TheOldGuy @TheOldGuy@qoto.org

Ukrainian forces have halted the Russian advance in the Kharkiv region, according to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the situation remains challenging. UNITED24 Media journalist Philip Malzahn has returned from the frontline, here’s an update on the situation.

Watch now: https://youtu.be/sj5HjVpWQmM?si=TmcjJUOTU2qQAfgu

Romania has arrested a spy who has been passing data on military equipment for Ukraine to the Kremlin for 2 years.

Since 2022, the defendant has been observing Romanian or NATO military facilities located on the outskirts of Tulcea. He collected military information and photographed military equipment and military vehicles, and the movement of personnel in the border area with Ukraine. He sent the data to the staff of the Russian Embassy in Bucharest, according to the DIICOT (Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism).

This is the first arrest in Romania, the center of Western military and humanitarian supplies to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country.

Watch the Russian S-400 system fire its load, and then an entire S-400 battery — four launchers and a radar — get wiped out by Ukrainian-operated ATACMS missiles.

❗️ Russia and North Korea may be preparing a provocation on the eve of the US presidential election.

US officials are bracing for North Korea's most provocative military action in a decade ahead of the US presidential election in October, possibly at the urging of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Biden administration is increasingly concerned that a deepening military alliance between Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un could greatly expand Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities and heighten tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.

Putin is expected to visit North Korea in the coming weeks to meet with Kim, and US officials predict they will strike a new deal to expand the transfer of military technology to Pyongyang.

A serious cyber attack on a NATO country can activate Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, stated NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

In an interview with The Economist, Stoltenberg noted that NATO member states can intensify joint defense actions not only in the case of direct armed aggression.

"Cyber attacks can reach the threshold of Article 5 if they are serious. If it is large-scale, then we can apply Article 5 and respond not only in cyberspace, but also in other areas to protect NATO allies," Stoltenberg said.

He emphasized that Russia is the main threat in this area.

The Russians are holding 403 Ukrainian women captive, including civilians, according to the Coordinating Staff for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

It is reported that the Russian Federation is also detaining women whose fate has been unknown since 2014. The conditions of their detention do not comply with the Third Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

According to women released from captivity, the Russians humiliated them, kept them in inhumane conditions with insufficient food, refused medical care, and did not allow them to contact their relatives. Additionally, Russia does not grant representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross access to places of detention of prisoners of war and civilians.

"The Ukrainian side has more than once offered Russia to release the women first, but instead the representatives of the aggressor country engage in manipulations, in particular by publishing various lists. Behind all this is the reluctance to continue the exchanges," the report states.

The Headquarters emphasized that women, as well as seriously wounded and seriously ill individuals, should be freed from captivity or repatriated to neutral countries as a matter of priority according to international humanitarian law. However, the aggressor country ignores this.

Heroes. Second time posting this. Want to make sure a lot of people see it. They were hit as they came in to rescue. Did not abort.

🦅  Operators of the 🦁 71st Brigade destroyed/damaged a Russian turtle tank

"Don't wear black. We say goodbye to the little angel."

In Odessa, they said goodbye to 4-year-old Zlata, who was killed by the Russian army.

The girl was wounded during shelling on April 29. Then the enemy hit the city with a ballistic missile, killing 7 more people.

Zlata was hospitalized in a very serious condition. She underwent heart surgery and was in a coma. The girl died on May 23.

Before saying goodbye, Zlata's father published a video on social networks with an appeal not to wear black clothes to the funeral, because his daughter did not like this color.

"I want to ask you not to wear dark clothes, because we are saying goodbye to a little angel, the angel is white," Vyacheslav's father wrote.

"You saved and united many, our little angel. Your ringing laugh is forever etched in everyone's heart. Fly away with a cloud, return to us with rain. My dear, the softest clouds and eternal memory for you," the parents wrote.

📸 Nina Lyashonok, Ukrinform‌‌

A video of the moment when fighters of the 110th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine shot down a Russian Su-25 aircraft

CONTINUED…
Given the fact they have had so many advantages - preparing unmolested because Ukraine cannot fire over the border, that their artillery is safe over the border for the most part (except from Ukrainian made drones), their logistics likewise, that they can retire to home territory for rotations and repair just a few kilometres away, and this is the best they can manage? These forces were building up for the best part of ten months. Rumours of an attack here have been long suspected. The Russians even built a new airstrip.
The fact is the Ukrainians left the open fields undefended for good reason - and the Russians paid the price crossing them and continue to do so, having grossly underestimated their vulnerabilities (which at this stage of the war is frankly incomprehensible). The number of troops allocated to the attack was clearly insufficient.
Now they are stuck and in effect draining their own resources for no real gain. Even more galling for the Russians is that on many sectors of the front the Ukrainians have stopped their advances or even retaken small sections in places in just a few days.
Only in Robotyne do the Russians appear to have made a significant but small gain.
Once again, let’s just remember that for months, Ukraine was almost on its knees. The shortages of weapons and artillery shells has been almost crippling. The winter was nowhere near as bad as expected and the mud of the autumn and spring has been minimal. Russia had all the advantages and it made some gains - but they’re relatively small other than Avdivka. If with all their advantages that’s the best they can do then they really have a problem. You cannot but start to wonder if the tide has reached its peak and is starting to turn. The Kharkiv offensive isn’t yet over but it’s stuck in a rut of its own making, dragging resources into a fight that should have never happened and certainly wasn’t in the plan. That sounds like the description of this entire war from Russia’s perspective.

It is Memorial Day tomorrow in the US . Maximum credit to the Ukrainian forces and people for defending their country and all of ours against such an evil enemy. An outstanding job. We should all be eternally grateful.

