TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
From "The Analyst":
AVDIVKA BATTLE SAPS RUSSIAN RESERVES
The Ukrainians have managed for the most part to hold well in front of the areas on the east bank of the river that their new defence lines are being finished on the west of. In the northern part where the river touches Russian controlled land and they can try an come behind it, there have been tougher battles.
The area is geographically difficult for the Russians.
Several rivers flow east to west and fill the river that flows north to south - the same river the defence lines are behind.
These rivers force the Russians into corridors between them and make it difficult to manoeuvre, and they act as a funnel that forces the attackers into a tight targeting zone. As a result the Russians have held back. The northern sector however has appeared most productive for them, but the Ukrainians are having none of it. They keep up fire and counter attacks against the advancing Russians to such a degree that the Russians got bogged down. This was not acceptable to the Russian commanders who were afraid they were loosing the initiative. As a result they decided to do the one thing you only should do in two clear circumstances. They committed their reserves, half reconstituted units savaged in the Avdika attacks.
Reserves that are half reconstituted should only be used in a last ditch defence, or when you are totally sure they will tip the balance of a vital situation in your favour. This was neither, it was excessive pressure to maintain an illusory advance that was going nowhere for cosmetic reasons. That’s just bad generalship.
The consequences of doing this and what it tells us are significant. Firstly they have no other reserves. If they did they would use them. Some of the soldiers were captured and had only been mobilised 8 days prior!
It also tells us they have run out of men again and that building up reserves prior to a summer offensive isn’t going to be easy. Their quality will be minimal.
As it is some of the Russian advances were one way suicide missions. Troops were sent off to engage with zero back up in the full knowledge they weren’t coming back. Just to test minefields and detect the positions of Ukrainian defences.
Something tells me it’s going to be a difficult summer for the next Russian attempts to take more ground.
Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!
🇷🇺 The enemy is using the "multi-line" tactic
⚔️ In many areas, the enemy continues to conduct assault operations, while constantly improving its tactics. The war is evolving and it works both ways. Recently, the Katsaps have been able to improve their tactical position by using some interesting tactics.
✈️ At first, the Katsap presses logistics - ways of approach, any movement of equipment to bring in combatants or evacuators, etc. Both artillery and FPV drones are used.
🔥 The enemy first sends the first wave of infantry in squad to platoon strength. He sees our firing points and positions that suppress his attack. Then the second wave is sent with the same forces and begins to suppress our firing points. At the same time, for the enemy, participation in the first or second wave means 95% death. Artillery, FPV drones, and worst of all, CABs are used for suppression.
🔥 Usually, the second wave is followed by professional enemy assault units. But if the first two waves were not suppressed, and there are reserves, the enemy can make repeated attacks. Of course, this is a rather meaty tactic and we can say that the enemy is a cretin, but he succeeds in this way and most importantly, the Katsap can afford to neglect human resources like this.
👤 As one of the fighters of the 47th Brigade, who witnessed the "death conveyor" for Muscovites in Stepove, said, if our combatants had sent them to certain death like that, they would have been shot long ago.
Good morning from Ukraine
Trump had a terrible week. Good!
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/its-all-raining-down-on-donald-trump-now/55054/
Steve Bannon knows he is going to prison. He stole a bunch of money with his build the wall scam.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/steve-bannon-tips-off-that-he-knows-hes-going-to-prison/55046/
Ukraine is reaching deeper into its stocks of Cold War-vintage leftovers to find weapons—any weapons—that can strike military and industrial targets deep inside Russia.
Somewhere, somehow, someone seems to have found an additional batch of 1970s-vintage Tupolev Tu-141/143 drones—crude, hulking but nevertheless potentially effective vehicles that the Ukrainians last deployed a year ago, four decades after they initially retired from Soviet service.
