From the looks of things, Putin isn't going to have that victory he was hoping for on May 9.
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From the looks of things, Putin isn't going to have that victory he was hoping for on May 9.
Business Insider
A Russian general who commanded electronic warfare units was killed in a strike that killed 100 soldiers, top Ukraine official says
Alia Shoaib
Another Russian general has been killed in Ukraine, authorities claim.
Maj. Gen. Andrei Simonov was reportedly killed in an attack on a Russian command post near the city of Izyum.
The general, who commanded electric warfare units, was among 100 Russian servicemen killed.
Russia has lost another general in Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, according to top Ukrainian officials, The Kyiv Post has reported
Maj. Gen. Andrei Simonov was killed near the city of Izyum in the Kharkiv region, which is currently occupied by Russian forces, Ukrainian authorities said.
The Ukrainian military attacked a field command post of the Russian 2nd Army on Saturday, striking more than 30 Russian armored vehicles, including tanks, according to the paper.
Footage posted on social media appears to show the command post being bombarded by rockets, said the Kyiv Post.
The general was among 100 Russian soldiers killed in the attack, President Zellenskyy's military adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, according to The Kyiv Post. Arestovych said well-placed army sources had confirmed the death of Maj. Gen. Simonov in a YouTube interview, per the Mail Online.
The claims by the Ukrainian authorities have not been independently verified.
Russia has not as of yet confirmed the death of Maj. Gen. Simonov.
Simonov was a senior commander of electronic warfare, Ukrainian government advisor Anton Gerashchenko said on his Telegram account.
His death would make him the tenth Russian general to die in Ukraine, according to a count by The Kyiv Post.
Russia has suffered heavy losses since it began its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, losing many of its top generals and commanders.
NATO estimates that Russia has lost up to 15,000 troops during the war, while Ukraine claims to have killed nearly 20,000.
Russia has put its official death toll in Ukraine at 1,351, which was last updated on March 25.
As per circulated in Russia gossips Canadian general Trevor Cadier is missed since February while worked in Ukraine. There are also gossips what he is now in Moscow after been captured in Azovstal foundry. It explains why there were so many attempts to deblock Azovstal and few failed rescue missions.
Again, by gossips, Cadier was responsible (or coordinator) for biochemical research in biolabs in Ukraine, about which Nulland said what "Russians must not find results of research" at time of her speech in Congress.
Attachment 12528
There are a lot of twits about Cadier's destiny now on Twitter. https://twitter.com/Cyberspec1/statu...88990364778502
Oh for fuck sakes, no, Russia did not capture a Canadian General in Mariupol at the steel plant. What reality do you people live in where this is even a remote possibility? Do you really think the Canadian military has a presense in Mariupol? Or do you believe the Canadian armed forces allowed a General to hang out in Mariupol by himself? Really now...
Same as a couple weeks ago you said a top NATO commander was captured in Mariupol. Yeah, that didn't happen either.
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1. The reports all originated with a self-proclaimed Russophile name Tony on Twitter.
2. No Canadian media are cited by name and none can be found on an Internet search reporting this general's absence.
3. "There are a lot of twits" is probably the most accurate comment in this posting, given that one definition of a "twit" (as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary) is "1 : a silly annoying person : fool." Posts on Twitter are usually called tweets, though. A second definition of twit, however, is " 2 : an act of twitting : taunt. twit. verb. twitted; twitting." Twitting, though, means to tease or taunt someone, especially in a good-humored way, though I doubt that was Tony's intention.
Ok, fine then... from our gossip channels in the West, Putin is about to undergo cancer surgery and will be temporarily handing over power to a top hard lined police chief / FSB guy.
Only difference is, that's actually credible. Was even asked today at the Whitehouse press conference, and have seen it popping up more and more. Let's hope he dies under the knife.
The Russians Are Losing The Naval War Off Ukraine—To An Enemy With No Warships
On Monday, a TB-2 armed drone apparently belonging to the Ukrainian sea service struck two Russian patrol boats with laser-guided missiles, heavily damaging if not destroying both boats.
Add the two 55-foot, gun-armed Raptor-class vessels to the growing list of Russian boats and ships the Ukrainians have sunk or so heavily damaged that they’re no longer relevant to the current conflict.
Moscow’s naval losses of course include the 612-foot missile cruiser Moskva, holed by two Ukrainian navy Neptune coastal anti-ship missiles on April 13. Moskva was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet with its, at the time, two dozen or so major warships.
Three weeks earlier on March 24, an Alligator-class landing ship belonging to the Black Sea Fleet’s reinforced amphibious flotilla burst into flames while pier-side in Russian-occupied Berdyansk in southern Ukraine. It seems an accurate hit by a Ukrainian army Tochka ballistic missile started the chain reaction.
