YazataMay 22, 2023 07:25 PM (This post was last modified: May 22, 2023 07:59 PM by Yazata.)
Perhaps as a response to losing Bakhmut, fighters from Ukraine have crossed the Russian border and attacked the small Russian town of Grayvoron (population ~6,000) in Belgorod oblast.
There are photos of armored vehicles with Ukrainian markings on them crossing the border past a shot-up Russian border post where a dead Russian border guard was visible. They seem to have penetrated about 3.5 miles/5.6 km into Russia towards Grayvoron.
The Ukrainians deny that these fighters are Ukrainian military and claim that they are all Russian citizens, members of anti-Putin dissident groups who want to carve out a protective buffer zone inside Russia along the Ukraine border. But their being equipped with what looks like Western equipment and their possession of armored vehicles suggest that Ukraine is supplying and supporting them. Artillery fire in support of them is coming from inside Ukraine, so all indications are that this is actually a Ukrainian military operation.
Putin is being kept up to date and Russia has announced what they call a "counter-terrorist" operation to expel the attackers. Defense of Belgorod oblast has been made a part of the Special Military Operation. Evacuation of civilians from Grayvoron and the surrounding area has been announced and lines of busses have been seen on the roads. Word seems to be that the attackers have not yet entered Grayvoron and fighting is occurring near the edge of town. Shells fired from inside Ukraine have landed in the town and damaged/destroyed several homes and the administrative building for the surrounding raion (district). Injuries are reported including local government officials. If an oblast (province) is analogous to a US state, a raion is analogous to a US county. Grayvoron is the county seat of Grayvoron raion.
Russians say the attackers have entered/captured several small villages in the district. Additional locations are being shelled by Ukrainian artillery.
Russian photo of a M1224 MRAP supplied by the US to the Ukrainian military found abandoned in the Grayvoron vicinity. Unclear why it was abandoned, perhaps it broke down.
YazataMay 23, 2023 01:23 AM (This post was last modified: May 23, 2023 10:05 PM by Yazata.)
Apparently the tiny area of the Belgorod oblast occupied by the attackers has received the grand sounding name 'Belgorod People's Republic'.
It isn't clear whether that's in any way official or whether it's just pro-Ukraine internet trolling. Most of those posting about it seem to be part of the self-proclaimed "nafo fellas" information-warfare group. (Which is widely suspected of having some sort of relationship with CIA information-warfare activities.)
Here's something more serious, that might even explain the purpose of this Ukrainian operation:
The red circle in the photo below indicates the position of the 'Belgorod-22' munitions storage site, which is rumored to contain several tactical nuclear weapons. Ukraine would love to get its hands on those, assuming they are really there. (Which isn't certain. There's lots of bullshit and disinformation swirling out there, coming from Kyiv, Moscow and even Washington DC.) Ukrainian military intelligence has announced that they have observed "hurried" Russian military efforts to remove things from Belgorod-22 and move them to more secure locations.
YazataMay 23, 2023 10:02 PM (This post was last modified: May 24, 2023 06:44 PM by Yazata.)
Well, that's it for the short-lived Belgorod People's Republic...
Reports today May 23, 2023 that the attackers have been pushed back over the Ukrainian border. Russian soldiers are still sweeping the villages to make sure no stragglers remain and residents haven't yet been cleared to return.
The attackers (supposedly the "Freedom of Russia Legion" and the "Russian Volunteer Corps", but widely suspected to be Ukrainian soldiers) insist that they suffered no losses, which is almost certainly false given many photos of dead fighters and wrecked and abandoned vehicles all over the Russian language internet.
(May 23, 2023 01:23 AM)Yazata Wrote: Here's something more serious, that might even explain the purpose of this Ukrainian operation:
The red circle in the photo below indicates the position of the 'Belgorod-22' munitions storage site, which is rumored to contain several tactical nuclear weapons. Ukraine would love to get its hands on those, assuming they are really there. (Which isn't certain. There's lots of bullshit and disinformation swirling out there, coming from Kyiv, Moscow and even Washington DC.) Ukrainian military intelligence has announced that they have observed "hurried" Russian military efforts to remove things from Belgorod-22 and move them to more secure locations.
If there's any truth to the nuclear weapons at Belgorod-22 rumors (and they did seem to originate with Ukrainian Intelligence), then that would have big implications.