Social-media users highlighted recent photos apparently depicting the wreckage of a Tu-143 in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, just north of Ukraine. It seems the drone was part of Ukraine’s ongoing deep-strike campaign targeting Russian infrastructure—including oil facilities—in regions near
BREAKING:
"Victory on earth is forged in heaven!" I say this every time, thanking our defenders of the sky: pilots, anti-aircraft fighters, everyone who watches over the airspace and everyone who ensures the result.
Since the full-scale invasion, I have personally thanked this person only twice a year - on a birthday and a professional holiday. For what? For a huge amount of work. And the main thing is the result of the fight against the enemy on the information front! Both in Ukraine and abroad... for which he received a well-deserved state award from the President of Ukraine.
Today I would like to thank Colonel Yuriy Ignat for the fifth time. I would like to thank you for your productive work as the head of the public relations service of the Air Force Command. He will remain in the Air Force and will work in another direction no less successfully. No doubt!
Wherever I am, I am sure I will thank him again and again!
Life goes on. The main thing is to remain human!
Let's fight on!
✌️Together to Victory!
A taxi driver from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky was fined for the fourth time for “discrediting” the Russian army. SibRealii
He was fined 30.000 rubles for a message in the WhatsApp group “Political Discussions” in which he criticized the war against Ukraine.
"The information posted by citizen M. expresses a negative attitude towards the military personnel of the Russian Federation and the conduct of a special military operation; it is aimed at discrediting, that is, denigrating, deliberately undermining the authority of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, distorting the goals and objectives assigned to them outside the Russian Federation Federation," reads the message on the court's website.
The accused refused to admit guilt, but explained to the court that he remained unconvinced. He also pledged not to commit such actions in the future.
According to the information published by the court, 61-year-old M. had already been charged three times under administrative law for a similar “offence.” The amount of fines he paid in the past amounted to 90.000 rubles.
From March 2022, when the “discredit” law was adopted, to October 2023, Russian courts received 8.055 administrative cases under this article; Russians were fined almost 194 million rubles under it.
In administrative cases about anti-war statements, posts and statuses on WhatsApp began to appear more and more often. As of July 2023, at least 184 cases of “discrediting” the army mention this messenger.
As a rule, after the third resolution on administrative punishment under the article on “discrimination” comes into force, a criminal case may be initiated for repeated “discredit” of the army.
@freerussia_report
"The market is afraid of something." Ruble and Russian national debt collapsed against the backdrop of Putin's election .
The Russian foreign exchange market met the next presidential election with a noticeable fall in the ruble exchange rate.
At the Moscow Exchange on Friday, March 15, the dollar rose in price by 1.18 rubles, or 1.29% - the highest value in more than three months. The euro added 1.42 rubles and reached 101.22, the highest since the beginning of January.
At the end of the week, the dollar rose in price by 2.5% - a record since August last year, and paired with the euro, the ruble experienced the worst week since December (+2.3%).
"The market is clearly afraid of something," writes Evgeny Suvorov, an economist at TsentroCreditBank and author of MMI. A popular version, he notes, is that after the elections, "the ruble will be released": the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance will reduce or stop selling foreign currency from reserves, with the help of which they "brought down the temperature" of the ruble in the fall, when the dollar soared above 100 rubles.
Along with the ruble, Russian government bonds, with which the government closes the budget deficit, are falling. On Friday, the RGBI index, which reflects OFZ quotes, collapsed to its lowest since April 2022 - 116.03 points. Yields on all debt securities of the Russian government jumped above 13%. And the sell-off was accompanied by increased trading volumes of 12-18 billion rubles, says PBS analyst Dmitry Gritskevich.
"Pressure on the ruble continues to be exerted by a probable reduction in exports in quantitative terms," said Dmitry Babin, an analyst at BCS: against the backdrop of problems with settlements through banks in Turkey, China and the UAE, export revenues of the Russian economy rolled back to three-year lows at the beginning of the year. According to the Central Bank, the sale of goods abroad brought only $28.9 billion to the country, which is 14% less than a year earlier. The shortage of foreign currency "is exacerbated by increased budget expenditures, as well as the persistence of a relatively large outflow of capital abroad," Babin said.