The 370-foot Saratov quickly sank. A pair of landing ships moored nearby also suffered damage and casualties. The attack on the Crimea-based amphibious force was an inflection point in Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, which began with heavy bombardment on the night of Feb. 23.
Down three amphibs as well as Moskva with its long-range air-defense missiles, the Black Sea Fleet no longer can concentrate a large landing force nor protect it from air and missile attack. That means the Russians almost certainly can’t open a littoral front along Ukraine’s western coastline in order to stage an assault on the strategic port of Odessa, Ukraine’s main gateway to the sea.
That could free up Odessa’s garrison, including the reserve 5th Tank Brigade with its undamaged T-72 battalions, to roll east in support of Ukraine’s campaign around the port of Kherson, occupied by the Russians since early March.
Moskva, Saratov and the other landing ships are the most significant naval casualties on the Russian side, but they’re not the only ones. On or before March 22, Ukrainian army troops in Mariupol—an historic port on the Sea of Azov, adjacent to the Black Sea—struck a Raptor with at least one Konkurs anti-tank missile as the boat patrolled close to shore.
That makes two big Russian ships sunk plus two damaged, as well as three patrol boats knocked out if not totally destroyed. This out of a regional fleet that, before the war, included just seven large surface combatants—frigates and large corvettes plus Moskva—in addition to a half-dozen landing ships, six or seven Raptors and six or so diesel-electric submarines.
Bear in mind, Turkey controls the Bosphorous Strait, the only waterway connecting the Sea of Azov and Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and thus the open ocean. Ankara is a strong backer of Ukraine’s independence—remember, the TB-2 drone is a Turkish product—and has not allowed the Russian navy to send in fresh ships to make good the Black Sea Fleet’s losses.
All that is to say, the Black Sea Fleet is getting smaller and less effective by the week as Ukraine’s forces chip away at it. And there’s no prospect of the fleet restoring its waning power until after the war ends ... and Turkey reopens the Bosphorous.
The TB-2 strike on Monday underscores the Black Sea Fleet’s dire condition. It’s apparent the Russians no longer can protect their remaining warships from aerial attack.
Moskva with her 200-mile air-search radars and 64 S-300 surface-to-air missiles, each with a 50-mile range, in theory was the fleet’s main air-defender. But the cruiser couldn’t even defend herself.
Now the Black Sea Fleet leans on a trio of 409-foot Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates for aerial protection. The frigates are some of the newest vessels in the Russian fleet—and the biggest surface warships Russian industry can build owing to problems manufacturing or importing large maritime engines.
But the three frigates—Admiral Grigorovich, Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov—each pack just 24 medium-range Buk surface-to-air missiles traveling no farther than 30 miles. Even with Crimea-based fighter jets and SAM batteries backing them up, the frigates almost certainly are struggling to maintain an air-defense umbrella along the Black Sea Fleet’s area of operations stretching along 300 or 400 miles of coastline from Odessa to Mariupol.
The Ukrainians have proved they can exploit the gaps in the Russians’ at-sea air-defense coverage. A propeller-driven TB-2 with its 39-foot wingspan isn’t a huge target, but a well-equipped, trained and motivated fleet should be able to detect it and shoot it down before it gets close enough—nine miles or so—to snipe a patrol boat with a 14-pound MAM laser-guided missile.
If a solitary Ukrainian TB-2 can sink a pair of Russian patrol boats, it’s worth asking what the combined force of Kyiv’s other drones plus its Neptune anti-ship battery or batteries, Tochka ballistic missiles and anti-tank missiles might soon do to what’s left of the Black Sea Fleet.
And that’s before the Ukrainian navy deploys the anti-ship missiles and drone boats that the United Kingdom and United States have donated. The Russian fleet is losing the naval war off Ukraine ... to an enemy with no warships.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...b741fd0403e251
Dmitry Kiselyov, Russian state television executive and propagandist, in addition to threatening the UK with a Sarmat missile known as Satan II and “will be enough to sink it once and for all,” has now threatened that the use of one of Russia’s Poseidon torpedoes “could "plunge Britain into depths of the sea,” as “"The explosion of this thermonuclear torpedo near Britain's coastline will cause a gigantic tsunami up to 500 meters high.” Apparently, the torpedo “approaches its target at a depth of 1km at a speed of 200km per hour. There's no way of stopping this underwater drone.”
As the weapon is supposedly more than 24 meters long, it's probably more accurate to describe it as an unmanned submarine than as either a drone or a torpedo.
