Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

(Jun 28, 2023 02:51 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]Some sources report..
"Wagner ‘shot down seven Russian aircraft and killed 13 airmen’ during coup attempt"
and some don't.
Fake or not fake?

I believe it's true.

Interesting things have happened while our attention was directed at Wagner's little adventure.

A Russian missile slammed into what was being described as a shopping mall in Kramatorsk, a smallish city in Donbas northwest of Bakhmut. The large building collapsed and buried many people inside. At first, the pro-Ukraine media was portraying it as some kind of war crime, an attack on innocent civilians.

Except that Kramatorsk is a major staging area for Ukrainian forces on the eastern front, and it appears that the mall and an associated hotel were full of military men. And not just military men, but English-speaking military men with American and British accents. At least one (a medic by the looks of it) had a US flag on his helmet, and others had US military unit tattoos and t-shirts. A Ukrainian post on Instagram said there are lots of Canadians there too. One of the injured appeared to be a young English speaking woman getting her head bandaged and asking where she should go to get stitches.

A British guy is videoed calling (in English) for some unknown somebodies to gather up needed supplies and get into Kramatorsk asap, to aid in the attempt to rescue trapped soldiers under the rubble. Which suggests that there are even more English-speaking personnel nearby.

So who were these people? Volunteers? Mercs? Or (the majority theory) NATO advisors and trainers?

The US government has denied that it has US soldiers in Ukraine. If there are indeed advisors and trainers there, it would contradict that. (Wouldn't be the first lie the US government told its people.)

If there really was a big gathering of NATO advisors there, makes me wonder if that's where the Ukrainians plan to use the reserves they are supposedly holding back and that their main Offensive might be in the broader Bakhmut area instead of Zaphorizhia where the Ukrainians seem to be suffering huge losses for little gain.

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/16...44/video/2

Those F-16's cant come quick enough

if ruzzia was smart enough to be targeting Ukrainian military key targets they would be already.
Ukrainian secret service have arrested a local in that area for directing Ruzzian fire. i hope they shoot him if he is guilty.

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(Jun 28, 2023 08:10 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]

(Jun 28, 2023 02:51 PM)confused2 Wrote: [ -> ]Some sources report..
"Wagner ‘shot down seven Russian aircraft and killed 13 airmen’ during coup attempt"
and some don't.
Fake or not fake?

I believe it's true.

5 helicopters and 1 fixed wing
8 were on board the fixed wing
2 minimum per helicopter
that's 15 maybe more
apparently consisted of 12 pilots

awesome

im wondering if a sonic cannon could be designed to use to set off land mines to de-mine

alternatively cheap old small cars with roller wheels on the front to drive over them and set them off

but i was thinking, why not a plow that plow up half a foot of soil and moves it to the side

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(Jun 28, 2023 09:19 PM)Yazata Wrote: [ -> ]Except that Kramatorsk is a major staging area for Ukrainian forces on the eastern front, and it appears that the mall and an associated hotel were full of military men.

there will be a lot of westerners who are providing AID who will be in the city.

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with Ukraine hammering & destroying Ruzzian Artillery it will give de mining more time and opportunity to work difficult mine fields

more artillery for Ukraine

Turkish sources are saying that the soldiers in Kramatorsk were former military from an assortment of NATO countries, supposedly volunteers, who were serving as trainers, advisors and planners for the Ukrainian forces. Unclear if they had been recruited and their being there was organized by somebody (CIA? US DoD?) Sending experienced former military and calling them volunteers would enable NATO to send troops into Ukraine while maintaining 'plausible deniability'. Not unlike Wagner's relationship with Moscow, allowing Moscow to send troops to countries while insisting there were no Russian troops there.

The Turks are saying there are at least 100 dead and that number might climb. Pretty clearly, whatever was happening, the Russians were on to it.

I still wonder if this is evidence of what the next stage of the Ukrainian offensive might be. If we speculate that Ukraine planned to initiate a new attack somewhere along the front, there would be signs before it happens. NATO advisors gathering might conceivably be one of those signs. We would also expect to see Ukrainian forces gathering and supplies flowing in.

