Russia Ukraine Update Thread - part 3

a reply to: worldstarcountry

Oh. OK.

I'll lighten up, then.

Has Cav abandoned us?
No updates and hasn't visited the site since the fourth of this month.
He may be on his jollies or travelling about with work etc.....just hope he's ok.

Looks like Arbi hasn't posted much recently as well.

originally posted by: Freeborn
Has Cav abandoned us?
No updates and hasn't visited the site since the fourth of this month.
He may be on his jollies or travelling about with work etc.....just hope he's ok.

Looks like Arbi hasn't posted much recently as well.

I never posted daily updates. Cav did, but he has taken breaks before, this isn't the first time, so hopefully he'll be back. I like his updates.

I saw the video below about "India had enough of Russia" on Oct 4 or 5 and wanted to share it so our Serbian friend Imhere could comment on the segment about Serbia changing allegiances from Russia to Ukraine after Putin stabbed Serbia in the back so to speak, but I've been busy trying to spec out a replacement for my computer which is 9 years old going on 10. It's been difficult since the entire market seems like a mess right now with Intel's leading 13th and 14th generation CPUs being unreliable and all other kinds of problems in the market, so it's way more time consuming to research and avoid so many pitfalls like that since I hope to get 9 years out of my next PC too. Nobody is really sure if Intel is making good chips right now or not.

originally posted by: Imhere
With or without Putin, Crimea and the east etc is a done deal.

That's not what the president of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic now says, have you been keeping up with recent events?

This video is about how even the few friends, or neutral parties Russia had after it invaded Ukraine full scale in 2022 are now distancing themselves from Russia. To see how India is distancing themselves, watch the first 10 minutes of this video, but just before 11 minutes it begins talking about how Serbia initially supported Russia, but then Putin betrayed Serbia by implicitly recognizing Kosovo. After that betrayal, things have changed for Serbia and Serbians, have they changed for you too? You're Serbian, right?

India Had Enough of Russia - GET OUT OF UKRAINE!

10:36

...it seems like India isn't ready to ditch Russia yet, but it has started to lay the groundwork for a future betrayal which is not good news for Putin, but right now, it doesn't seem like he has time to worry about India distancing itself because other countries like Serbia are moving much faster when it comes to pushing away Russia

At the beginning of the war, many considered Serbia to be one of the closest allies of Russia. It wasn't just the Serbian leaders who were supporting Russia. Serbian citizens had pro-Russia rallies in Serbia, when the West announced sanctions on the country, Serbian leaders publicly blamed NATO for the war, not Russia, which is a little odd, but we'll get to the true reason behind that in just a second, but all this public support from Serbia and Serbians made sense, since Russia and Serbia share close historic ties and citizens often refer to each other as brothers.

Additionally, Serbia hates NATO as well, much like Russia. When Kosova broke away from Serbia and became an independent state, NATO sided with Kosovo, which of course didn't please Serbia, so that saying an enemy of my enemy is my friend played a role too in Serbia's support of Russia against NATO. So obviously Serbia didn't follow Western sanctions against Russia, and they continued buying Russian oil at that sweet sweet discount, but all of this friendliness started to change when the Serbian president made a surprisingly strong statement saying

"we said from the beginning that we cannot support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, for us Crimea is Ukraine, Donbas is Ukraine, it will remain so."

That's because Putin used the UN recognition of Kosovo Independence referendum to make his case for recognizing Ukrainian cities captured by Russia as part of Russia since people there quote unquote "voted to join Russia". The integrity and fairness of that referendum is already in question, but this statement definitely did not please Serbians, who felt betrayed by Putin's indirect recognition of Kosovo as an independent state and thus Serbia Russia relations started to fall apart.
On top of this, Serbia is much more dependent on EU for trade than Russia, and it receives substantial funding from the EU, so it makes sense that Russia is losing the war it started Serbia is siding with the group that benefits its people the most.

Serbia has distanced itself from Russia so far now, it is even supporting Ukraine by sending weapons to them, so on behalf of Ukraine, thanks to your fellow countrymen for that!

