Russia Ukraine Update Thread - part 3

a reply to: gortex

Curious. I was wondering the other day why he hasn't threatened to nuke the West because of Ukraine's invasion of the Kursk Oblast.

Very quiet for Off-his-Meds-vedev.

Cheers

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

It's certainly one to watch mate , not saying he is dead but his last twitter post was Aug 9th.
x.com...

a reply to: gortex

Yes, that's all I could find, too.

a reply to: andy06shake
I've run across maybe half a dozen youtube channels in that format of having a caption of "video footages for illustration purposes only', and some kind of bouncing logo scrolling all over the screen. They have some kind of artificial voice reading the script, but I think this is the worst voice yet, because of the unnatural.

Pauses.

I tried to type the way it sounds, like putting a gap where there shouldn't be one. It sounds especially bad when they say square.

kilometers as if they don't really mean "square kilometers", lol. For all I know they may be generating the script by asking an AI to scour news sources and put together a narrative, so they could conceivably make these videos with very little work, yet they seem to get over 100,000 subscribers on some of their channels, I see they have 300k on that one. I was wondering how they get so many subscribers, I wonder if they are using bots to subscribe. Either that or maybe people just can't help falling for the click-baity headlines which I admit make pretty good clickbait at times.

I think all those channels are from the same producers because they are so similar, and I stopped watching them about a year ago. But other channels have used better artificial voices without the unnatural.

pauses in the script. LOL.

Some are more advanced, and even have AI generated news anchors reading the script, but that takes a lot more processing power than these cheap productions that only generate voice:

How To Create A News Channel With AI | AI News Video Generator with Lip Sync


I prefer a real host like Denys Davydov, who actually does his own research from Global sources (sometimes he promotes ground news which is supposed to help identify bias in news sources, but he says he uses it himself). One might think he's biased since he's from the Russian speaking Crimea peninsula in Ukraine, and he is pulling for Ukraine but he doesn't hesitate to report when Ukraine has bad news or losses, so his reporting is relatively unbiased even if he personally is not. This is his latest video, showing the large territory to the West in Russia now isolated by the three destroyed bridges:

Update from Ukraine | Great news! All of the Bridges gone! 3000 Ruzzian troops are trapped

He shows an aerial view where a pontoon bridge was made by Russia, to make up for the three destroyed bridges, but it was gone the next day and there was a lot of smoke in adjacent areas making it look like not only was the pontoon bridge destroyed, but possibly some Russian forces trying to cross it also.

Russia is still not pulling their best troops from Eastern Ukraine, they are just allowing conscripts to try to defend Kursk and adjacent oblasts, not very successfully. This is not a good look for Putin. I'm not sure if the troops from Kaliningrad arrived in Kursk yet or not.

That was short but sweet , the claim has been removed.

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter
Steamrolling time. Russian forces advancing so fast families are under orders to leave nearby towns and villages..............

Russia is just now arriving at a defense line Ukraine built to protect Pokrovsk, so if it's any good, Russia won't be able to steamroller over that. But, I can't say if it's any good or not, the quality of Ukrainian defense lines has varied a lot, some were good and some were bad.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

I did post video from Denys Davydov on the previous page also Arbitrageur.

Its a hit-and-miss affair as to the quality of the content.

The last one maybe was not the best all the same for the very reason you indicated.

Let's just hope Ukraine manages to hold any lines or defenses they have built.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter
Steamrolling time. Russian forces advancing so fast families are under orders to leave nearby towns and villages..............

Russia is just now arriving at a defense line Ukraine built to protect Pokrovsk, so if it's any good, Russia won't be able to steamroller over that. But, I can't say if it's any good or not, the quality of Ukrainian defense lines has varied a lot, some were good and some were bad.

The defences will be a test for sure yet the way things are looking Ukraine is beginning to fall apart. They lack manpower. Locals don't want to fight in a pointless defence of the Donbas. Putin will get that region it's just suicide for the local lads to throw themselves at an enemy in Russia that can funnel into the conflict nearly a thousand men every day for the next three years no problem whatsoever.

Not only are Ukraine increasingly short of manpower, they also are possibly going to lose their two main financial backers. The Yanks might pull funding if Trump gets in later this year. Germany is looking like pulling the funding too as its leaders tire of the war and the disaster it is bringing to the mythical economy. Sholz behind the scenes wants and end to this war asap and historic tight relations between the two powers looks like they'll carve out a deal in eastern europe that suits both parties.

As a neutral onlooker I'd say things are looking rather bleak for Ukraine right now.

20 August Update

Ukrainian forces continued attacking throughout the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast on August 20 and recently made additional advances. Ukrainian forces appear to be continuing efforts to strike Russian pontoon bridges and pontoon engineering equipment west of the current Kursk Oblast salient over the Seim River in Glushkovo Raion—geolocated footage published on August 20 shows Ukrainian drones striking Russian equipment bringing pontoons to a staging area near the Seim River about 3km north of Glushkovo. Satellite imagery indicates that Ukrainian forces have destroyed at least one pontoon bridge across the Seim as of August 19 that was visible on August 17.

Russian forces recently advanced near Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and Donetsk City.

More at URL above.

Cheers

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter
The defences will be a test for sure yet the way things are looking Ukraine is beginning to fall apart. They lack manpower. Locals don't want to fight in a pointless defence of the Donbas. Putin will get that region it's just suicide for the local lads to throw themselves at an enemy in Russia that can funnel into the conflict nearly a thousand men every day for the next three years no problem whatsoever.

Russia doesn't seem to have enough trained soldiers to defend its own country and you call that "no problem whatsoever"? If you want to refer to military battles where lots of people die as "suiciding", aren't Russian soldiers "suiciding" at a higher rate than Ukraine's soldiers? It seems to me they are. I also ran across a video on Davydov's telegram channel of Russian soldiers actually suiciding, not in the context you meant but actually self inflicted death.

Russian POWs previously interviewed by Kyiv Post said soldiers are told by their commanders that it’s better to kill themselves than surrender to Ukrainian forces.

Some of them actually do that as the video shows. Apparently the Russian conscripts were either not told the same thing or if they were, they are not following it because they are surrendering by the hundreds in the Kursk area.

Russia might need to do another mobilization, but Putin has been saying they don't need to do it, they will just achieve their objectives more slowly with whoever they can get without mobilization. I think he is afraid of how Russians will react if he does another mobilization, but we will see.

Not only are Ukraine increasingly short of manpower, they also are possibly going to lose their two main financial backers. The Yanks might pull funding if Trump gets in later this year. Germany is looking like pulling the funding too as its leaders tire of the war and the disaster it is bringing to the mythical economy. Sholz behind the scenes wants and end to this war asap and historic tight relations between the two powers looks like they'll carve out a deal in eastern europe that suits both parties.

US elections are a wild card, and so is Trump if he gets elected, but the worst I've heard is Trump's running mate, Vance, who seems absolutely anti-Ukraine. However, there seems for now at least to be majority support in the US Senate and House of representatives for Ukraine aid, because majority of Americans support it. The only reason for the US gap earlier this year is the speaker of the house wouldn't put it up for a vote. When it was finally put up for a vote it passed with majority.

Even if Trump was president, he doesn't have authority to stop that funding. He tried to stop Ukraine funding during his previous presidency, which was not within his power to do:

Trump impeachment: How Ukraine story unfolded

As a neutral onlooker I'd say things are looking rather bleak for Ukraine right now.

I thought the 50 billion loan package they just got was a glass at least half full on the funding side, they can receive a lot of that money before the end of this year.

G7 leaders agree to lend Ukraine billions backed by Russia’s frozen assets. Here’s how it will work

WASHINGTON (AP) — Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies have agreed to engineer a $50 billion loan to help Ukraine in its fight for survival. Interest earned on profits from Russia’s frozen central bank assets would be used as collateral.

Anyway your kind of rhetoric is nothing new in this war, people were saying worse things about Ukraine since February 2022, like Ukraine would only last a few weeks, or a few months at most against overwhelming Russian forces. They have always been the scrappy underdog in this fight, and we've had surprise after surprise after surprise in this war.

They do need to come up with a defense against those aviation gliding bombs though, those things are devastating to Ukraine's front lines. The most recent strategy seems to be attacking stockpiles of those bombs but they are relatively inexpensive, and Russia will keep making more. If they could destroy the planes delivering them, that would help because the planes are not so easily replaced.

