TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 72 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
In the Kharkiv direction, the Russians are trying to save vehicles to ensure logistics.
The key part is ‘trying.’ 😏
Fighters of the 2nd separate detachment of the Special Purpose Center "OMEGA" destroyed another "loaf" used by the enemy to deliver ammunition.
❗️This is the 8th such vehicle destroyed this week by special forces.
🤩It burned long and beautifully!
The SBU detained an FSB informant who wanted to disrupt the delivery of heavy equipment of the Armed Forces to the southern front
The security service detained another FSB informant in Zaporizhzhia. The attacker monitored the intensity of traffic and the approximate number of military echelons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine heading in the direction of the front line.
The figure drew special attention to mobile warehouses that transport heavy weapons.
Also, among its tasks was the establishment of geolocations of repair bases of the Defense Forces near railway stations.
Intelligence was needed by the occupiers to plan combat operations on the front line and prepare airstrikes against the facilities of the Armed Forces and Ukrzaliznytsia.
In order to carry out the enemy's mission, the FSB informant walked around the area near the railway tracks, where she monitored traffic and recorded the coordinates of possible repair bases of the Armed Forces.
Also, the defendant "darkly" used her acquaintances when she veiledly asked them for information about Ukrainian troops.
She displayed the received intelligence in the form of marks on Google maps with a detailed description of the "required" objects.
The SBU exposed the perpetrator at the initial stage of her criminal activity.
The Ukrainian special service carried out comprehensive measures to secure the positions of the Armed Forces and detained the perpetrator in her own apartment.
According to the investigation, the occupiers engaged the woman to cooperate remotely.
She came to the attention of the FSB because of her anti-Ukrainian activity in social networks. Further communication with her took place through an anonymous chat in a popular messenger.
The perpetrator is in custody. She faces up to 8 years in prison.
Counter-subversive measures were carried out by SBU employees in the Zaporizhzhia region under the procedural guidance of the regional prosecutor's office.
From "The Analyst":
THE FOREVER WAR STATE
Ukrainians will begrudgingly admit that the Russians have learned a great deal.
They have become more open to opportunity when it presents itself on the frontlines, and capable of exploiting it when it materialises. Avdivka was a prime example of that.
However they often use old methods to make things happen and can be grotesquely wasteful of their manpower and material, under some impression that there’s simply loads more where that came from.
They have started a process of indoctrination and instilling religious fatalism in their new troops, to erase their fear of death and injury to make them more willing to fight for Putin’s distorted dreams of a Russian ‘Imperium Nova’.
Putin has assumed an almost Czar like quality - so much so that the Patriarch of Moscow at Putin’s recent inauguration, used the Russian for ‘Your Highness’. The trappings of the Imperial Past are everywhere. In many ways it’s like watching Franco
in fascist Spain, acting as everything was a monarchy while he wasn’t actually the king.
The introduction of new ministers and revised heads of the military and security services is just one more aspect of the way Putin will create a new, modernised soviet system of governance and production. Only this time trying to encourage innovation - never easy in any autocracy that doesn’t like free thinking - and promote those who will operate its new ideas and systems.
The age old problem is that it’s much harder to get older minds to do your biding than younger ones who know no different. That’s why it’s become so vital to change education and begin the process of indoctrination at school - the next generation will know the system and how to use it willingly for their own good and that of the motherland.
The only country that has remained reasonably open but has achieved such totality of control over information and surveillance is China. Those technologies and policies are slowly being introduced into Russia.
The Putin view is that he will oversee a transformation in Russia that will use its oil to buy its future and prop up its economy one way or the other. He believes - I would say he knows in his heart if it’s still there - that the west will fail to support Ukraine to the end. And he believes absolutely we will eventually tire of the war and so will Ukraine. He will win and then after a few years of rebuilding, he will sweep in and take the rest, having learned from the mistakes of the past.
China and Russia are playing the long game. Iran too. They know the rules are different if they make them so. Given time they know the west will tire of the cost and the threat.
Russia will learn, as Iran, Cuba and N.Korea have, to live with sanctions and get around them. In many ways they create an autarky that can be fairly liberating for a dictatorship. Life may not be perfect under such conditions but they’re rarely fatal. Once your acceptance of the situation becomes clear, it’s difficult for your opponents to impact you in any meaningful way. With China having access to almost anything Russia wants, and sophisticated pathways into restricted access products and services through complex third and fourth party arrangements, long term if the government can survive so will their people.
Training the military and the population to live with it is the aim. With no means of opposing it and no information to base that opposition on, acquiescence is inevitable.
The State and the nation are therefore ready for the endless state of war it will take to win.