FT: Around $855 million in Serbian ammunition reaches Ukraine

So are you still stuck in 2022 when Serbia was friendly to Russia? Or are you on board with Serbia distancing themselves from Russia in 2024 and becoming friendly with Ukraine, insisting that Crimea is Ukraine's, and even sending them arms?

President Macron of France said he couldn't rule out sending French troops to Ukraine, and Putin and his minions made a big stink about that comment even though I don't think France has officially sent any troops there yet. But now that Putin is getting soldiers from N Korea to fight on his side in Ukraine (or allegedly do "engineering"?), it seems hypocritical to say Russia can get soldiers from his friends, but Ukraine can't.

North Korea To Deploy More Soldiers to Ukraine After Reported Deaths: Seoul

It is "highly likely" North Korea will send more troops to fight for Russia in Ukraine, said Seoul's defense minister, commenting on reports of North Korean soldiers dying near Donetsk last week.

originally posted by: worldstarcountry
History Legends released a video a week ago analyzing the Russian war of attrition tactics and goes deep into numbers and methods, backed with footage and various legacy media statements.

If you're interested in attrition, have you seen the satellite photos of the soviet tank graveyards and or storage depots, showing the number of tanks being depleted? This youtube channel and another guy known as "Hymarsed" analyze a mix of satellite photos, some publicly available, and some that they buy but can only analyze in private, the purchase agreement doesn't allow those to be displayed in their videos. They have a couple nice updates of the status of the Russian tanks and a more recent video about how the rate of depletion of the old tanks is increasing. Here's one with some sat photos available:

Russia's Looming Serious Tank Shortage - Tank Count Using Latest Bought Satellite Imagery

Only 20% of Russian Tanks in Storage are "Decent", according to their current 3 category rating system, the other 2 categories are worse, and the satellite photos seem to show a lot of them are missing turrets completely, maybe they are just being used for spare parts?

Before:


More recent:

The thing I like about these photos, is you aren't hearing propaganda from one side or the other (there could potentially be propaganda in someone's rating system, but you can disregard the rating system if you don't trust it, and just see what the images show...no propaganda, just reality. In some of these, you can see the missing turrets for youtself).

Before:

More recent:



Russia's Largest Storage Depot Is Suddenly Declining 3 Times Quicker - 20 September 2024 Imagery


Before:

More recent:


Here's an example where you can see some missing turrets, and some open hatches meaning the inside is exposed to rain and weather that is really going to make the interior condition degraded. It's not impossible to recondition such degraded tanks, but at some point, it may be more economical to scrap it for the metal and just make a new tank.


History Legends says Russia will not run out of tanks. These analysts say that much is true, however, as these ancient soviet stockpiles are depleted, the most easily refurbished tanks are refurbished first (as we might expect) and those that remain get progressively harder and take longer to refurbish since the low hanging fruit was already picked, so the rate of these refurbished tanks flowing to the front lines will decline. Some analysts say that Russia may run out of tanks from these stockpiles they can economically refurbish next year (2025), but of course they will keep making new tanks, however at a rate far lower than Ukraine is destroying them. So Russia is more likely to encounter a shortage of tanks, possibly as soon as next year, rather than running out completely.

If Russia doesn't have enough tanks and other armored vehicles, they can always use golf carts and motorcycles, since they seem to have an ample supply of those. Since Russia doesn't seem to care how many soldiers die, who needs armor? Not Russia, apparently. Now that North Korea is providing soldiers to Russia, when they run low on Russian solders who are killed in the golf carts, they can send out the N Korean soldiers in some more golf carts.

originally posted by: gortex
As we head toward the 3rd year of this 3 month invasion of Ukraine and with Russia itself losing its own territory in the process Russia's chief TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov voiced his frustration which is no doubt echoed by many watching.

“Et tu, Brute?”
"The Russian press reported on this.
Solovyev called for concrete decisions and even for the resignation of the Commander-in-Chief:
'It is not enough to arrest the guilty. We need to appoint those who understand how to do this effectively, quickly and clearly. It does not matter what ministry these people are in and how they are called. It doesn't matter to me what color the cat is, the main thing is that it catches mice.

Therefore, let's move on to concrete solutions. If this requires the resignation of the Supreme Leader... well...' ”.