It is presently untested. If it travels at speeds of 200 kph (or over 100 knots), it would need to be rocket-powered. it is designed to be carried by a submarine in a sealed tube. Russia currently has somewhere between 49 and 64 submarines, of which it has only one special purpose submarine from which Poseidons would be launched - the B-90 Sarov. Its reported test depth is 300 metres (980 ft).
Way to stop them 1: Seed the seabed around the UK with networks of sensor-mines to detect and destroy them. The seabed around the UK is comparatively shallow, i.e., nowhere near 1000 meters deep.
Way to stop them 2: Use submarine-launched long-range hyper-sonic glide vehicles with payloads that could be lightweight torpedo or nuclear depth charge.
American underwater nuclear explosive tests in shallow waters (admittedly at a lesser kilo-tonnage and not discounting that damage and long-term effects caused) suggest that generating a "tsunami" that “could "plunge Britain into depths of the sea” is more Russian bombast, i.e., high-sounding language with little meaning, used to impress people - most probably the Russian people.
Needless fear mongering.
Why are you even bothering to post this garbage?
Just childish and screams desperation, doesn't it?
Heard an interview from a test pilot yesterday -- started with CF-18s in Canada, then over to Europe to test Typhoon EuroFighter or something it's called, then for the past 17 years before retiring was with Lockheed Martin mainly testing the F-35. He was asjed how he thought the F-35 would do in Ukraine. He just confidently and humbled remarked this is the exact theater the F-35 was designed for, would rapidly dominate the Ukrainian skies, and obliterate the Russian air force and air defenses.
One thing I didn't know before is I guess the F-35 is so different you can't really train older pilots on it, eh? I guess their plan is to retire out the older pilots on existing aircraft, and train the newer pilots on the F-35. I guess it's such a different beast the skills aren't all that transferrable, or at least an existing pilot wouldn't be taking full advantage of what the F-35 offers.
Anyway, back on topic... you don't see the West in the media constantly bragging about this type of shit, now do you? I don't know what Russia is doing, but it's pretty pathetic.
Because Putin's Russia is a classic bully that misunderstood the situation, miscalculated the response of its victim and, because it doesn't now know how to deal with the victim's response or that of bullied target's friends who have come to its aid, makes ever-more extravagant claims about what it will do next in order to frighten them into submission by claiming to have more powerful weapons it can use if it doesn't get its way - a form of psychological mind-games. One way of responding to a bully is by letting it understand that you know what it is doing and can (and will) respond if pushed to far. Alternatively, you can put your head in the sand and get your butt kicked,
An old saying in the West is "Walk softly - but carry a big stick".
The U.S. Military prefers speaking more by its "actions" than it does by "words", and boasting about its strength to frighten a tyrant like Putin serves no real purpose. Putin is already aware of this. This is what keeps him up at night.
You know those morbidly obese kids who throw tantrums when they don't get to eat all the junk food they want?
That's what Russia is. A 300lbs, 6 year old immature little shithead.
Ohh, and apparently Israel is now jumping into the fray and will begin sending weapons to help Ukraine now as well.
Apparently, they took offense when Lavrov went on TV and started saying Hitler was a Jew. Shocking they took offense to that, I know.
I'm totally confused now...
Ok, so the Nazis are in the country run by a Jew.
The German Nazi dude who killed all the Jews was actually a Jew.
So if I got this right, I think that means the Israelis are South Africans.
I don't know, we'll have to ask Lavrov, as this is all very confusing to me. No idea what point he was trying to make by saying Hitler was a Jew, but it wasn't a very good one.
Pretty pathetic is what you are reading in Western news, dear.
Ruble is already below 65 rubles per dollar and it has 2 year strongest position (does Mr. Alzheimer still thinks what it is 200?), thanks to payment in rubles for Russian gas. Revenue from sales of fossil fuel at February-March is $68 bln, from which EU bought $44 bln and this is twice more than in F-M'21. At April only Italy bought 40% more gas than in 2021.
Poland and Bulgaria refused to pay for Russian gas in rubles and are without gas from May 1st.
Yesterday EU again wasn't able to get consensus about oil export from Russia - 4 countries vetoed ban of oil export and 3 countries vetoed ban of Russian oil transportation.
Looks like inflation here will changed to deflation soon - local prices are dramatically going down follows USD/RUR rate. UAE, India, China signed with Russia trading agreements in rubles.
2 days ago Russia again paid bonds in dollars. Did you told something about "unavoidable default"?
NATO is about to get bigger.
