scandal that they wasted money on less effective Chinese night vision devices, are is there more to it than that?

I've read fluently the thread about Mriya Aid more than month ago. As I can recall NV scandal was most significant, but there were other similar things. "Hospitalyers" claimed they help to Mriya Aid to rise 20 000$ for turniquets for them, but they didn't get it. After representatives of unit asked "WTF?" Mriya Aid answered that they are right-wing neo-nazi and didn't deserve any aid.  

As I know representatives of World Ukrainain Congress in Canada still donate to Mriya Aid and somebody likely have good business on this. 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Haiduk

[dan/california]

3 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Dirt and often even asphalt roads in small villages are completely broken by heavy tracked vehilces, rains and snow.

 

 

58 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:

The extreme differential between a drone's cost and effort to deploy compared to what it takes to defend against it still amazes me.  And in some ways it scares me.  Can any semblance of cost-effective drone countermeasures protect a target?  And what happens, not if but when, the target becomes a civilian airplane, critical structure, crowd, sporting event, school, etc. 

Can't imagine thousands of criminals with recent military training/experience being suddenly released into the general population.  This ain't gonna end well...

In the very short term it just means war is n expensive business. Looking out further there absolutely have to be laser beam based solutions.  The DOD gets this and is working hard on it. I would love to see some systems in Ukraine for real testing,  but either they aren't ready yet, or they think they are far enough ahead of the Chinese they don't want to risk letting anything loose.

 

Quote

https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/01/13/army-readies-to-deliver-first-set-of-strykers-with-50-kilowatt-laser-weapons/

 

44 minutes ago, cesmonkey said:

Reading the article, the transgressions of the people don't seem that bad to me compared to what they are accomplishing in helping to fight against Russian's invasion of Ukraine. They are doing more for Ukraine than us armchair generals here.

Vasquez's transgression,

Ripley's Heroes, "Absent Paper Trail"

 

I agree the whole foreign volunteer and charity funded war thing is a mess and was always going to be a mess. I also agree with cesmonkey that if this is the worst the NYT can find things are much better than I actually feared.

It is more than a little silly though that the U.S. will supply billions in military equipment and real time targeting data, but can't manage to detail off some actual special forces types to get the foreign legion working better. The distinctions get absurd at times.

Edited March 25, 2023 by dan/california

[Beleg85]

About latest videos of Russians complaining- there is small ****storm in Russian net that they were paid Ukrainian traitors. To counter this, nationalistic channel Grey Zone took them in defence and revealed their identities, by way confirming they were Russian soldiers " from Archangelsk, Kaliningrad, Kursk etc.,some fighting already from 2014" (remember Rusian claims how genuine was separatist movement then?). Now orcs bite themselves there who is in fact "real patriot" and who "paid chekist troll".

 

[dan/california]

3 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

About latest videos of Russians complaining- there is small ****storm in Russian net that they were paid Ukrainian traitors. To counter this, nationalistic channel Grey Zone took them in defence and revealed their identities, by way confirming they were Russian soldiers " from Archangelsk, Kaliningrad, Kursk etc.,some fighting already from 2014" (remember Rusian claims how genuine was separatist movement then?). Now orcs bite themselves there who is in fact "real patriot" and who "paid chekist troll".

 

I am quite certain that the people who run Grey Zone are among the worst human beings on the planet. On the other hand they do usually seem to have their perceptions anchored in reality, and understand Russia is losing this war.

[Battlefront.com]

1 hour ago, cesmonkey said:

Reading the article, the transgressions of the people don't seem that bad to me compared to what they are accomplishing in helping to fight against Russian's invasion of Ukraine. They are doing more for Ukraine than us armchair generals here.

Agreed.  I was expecting a lot worse in that article.

My guess is the majority of fraud is old fashioned types... setting up fake organizations that don't exist at all.  At least these examples are of real people and real organizations.

Steve

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

Interesting details from "Caesar" howitzer commander:

The commander told recently he had "Msta-S" and it's deployment time was 10 minutes. "Caesar" can be deployed for 2 minutes. When they got an order to move on Vuhledar direction, they were able to open fire since 40 minutes after arrival to new theater. Intensivity of fire was too high - they had fire tasks both day and night and were shooting about 150 shells for 24 hours.  

@Taranis what would this rate do to barrel life? When would replacement be needed? 