Here's another video talking about Solovyev talking about "the resignation of the Supreme Leader." It also talks about more and more people in Russia speaking out against Putin, and I think Solovyev is still broadcasting. Can we assume that Putin didn't write the script for Solovyev to talk about Putin resigning because the war has turned into such a debacle? And if Putin didn't write that script, who did, and who is running the Kremlin? If Putin did write a script talking about his own resignation, that would be even more shocking.

Russians WARN Putin: "Resign & GET OUT!"

Putin 'FINISHED' as Losses in Ukraine Destroy His Grip on Power

More analysis of satellite imagery, this time on MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket Systems), showing Russia has significantly depleted their inventory of old MLRS systems in storage. Those relatively few that remain in storage may be in poor condition, and they are even seeing some MLRS trucks in storage where the rocket pods have been completely removed.

After 2.5 Years, How Many MLRS Does Russia Have Left? Count Using Unreleased Satellite Imagery

Denys Davydov's latest update has some interesting news items:

Update from Ukraine | Awesome! Ukraine Strikes in Kursk Again. Ukrainian F-16 Shot down Su-34. Maybe

Around 5 minutes, he talks about an update from the ISW (Institute for the Study of War) saying a Russian milblogger says a Ukrainian F-16 shot down a Russian SU-34, which is one of the planes used to drop the gliding bombs that are so devastating to Ukraine. ISW and Denys say it's not 100% confirmed, but Russian milbloggers don't like to give credit to Ukraine that's not due so it may very well be true. If so, this is good news, since it's one of the F-16 missions that Ukraine really can benefit from, since they really don't have good defenses against those Russian gliding bombs, other than destroying the planes that drop them.

Around 16 minutes he talks about a story that's probably good news for Ukraine. The Russians have been using Discord to allow their surveillance drones to communicate what they are finding over Ukraine's positions, and Denys shows a screenshot from the video proving it. Meanwhile, a Russian general says they have never used discord, which is obviously a lie. The good news for Ukraine, is Discord has been shut down in Russia, and they tried to use an alternate service (for gaming apparently), and that has also been shut down to Russia. So maybe Russia now has been cut off from its surveillance drones, which is bad news for Russia, good news for Ukraine.

Maybe partly from that, and all the ammunition depots in Russia that Ukraine has damaged or destroyed, Russia seems to have lost a lot of the momentum they had in recent months. Russia is still advancing in some areas, but at a much slower pace.

Then around 21 minutes, Denys says that pro-Russian sources like History Legends and others are lying about Ukraine pulling out of Toretsk. Russia gained a little larger foothold there, but Ukraine still controls the vast majority of the town:

20:45
Ukraine has the majority control over the settlement (Toretsk)

I know that some of the YouTube bloggers Pro Russian, I would say bloggers like History Legends or something else say that Ukraine is withdrawing the forces from Toretsk, but it's absolute lies. Ukraine still keeps control over the large part of the settlement and Russia yes goes there, but very, very slowly, again with severe losses, so for Ukraine, for defense, everything is more or less okay in the Toretsk. Ukraine is still there.

Eyeballing the map, it looks like maybe 20% or so of Toretsk is controlled by Russia, and 80% or so by Ukraine.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Ukrainian F-16 Shot down Su-34. Maybe

I've been reading this too. The fact that this is coming from Russian bloggers is also telling?

Ukrainian F-16 shoots down £27m Russian fighter in harrowing dog fight
A Ukrainian pilot is understood to have intercepted a Russian Sukhoi Su-34 fighter-bomber over Ukraine.

According to Russian military blogging sources, the two-man crew of the Kremlin's Sukhoi Su-34 died in the attack when the aircraft was intercepted by a Ukrainian F-16 Fighting Falcon jet over the Donbas region on Saturday.

Another military Telegram channel dedicated to the Russian Air Force paid tribute to the crew of the plane, writing: "The earth is the sky, brothers."

a reply to: Kurokage
The crew being killed is significant.

When poorly trained Russian infantry are killed in meat wave attacks, they are easily replaced with more poorly trained infantry.

But pilots have a long training cycle that costs lots of money and takes years, even in Russia, so killed pilots are not easily replaced.

Well, I wonder How this is going to go over .