It was just reported on Aljazeera evening news that Finland and Sweden have both reached final decisions to join NATO. Apparently this landmark decision is unanimous among members of both parliaments. Both countries have cited the reason for joining the Alliance was due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the risk this presents to Finland and Sweden going forward.
One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies warned NATO that if Finland and Sweden joined the US-led military alliance then Russia would deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in an exclave in the heart of Europe. "Time for everyone to tremble again - here comes more of those "woof tickets".
When asked how Washington views the addition of Sweden and Finland to NATO in light of Russia's warning, the U.S. State Department said there was no change in Washington's position and repeated that "NATO's open door is an open door."
Just in time for Putin’s Victory Day celebration…the irony.
Perhaps Russian news reports may also be pathetic as, again, this response is not factually correct in all respects.
1. Bloomberg is currently still showing the ruble at above 65 to the US dollar - 65.3764 to be precise.
2. Poland may not be receiving new supplies from Russia but is not "without gas" as they have either enough gas stored, or have alternatives to draw on. Poland said its gas stores were 76% full and it did not need to use any reserves as yet. Moreover, the Poles claim that cutting off supplies is a breach of contract and they reserve the right to use all available contractual and legal means to do so.
3. Bulgaria is also stating that it is not "without gas." It is receiving supplies from Greece and is to begin importing supplies from Azerbaijan.
4. Countries such as China and India, which are oil and gas buying from Russia, are probably getting supplies at high discounts.
5. While it is true that Russia paid two bonds in US dollars, it is probable that repayments were made using assets not already frozen, thus drawing down on its resources. Future default is still possible is such resources are depleted.
6. The EU is willing to launch legal action against EU countries that allow their energy companies to pay for Russian gas in rubles, violating EU sanctions, according to European Commission's Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis.
Bloomberg today: UK will meet recession and inflation up to 10%
And few words from member of EU parliament
https://youtu.be/AXW4TjaFowg
One more "bad" news: Russian economy could weather impact of EU oil ban https://www.ft.com/content/82dfa0f1-...7-29c69f6938c3
The Bloomberg headline actually is "BOE Sees Risk of U.K. Recession With Inflation Above 10%," the word "risk' meaning nothing is certain.
Clare Daly is an Irish member of the European Parliament, being elected for the Dublin constituency where she received a final total of 87,770 votes, or 11.6%, and took the third seat. She was expelled from the Irish Labor Party as a teenager when accused of being a Trotskyist. She has been accused by members of Fianna Fail as being an "embarrassment to Ireland." She chose to give this interview to CGTN and CCTV, i.e., China Global Television Network and China Central Television, both state-owned entities, rather than making these statements to a western media outlet. They are her words based on her own political beliefs, and should be judged only as such.
Again, the headline uses the modal verb "could" and the article states that Russian "Capacity to balance the budget depends on whether producers meet logistics challenge of switch to Asia." Conditional verbs are used to create conditional sentences, which express hypothetical or unlikely situations. Hardly "bad" news as a favorable outcome for the Russian economy is conditional upon events and situations over which Russia may have no control. There are numerous academic research articles on the difficulties of logistics standardization in Asia.
As a person has the misfortune to live in the very constituency that Clare Daly represents In the European Parliament, it was interesting to hear her giving interview on this. She is very reluctant to talk to many journalists in Ireland these days.
She may have got 11% in the last election, but her stance on Ukraine is extremely unpopular in Ireland, to put it mildly, and I personally doubt she will even contest the next one.
I would say her best hope for a job after 2024 would be if she wrangles a sinecure from Putin, like ex-Chancellor Schroeder.
It is worth remembering the comment of the late former US Senator John McCain in 2015: ""Look, Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. "It's kleptocracy. It's corruption. It's a nation that's really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy, and so economic sanctions are important."
Great, go be a big North Korea and act tough. Nobody else gives a shit.
The Russian military is quite obviously a joke. Now that they're on the "second phase" of the operatioh and concentrating all energy on eastern Ukraine, the gains are still minimal at best. Putin definitely isn't getting the victory speech he was hoping for on May 9th.
Your generals are dropping like flies, soldiers have to loot grocery stores and corner markets because they don't have any food, the Russian navy is losing its ships to a country that doesn't even have a navy, loads of reports of Russian soldiers shooting themselves in the leg to get out of the war, and the list is endless.
And to top if off, the sheer inhumane, atrocious and barbaric atrocities the Russian soldiers are leaving in their wake is beyond words. I can promise you that will not get forgotten, because it's so systemic that must have gotten approval from the commanders. These aren't one off incidents. This means that no matter what Russia does, you've already lost.
You do know there's loads of stories out there of Russian soldiers raping 12 year old boys, right?
