Ukraine Notes
Apr. 2nd, 2022 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneLots of stuff
A Russian tank unit commander took his own life. When the build-up for the war began, they built a depot to bring up "reserve" or moth-balled units that could be 'reactivated' to replace units lost in combat. He went there. Of ten tanks that were supposed to be reactivated, only one could be made operable, and according to the article, it had some serious considerations whether it could fight. Optics were missing, which is kind of important if you're interested in some minor things, like, say, AIMING. Anything containing precious metals was missing. Most of the tanks were missing their ENGINES. All of this stuff was stolen when they were sitting in their bone yards somewhere, and they were all shipped to the refurbish depot next to the war zone in this condition. And the tank commander reported the situation up his command chain and then shot himself.
This is a classic kleptocracy/dictatorship. All of Putin’s friends got rich off of stealing from the government, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one or more of them was connected to stripping these reserve units.
Speaking of Russian tank commanders, the one whose crew ran him over? Apparently he survived! His legs are mangled, but there is video footage of him talking after the incident. He was taken to Belarus for repairs and probably is going home.
Ukraine may have started shelling inside RUSSIA. Two towns have been placed under military orders, one reporting four injured and the other reporting an explosion at an ammunition depot. The sad thing is that Putin will probably spin this to the Russian people as “SEE! This is why we had to invade, to prevent them from attacking us!”
A Russian oil depot is on fire after being attacked by two helicopters, no lives lost as of yet. Ukraine has not yet said they made the attack, but if so, BLOODY GOOD FOR THEM! Russia invaded them, time for some good payback! The depot is in Belgorod, just across the border north of Kharkiv, if you're up on your geography. Ukraine is denying that they attacked the depot, so the possibilities are: they are lying, or Russia did a false flag operation and attacked their own depot with two repainted helicopters. The attack helicopters, Mi-24 Hips, are used by Ukraine, but the attack would have required precision low altitude flying, nape of the earth, at night, to make the attack, evade air defenses, and get away.
Turkey and Romania are finding mines floating in their harbours and are having fun isolating and neutralizing them before they can damage ships and possibly kill people. It is suspected they were placed in Ukraine’s harbors and drifted.
Speaking of mines, Russia is leaving huge numbers behind as they withdraw. This makes driving on roads tricky. The anti-tank mines aren’t difficult to deal with: they require LOTS of weight driving across them to set them off, so the soldiers just scoot them off the road with their boots gently. Anti-personnel mines? Very dangerous. Those can go off with very little pressure. This is going to be a cleanup for a decade or more to come.
While the "peace negotiations" have been going on, Russia has been claiming that they would reduce the amount of shelling and fighting, but that has never happened. There's an old joke about "How do you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving." Just substitute Putin for Politician. You can't trust a word from his mouth or his press secretary. Shelling actually intensified after negotiations began.
Ukraine published a list of SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY alleged spies for Russia’s FSB, the successor of the KGB, whom they allege have engaged in criminal activity but provide no detail. The list has names and contact information, I imagine life will become a little uncomfortable for these people for some time. I am curious how they got the list.
U.S. President Biden was talking about America and NATO having a response planned if Russia uses chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. A Fox News reporter pressed him, wanting details. Joe tried to be evasive and nice and finally said “Look, I’m not going to tell you that! If I tell you our response, then Putin will no!” This is the same reporter that Biden was caught in a hot mic moment saying “What a moron”.
The Independent has reported Russian military units disobeying direct orders, and in one case, accidentally shooting down one of their own aircraft! Another story wrote about three large Siberian units refusing orders to mobilize to the Ukraine! That is pretty damn serious, that strikes me as courts martial-level offense for the command echelon. Apparently the units did a rapid demobilization instead.
Good article in The Atlantic about how badly the West and everyone else so overestimated Russia’s competence and quality and underestimated Ukraine’s pluckiness. No one knew how badly Russia’s military had been rotted by corruption and bad morale. Everybody - including me - assumed Russia was just going to roll over Ukraine, I’m so happy to see Russia get slapped upside the head. The article quotes Mike Tyson: “Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.”
Russia has only managed to shoot down TWO of Ukraine’s TB-2 drones that have been wreaking so much hell on their armor and so many other soft targets. No one knows exactly how many they’ve bought from Turkey, but they have more than gotten their money’s worth from them. And Turkey has gotten some great battle testing endorsement and probably model stepwise refinement in the process. In a cost/benefit analysis, clearly the TB-2 has been a huge benefit to Ukraine and a huge cost to Russia.