Ukraine could have nuclear weapons within weeks – Bild

Kiev has the capability to build a nuclear weapon “in a few weeks,” a high-ranking Ukrainian official told Bild on Thursday after Vladimir Zelensky alluded to such a possibility.

Ukraine needs either membership in NATO or nuclear weapons, Zelensky said on Friday in Brussels, arguing in favor of his “victory plan” to end the conflict with Russia.

This prompted Bild to reveal that a Ukrainian official involved in weapons procurement told them “a few months ago” that Kiev was willing to go nuclear.

“We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb,” the unnamed official said,

a reply to: Ravenwatcher
Ukraine already had nuclear weapons, more than any other country except the US and Russia.

The US and the UK talked Ukraine into giving those to Russia, but Ukraine now wishes they hadn't agreed to that in exchange for security assurances that are not really guarantees and we see how the West is drip-feeding support to Ukraine when they need a lot more, faster.

The nuclear non-proliferation intent was honorable enough, but unfortunately the madman Putin has now changed the landscape from one of non-proliferation to one of proliferation where states can see the benefit of having nuclear weapons, after seeing how western countries cower in fear from Putin's nuclear saber rattling.

So as Zelensky said, I'm sure he doesn't really want nukes, he's just using that as a bargaining tactic to apply pressure for Ukraine's more rapid admission to NATO. Ukraine can help speed up their admission by fighting corruption even harder than they already are, but the Slovak prime minister has vowed to block Ukraine's NATO membership as long as he's in office, so I don't know what Ukraine can do about that. Maybe Zelensky hopes his potential nuclear saber-rattling will result in pressure to speed up their NATO membership.

Zelenskyy: We need NATO or nukes … and we want NATO

Kyiv must get the approval of all 32 NATO members to join, but pro-Russian Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has vowed to block Ukraine’s accession as long as he is in office.

At least now we are finally finding out what was in Zelensky's victory plan that he presented to Harris and Trump recently, with an emphasis on NATO membership. I don't know that he mentioned nukes to the US presidential candidates though, but I really can't blame Zelensky for bringing up memories of the Budapest memorandum, after seeing how the US is delaying support for Ukraine. If the US was helping Ukraine win the war, I would be appalled, but the US is not doing that, so I'm not appalled at all that Zelensky is bringing up nukes.

Zelensky walks back earlier comments on Ukraine's possible plan to obtain nuclear weapons

President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Oct. 17 that Ukraine was not pursuing nuclear weapons, clarifying comments he had made previously.

Earlier in the day, Zelensky said that he told Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in their meeting in September that Ukraine needs to be part of NATO, or it would pursue nuclear capabilities to protect itself.

In a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Zelensky walked back the comments and said explicitly that Ukraine was not seeking nuclear weapons.

"We never spoke about...that we are preparing to create nuclear weapons or something like this," he said.

www.yahoo.com...

lol another comedy hour performance from Zelensky.

a reply to: Imhere

And from your good self. As usual.

Possibility for regional escalation today in the centuries old battle for control of eastern Europe...........

"Moldovans are voting in a presidential election and an EU referendum that will mark a pivotal moment in the tug-of-war between Russia and the west over the future of the small, landlocked south-east European country of fewer than 3 million people.

The pro-western president, Maia Sandu, hopes to advance her agenda by winning a second term and securing a “yes” in a referendum to affirm EU accession as a “irreversible” goal in the constitution.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Moldova has gravitated between pro-western and pro-Russian courses, but under Sandu the impoverished country has accelerated its push to escape Moscow’s orbit amid its war in neighbouring Ukraine.

Sandu, a former World Bank official was elected president in November 2020, riding a wave of popularity as an anti-corruption reformer with a pro-European agenda."

Link for above www.theguardian.com...

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

Ukraine already had nuclear weapons, more than any other country except the US and Russia.

When the Wall fell, one of my roles was to fly nukes around the world to different places as part of the PNAF program. We were ready to go into Ukraine and help them clean up their nukes as one of the biggest issues was not to let all those Russian nukes get into the hands of bad actors. The interesting part is that our nukes are clean, and only the tactical nukes had a 30-minute close proximity limit, which was like an x-ray. The Russian ones...holy hell, they would need lead blankets on them, a lead curtain between the nukes and aircrew. The aircrew would wear lead aprons and gamma badges to really limit any time around them.

originally posted by: ufoorbhunter
Link for above www.theguardian.com...