Troops sent into Ukraine to back up Russian forces say they had no choice but to leave because Russian military was in shambles and “they deceived us at every step".
They described the situation as being ”utter dysfunction”, i.e., equipment that didn’t work, guns that wouldn’t fire, tanks that wouldn’t roll, no command and control, and even officers who ran when the fighting started. Almost unbelievable circumstances.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/deceived-...122642378.html
The reports coming from these Russian soldiers may or may not be 100% accurate as the “information flow” on both sides of the street is questionable at best, although, this is consistent with the numerous reports describing Russian military deficiencies since this war started, including, but not limited to, accounts of poor logistical planning, lack of preparation and training of ground troops, poor equipment maintenance, i.e., trucks, tanks, armored vehicles, missile launchers, etc, lack of food supplies and ammunition, and serious concerns related to command and control in general.
There is no way of possibly calculating just how much damage Putin has caused by the miscalculations which led to this disaster, but one thing’s for sure: His actions have resulted in a larger, stronger, better equipped, and highly galvanized NATO force in Europe, and forced Russia into a state of total isolation - with crippling sanctions that are already draining Russia's economy. Not to mention all the lives that have been ruined and lost (Ukrainians and Russian) because of his delusional mental state.
U.S. Intelligence believes it's possible that Putin is preparing to declare war on Ukraine as a means of utilizing Russia's reserve military force. Apparently Putin can not call out his reserve force until a war is officially declared according to Russian law.
The problem with this move is that Russia's reserve force is comprised mostly of conscripts who have received very little training and lack the skills and motivation to go into battle without suffering huge losses. A move like this would be just one more atrocity added to the list of Putin's actions...and his legacy.
If this does happen I feel sorry for the conscripts and their families. If you read the article below you'll gain a better understanding of this:
https://unherd.com/thepost/the-russi...roblem-hazing/
Yeah, according to a Sky News report that popped up on my feed today, Russian reservists have already been getting contacted to check in with their local recruitment center to verify address, status, health, et al.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PcFepWMVDo
I guess we'll find out more on the 9th when Putin gives his Victory Day speech.
They do it twice a year - about a month before to start spring or autumn army draw of cadets. Also twice in year they call about 5%-10% of reserves for 1-month training in intention of all reservists should have training once in 5 years.
And most important: by law govt can use reservists only within Russian territory.
Al Jazeera has an interesting report at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/...ing-in-ukraine on the Russian practice of calling up reservists twice a year. It references the following statement:
MOSCOW, March 8. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said conscripts and reservists aren’t taking part in Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and won’t do so.
"I would like to emphasize that conscripts aren’t and won’t be taking part in hostilities, and there will be no additional call-up of reservists from the reserve," he said in a video address to women on the occasion of the International Women’s Day celebrated on March 8, which was posted on the Kremlin website. "Missions are carried out only by professional troops."
The Al Jazeera report also states:
"On the first day of the spring conscription, which runs from April 1 to July 15, a government-issued disclaimer appeared in Russian news articles, offering families information on the nature of service: “Conscription events are not related to the special operation in Ukraine.” The articles included a message of reassurance from Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu: “I would like to emphasise that conscripts will not be sent to any hot spots” – a euphemism for the war in Ukraine. But many families remain sceptical and fear their sons may end up on the front of what Moscow has called a “special military operation” in Ukraine."
"In early March, after denying conscripts were being deployed in Ukraine, Russian senator Lyudmila Narusova told the country’s Federal Council she was aware of 100 young soldiers, mostly conscripts, who were forced to sign contracts to serve in Ukraine. Only four were alive, she said."
"Russia’s defence ministry then acknowledged that conscripts had participated in the conflict, with some taken prisoner by the Ukrainian army – but stressed remaining conscripts had been pulled out of the territory. The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had launched an investigation into the officials who disobeyed his orders to exclude conscripts from the operation. But since then, reports suggest conscripts are still participating in the war."
"After the sinking of Russia’s flagship Moskva in the Black Sea on April 14, Russian authorities said the entire crew had been evacuated. But Dmitry Shkrebets wrote on social media that his conscript son Yegor had been a cook on the ship, and was now listed as missing in action. “A conscript who was not supposed to take part in hostilities is listed as missing,” he said in a post on VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network."
Plausible deniability is the ability of people, typically senior officials in a formal or informal chain of command, to deny knowledge of or responsibility for something. Increasingly, however, as this special military operation drags on, already lasting 10 times the claimed period during which it was supposed to be concluded, implausible deniability (i.e., denials that do not seem reasonable or probable, or fail to convince) have become to be expected.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
Russian conscript: