TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

🔴 IDF: Terrorist cell identified operating near IDF troops thwarted in joint ground, aerial, and naval operation

In the central Gaza Strip, a five-man terrorist cell operating near IDF troops was identified and promptly thwarted through a joint operation involving ground forces, the brigade's fire control center, aircraft, naval vessels, and tanks.

IDF troops are continuing to conduct targeted raids on Hamas terrorist targets in the central and northern Gaza Strip. Over the past day, the 401st and the Nahal brigades killed dozens of terrorists.

During IDF activity in Khan Yunis, an IAF fighter jet struck a Hamas terrorist cell operating inside terrorist infrastructure, where the terrorists were preparing to attack IDF troops in a nearby structure with explosives.

In western Khan Yunis, IDF troops continue to kill terror operatives in battles and conduct targeted raids on terrorist targets. Over the past day, the troops killed dozens of terrorists who ambushed the troops throughout the city.

In another IDF activity, a terrorist carrying explosive devices near IDF troops was identified and struck by an aircraft. Secondary explosions were seen, which indicated explosive devices in his possession.

In a separate IDF activity directed by intelligence in Khan Yunis, IDF troops conducted targeted raids on terrorist targets and located weapons including AK-47 rifles, sniper rifles, grenades, and ammunition. The troops also killed 10 terrorists using close-range fire and aerial support.

Furthermore, IDF missile boats struck terrorist infrastructure used by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.

Attached is a video of the terrorist cell thwarted by joint ground, air, and navy forces: https://bit.ly/3SMsMFO

Attached are photos of IDF activity in the Gaza Strip: https://IDFANC.activetrail.biz/anc0502202465841135426541234

Attached is a video of IDF strikes in the Gaza Strip: https://bit.ly/3OudG5v

Attached is a video of IDF activity in the Gaza Strip: https://bit.ly/3OuCj1Q

🇮🇱 @israel_report

🟠 Did you know that before becoming America’s jihad capital, Dearborn, Michigan, was a thriving center of Middle Eastern Christian culture?

Not a lot of people know, but Dearborn was initially settled in the early 20th century by Lebanese Christians and Assyrians/Chaldeans fleeing Islamic persecution in the Middle East.

Middle Eastern Christians were the majority of Dearborn’s population until the 1980s, when they gradually started being replaced by Hezbollah-supporting Muslims from Southern Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Bangladesh.

These Christians no longer felt welcomed in the city they helped build. Fearing the same persecution they faced back home, they had no other option but flee Dearborn too.

Dearborn became unlivable. Islamic extremism runs the city now. Maronite, Chaldean and Orthodox churches were converted into mosques. Dearborn’s Eastern Christian heritage is forever lost.

@realmaalouf

🇮🇱 @israel_report

Two Russian army T-72 tanks collided during a botched assault in eastern Ukraine last week.

It’s a sign that Russian training standards continue to slip as the Kremlin struggles to make good the more than 300,000 casualties its forces have suffered in their 23-month wider war on Ukraine.

“Complete stupidity and incompetence,” is how one Russian blogger described the recent assault in a missive translated by wartranslated.

The tanks were part a company-size element that attacked the Ukrainian garrison in Novomykhailivka, 10 miles west of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Jan. 30.

The grouping included three T-72s, seven MT-LB armored tractors and a single BMP-2 fighting vehicle.

The assault got off to a bad start, when—a couple of miles from the front line—two of the T-72s collided, disabling one of the tanks.

The rest of the vehicles proceeded with their attack, only to come under fire from Ukrainian artillery, anti-tank missiles and explosive FPV's

Source Forbes.

🇺🇦@ukraine_report🇺🇦🔱Liz

Russia Will Block VPN Services in March, Says Safe Internet League Chief Mizulina.

Downloads of VPNs, which help users access blocked websites, surged in Russia after authorities started blocking Western social media platforms and scores of Russian independent news outlets amid the invasion of Ukraine. 

At a meeting with Russian schoolchildren in Yekaterinburg, Mizulina admitted that it will not be possible to block all VPNs.

Mizulina is head of the "Safe Internet League" in Russia, avid supporter of war. In her speech on May 26, 2022 to the International News Agency “Russia Today”, she called the citizens who left Russia and disagree with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “crowing roosters”, and their departure from the country was a cleansing of unwanted citizens. Another threat was made against Google and Wikipedia: “First, we will clean Ukraine from the Nazis and Bandera, and then we will get to Google and Wikipedia,” Mizulina said.

🇺🇦@ukraine_report🇺🇦🔱Liz

🇪🇺🇺🇦 Stop exporting weapons and send them to Ukraine instead, Borrell urges EU countries

Member states should temporarily halt exports of weapons to countries other than Ukraine, The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said on Monday, asking governments to take a "political decision" and step up ammunition supplies.

"Not only do we have to support Ukraine for as long as it takes but for whatever it takes. (It's) not just a matter of time – it's a matter of quantity and quality of our supplies," the foreign policy chief said during an official visit to Warsaw.

"And certainly we have to do more and quicker because Ukraine has to prevail."

The European Union approved in March last year a €2-billion plan to boost ammunition deliveries to Ukraine, pledging to send one million 155mm shells within 12 months to help the battered country defend itself against Russia's full-scale invasion.

But by late 2023, the bloc had provided just 330,000 rounds, despite repeated pleas from Kyiv. The number is expected to reach around 520,000 by the end of March.

The slow deliveries were initially blamed on entrenched industrial bottlenecks, supply chain disruptions and sluggish investment, a direct consequence of the peaceful years that Europe enjoyed after the end of the Cold War.

However, according to Borrell, industrial capacity is no longer an obstacle: what is hampering deliveries to Ukraine is the fact that European companies are exporting weapons to clients that are not at war.

"An important part of our production is being exported to third countries," he said, without naming the destinations.

"The quickest and cheapest and (most) effective way of increasing our supply of
ammunition to Ukraine is to stop exporting
to third countries. And this is something that
only member states can do – and this has
been my request."

"Try to tell the others (clients) – 'please wait, you're not at war, you can wait some months' – and divert this production to Ukraine"

18+ Graphical Content

The 110th Separate Mechanised Brigade are fighting the ruzzians in Avdiivka and wrote the following message:

--
Avdiivka - under extremely high pressure from the enemy, these cockroaches seem to have no limit in number... assaults occur every 30 minutes
BUT...
We do everything for these "non-people" so that Avdiivka seems like hell not only for us...!

We thank all friends, volunteers, patriots, our relatives, our families, everyone who helps us!

GLORY TO UKRAINE!!!
DEATH TO ENEMIES!!!
--

Note: Warriors Ukrainian directly support the 110th Separate Mechanised Brigade through collections for drones and other equipment!

Orbán boycotts parliament session called to ratify Swedish NATO bid - The Guardian

Sweden applied to join NATO following Russia's war against Ukraine, but Hungary has so far prevented the membership.

Today, Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party boycotted a session of parliament called by the opposition to ratify Sweden’s Nato membership, even as a group of western ambassadors arrived in the building to urge a vote.

For months, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, repeatedly promised his counterparts within Nato that the country would not be last to sign off on Sweden’s membership. But Orbán reneged on the pledge when Turkey ratified the Swedish bid last month, leaving Hungary alone holding up Stockholm’s accession.

The Hungarian leader then publicly promised Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, that he would urge parliament to “conclude the ratification at the first possible opportunity” – only to also abandon that pledge by not showing up to a session initiated by the country’s opposition with the aim of voting on Sweden’s accession.

In a symbolic move, a group of 16 diplomatic representatives, including the American ambassador in Budapest, David Pressman, arrived at Hungary’s parliament on Monday.

“Sweden’s Nato accession is an issue that directly affects the United States national security and it affects the security of our alliance as a whole.”, Pressman stated.

“The prime minister pledged to convene parliament and urge parliament to act at its earliest opportunity. Today was an opportunity to do that – and we look forward to watching this closely and to Hungary acting expeditiously,” the American diplomat added.

The Hungarian delay has deeply frustrated western officials, who have expressed concern both about the length of delays and the lack of clarity over the reasoning behind Hungary’s moves.

A horde of violent criminals have invaded Eagle Pass, Texas

https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/dipshit-maga-truckers-are-now-a-huge?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Robert Reich

https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/why-i-preach-to-the-choir?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

From "The Analyst":

AVDIVKA UPDATE

Russian forces in the south west salient they created have effectively been cut off as Ukraine has regained the key fortified area of the restaurant services area.
Russia tried to send a column to reinforce their troops in Avdivka’s lower streets, but this was annihilated.
The Russians used a 2km waste water service pipe to get behind the restaurant and into south Avdivka. It’s very narrow and they had to crawl through it, so supplying and reinforcing the now cut off island they’re in in south Avdivka is near impossible, if not pointless.
The tunnel needs to be destroyed at both ends and it’s deep so this hasn’t yet happened.
Eradicating the Russians in the housing they occupied is well underway.
Overall the Russian operation was quite imaginative and it gave them a major gain - taking the southern defences completely and the Ukrainians by surprise. In some ways the Ukrainians should have expected use of the tunnel, or at least taken precautions to block it. It’s far more likely they just never expected it could be used if they even remembered it was there.
Russian success - and it was, there’s no getting away from that, it was a daring and imaginative operation, was simply not followed up. Senior commanders doubted its likely success and no one was ready to exploit it until it was far too late. By then the Ukrainians had snatched back the restaurant’s fortification, because nobody reinforced the Russian forces, and now the few remaining Russian troops are more or less trapped, and the whole thing has turned into a Russian disaster. It’s not something Ukraine will fall for again and they’re probably looking to make sure nothing like happens anywhere else either.
This could have been the most consequential move the Russians made in months.
If they had been ready to exploit the success and acted quickly, given it the support it needed, they could have surrounded Zenit and have broken deep into Avdivka. It would in all likelihood have been the beginning of a much faster end for the town which would have quickly become untenable.
Instead their own handful of competent people were as usual, let down by hide bound commanders with zero imagination. Ukraine has always worked well against such opponents and did so again. That they were just as quick to see what had happened and responded with lightning pace to retake the initiative says it all.
Yet another bad day for Russia!

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!

Daily Russian losses
https://t.me/WarriorsUkrainian/20479

Russia has assembled forces to attack Kupyansk - Forbes

According to the publication the goal is to retake a huge swathe of Kharkiv Oblast that the Russians briefly occupied in 2022, perhaps as a "gift to Putin" for the March (so called) "elections".

The information from Forbes about the force in the area corresponds with statements previously made by the Ukrainian head of the press service of the operational and strategic group of troops "Khortytsia" Ilya Yevlash:

"The Russian occupation army has concentrated a total of about 57K troops in the Lyman-Kupyansk direction, including about 500 tanks, 1100 armored vehicles, 530 artillery barrels and 200 MLRS.

Most of these forces are held in the Kupyansk direction:

40,000 soldiers,
500 tanks, 650 armored fighting vehicles,
430 artillery systems, more than 150 MLRS.

That is, together they are very powerful forces. And the enemy does not abandon its intentions to continue gathering its reserves, preparing them. That is, we do not see that the enemy intends to stop its actions. Our task now is to deter and knock out the enemy as much as possible", Ilya Yevlash said.

Forbes write:

It’s obvious what this army aims to do: retake a huge swathe of Kharkiv Oblast that the Russians briefly occupied in 2022—until a powerful Ukrainian counteroffensive liberated most of the oblast late that year.

Everything east of the nearest major river is the goal. “The Russian Federation plans to seize the entire Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and part of Kharkiv Oblast up to the Oskil River by March 2024,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies explained. The river threads through Kupyansk from the north.

Why March? Because that’s when Russia will “vote” for “president” in a national “election.” In fact, Vladimir Putin is the only real candidate—and will maintain his brutal, dictatorial control over Russia and the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.

A slice of Kharkiv would be an election-day gift to Putin from the Russian army in Ukraine.

Some or part of around 10 Ukrainian brigades, anchored in the north by the 3rd Tank Brigade and south by the 4th Tank Brigade, defends Kupyansk and surrounding settlements. It’s a significant forces with perhaps 20,000 troops and hundreds of tanks, fighting vehicles and howitzers.

But people and vehicles aren’t the problem for the Ukrainians. The problem is ammunition. The United States was one of the biggest donors of 155-millimeter shells for Ukraine’s best big guns—and pro-Russia Republicans in the U.S. Congress cut off aid to Ukraine last fall.

Since then, Ukrainian forces’ daily allotment of shells has fallen by two-thirds to just 2,000 rounds. Russian forces meanwhile fire as many as 10,000 shells a day, thanks to a steady supply of ammo from North Korea.

“Artillery shortages and delays in Western security assistance will create uncertainty in Ukrainian operational plans,” the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C. warned, “and likely prompt Ukrainian forces to husband materiel, which may force Ukrainian forces to make tough decisions about prioritizing certain sectors of the front over sectors where limited territorial setbacks are least damaging.”