Putin is recruiting mercenaries from Syria. Let’s break this down. Syria has been torn apart by a war for years now, with Russia playing a large part in it. Putin is a friend of its leader, Bashar al-Asaad. The country hasn’t quite been reduced to the level of Afghanistan, but they’re trying. Now Putin is paying people an initial payment of $7,000 to go to Ukraine and kill. I would expect these soldiers to be poorly trained and not integrated into the rest of the Russian army, which means they’ll be used as cannon fodder and probably be given an unrestricted remit, which means more atrocities and rape. I’m hoping that, even though there’s not much of an economy in Syria anymore, word will soon get back that the $7k is not worth it and that soldier supply chain will evaporate for Putin.
Why does Putin want foreign mercenary fighters? A lot of it is that it reduces the number of ethnic Russian soldiers returning in body bags, which reduces the number of Russian mothers and family members protesting in the streets, holding large framed photos of slain family members. Russian mothers have lots of power that is hard to suppress. He starts throwing Russian mothers in prison, he starts getting a major PR problem, moreso than he has already. Second, we’re back to that Dictators Need Two Armies problem. He’s probably saving a lot of the ethnic Russian army for internal control, or control against possible aggression from adjacent countries who decide that now might be a good time to try and grab some land back from the Rodina. Finally, trying to construct a tissue-thin defense against war atrocities. “I didn’t order those war crimes, those Syrians/whoever committed them all on their own!”
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant area, after digging trenches. It’s possible they have hit radioactive hot spots and suffered radiation exposure. It’s highly unlikely that these troops were trained for working in a nuclear environment or were equipped with proper detection equipment.
Sean Penn is calling for billionaires to buy Ukraine a new Air Force consisting of F-15s and F-16s. He thinks that for $300mil you can get a dozen of each and with very little retraining, their pilots will completely dominate and eliminate the invading Russian Air Force. I think he is sorely underestimating the costs and retraining required, not to mention the logistics chain required to keep them flying, but what do I know. There’s also the matter of what air fields they would fly out of: guaranteed Russia would redouble their artillery and rocket attacks on them and pulverize their runways.
In early March, the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was kidnapped by Russian forces and held for five days. I’m not sure if this was the incident where another person was released and it was announced by the Russians that “this” was the mayor, a Potemkin mayor. Anyway. Ivan is now in France, making media appearances to drum up further support for Ukraine. He says Russian forces knew nothing about Ukraine or the situation they were going in to. They were becoming increasingly aggressive because their plans for a lightning victory didn’t work and the locals were not welcoming them. His kidnapping was caught on public surveillance cameras. His interrogators said “…they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis and where were they, and I told them in my 30 years in this town I've never seen a single Nazi”. “He said that after that the soldiers told him they wanted to defend the Russian language. "I told them 95% of us speak Russian already and nobody's stopping us, so there's no problem," Fedorov said. After that, they told Fedorov they had heard that veterans of World War II were beaten during the last commemoration day. "I told them I know these men personally, because there aren't many of them left, and they're treated as heroes," he said.” The NPR article says that 29 other elected officials are still being held by the Russians. I wonder how many of them are victims of the diaspora and have been sent all over the Russian Federation.
Spring is the traditional time that Russia has its annual conscription drive for mandatory military service. Needless to say, the youth in Russia are a bit nervous.
Meanwhile, Putin is enjoying an 84% approval rating at home. Whether this is effective propaganda and news control or telling the pollsters what to report, who knows.
A Russian tank unit commander took his own life. When the build-up for the war began, they built a depot to bring up "reserve" or moth-balled units that could be 'reactivated' to replace units lost in combat. He went there. Of ten tanks that were supposed to be reactivated, only one could be made operable, and according to the article, it had some serious considerations whether it could fight. Optics were missing, which is kind of important if you're interested in some minor things, like, say, AIMING. Anything containing precious metals was missing. Most of the tanks were missing their ENGINES. All of this stuff was stolen when they were sitting in their bone yards somewhere, and they were all shipped to the refurbish depot next to the war zone in this condition. And the tank commander reported the situation up his command chain and then shot himself.
