Ukraine 14 - Back to the Mud

[SpaceChampion]

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

So in hours it will be Victory Day in Moscow.

Putin's planned glory parade will not be the shiny showcase he calculated it would. But hey Trump called his plan brilliant, right.

"Putin has put himself at the center of Russia's Victory Day. But he has little to celebrate"

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/europe/victory-day-russia-ukraine-war-analysis-cmd-intl/index.html

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

 

Karma sucks, doesn’t it?

[Werthead]

Snake Island taking a pounding. The Ukrainians took out what appears to be the only air defence system on the island last week and have since destroyed a small outpost, several patrol boats and helicopters landing carrying reinforcements. Some speculation that the Ukrainians want to retake the island and put antiair and antiship weapons in place to screen the far SE coast of Ukraine from a possible amphibious invasion. Tough operation. 

4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

So in hours it will be Victory Day in Moscow.

Putin's planned glory parade will not be the shiny showcase he calculated it would. But hey Trump called his plan brilliant, right.

"Putin has put himself at the center of Russia's Victory Day. But he has little to celebrate"

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/08/europe/victory-day-russia-ukraine-war-analysis-cmd-intl/index.html

The timing of how the situation in Mariupol is ticking down to the confluence with tomorrow is remarkable. I wonder if Ukraine will deliberately surrender Mariupol at a point just so Putin gets a massive victory rush and might choose against escalation (or maybe it would embolden him to the same).

[Werthead]

Huh, the attack on Snake Island was reported in Russia as the Russians foiling a Ukrainian attempt to recapture the island. Then the Wagner Group (via their own Telegram channel) angrily contradicted them, saying it was a Russian special forces chopper that was shot down and berating them for propaganda.

[broken one]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Huh, the attack on Snake Island was reported in Russia as the Russians foiling a Ukrainian attempt to recapture the island. Then the Wagner Group (via their own Telegram channel) angrily contradicted them, saying it was a Russian special forces chopper that was shot down and berating them for propaganda.

Psychological effect plus great distraction at low cost.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHt8GCqSbNw

Film taken by Bayraktar, two SU 27 flying at low altitude drop several parachute bombs on the island, 3 of them hit buildings. It was after Bayraktar had destroyed AA systems.

 

 

[Martell Spy]

Fox News deals in Kremlin propaganda. So why not freeze Rupert Murdoch’s assets?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/07/fox-new-deals-in-kremlin-propaganda-freeze-rupert-murdochs-assets

Quote

Murdoch is boosting Russian morale and, conversely, undermining Ukrainian resolve by supplying a dictatorship with foreign validation. Do not underestimate its importance. Russians who suspect their TV anchors are state-sponsored bootlickers are more likely to believe foreign commentators who assure them that the lies they are hearing are true. Reporters risk their lives but Putin cannot fire or imprison Fox News presenters, steal their wealth or poison them with Novichok. Russian forces will not reduce their towns to rubble, rape them, torture them, burn them alive in theatres or shoot them in the head by the side of forest roads. Murdoch and his employees have nothing to fear from Putin. Their endorsement of Kremlin war propaganda carries conviction because it is freely given.

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Is this standard for this time of year?  Or more serious?

 

[Makk]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is this standard for this time of year?  Or more serious?

Pretty sure it is not. There is a normal draft in Russia about this time of the year, but it is restricted to younger men. 

[Corvinus85]

Does the post work on Sundays in Russia? 

[DireWolfSpirit]

6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Fox News deals in Kremlin propaganda. So why not freeze Rupert Murdoch’s assets?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/07/fox-new-deals-in-kremlin-propaganda-freeze-rupert-murdochs-assets

 

This is the best idea I've seen in a long time!

Murdoch is a State enemy to Democracies everywhere. Put a bounty on him.

[Varysblackfyre321]

5 hours ago, Makk said:

Pretty sure it is not. There is a normal draft in Russia about this time of the year, but it is restricted to younger men. 

Ha, can you imagine people going into nursing homes and conscripting old men in wheelchairs?

[Maithanet]

Russian forces took Popasna today.  That's not great news, as the Ukrainians had been defending it pretty hard.  City looks ruined.