The Soviet’s thought the same. So did the governments they controlled. China is not Russia. Putin cannot last forever. His successor may have a very different view.
But for now we have to be the ones to prove him wrong.
⚡Tucker Carlson launches new show on Russian TV.
U.S. far-right political commentator and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson launched a new television show in collaboration with the Russian state television network Rossiya 24, with the first episode, about the dangers of ticks and Lyme disease, being available online on May 21.
More about reserves...
"All our troops are now either here or in Chasovoy Yar. I used everything we have. Unfortunately, we don't have anyone left in the reserve," said the head of the GUR.
✏️ Many people took the words of Kirill Oleksiiovych as meaning that we have absolutely no reserves left. However, we would say that this is not the case at all.
🦉 A reminder that Budanov heads only the GUR, and the newly created units of the GUR actually became combat units from the reserves.
🔵This is evidenced by the introduction in Vovchansk of the newly created "Vidar" subdivision, which is part of the GUR. This was hinted at by Ruslan Kaganets, who previously headed "Sonechko" in the same structure.
According to the signatures of sources citing Budanov, it is written about the partial withdrawal of some brigades from the east. It is not possible to confirm full withdrawal. However, it is possible to state the fact of the presence of one of the individual battalions of the Novokakhovskaya 57th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade in the Kharkiv border regions.
Now a little about the reserves themselves...
🔴Not so long ago, the reserve corps was reformed into the 11th Army Corps. And although according to some sources (link to MilitaryLand) the 11 AK includes such brigades as: 3 OTBr, 45 OABr, 60 OMBr, 61 OMBr, 63 OMBr, then according to other sources (which will not be specified), the corps also has and 141 separate infantry brigades that never saw combat action.
🗂 Given that it, like a number of other brigades from the 140 series, were at the beginning of formation in February 2023, they should clearly have been formed by now. And this, for a moment, as many as 4 infantry brigades. Usually, the staff of the brigade is from 3 to 5 thousand personnel.
⚪️In addition to the above, from October 2023, the formation of the 150 series brigades began: 150, 151, 152, 153 and 154, which also have not yet appeared anywhere, but already for the reasons that some of them are still in a state of completion, probably on at the very final stage and at the stage of further training of personnel. They were also in the Reserve Corps (now - it is not known for sure, but they do not take part in battles).
❗ But this is not the end either. Therefore, the network recently became aware of the 155th separate infantry brigade.
However, information is already appearing about the possible formation of 156, 157, 158 and 159 brigades of the same type.
The only one that is known is that 159 may be forming in Mykolaiv Oblast.
🤔 Undoubtedly, there are reserves in the ground forces, although they may be insignificant for plans of a strategic scale. But for what purposes are they kept, and for what are they prepared?
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The Soviet Union developed the BTR-50 in the early 1950s. It entered service in 1954 and, for the next 12 years, was the Soviet army’s main fighting vehicle. BTR-50 crews would haul soldiers into battle, protect them as they dismounted and then support them with its machine gun.
The BTR-50 is lightly-armed and thinly-armored by even 1960s standards, however. When the heavier, and more heavily-armed, BMP-1 debuted in 1966, thousands of BTR-50s cascaded to second-line units. The BTRs hauled artillery, engineers and anti-aircraft guns until MT-LB tractors began displacing the older vehicles from those roles, too.
The present-day Russian military had few uses for a BTR-50 until, around 15 months into the wider war in Ukraine, Russia’s monthly losses of modern armored vehicles exceeded Russia’s monthly generation of reasonably modern replacement vehicles—either through production of brand-new vehicles or the recovery, from long-term storage, of vehicles from the 1980s or later.
The Kremlin began pulling BTR-50s out of open storage in early 2023. It seems Russian commanders initially assigned the vehicles to rear-area support roles and kept them away from the front line. But then, in late 2023, BTR-50s began showing up in Russian assault groups in the east.
Six months later, the Russians have lost in battle at least four BTR-50s that the analysts at Oryx can confirm. One got hit by a Javelin while attacking Ukrainian lines west of Novomykhailivka on or right before Sunday.
The Ukrainian army’s 79th Air Assault Brigade holds the line in that area—and that brigade’s anti-tank missileers are notoriously bloodthirsty. It’s unsafe to send a modern T-72 tank with hundreds of millimeters of armor against the 79th Air Assault Brigade; it’s suicide to send a BTR-50 with just 10 millimeters of armor.
That BTR-50’s doomed assault is indicative of a wider problem. Tens of billions of dollars worth of fresh military aid the United States and the European Union are on the way to Ukraine. Perhaps hoping to capture additional territory ahead of that aid arriving, the Russians launched a new offensive two weeks ago—rolling south across Ukraine’s northern border with Russia.