This is a classic kleptocracy/dictatorship. All of Putin’s friends got rich off of stealing from the government, and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if one or more of them was connected to stripping these reserve units.
Speaking of Russian tank commanders, the one whose crew ran him over? Apparently he survived! His legs are mangled, but there is video footage of him talking after the incident. He was taken to Belarus for repairs and probably is going home.
Ukraine may have started shelling inside RUSSIA. Two towns have been placed under military orders, one reporting four injured and the other reporting an explosion at an ammunition depot. The sad thing is that Putin will probably spin this to the Russian people as “SEE! This is why we had to invade, to prevent them from attacking us!”
A Russian oil depot is on fire after being attacked by two helicopters, no lives lost as of yet. Ukraine has not yet said they made the attack, but if so, BLOODY GOOD FOR THEM! Russia invaded them, time for some good payback! The depot is in Belgorod, just across the border north of Kharkiv, if you're up on your geography. Ukraine is denying that they attacked the depot, so the possibilities are: they are lying, or Russia did a false flag operation and attacked their own depot with two repainted helicopters. The attack helicopters, Mi-24 Hips, are used by Ukraine, but the attack would have required precision low altitude flying, nape of the earth, at night, to make the attack, evade air defenses, and get away.
Turkey and Romania are finding mines floating in their harbours and are having fun isolating and neutralizing them before they can damage ships and possibly kill people. It is suspected they were placed in Ukraine’s harbors and drifted.
Speaking of mines, Russia is leaving huge numbers behind as they withdraw. This makes driving on roads tricky. The anti-tank mines aren’t difficult to deal with: they require LOTS of weight driving across them to set them off, so the soldiers just scoot them off the road with their boots gently. Anti-personnel mines? Very dangerous. Those can go off with very little pressure. This is going to be a cleanup for a decade or more to come.
While the "peace negotiations" have been going on, Russia has been claiming that they would reduce the amount of shelling and fighting, but that has never happened. There's an old joke about "How do you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving." Just substitute Putin for Politician. You can't trust a word from his mouth or his press secretary. Shelling actually intensified after negotiations began.
Ukraine published a list of SIX HUNDRED AND TWENTY alleged spies for Russia’s FSB, the successor of the KGB, whom they allege have engaged in criminal activity but provide no detail. The list has names and contact information, I imagine life will become a little uncomfortable for these people for some time. I am curious how they got the list.
U.S. President Biden was talking about America and NATO having a response planned if Russia uses chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine. A Fox News reporter pressed him, wanting details. Joe tried to be evasive and nice and finally said “Look, I’m not going to tell you that! If I tell you our response, then Putin will no!” This is the same reporter that Biden was caught in a hot mic moment saying “What a moron”.
The Independent has reported Russian military units disobeying direct orders, and in one case, accidentally shooting down one of their own aircraft! Another story wrote about three large Siberian units refusing orders to mobilize to the Ukraine! That is pretty damn serious, that strikes me as courts martial-level offense for the command echelon. Apparently the units did a rapid demobilization instead.
Good article in The Atlantic about how badly the West and everyone else so overestimated Russia’s competence and quality and underestimated Ukraine’s pluckiness. No one knew how badly Russia’s military had been rotted by corruption and bad morale. Everybody - including me - assumed Russia was just going to roll over Ukraine, I’m so happy to see Russia get slapped upside the head. The article quotes Mike Tyson: “Everybody’s got a plan until you get punched in the face.”
Russia has only managed to shoot down TWO of Ukraine’s TB-2 drones that have been wreaking so much hell on their armor and so many other soft targets. No one knows exactly how many they’ve bought from Turkey, but they have more than gotten their money’s worth from them. And Turkey has gotten some great battle testing endorsement and probably model stepwise refinement in the process. In a cost/benefit analysis, clearly the TB-2 has been a huge benefit to Ukraine and a huge cost to Russia.
Putin is recruiting mercenaries from Syria. Let’s break this down. Syria has been torn apart by a war for years now, with Russia playing a large part in it. Putin is a friend of its leader, Bashar al-Asaad. The country hasn’t quite been reduced to the level of Afghanistan, but they’re trying. Now Putin is paying people an initial payment of $7,000 to go to Ukraine and kill. I would expect these soldiers to be poorly trained and not integrated into the rest of the Russian army, which means they’ll be used as cannon fodder and probably be given an unrestricted remit, which means more atrocities and rape. I’m hoping that, even though there’s not much of an economy in Syria anymore, word will soon get back that the $7k is not worth it and that soldier supply chain will evaporate for Putin.