[billbindc]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

NY Times has an interesting article today about the various scammers, fraudsters, disorganized, or otherwise harmful individuals who are took advantage of the chaos in Ukraine.  Not surprisingly, Vasquez is one of the people they focused on.  Looks like the NY Times' inquiries to him about his military career is what caused him to delete his Twitter account.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/world/europe/volunteers-us-ukraine-lies.html

It would be shocking if this wasn't happening.  There's a very long history of this sort of thing, especially with conflicts that have an "insurgency" element to them.  Sometimes it actually works out for the better.  Case in point... Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who would not have seen service with the Continental Army if the truth of military service was known, yet wound up professionalizing the forces fighting against Britain and creating the foundation for the US Army to follow:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/baron-von-steuben-180963048/

Steve

Given my reaction to other examples posted around here, you won't be surprised to find that I have been skeptical of most of these guys from the beginning and from Nance on down. The brutal rule of thumb is that if they have achieved notoriety before they are a casualty then you should exercise great restraint in accepting anything they say at face value. 

And all of this is a good development. It is a symptom of the fact that the Ukrainian Army is growing up at mach speed before our very eyes. Militaries significantly dependent on more or less ad hoc 'international legions' (see Republican Spain, Nazi Germany, the Vatican State, Mexico in 1848) tend to be states that are losing their wars. Ukraine is past the point of needing these units and it shows.

[kevinkin]

2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben

Don't get me started ...

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=7259

Been involved with the history Battle of Monmouth since I was a kid. 

 

[Anon052]

There is  a new story about the northstream  sabotage in german Focus.

I did  find the article only in german: https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/neue-spur-fuehrt-nach-russland-mit-greifarm-u-boot-steuerten-russische-militaerschiffe-nord-stream-pipelines-an_id_189278264.html

This new story is much more plausible then the sailing yacht story. The article states  that on september 19 there  were bigger maneuvers of the russian baltic fleet. It seems at least  3 russian ships (the article states that there could be  6 russian ships in all, all six  ships were named  in the article) used those maneuvers as cover to reach  the location of the bombings and were active there. This activity was detected by different swedish  and danish patrolships. The russian ships had specialised equipment like cranes and submersibles and there were espionage  ships that covered the  activity.

I myself work a lot in the port of Hamburg in explosive ordance  disposal of ww2 ordnance from specialised ships. This yacht story seemed like a  bad joke to me. I can't imagine how they handled the explosive from a yacht without a  crane.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Anon052

[Battlefront.com]

4 minutes ago, Anon052 said:

There is  a new story about the northstream  sabotage in german Focus.

I did  find it only in german: https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/neue-spur-fuehrt-nach-russland-mit-greifarm-u-boot-steuerten-russische-militaerschiffe-nord-stream-pipelines-an_id_189278264.html

This new story which is much more plausible then the sailing yacht story. The article states  that on september 19 there  were bigger maneuvers of the russian baltic fleet. It seems at least  3 russian ships (the article states that there could be  6 russian ships in all) used those maneuver as cover to reach  the location of the bombings and were active there. This activity was detected by different swedish  and danish patrolships. The russian ships had specialised equipment like cranes  and there were espionage  ships that covered the  activity.

I myself work a lot in the port of Hamburg in explosive ordance  disposal of ww2 ordnance from specialised ships. This yacht story seemed like a  bad joke to me. I can't imagine how they handed the explosive from a yacht without a  crane.

Could be something, could be nothing.  Still, it is interesting

I don't know why Russia would have to do such a thing, though.  It must have robots to do inspections and repairs from inside the pipeline, so why not load one up with C4 and blow it up wherever they wanted to sever the connection?

Steve

[dan/california]

13 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Don't get me started ...

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=7259

Been involved with the history Battle of Monmouth since I was a kid. 

 

We seem to have had a catastrophic success.

 

39 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Given my reaction to other examples posted around here, you won't be surprised to find that I have been skeptical of most of these guys from the beginning and from Nance on down. The brutal rule of thumb is that if they have achieved notoriety before they are a casualty then you should exercise great restraint in accepting anything they say at face value. 

And all of this is a good development. It is a symptom of the fact that the Ukrainian Army is growing up at mach speed before our very eyes. Militaries significantly dependent on more or less ad hoc 'international legions' (see Republican Spain, Nazi Germany, the Vatican State, Mexico in 1848) tend to be states that are losing their wars. Ukraine is past the point of needing these units and it shows.

100% agree!

 

[Kinophile]

2 hours ago, Haiduk said:

I've read fluently the thread about Mriya Aid more than month ago. As I can recall NV scandal was most significant, but there were other similar things. "Hospitalyers" claimed they help to Mriya Aid to rise 20 000$ for turniquets for them, but they didn't get it. After representatives of unit asked "WTF?" Mriya Aid answered that they are right-wing neo-nazi and didn't deserve any aid.  

As I know representatives of World Ukrainain Congress in Canada still donate to Mriya Aid and somebody likely have good business on this. 

I sorta mentioned something sideways related to this area previously. 

Last year my Wife (Polish dad, Ukrainian mom) was involved with a chef Friend in organising a large festival at a Ukrainian summer camp location outside Toronto. They eventually had a lot lined up - bands,  food,  kids bouncy castles,  accommodation,  the works. All Ukrainian food,  musicians etc,  everything in support of UKR refugees here in Canada. Let's call it "Ukrainian Refugee Festival 2022", so "URF 2022" for short. 

Wife and Friend were working with the Owner of the summer camp. Let's call him Oleg,  Oleg the Owner. 

Soon they were at the point where a website should be up and running, for Wife to start pointing social media campaigns towards and to start selling tickets. Oleg had a guy attached, a proper website developer,  legit and experienced. Let's call him Dave,  Dave the Developer. 

So -  Wife,  Friend, Oleg (Owner) &  Dave (web Developer), all working on "URF 2022" . (Ukrainian Refugee Festival). 

Early on Wife &  Friend ask Oleg re website, pushing a lot, but Oleg is stalling,  not clear why. He's older,  maybe it's a generational thing,  he doesn't "get it",  yadda yadda. W & F know of Dave, want to talk to him direct but Oleg doesn't/won't give contact details. 

Two months pass of Festival organizing,  busy busy busy. Wife checks in re website Again - nothing's built. WTF.  With Friend she bears down on Oleg,  eventually gets Dave's details and reaches out. Festival is two months away. 

Wife &  Friend to Dave: Hi Dave! Oleg said you have a site built,  may we see? 

Dave: Sure!  (sends url) 

Wife: Hmh...? 

Friend: Uhhhh? 

1. The website domain is not "URF2022.com"
2. The site mentions about a festival but no URF by name,  and not at the Summer Camp location
3. The Summer Camp location is mentioned but purely for 2024 (yes,  '24) summer camps. 
4. The organization that the site is purportedly for my Wife has never, not once heard of. Let's them Who The **** Are These Guys (WTFATG).  It's certainly not "URF 2022 Ltd" . 
5. There's no payment portal -  you email this WTFATG with your tickets request and your credit card details in the email and they process the order and mail you the tickets. Mail.  Not email. Mail. Perfectly safe, legit,  transparent and standard, yup yup yup. 

Wife: Ugh Dave?  Wtf all the above? 

Dave: You, Mrs. Wife &  Mr. Friend,  are as confused as I am. Btw I haven't been paid diddly squat and I'm nanometers from walking away. Your own confusion, as Primary Organizers, is a serious accelerant. 

Friend: Have you sent an invoice? 

Dave: Yes. To Oleg. 

Wife: WTFF (What The ****ing ****).  Not even to the WTFATG? 

Dave: Nope.  Oleg insisted, plus I have no details of WTFATG - address, accountants, working phone number, etc. Just that email.

Wife: Dave - get your sneakers on,  the fast ones. I'm gonna talk to Oleg and I have a bad feeling. 

Dave: Lady, metaphorically I'm sitting in the car with my foot hovering over the gas pedal. 

So, Wife & Friend call Oleg. 

Wife: Oleg,  who are WTFATG? 

Oleg: Oh them,  they're a separate organisation. Nothing to do with URF2022

Wife: Uh huh. Btw,  no ****ing way we selling tickets in the process described above.

Oleg: What? But how will we pay for the 2024 camps? 

Wife: WTFFF* are you talking about?  We're organizing URF 2022 remember? 

Oleg: Yes,  and they'll pay for the '24 camps in advance,  then pay off the URF2022 people. 

Friend: Wait a second -  "they"?  The tickets for URF? 

Oleg: No, "they"  as in WTFATG. But they need to be paid off, which is where URF 2022 will help them out. Plus how else will they pay me for minding the place? 