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦!

From "The Analyst":

KHARKIV STRATEGY

The Russians started the operation with attacks on more of the bridges over the Seversky-Donetsk river (running south) and the Vovcha which runs east-west through the town of Vovchansk into the former.
Their targets, designed to prevent Ukraine from crossing back and forth and reinforcing either of the two offensive zones, were primarily the main dam on which they used a HH-38 guided missile with a 200kg warhead. This bridge is crucial as it links Kharkiv with Vovchansk.
The missile was impossible to intercept as it came from inside Russia and was fired at just 30km so nothing could stop it at such short notice.
The only remaining crossing is much further south and doubles the distance Ukrainians will have to travel from Kharkiv to Vovchansk.
The whole point of doing this was to make it easy to seize Vovchansk - that was the main goal of this operation and would allow further expansion down the river and towards Kupiansk, slicing the whole section of front off from Ukraine.
The original plan was to encircle the town and capture it intact rather than do what they usually do and flatten it. To this end they began an encircling operation.
Many forget that Russian tanks and BMP’s are technically amphibious with the right kit in use and would have no trouble, if properly prepared, in crossing the narrow Vovcha river to its west.
The plan was to take the forest on the south side of the river. Artillery prepared the crossing point, but it seems the Russians really didn’t think about what they were about to do. To reach the crossing point, the amphibious prepared armour had to cross 5km of open farmland - the very reason then Ukrainians didn’t bother defending it because it was so exposed. The Russian armour was hunted down by drones and artillery; the entire assault group of five T-90 and five BMP, along with two supply trucks never reached the river bank.
With Ukrainian forces surging into Vovchansk area, the idea of encirclement rapidly fell apart.
The Russian combat troop allocation for the operation is around five thousand - far fewer than needed, and while they got into the town and appeared to take much of the northern sector (it is just 5km from the border), as soon as the Ukrainian reinforcements arrived it became clear the Russians hadn’t got as far as was imagined or they were claiming. That’s when the artillery turned itself on to the town, the Russians gave up on capturing it intact and began their usual practice of destroying everything to deny it to the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians have sufficient force to stop the Russians and the northern section is more of a contested zone than under Russian control, not at all how this was supposed to go at this point in their offensive.
Baring in mind the relatively light forces the Ukrainians had, right at the start, the Russian failure to encircle Vovchansk is extraordinary. Add to that they didn’t expect Ukrainian reinforcements to be so rapidly deployed and stop them in their tracks.
This shows that rumours the Ukrainians had gained intel on what was planned was likely true, that their own plans, rather then being chaotic as western media tried to make out, suggesting unpreparedness, were in fact a series of options based on what happened in the opening phase, and they reacted accordingly.
The result was the Russian strategic plan to swoop in to Vovchansk after surrounding it in a lightning attack went totally wrong, leaving them undermanned and stuck in a battle they never wanted or expected for the town.
The distraction attack towards Kharkiv itself - aiming for Liptsy, a key village due to its being in tube artillery range of the city, also ground to a stop.
Yet again we see the Russian ‘what’s in the box’ mentality play out. The commanders are given x amount of resources and as they get used up there’s no more. As resources and losses mount at a staggering and unexpected level Russia is faced with persisting and doubling down on it or withdrawing and returning to the border status quo. CONTINUES…

🕯 9:00 - minute of silence

Junior Sergeant Oleksiy Garyachuk died on July 24, 2022 while performing a combat mission in the area of ​​Vuglehirskaya TPP in Donetsk region. The defender was 36 years old.

Oleksiy comes from the city of Berezan, Kyiv region. He had his own business in the trade sphere. He loved his work very much. In his free time he went fishing.

After the start of the full-scale invasion, he served in the 5th separate assault brigade.

"Thanks to my husband's act and for his sake, I consciously feel what it is to be Ukrainian," said Inna, the wife of the deceased.

Parents, brother, wife and daughter were waiting for Oleksiy at home.‌‌

A comparison

A bunch of wackadoodles in robes.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/extreme-court-strikes-again-2/56262/

Standing in a parking lot waving at nobody

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/senile-donald-trump-waves-at-no-one/56282/

Trump found out people hate him.
https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/donald-trumps-ugly-encounter-with-reality/56283/

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/president-biden-is-just-getting-started-on-this-one/56263/

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/new-trouble-for-matt-gaetz-5/56274/

France to open plant for production of 155mm shells in Belgium.

France plans to open a new plant for the production of 155mm artillery shells in Belgium.

The plant will be opened next week by KNDS Mecar in Belgium, a subsidiary of the French company Ouest-France. In the long run, this will provide a significant increase in the production of artillery shells, which are now so much needed by both Ukraine and European militaries.

The Petit-Roeulx-les-Nivelles plant will specialize in producing the artillery shells, which will be filled with explosives at other enterprises in Belgium and France.

Despite the opening, the plant’s full operation will begin no earlier than 2025, but the increase in production rates will be noted earlier.

In addition to expanding the production of 155-mm shell casings, France is also expanding the production of special modular artillery charges used to fire artillery shells. The French gunpowder and explosives manufacturer Eurenco will increase production of modular powder charges for artillery to 500.000 units per year. The company will launch production and produce up to 1,200 tons of artillery powder per year at its facilities in Bergerac, in which it has invested over €500 million.

The new Eurenco gunpowder production line, which was laid in mid-April 2024, should to meet the growing needs of the EU and Ukraine. The new production line of the plant should begin work in early 2025. Currently, the bottleneck in the production of artillery ammunition for Europe is the supply of gunpowder.

In parallel with this investment, EURENCO is also increasing its production capacity at its other sites in Europe, said the company in a press release.