This offensive, apparently targeting Kharkiv—Ukraine’s second-biggest city, just 25 miles south of the border—captured a few small border villages before running into a wall of Ukrainian mechanized brigades firing those first consignments of fresh artillery shells coming from the United States.
Sustaining offensives in the north and east in addition to positional fighting in the south has proved difficult for the Kremlin. Big advances in the north would require “a large number of vehicles,” according to Frontelligence Insight. Even as it mobilizes tens of thousands of fresh troops every month, Russia is struggling to equip them with modern vehicles.
A BTR-50 is as old as a combat vehicle gets without coming directly from a museum. And it’s only slightly more protected than a golf cart. When a Ukrainian anti-tank missile team spots a BTR-50 rolling toward it, it’s not just bad news for the crew and occupants of that BTR-50. It’s also bad news for the whole Russian war effort.
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When A 70-Year-Old Russian BTR-50 Attacks Ukrainian Troops, It’s Bad News For The Whole Russian War Effort
The thinly-protected, 1950s-vintage BTR-50 might not be the worst vehicle the Russian army has sent in a direct assault on Ukrainian positions, but it’s probably the oldest.
And while it’s safer for Russian troops to ride in a 70-year-old BTR-50 with its 10-millimeter-thick armor than to ride in, say, a brand-new Chinese golf cart, it’s still an ominous sign for Russia that more BTR-50s are appearing on the battlefields of eastern Ukraine as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its 28th month.
“Without mechanized units fully equipped with proper combat vehicles like tanks, achieving swift and decisive penetration of defenses will be very challenging,” Ukrainian analysis group Frontelligence Insight explained. “This limitation is likely to result in slower and more limited advances, hampering the overall progress of Russian forces.”
The BTR-50 is a 15-ton, diesel-fueled armored tractor with two crew and space for up to 20 passengers. It usually packs a heavy machine gun.
The Soviet Union developed the BTR-50 in the early 1950s. It entered service in 1954 and, for the next 12 years, was the Soviet army’s main fighting vehicle. BTR-50 crews would haul soldiers into battle, protect them as they dismounted and then support them with its machine gun.
The BTR-50 is lightly-armed and thinly-armored by even 1960s standards, however. When the heavier, and more heavily-armed, BMP-1 debuted in 1966, thousands of BTR-50s cascaded to second-line units. The BTRs hauled artillery, engineers and anti-aircraft guns until MT-LB tractors began displacing the older vehicles from those roles, too.
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In addition to the Kovrovets minesweeper, which was reportedly destroyed yesterday, the destruction of another ship, the Project 22800 Karakurt Class 'Tsiklon', is likely, Navy spokesman Dmytro Pletenchuk said.
"Actually, this information is still being verified. Because in order to be 100 percent sure, it is still necessary to obtain the appropriate results of objective control," he added.
https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news-vms-imovirnist-rosiiskyi-korabel-tsyrkon/32954637.html
Nato allies should not fear that sending troops to Ukraine to train its soldiers would risk dragging the military alliance into war with Russia, Estonia’s prime minister Kaja Kalas said.
"There are countries who are training soldiers on the ground already, and they did so at their own risk. If training personnel were attacked by Russian forces it would not automatically trigger Nato’s Article 5 mutual defence clause," she said.
The chairman of the French Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly demands that France change its doctrine, and no longer prohibits Ukraine from striking inside Russian territory.
"This change in doctrine is perfectly legitimate insofar as it puts an end to the unacceptable asymmetry between the situation of the aggressor and that of the aggressed. In the name of what can we deny the Ukrainians the right to respond blow for blow to the attacks of which they are victims?" he emphasized.
"There are mines on the road."
Ok. Let's continue. Blyatbarn, charge!
Russians at work.
People are looking forward to dancing on this man's grave.
🇺🇦 The International Boxing Federation (IBF) will strip Oleksandr Usyk of his heavyweight title as his belt defense against Filip Hrhovych has expired
Horvath is a must-win title contender, and he refuses to wait for Fury and Usyk to rematch (if it comes to that match it would be in October).
With that in mind, the IBF is taking away its belt and will award it to the winner of the Hrgovych-DuBois fight on June 1. The winner of this fight will face the ex-heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
If Usyk can defeat Fury in the rematch, then he will have to fight the new IBF champion to collect all four belts (WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO) and defend the title of the absolute champion in the heavyweight division.
@ukrainejournal
I am a Democrat who supports Ukraine in their battle against The Russian Z fascist invaders.
I am a 72 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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