Why does Putin want foreign mercenary fighters? A lot of it is that it reduces the number of ethnic Russian soldiers returning in body bags, which reduces the number of Russian mothers and family members protesting in the streets, holding large framed photos of slain family members. Russian mothers have lots of power that is hard to suppress. He starts throwing Russian mothers in prison, he starts getting a major PR problem, moreso than he has already. Second, we’re back to that Dictators Need Two Armies problem. He’s probably saving a lot of the ethnic Russian army for internal control, or control against possible aggression from adjacent countries who decide that now might be a good time to try and grab some land back from the Rodina. Finally, trying to construct a tissue-thin defense against war atrocities. “I didn’t order those war crimes, those Syrians/whoever committed them all on their own!”
Russian troops have left the Chernobyl nuclear power plant area, after digging trenches. It’s possible they have hit radioactive hot spots and suffered radiation exposure. It’s highly unlikely that these troops were trained for working in a nuclear environment or were equipped with proper detection equipment.
Sean Penn is calling for billionaires to buy Ukraine a new Air Force consisting of F-15s and F-16s. He thinks that for $300mil you can get a dozen of each and with very little retraining, their pilots will completely dominate and eliminate the invading Russian Air Force. I think he is sorely underestimating the costs and retraining required, not to mention the logistics chain required to keep them flying, but what do I know. There’s also the matter of what air fields they would fly out of: guaranteed Russia would redouble their artillery and rocket attacks on them and pulverize their runways.
In early March, the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was kidnapped by Russian forces and held for five days. I’m not sure if this was the incident where another person was released and it was announced by the Russians that “this” was the mayor, a Potemkin mayor. Anyway. Ivan is now in France, making media appearances to drum up further support for Ukraine. He says Russian forces knew nothing about Ukraine or the situation they were going in to. They were becoming increasingly aggressive because their plans for a lightning victory didn’t work and the locals were not welcoming them. His kidnapping was caught on public surveillance cameras. His interrogators said “…they wanted to liberate the town from the Nazis and where were they, and I told them in my 30 years in this town I've never seen a single Nazi”. “He said that after that the soldiers told him they wanted to defend the Russian language. "I told them 95% of us speak Russian already and nobody's stopping us, so there's no problem," Fedorov said. After that, they told Fedorov they had heard that veterans of World War II were beaten during the last commemoration day. "I told them I know these men personally, because there aren't many of them left, and they're treated as heroes," he said.” The NPR article says that 29 other elected officials are still being held by the Russians. I wonder how many of them are victims of the diaspora and have been sent all over the Russian Federation.
Spring is the traditional time that Russia has its annual conscription drive for mandatory military service. Needless to say, the youth in Russia are a bit nervous.
Meanwhile, Putin is enjoying an 84% approval rating at home. Whether this is effective propaganda and news control or telling the pollsters what to report, who knows.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-02 04:37 pm (UTC)"Energoatom said the troops had “panicked at the first sign of illness”, which “showed up very quickly”."
"Some Ukrainian reports have suggested the soldiers were taken to a special medical facility in nearby Belarus after driving tanks through the exclusion zone, kicking up radioactive dust. The Kremlin has not commented on the claims."
Also, it they were digging, that too would be a really bad idea. When we toured Chernobyl, most of the area was safe enough (with a few hotspots) BUT, that is because the radioactive material has been buried over time, being washed down into the earth, and covered by layers of organic matter. The layer of "clean" earth provides a shield, but digging down and you are back to square one.
There have been reports that they were driving through the Red Forest, stirring up radioactive dust, and likely inhaling it, which would be really bad news for them. When I visited Chernobyl, going into the Red Forest was totally forbidden, and we even drove past it at a fair old clip, one did not hang about.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-02 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-02 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-02 08:03 pm (UTC)I have read the same thing, that they are considered largely the most reputable pollsters there. We still have the issue of state/Putin-controlled media skewing the poll results.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 12:33 am (UTC)Many thoughts and comments:
I agree that if Ukraine actually did hit that depot, then good on them.
