Russian Ukraine Invasion

[Yazata]

The latest Bakhmut news (from yesterday) is that Wagner seems to have captured most of the industrial area around the AZOM metal works in the north side of Bakhmut and claim to have captured the city administrative building downtown. Osintdefender notes that Wagner is yet to post photos of their fighters at the city hall, and they usually promptly post photos of themselves in places they claim to capture (like they did at the metal plant), so their capture of the city hall still has an asterisk next to it.

(Map from Institute for the Study of War, a pro-Ukrainian source with close ties to US Intelligence)

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There might not be a lot of change in the next few days, because a late season snowstorm has struck the Donbas region and should persist over the weekend. Reportedly there are severe blizzard conditions in some of this area with almost zero visibility, which is likely to disrupt operations by both sides. (It might cover military movements though, so hard to say.)

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[Yazata]

The big news on April 1:

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[Yazata]

Verification of Wagner's capture of the Bakhmut city hall and adjoining civic buildings has arrived in the form of a video from city hall featuring Wagner's boss Yevgeny Progozhin. Progozhin claims that Ukrainian defenders are withdrawing into the western side of the city, except for a few pockets.

This is War_Mapper's latest map based largely on Ukrainian sources. I believe that it underestimates Russian gains in and around the AZOM metal works. (The grey rectangle on the north side with the red arrow.) If I'm right, the withdrawal Progozhin is talking about might just be from the narrowing strip between the AZOM works and city hall. (Green on this map.) That's the main commercial center of town. But it might become indefensible if it has to defend against attacks from two sides, only a few blocks apart. There's still a substantial part of Bakhmut to the west, where the Ukrainians are presumably still resisting.

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The situation to the south in Avdiivka is pretty much unchanged. The Russians made a big breakthrough a few days ago and there were fears the Ukrainians would be encircled, but the Ukrainians halted the Russian advance and there's been little change since then.

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In other news, a crowded cafe in Russia's second city of St. Petersburg was hosting some kind of event honoring Russian artist and blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. Tatarsky was known for his support of the 'Special Military Operation'. About 100 people were in the large room. A woman was present that nobody recognized. She said she was an artist and wanted to give Tatarsky one of her works, a bronze bust of a heroic Russian soldier. It was heavy so one of the men present carried it up to a table next to Tatarsky who got out of his chair to look at it and thank the woman.

Then a few minutes later the bust exploded, as it concealed a bomb. Tatarsky was killed (as was apparently the intention) and 16 others in the cafe were wounded.

Photo in the link below shows before and after. On the right is before the explosion, the guy in the black t-shirt with the microphone is Tatarsky. On the left is Tatarsky's body after the explosion in a pool of blood.

(Warning, the photo is graphic.)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsuOXx_XwAUF...name=large

The St. Petersburg police say that they have arrested the woman they believe is responsible. All that's known about her at present is that she is a St. Petersburg resident.

This is said to be the woman. Reports coming out of Russia say her name is Daria Trepova. Little is known about her, but I bet the FSB is busy tracking down all her associates as we speak.

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[Kornee]

Douglas Macgregor's latest non-MSM assessment of how the war in Ukraine is panning out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IqjHL_syA

[stryder]

Douglas Macgregor's latest non-MSM assessment of how the war in Ukraine is panning out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IqjHL_syA

Way too pro-Russian for me. Considering the state of AI voice manipulation, is it even real???

[confused2]

Whatever side we think 'ought' to win - Russia is on a war footing with short supply lines and Ukraine is a smaller country reliant on the support of politicians in distant countries giving limited support.

[stryder]

Whatever side we think 'ought' to win - Russia is on a war footing with short supply lines and Ukraine is a smaller country reliant on the support of politicians in distant countries giving limited support.

Lets say Russian "stürms" into the last remaining parts of Ukraine and takes control. There would never be peace as they will always be seen as illegal occupiers, war criminals and abusers of human rights.

That will mean they will turn to PR to win people over, however thats going to be a fail from the get-go considering Putins already stated that "he'll never trust the West again". So in otherwords he's against the West and Nato (which he lovingly refers to as "Nazi") and hes actively going to continue being a problem (expect more espionage/assassination/coersion attempts on "our" soils)

This is going to be dragged out one way or another, whether they take control of the territory or not.

[Kornee]

Douglas Macgregor's latest non-MSM assessment of how the war in Ukraine is panning out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-IqjHL_syA

Way too pro-Russian for me.  Considering the state of AI voice manipulation, is it even real???