If some good radar planes flying in Ukraine can send targeting info on the Russian planes to Ukraine's F-16s, I know there are air to air missiles that have the range to reach the Russian planes droppping the gliding bombs, without entering Russian occupied airspace. But the details of exactly which armaments are being supplied for the F-16s are hard to come by. We know what could be supplied, but I haven't been able to find what actually is being supplied to Ukraine.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

It's certainly one to watch mate , not saying he is dead but his last twitter post was Aug 9th.

I missed your post before it was removed, but the Inside Russia guy says the entire Kremlin has been silent since about then, not just Medvedev, but also Putin and Peskov.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Holy smoke Arbi that's one good write up. Agree with most of your points there, you're being fairly balanced which is a good thing on a current WW3 event that gains 'fan clubs' for one side or the other in a war far far away yet that affects us all in many ways. The great centuries old game for control of eastern and central Europe continues and is as heated as ever

21 August Update

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations throughout the Kursk Oblast salient on August 21 and have made additional marginal advances. Ukraine's Special Operations Forces posted footage on August 21 showing Ukrainian strikes on several pontoon bridges and staging areas along the Seim River in Glushkovsky Raion, west of the current Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast. The Ukrainian Special Operations Forces suggested that Ukrainian forces may have used HIMARS in some of the strikes against pontoon bridges, while milbloggers speculated that Ukrainian forces used air-launched small-diameter glide bombs.

The Ukrainian General Staff reported that overnight on August 20 to 21, Ukrainian naval forces and other Ukrainian units conducted a coordinated strike with unspecified weapons and hit a Russian S-300 air defense system's position near Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov Oblast.

Russian forces recently advanced southeast of Pokrovsk, southwest of Donetsk City, and northeast of Robotyne.

More at URL above.

Cheers

a reply to: andy06shake
Denys shows that Ukraine attacked the ferry carrying oil tanks across the Kerch strait, and the huge fireball that resulted as the oil tanks burn and destroy the ferry.

He says he's clueless why Russia isn't using their railroad to transport the oil tanks.
Which is strange because his picture of the huge fireball is the answer, sort of. If Ukraine attacks those oil tanks as they are transported by rail, there would also be a huge fireball and instead of sinking a ferry, the fireball would damage the Kerch bridge. Russia is williing to risk losing ferries which can be replaced, but it doesn't want the Kerch bridge damaged, since they send a lot of non-flammable military supplies, and other cargo across the bridge via rail.

Concrete and steel are not immune to fire damage:

How fire destroyed the I-85 steel and concrete bridge

I found some of the answers I was looking for regarding F-16 deployment in Ukraine. They will likely be used for additional air defense like intercepting Russian cruise missiles. It will be some time before they can shoot down the Russian planes dropping the gliding bombs, unfortunately, according to the expert in this video. He also mentions that Ukraine probably wants to hold Kursk if Trump gets sworn in as US president in January because it gives them a bargaining chip if he forces Ukraine to negotiate with threat of cutting off supplies if they don't. That implies that if Kamala Harris wins, they don't really need Kursk as a bargaining chip since she's expected to keep supporting Ukraine.

In any case, he says morale is much higher now in Ukraine, than it was before the Kursk counter-offensive.

Deep Intel About Ukraine's New F-16 Tactics

He says Ukraine may have 20 F-16s by the end of the year but they aren't really using them yet except for continuing training in Ukraine or something like that. I also think Ukraine may need to build some hardened hangars to store them, they can't just leave them in the open on the tarmac, Russia will hunt and destroy them if they do. Putin is offering a big reward for the first one destroyed I hear.

The reason training of pilots is so painfully limited is there is a global shortage of pilots, so it's really hard to pull pilots off the front line to conduct training for a very limited number of training slots. So even if Ukraine got all 80 F-16s now they wouldn't have enough trained pilots to fly them.

He says Ukraine will never have air superiority, so the real mission for the limited number of F-16s going to Ukraine is to help stop Russia from gaining air superiority.

22 August Update

The Russian military command recently redeployed elements of at least one Russian airborne (VDV) regiment from western Zaporizhia Oblast in response to Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk Oblast . . .

Ukrainian forces marginally advanced throughout their salient in Kursk Oblast amid continued Russian efforts to stop these advances on August 22.

Ukrainian forces conducted a series of successful strikes against targets in Volgograd Oblast and Krasnodar Krai on August 22.

Russian forces recently advanced north of Siversk, within Chasiv Yar and southeast of Toretsk and Pokrovsk.