Perhaps most importantly, Ukrainian workshops are building explosives-laden first-person-view drones—tens of thousands of them per month. As artillery ammunition becomes scarce, Ukrainian brigades are flinging more and more FPVs at the Russians: sometimes thousands per day all along the 600-mile front.

But the FPVs range just two miles or so—too short to target artillery that might be 15 or miles from the line of contact. Drone-operators have made quick work of small Russian assault groups that, for months now, have been probing the Kupyansk sector.

"But can a swarm of two-pound drones, even thousands of them, defeat 500 tanks and 650 fighting vehicles as they attack behind a wall of artillery fire?", Forbes ask.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy at the front lines.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/zelensky-visited-frontline-positions-in-the-village-of-robotyne/

Thermite Munitions
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/ukrainian-drones-use-thermite-munitions/

Problems The Commanding Genertal plans to solve in 2024.
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/zaluzhnyi-names-key-problems-of-armed-forces-of-ukraine-to-be-solved-in-2024/

The head of the Ukrainian Army.

https://mil.in.ua/en/news/zaluzhnyi-unmanned-systems-are-crucial-in-modern-warfare/

Trucker Convoy, No trucks Jeff Tiedrich

https://open.substack.com/pub/jefftiedrich/p/dipshit-vigilante-truckers-reach?r=70k1h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

From "The Analyst":

RUSSIAN STRATEGIC WEAPONS PRODUCTION FALLS SHARPLY

Russian is very much dependent for its great power status on its nuclear weapons. A recent review of what they have claimed and lauded compared to the somewhat starker realities, show a strained industrial base. Facing lack of private investment, a shortage of state funds, insolvency, manpower shortages caused by mobilisation, international sanctions and an inability to overcome technical delays on one side. On the other state giants such as Roscosmos which make sections of the strategic Sarmat missile for instance, have lost 50% of their workforce due to lack of state funds and resources, and the complete disappearance of foreign contracts for satellites and space launches. On top of that rampant corruption has reared its head with no less than six serious cases of multi-million dollar level fraud haunting the company. Most of those cases are bogged down in corruption as those up the chain and down it, do their best to sideline investigators.
One of the suppliers who provide the primary stage of the Sarmat missile, Proton-PM, is on the point of bankruptcy, unable to pay its suppliers and barely getting by let alone supplying dozens of missile sections. Only one missile is actually expected to enter service this year, despite it being a high priority.
The second stage producer, Chemical Automatics Design Bureau, is actually bankrupt and going through the court process to dissolve its business. The reason? ‘A chronic shortage of working capital’. That’s no state or bank funds and interest rates being so high it can’t afford to borrow. Add to that the state is terrible at paying its bills and these companies cannot survive.
The Kazan Aviation Plant is supposed to be upgrading ten of the old 1980’s Tu-160 strategic bomber to ‘M’ standard and has only delivered one. The company is also supposed to be building ten new ones to the same standard having restarted the line.
So far only one test plane has been delivered and the most they can produce is 1.25 per year - if they get the approval in 2024. A second aircraft is said to be under testing. The target was to build ten per year through to 2027. That seems beyond impossible at present. The government just doesn’t have the money. In addition the modernised plant was supposed to have been finished in 2020 but COVID delayed it. Then sanctions hit in 2022 and the availability of machine tools and equipment from western sources dried up.
The latest Borei-A class SSBN is also way behind schedule - two more were supposed to be laid down. The Knyaz Pozarsky was supposed to enter service in 2023 but will only just manage late 2024 - and even then she may have no missiles unless another Delta-IV class is decommissioned to provide them. The eleventh and twelfth in the 16 planned submarine class, each of which carries 16 SLBM’s, were due be laid down for completion in the 2030’s but it hasn’t happened. They haven’t been cancelled but if they don’t get started then the experienced labour force will likely be considered mobilisation fodder and their skills permanently lost.
So we see above how in real life the sanctions on technology and mechanical/engineering equipment, technology and finance have seriously impacted Russian nuclear weapons plans. This equipment should never have been sold to them in the first place and should never be ever again.
Imagine too, how deep these problems run in Russian military industries generally. Over time the economic costs have and are hitting ever deeper into the Russian military industrial complex. Despite their best efforts to get around it, huge capital intensive and high tech industries are buckling under the strain. Government funding is clearly stretched - even for their pet projects that are considered next to god in terms of national prestige and importance.
It may not look like it every day, but slowly and surely the sanctions are digging deep. We need to pile on the pressure. Not letting up. It DOES make a difference!