Russian nuclear weapons doctrine is to keep tactical nuclear weapons in very secure locations under tight control of the Defense Ministry's 12th Chief Directorate. They are only distributed to front-line Army and Air Force units in extraordinary circumstances, in wartime when their use is being contemplated. (This doesn't apply to ICBMs and submarine launched missiles that have to be a credible nuclear deterrent at all times.)
So if nuclear weapons were really stored at Belgorod-22, then that sends a big message.
YazataMay 25, 2023 05:36 AM (This post was last modified: May 25, 2023 06:24 AM by Yazata.)
Fire this evening at one of the Ministry of Defense buildings in Moscow. There doesn't seem to be any indication yet that it's the result of Ukrainian military action. This is an old Soviet era building and perhaps the electrical wiring isn't all that good.
And the Ukrainian drone-boats have been in action again. This time they attacked the Russian naval vessel Ivan Khurs that allegedly was guarding pipelines in the Black Sea, in international waters off the Turkish Bosphorus.
The Ivan Khurs is a Yury Ivanov class intelligence gathering ship, which actually was probably observing naval traffic in and out of the Black Sea through the Bosphorus.
The Russians say that the Ivan Khurs destroyed all three drone boats with naval gunfire.
Today Thursday May 25, Wagner has begun withdrawing from Bakhmut and turning the city over to the Russian Army. Apparently the Wagner fighters will get rest and resupply, then Wagner will move on to new assignments.
After the fall of Bakhmut, things are fairly quiet in the Ukraine War. The Ukrainians have launched several small probing attacks at various places along the front, probably to test Russian defenses, but little territory has changed hands.
Regarding the drone boat attack referred to above, the Ukrainians insist that at least one of their drone boats managed to strike the Ivan Khurs. But the Ivan Khurs has reentered the port of Sevastapol, where no damage was visible.
The last few days the Russians have been sending many cheap, simple and effective drones against Kyiv and other Ukrainian targets. The Ukrainians claim to have shot most of them down which may or may not be true. Of course the Russian intention might be to get the Ukrainians to expend their surface to air missiles.
But turn about is fair play and Ukrainian drones have started striking Moscow. They must be long range drones since Moscow is far from Ukraine.
Here's the best photo known so far of what the Ukrainian drones that attacked Moscow looked like. There are claims on the internet that the drones that attacked Moscow were Ukrainian-made UJ-22's, but it's questionable whether they have sufficient range and whether they can be remote controlled so far away. Maybe the Ukrainians have figured out some autonomous GPS control system for them. UJ-22's fly at low altitude and are loud, like flying lawnmowers, so it would seemingly be hard for them to fly all the way to Moscow without being noticed. (Video of the drones over Moscow confirms they sounded like buzz-bombs.) And UJ-22's appear to be a conventional propeller-in-front, tail-in-the-rear design, while this Moscow thing looks like it might be a canard-in-front, propeller-in-the-rear design. So it still isn't clear what it was.
Bottom line seems to be that the Ukrainian drones did little damage to Moscow, but they did make Russian air defenses fire off (the Pantsirs that were installed atop government buildings some time ago) which created some loud bangs in the sky audible all over the city. So they might have had some psychological effect, bringing the war home to Russians in the capital, whose lives have been pretty normal up till now.
YazataMay 30, 2023 05:44 PM (This post was last modified: May 30, 2023 06:25 PM by Yazata.)
More video of the Moscow drones has surfaced. Geolocated flying over Il'inskoe, an apparently very attractive Moscow residential suburb. It's definitely a canard-foreplane model.
Multiple reports of a loud bang and smoke in the sky originally suggested multiple drones. But figuring out the direction the cameras were pointed suggests that many of them were recording the same intercept.
Explosion in a field. This suggests to me that these drones were at best minimally guided and were kind of a scatter-shot attack on Moscow. Most of the action appears to have been in the Russian capital's western outskirts.
YazataMay 31, 2023 10:47 PM (This post was last modified: May 31, 2023 10:48 PM by Yazata.)
Some sort of Russian drone appears to have struck the headquarters of the GUR, the Main Directorate for Intelligence of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Kyiv.
Right now, the Ukraine War seems to have become the War of the Drones.
May 22, 2023 07:25 PM
(This post was last modified: May 22, 2023 07:59 PM by Yazata.)
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