Wife: WTFFFF** do you mean, minding the place? Aren't you the bloody owner? Why the hell should URF2022 give any monies to anyone but Festival acts &  suppliers, not to mention the fugees THIS WHOLE THING IS MEANT TO HELP? 

Oleg: Well they own the place, not me. I just live here. 

Wife: !!!! etc 

There are not enough ****s in the worlds to describe her simultaneous Volcanic Fury & Complete Confusion, her mind is in a quantum state of both Horrified (particle) and Enraged (wave).

Wife: Oleg, your understanding of Space & Time, not to mention Basic Logic, leaves a lot to be desired. I don't know who the hell you actually are (the Janitor!?),  who WTFATG are,  what the hell is going on and why I'm still talking to you. I'm out. 

Wife calls Dave. 

Wife: GO. 

Dave: VROOM

...

URF 2022 did not go ahead.

Website disappeared. WTFATG still exist online. Kids still go to Ukrainian Summer Camp at that location but it is absolutely impossible to find out anything about WTFATG themselves. Not that Wifey cares to bother. Oleg is the Site Manager of the location; Wife never got the sense that he was a Bad Guy, just an older guy glad to have a paycheck who didnt have the wit to sense what was going on.

True story,  enormous quantity of ****s and all. 

 

 

_{*What The ****ing ****ity ****}

_{** What The ****ing ****ity **** ****} 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Kinophile

[dan/california]

7 minutes ago, Anon052 said:

There is  a new story about the northstream  sabotage in german Focus.

I did  find the article only in german: https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/neue-spur-fuehrt-nach-russland-mit-greifarm-u-boot-steuerten-russische-militaerschiffe-nord-stream-pipelines-an_id_189278264.html

This new story is much more plausible then the sailing yacht story. The article states  that on september 19 there  were bigger maneuvers of the russian baltic fleet. It seems at least  3 russian ships (the article states that there could be  6 russian ships in all) used those maneuvers as cover to reach  the location of the bombings and were active there. This activity was detected by different swedish  and danish patrolships. The russian ships had specialised equipment like cranes and submersibles and there were espionage  ships that covered the  activity.

I myself work a lot in the port of Hamburg in explosive ordance  disposal of ww2 ordnance from specialised ships. This yacht story seemed like a  bad joke to me. I can't imagine how they handled the explosive from a yacht without a  crane.

I was pretty sure the original "yacht" story was BS within five minutes of reading it. It just reeked of someone falling for a Russian disinfo op. I am am a lot more certain of it now.

[Battlefront.com]

40 minutes ago, billbindc said:

Given my reaction to other examples posted around here, you won't be surprised to find that I have been skeptical of most of these guys from the beginning and from Nance on down. The brutal rule of thumb is that if they have achieved notoriety before they are a casualty then you should exercise great restraint in accepting anything they say at face value. 

This war has changed that a little bit.  The amount of social media activity coming from the front makes everybody a potential "hit", and once that happens things can go on from there.  But yeah, the dysfunction and shortcomings of the foreign volunteer units has been on display since the start.  The more established national ones, such as the Georgian, Chechen, and Belarus units seem to be of a different sort.

I have to say I always thought Vasquez to be a horse's arse.  I have a particular dislike of his sort of personality, which came through right from the start. 

40 minutes ago, billbindc said:

And all of this is a good development. It is a symptom of the fact that the Ukrainian Army is growing up at mach speed before our very eyes. Militaries significantly dependent on more or less ad hoc 'international legions' (see Republican Spain, Nazi Germany, the Vatican State, Mexico in 1848) tend to be states that are losing their wars. Ukraine is past the point of needing these units and it shows.

Yes.  Ad hoc units at the beginning of an unbalanced struggle can be a good thing, but long term?  Bad.  Ukraine was smart to make a strong distinction between official foreigners (fighting on Ukraine's payroll) and irregulars.  It's been dealing with that for 8 years now so not surprising they had the correct mindset and structures in place when this war started.

Steve

[Haiduk]

Even the basement or the cellar don't give you 100 % of safety

 

Edited March 25, 2023 by Haiduk

[Gpig]

On the lighter side,

MITSI studio did a nice little animation on how countries fight their wars. The last one is a great tribute to Ukraine basically smashing RFs. Moskva skinking, turret tossing and drone mastery. 



Youtube Mitsi Studios

Also, check out their Battle of the Atlantic video