[broken one]

3 hours ago, Maithanet said:

 That's not great news

Seems it's not a tragedy either. They've withdrawn to the next line of defence prepared in the hills west of the town.

[Makk]

Putin has just given his speech at victory day and there was no new announcement about a mobilisation or any declared victory. Just a lot of the same propaganda about facists and how Russia stands for global order. He spoke for about 6 minutes with a moments silence in the middle. He did say the USA threatened to use a nuclear weapon which I haven't heard before. But otherwise it was a bit of a non-event. He appeared in good health with no obvious shaking. I think this day will pass without any change in direction. 

[Heartofice]

Bit disappointing that. Have been having this weird sense of anticipation of his speech, would be interesting to see if he would declare victory and end the war. I no have a real sense of anti-climax.

[Loge]

Some interesting speculation about the situation on Snake Island. Satellite photos show buildings reduced to rubble and somebody painted a Z in the ground. The conclusion is that some of the Russians deployed there are still alive but have lost radio communication. Footage of the helicopter that was blown up there shows the troops taking up defensive positions after disembarking. The implication is they were expecting a Ukrainian presence or were at least uncertain who  holds the island.

[Werthead]

This was a bit more old-skool Putin. Why commit himself to a course of action that ties him down to delivering something? He can, instead, just continue along and declare victory when he feels like it. Retaining flexibility so he can pick a moment to pivot and say that's what he planned all along is kind of his thing (useful in some cases, not in others). There are also signs of the Russian advance on the central Donbas succeeding in grinding forwards, even as the situation around Kharkiv continues to deteriorate for them. No updates on Izium, making me wonder if the huge attack from a couple of days ago was more of a raid, not a serious Ukrainian counteroffensive.

12 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is this standard for this time of year?  Or more serious?

Apparently this is a "request" to report for mobilisation. Purely voluntarily. In addition, I saw one analysis saying it had been photoshopped with a different date at the top, so this was probably from a while back.

They did note the 2021 stamp is probably genuine, and might be another sign that the invasion was planned for early 2021 but was called off because COVID had incapacitated too much of the potential workforce and military. I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more stories about the intersection of COVID and the conflict, with Russians only 50% vaccinated and Ukrainians less than that, and the estimates that Russia has lost 1.1 million dead to the pandemic.

[Maithanet]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

There are also signs of the Russian advance on the central Donbas succeeding in grinding forwards, even as the situation around Kharkiv continues to deteriorate for them. No updates on Izium, making me wonder if the huge attack from a couple of days ago was more of a raid, not a serious Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Agreed, the Ukrainians made stunning progress in like 2 days, but to fully cut off that portion of the Russian army would require a massive resources/reserves.  It isn't surprising that Ukraine lacked the strength for such a move. 

The overall Donbas offensive is grinding forward, but there's still more grinding than forward.  What we can see of Russian equipment losses (tanks/APCs/artillery) are still high, so it's hard to imagine Russia can keep this up much longer.  But at the same time, we know almost nothing about the state of the Ukrainian forces in the area, so it's possible they are equally degraded.  Or it's possible Ukraine is husbanding its reserves to commit them for a decisive push in the next several weeks.  We can certainly hope. 

[Maithanet]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

This was a bit more old-skool Putin. Why commit himself to a course of action that ties him down to delivering something? He can, instead, just continue along and declare victory when he feels like it. Retaining flexibility so he can pick a moment to pivot and say that's what he planned all along is kind of his thing (useful in some cases, not in others).

That is one interpretation, but another way is that this speech was actually fairly tame by Russian standards the past 3 months.  He mentioned the Donbas a few times, and Crimea once, but the war as described sounds fairly small.  He made his usual bluster and lies about the threat of NATO on the border of Russia prior to the invasion, but there really wasn't anything new or escalatory in this speech.  Which sounds to me like Putin is not seeking to make this war any bigger.  At the very least, this is a golden opportunity for escalation and he passed.  That makes me feel a bit more hopeful that Putin is getting at least some picture of how poorly this war is going for Russia and does not see a declaration of war or a mass mobilization campaign as necessarily the solution.