The amount of election interference from Russia is disturbing, though not surprising:

Olga Roşca, a foreign policy adviser to Sandu, said: “Russia is pouring millions in dirty money to hijack our democratic processes. This isn’t just meddling – it’s full-blown interference aimed at destabilising our future. And it is alarming.”

At a press conference earlier this month, the national police chief, Viorel Cernăuțanu, accused Shor and Moscow of establishing a complex “mafia-style” voter-buying scheme and bribing 130,000 Moldovans – almost 10% of normal voter turnout – to vote against the referendum and in favour of Russia-friendly candidates in what he called an “unprecedented, direct attack”.

Officials in Moldova’s capital, Chișinău, also believe Moscow is behind a wave of pre-election vandalism attacks on government buildings and has plans to cause unrest in the country in the days after the elections.

Cernăuțanu said his officers had detained about 300 people who allegedly went to Russia to get training on how to break police cordons and create public chaos. Some got military training – including in drone use and making DIY explosives – in Bosnia and Serbia.

To combat Russian influence, authorities in Moldova said they had blocked dozens of Telegram channels and chatbots linked to a drive to pay voters to cast “no” ballots in the EU referendum.

Speaking of Moldova, Russian troops occupy a part of Moldova called Transnistria. I wonder if that's how the Russian occupied Ukrainian territories will end up, occupied by Russia but internationally recognized as not Russian, in a frozen conflict?

Transnistria sounds like one of the most corrupt places on earth, even more corrupt than Russia, which is very corrupt when Putin runs the country like the head mob boss, chief of the kleptocrats.

a reply to: Xtrozero
We see the complete disregard Russia has for the lives of its soldiers now, when 85% of them can die in suicide mission meat wave attacks. I guess the disregard is nothing new, and exposing airmen to radiation wasn't much of a worry for Russian officials.

Saudi Arabia Warns Oil Prices Could Drop to $50

I don't know if you folks remember this, but when there were discussions about putting a $60 per barrel cap on oil prices from Russia, Zelensky of Ukraine objected and said he wanted to see it lower. Russia strongly objected to the $60 cap already but said a cap below that would be a huge problem for Russia, so the cap ended up at $60 over Zelensky's objection.

Now that Saudi Arabia is talking about the possibility of $50 per barrel oil, it could be the markets that drive oil below $60 per barrel. OPEC+ is an oligopoly which works to support higher market prices, as long as individual members don't cheat, but individual members have incentive to cheat because they can make more money by exceeding their quota as long as all other parties don't cheat. Well, there has been some cheating going on and guess who one of the cheaters is....you guessed it, it's Russia, they have been over-producing versus their quota from OPEC+. Iraq and Kazakhstan have also been cheating.

The Russian war economy is already in big trouble and $50 per barrel oil would crush it.For one thing, inflation in Russia is believed by analysts to be much higher than the 9% Russia is reporting, possibly as high as 25%, as discussed here:

Ruble & Oil in Freefall, Putin's War Economy COOKED!

As the title says the Ruble is falling too, but nobody wants to Trade in rubles anymore...India and China are both paying for oil in Chinese yuan. That may be part of the reason it's falling, the other part being the very high inflation, resulting from too many job openings and not enough people to fill them, including military.

It looks like North Korean troops training in Russia are now confirmed. Some are saying when they show up fighting on the front lines, that's the start of World War III. But I think we have to see what happens. If the N Korean soldiers defect, they will probably be better off than they were in N Korea, so some are predicting mass defections, but only time will tell about that.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur
We see the complete disregard Russia has for the lives of its soldiers now, when 85% of them can die in suicide mission meat wave attacks. I guess the disregard is nothing new, and exposing airmen to radiation wasn't much of a worry for Russian officials.

Life has always had low value to Russians. They camped 1000s of troops around a radiated lake to observe the effects of nuclear war on their army, for example. They killed 1/3 of the population in Ukraine, and another 40 million...maybe 80 million in Russia, so think of what they have done we don't know about... Chilling.