Yes of course it's real. There is a no contest when it comes to the MSM PR war - US/NATO are overwhelmingly victorious.
The Russian general? who occasionally fronts the TV camera to give stilted war progress updates acts like a 50s B-movie robot.

[Yazata]

I think Russia's original plan in February 2022 was to push troops into Kyiv in just a few days in a lightning strike, replace the Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian regime, and then use Russian troops for mop-up across the country against Ukrainian military garrisons here and there that failed to acknowledge the new pro-Moscow government. I think Russia expected many Ukrainians to welcome Russian troops, especially in what they thought was the more pro-Russian east. (They might have expected more resistance in the west near the Polish border and might have been willing to let a little pro-western rump state continue west of Kyiv around Lviv, south of Belarus.

The Russians never expected how skilled and effective the Ukrainian army proved to be, how badly their own Russian military performed, and how much the majority of the Ukrainian people opposed what Moscow was doing. I'm sure they never expected to be fighting a full scale war a year later.

My feeling is that the Kremlin has given up on their initial plan to replace Kyiv's government and turn Ukraine into a Russian satellite. Russia knows they will never control most of Ukraine and Ukraine will never be Russia's friend. The war has ended any hope of that. Any attempt to occupy the country would be a never ending struggle.

So Ukraine is seemingly destined to swerve westwards, join the EU and conceivably even NATO (an alliance that seemingly has no purpose beyond being anti-Russian). Russia seemingly has no way of preventing that outcome.

Russia's objective now seems to be to carve out as much as possible as a buffer between Russia proper and NATO. Moscow may or may not be satisfied with holding the Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts), most of Zaphorizia oblast they now hold and Kherson oblast south of the Dniper river. And Crimea of course. I fully believe that Russia is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons to defend Crimea. They haven't been shy about signaling that Crimea is their nuclear red line or that they are preparing nuclear weapons for use.

A very real risk of World War III exists.

I think the buffer zone is Russia's Plan B after the failure of Plan A. They signaled it pretty clearly with their annexations of those areas. I don't think that I see them launching any large ground attacks beyond those annexed regions, given their army's failures earlier. They might be willing to accept a negotiated settlement that allows them to keep the new territories.

Right now, Kyiv is in no mood to accept anything like that. They demand all post-1991 territories including Crimea, plus war-crimes trials for Russian leaders and generals. Ukraine's negotiation terms are effectively Russian surrender. Russia obviously won't accept that.

So war will continue for the forseeable future.

I think that Russia feels that they are so much larger than Ukraine that they can pursue a war of attrition longer than Ukraine can. Russia will have to endure hundreds of thousands of dead, but Ukraine will be losing the better part of a whole generation of young men. The Russian economy will suffer serious impacts from sanctions (perhaps cushioned by a deepening alliance with China) but Ukraine's economy will be far more disrupted, subject as it is to constant missile and drone attacks. Russia is counting on the Ukrainians tiring of never-ending war and non-stop destruction of their cities, economy, families and country. So Russia hopes that political pressure will grow in Ukraine to bring the terribly destructive war to an end.

I think that the Russian plan now is simply to wait Ukraine out until Ukraine is finally willing to come to the negotiating table and accept terms more agreeable to Russia.

[Kornee]

..... but Ukraine will be losing the better part of a whole generation of young men.....

'Slight' correction - a whole generation of young Gentile i.e. goy cannon fodder men. Why do you all think the ruling Jews Zelensky & Co turn a complete blind eye to the openly neo-Nazi Azov brigade and ilk?
How about - because pumping them up as 'patriotic heroes' to then be the foremost mowed down as 'fallen heroes' serves a useful added purpose. Of thinning out the very goy ranks who might otherwise father more Ukrainian goys.

Well that at least is a consistent premise in the light of what was uncovered, by of course non-MSM investigative journalism, way before the current war commenced:
https://redice.tv/news/israel-s-secret-p...in-ukraine
Pooh-pooh it if you like - it's at least serious 'food for thought'.

Some further digging and there is a disclaimer regarding the original Times of Israel article, stating it was satirical:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/leaked-r...o-ukraine/
But another site has pointed out it took *years* for that disclaimer to be added:

"Years after publication, a note has been recently added to this article to say it’s entirely satirical. While satirical elements are obvious and the story is packaged in irony, that’s just a decoy and it doesn’t imply it’s all made up, as they wish now to make it look like, knowing they let out too much and Goyim found out. Yeah, they use funny names and all, we can see behind that and there’s an abundance of totally serious and objective reports and public statements to support this scenario, I gathered below just a few examples":
https://silview.media/2021/06/11/times-o...o-ukraine/