Antitank mines can be set off by the weight of a person. Not supposed to happen, but can, if: (1) you're running (greater down-pressure), (2) the quality control is poor (we are talking Russian equipment), and (3) it's been out on the open too long and the spring corrodes.
Kleptocracy in action! Reminds me of the early stages of the first Arab-Israeli War. Everyone thought the Egyptians would roll right over the Israelis, but >half their equipment was broken or just missing, having been plundered by their corrupt establishment.
"Mercenaries don't have mothers." (Ancient military proverb.) The other reasons you mention are good thoughts also.
Not sure, but I think the price tag on one (1) F-whatever is likely 300 mil. (Just did quick online check - about $90mil. That's not counting spare parts, weapons, etc. Also, it does take some training to fly an unfamiliar fighter - less than if you walked in off the street without being a pilot, but a goodly amount. Sean is dreaming in technicolor.)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 04:50 am (UTC)Good point about the mines. I mean, if I encounter a mine, I'm moving away and waving people away from it and contacting law enforcement and EOD! One thing that I'm wondering about a $90mil jet is whether that's the USAF version or the Export version. Assuming "Warren Buffet" or "Elon Musk" decides to buy Ukraine an air force, and assuming Congress agrees to sell them one, they're not getting the USAF model, they're getting an older version that has the latest secret stuff removed, which will be much less expensive than the latest and greatest model. But the 'fly off the lot' costs are quite a bit higher than the sticker price, plus the training. You don't normally plop a Mig-29 pilot into an F-16 and expect them to rocket off: the 16 was called the Lawn Dart for a reason! A top of the line jet, like the F-35, is north of $300mil. The helmet alone is made custom for each pilot as it is a VR tank and costs a ridiculous amount of money.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 11:58 am (UTC)Just so. And defend an issue about Congressional approval (or at least some arm of government). Maybe they could pick up some used MiG’s for cheaper? I hear the Russians are hungry for hard cash.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 02:44 pm (UTC)ROFL! Now THAT would be irony with a capitol I! I think if they can bloody Putin's nose so that he has more than enough domestic issues to worry about that he will stay away, then clean up their own government and start some really good economic growth, then Putin's new "Independent Republics" in Donetsk and such may well want out of his new Russia and back in Ukraine!
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 03:48 am (UTC)You tell him Joe. :)
One thing I am not a fan of was how the talking heads first told us how Putin was Bonkers.
Now they are saying his Yes Men, and all lying to him about how the war is going.
They both sound like old arguments about the Soviet Union. :o
Hugs, Jon
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 04:55 am (UTC)Well, you can say Putin is crazy for doing such a thing. Does that mean he is insane? Not absolutely. Is he insane? I doubt it. But he is a dictator, and that screws with your thinking. He doesn't think like most people, and being a former KGB agent, he certainly doesn't think like most people. Presumably he designed a lot of the strategy that went into the invasion, and he either made a huge number of bad/faulty assumptions or took advice from a bunch of stupid people. Doesn't matter which. And now he's continuing that broken plan/advice. Amongst the many problems is the fact that he doesn't have a face-saving way of stopping the war, not that I think he wants to. Based on past performance, he has no problem continuing it and trying to make Ukraine utter rubble and then claim victory. "We had to destroy the village to save it" - American Commander's statement from the Vietnam war, probably applicable to most any war.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 04:10 pm (UTC)If Ukraine did decide to start attacking targets in Russia (completely justifiable, of course), they would be bragging about it to pressure Russia into bulking its defenses of other such infrastructure, perhaps even withdrawing forces from Ukraine to do so.
If Russia did it to themselves, and was trying to stir patriotic fervor with false-flag attacks on the Rodina, they'd be more likely to have attacked a school or other propaganda-friendly, militarily-worthless target (instead of boring but militarily-useful oil tanks)
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 07:08 pm (UTC)The fuel depot is a curious thing. It's a tremendous positive propaganda victory for Ukraine - "We can strike valuable targets!" And as you point out, if a false flag, Putin could have made a much stronger one by hitting a school. Very curious.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-04-03 07:12 pm (UTC)I don't know how AT mines are deployed. Anti-personnel mines can be dropped by bombs and artillery. I believe AT mines can be disarmed and possibly re-deployed, but there's always the risk of some being booby-trapped to kill EOD people.