More at URL above.

Cheers

What do you folks think about Inside Russia's prediction, and predictions from other sources, that Putin's days are numbered, basically because he is too slow to react to the Kursk "situation", and all the negative effects from that. Here is "Inside Russia" talking about it:

Are These Putin's Last Days? | And What Are The Signs Pointing To That?


Here's another source saying Putin's days are numbered, pointing out some very unusual and candid language from various oligarchs happening lately:

Putin’s warlords and oligarchs threaten coup as Ruble craters | Diane Francis

"The ruble is cratering and there are some very prominent Russians who are now speaking out against this war very unusually."

Putin's position is no longer secure, says journalist Diane Francis.

Diane Francis mentions an outspoken oligarch demanding that the Russian army overthrow Putin, which seems very unusual because usually people fall out of third floor windows when they express dissent or dissatisfaction with Putin's regime. She says there are also other oligarchs speaking out though not quite as forcefully, and some of these oligarchs have their own private militaries (think similar to Wagner though maybe smaller versions).

She also mentions a leak about Ukraine explaining their plan to assassinate Putin, asking western allies for permission to use western supplied weapons to carry out the assassination, but the western allies refused to give permission, is the only reason Putin is still alive. I think she's implying that this information may have been "leaked" intentionally so Putin won't consider himself safe, even inside Russia. This might also explain why Putin has moved air defenses from the front lines to defend his palaces.

23 August Update

Ukrainian forces continued to marginally advance near Sudzha amid continued Ukrainian operations in Kursk Oblast on August 23.

Russian opposition media reported that Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike against the oil depot at about 0500 on August 23, following a strike against the depot on August 18 that caused a fire that Russian authorities have been battling since August 18.

Islamic State (IS)-affiliated inmates took prison employees and other inmates hostage at a penal colony in Surovikino, Volgograd Oblast, Russia, on August 23.

Russian forces recently advanced near Kreminna, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and Donetsk City.

More at URL above.

Cheers

Oh boy here come the doom gloom esquire tabloid Putin talks now.

originally posted by: F2d5thCavv2
23 August Update
"Islamic State (IS)-affiliated inmates took prison employees and other inmates hostage at a penal colony in Surovikino, Volgograd Oblast, Russia, on August 23."

Denys Davydov mentioned the population crisis in Russia, that Putin himself said was Russia's biggest problem. He mentioned this Islamic State issue may be the result of Russia essentially opening its borders so that even undesirables like fanatics can now enter Russia. There previously was a Russian citizenship test immigrants had to learn Russian to take and pass, but Russia is so desperate to solve its not enough people problem, that it has waived the requirement to learn Russian. This is the video where he discusses that, and gives the latest update on the front lines in Ukraine and in Russia:

Update from Ukraine | Awesome! Ukraine closes the trap.| A new Step in Kursk operation

originally posted by: Imhere
Oh boy here come the doom gloom esquire tabloid Putin talks now.

It's not the tabloids Putin should worry about, it's people in his own country, like Georgy Zakrevsky.

Ukraine's Turning Point

Last year, Wagner Group mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin called for the war against Ukraine to end, staged a brief mutiny, and was assassinated. But since Kursk, another militia leader, Georgy Zakrevsky, said that the Russian army should overthrow Putin. “Our country is not just on the brink of disaster; our country is already in big trouble," he said. “Drones fly all over central Russia, up to Moscow and St. Petersburg. They even attacked the Kremlin. Our Black Sea fleet is being pushed out. The population is dying out, becoming impoverished, drinking itself to death - no one cares… And all this was done by the so-called 'president' - 'The Great' Putin."

Again he mentions the population crisis, contrary to the story we keep hearing that Russia has plenty of people. Putin even admitted Russia has a population crisis, and what is he doing about it? He's making it far worse by forcing lots of Russians to leave Russia (usually the best and brightest), and killing off or maiming those that remain, and then letting even undesirables like terrorists into his country to try to solve the crisis of not enough people.

It’s definitely doom and gloom “esquire” tabloid talk about Putin. Coming out of completely biased Zelensky armchair YouTubers looking to pander views/subscribers etc.

At any event, looks like a slow news day for Zelensky. As if U.S. doesn’t have it’s own alarming border/migrant issues with democrats chanting for open borders etc.