At the same time, the market is afraid of additional budget expenditures, Suvorov points out: in his pre-election address to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin made promises for 12 trillion rubles, which means that the authorities need to find and pour 2 trillion rubles of additional money into the economy annually.
Having failed almost all of the key promises of the fourth term, from poverty reduction to demography, Putin is going into the fifth with a new package of national projects, with which the government promises to achieve economic growth of 20% in six years.
But the key risk for Russia is uncertainty, said Sofia Donets, an economist at Renaissance Capital. The war economy lives off reserves, she points out, but this source is gradually nearing exhaustion: more than half of the $113.5 billion of the NWF's free money has been spent during the two years of the war – $57.6 billion.
Military spending is already eating up a third of the budget, which has never happened since the days of the USSR, but Putin does not plan to stop: he is preparing for a long war with the West and in his fifth term wants to reshape the world order according to his wishes.
Source
@freerussia_report
February 2024 — Monthly analysis of Russian fossil fuel exports and sanctions
14 March 2024 by Vaibhav Raghunandan.
Coal: China has purchased 38% of all Russian coal exports since 5 December 2022. They are followed by India (20%) and South Korea (13%).
Crude oil: Since the EU/G7 bans on 5 December 2022, China has bought 49% of Russia’s crude exports, followed by India (30%), the EU (7%), and Turkey (5%). Oil via pipeline is only partially sanctioned.
The EU’s crude oil imports have arrived via sea to Bulgaria and via pipeline to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.
LNG: The EU was the largest buyer, purchasing 49% of Russia’s LNG exports, followed by China (21%) and Japan (19%). No sanctions are imposed on Russian LNG shipments to the EU.
Oil products: Turkey, the largest buyer, has purchased 25% of Russia’s oil product exports, followed by China (12%) and Brazil (11%). The EU’s sanctions on seaborne Russian oil products were implemented on 5 February 2023.
Pipeline gas: The EU was the largest buyer, purchasing 41% of Russia’s pipeline gas, followed by Turkey (29%) and China (26%). No sanctions are imposed on Russian pipeline gas imports into the EU.
It seems the refinery fires are the best way to stop countries funding russian terrorism.
Source link 🖇️
🇺🇦@ukraine_report 🇺🇦🔱 Liz
Joint appeal of the Legion "Freedom of Russia", the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion to Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin, the whole world has been watching for several days now how the Russian city of Belgorod, Belgorod and Kursk regions have turned into an active combat zone. At the same time, the administration you installed, despite our repeated calls, is preventing the evacuation of the civilian population. In this regard, solely because of your ambitions, civilians continue to suffer and die.
We urge you to stop this circus, think about the fate of innocent Russians and allow the evacuation of civilians from the combat zone. Your elections have long since turned into a complete farce. Stop forcing ordinary people to participate in your show at polling stations under bombs and artillery fire. Even forced expression of will is not possible when air raid signals sound. You have long lost your legitimacy, and in the current circumstances even the appearance of an electoral process has disappeared. It is obvious to everyone that Russia needs immediate and fundamental changes. In Russia, the need for a deep transformation of the relationship between the authorities and the people, and a frank conversation about new fair social rules, is long overdue.
If you are ready to discuss the future of our country without dictatorship and authoritarianism, we, for our part, are ready for such a conversation. If you still have courage and responsibility, get in touch with us in a way convenient for you.
🇺🇦@ukraine_report 🇺🇦🔱 Liz
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 73 year old Covid hermit who
lives on 10 acres in a sparsely populated area of the Ozarks. I heat with wood that is leftover by the lumber industry. When cutting oak for lumber only the trunk is used.
The largest town is population 2992. The county is 13k people scattered over 713 square miles.
Joined Dec 2022
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