It makes sense. Russian forces in Bakhmut are a lot weaker after Wagner left and were replaced with inexperienced Russian draftees. That portion of the front is far less fortified than Zaphorizhia and lacks the extensive mine fields. It might be attractive to Ukraine if they want to have another go there and try to create a breakthrough deep into the Russian rear.

In the video one of the people speaking was doing so with a South African accent, which the country to my knowledge isn't apart of NATO.

So it would suggest that its just mercs from around the globe and people that didn't agree with Russias aggression, not some NATO hotspot.

when is Ruzzia planning to blow up zaporizhia nuclear power station

(Jul 1, 2023 12:11 AM)RainbowUnicorn Wrote: [ -> ]when is Ruzzia planning to blow up zaporizhia nuclear power station

Ukrainian intelligence suggest possibly 5th july

(Jul 1, 2023 12:11 AM)RainbowUnicorn Wrote: [ -> ]when is Ruzzia planning to blow up zaporizhia nuclear power station

I'm skeptical that either side will blow it up. I don't see any advantage for either of them in doing it.

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There are lots of Ukrainian attacks on the eastern Donetsk front. The Ukrainians have made some advances on the northern and southern flanks of Bakhmut, and maybe 5,000 fresh Ukrainian troops have arrived in the Siversk area west of Lysychansk.

But the Russians seem to consider those movements to be feints. Again, little or nothing is coming out of the Ukrainian side, but many Russian bloggers, some of them seemingly well connected, are talking. To hear them tell it, Russia believes that the Ukrainians have moved up maybe 40,000 reserves towards the Zaphorizhia front and believe that a big Ukrainian push south will take place this week. There's a big NATO summit coming up in a week and Russia believes that Ukraine is desperate to show that their offensive has had some success before that meeting takes place.

At the minimum, the Ukrainians need to penetrate through to the main Russian defense line if they hope to show any success. So far they have been stopped at the first Russian screening lines. The Ukrainians have taken some of these positions, but only at great cost and they have been pushed back out of some of them. Russian mine fields, artillery and 'loitering munitions'/drones have proven very effective so far, inflicting far more casualties on the Ukrainians than the Russians themselves have suffered. But if the Ukrainians throw 2/3'ds of their best brigades into battle, in some kind of all-or-nothing push, they might have the mass to burst through and the tide might conceivably turn.

So the Russians believe that a big, fierce and bloody World War II sized battle will likely happen in the next few days, a battle that might define the future course of the war.

July 4, 2023 - The internet is aflame tonight with predictions that the Zaphorizhia nuclear power plant will be attacked tomorrow. The Ukrainians insist that the Russians have placed explosives there and will blame the explosions on Kyiv. The Russians claim that the Ukrainians plan to attack it with missiles and blame it on Moscow.

As for me, I don't see how either side would benefit by blowing it up.

If Russia wants to blow up nuclear power plants, Ukraine has three more functioning ones: Rivno, Khmelnitsky and a south Ukraine plant down towards Odessa. (There's also Chernobyl, but it had some difficulties in the 1980's and isn't operating.) I don't see why Russia would want to destroy the single nuclear power plant that they've captured intact. Ukraine might get some propaganda mileage from blowing it up and blaming the Russians, but any radioactive plumes released would mostly endanger Ukraine, particularly those areas where their big offensive is operating in Zaphorizhia oblast.

I'm inclined to see the whole thing as a propaganda exercise, that both sides appear to be playing. So I don't expect any attack on the plant. (I might be proven wrong in a few hours though.)

Edit: - It's 7 AM on July 5 in Kyiv, and still no reports of any attacks on the nuclear power plant.

Both Russia and NATO are using the Ukraine War to test new weapons designs.

This was photographed by the Ukrainians over Sumy oblast.



It's believed to be one of two existing prototypes of Russia's S-70 Okhotnik heavy stealth drone. (Russia reportedly plans to start quantity production of them towards the end of the year.) It's a large aircraft with a wingspan of about 20m. It can reportedly carry 2.5 tonnes of weapons internally and has a range of 6,000km.

It can operate on its own semi-autonomously as it's apparently doing here, or operate alongside Russia's new SU-57 jet fighters in the "loyal wingman" role, in which several robot jets accompany manned jets as force multipliers.