Some info from the Ukraine

[68RR]

And, even more craziness!

For weeks, Russian troops have been operating inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone without proper protective gear.
Today, reports are circulating that a group of Russian troops who were digging fighting positions in the radioactive dust of the Red Forest have developed acute radiation poisoning. Seven busloads of these soldiers rolled up to a Belarussian hospital earlier today. Not sure how many men that represents.

[quikag]

Appreciate your sending these updates. Fascinating to read!

[68RR]

continuing:

Other news:
- Mutiny in the Baltic Fleet? According to Roman Tsibaliuk, a Ukrainian reporter usually with excellent sources of information in the RF, in the 9th Regiment and the 18th Naval Infantry Division, in Kaliningrad, 58 contract soldiers quit the service, rather than be sent to Ukraine. According to RF state propaganda, a contract soldier refusing to go where he’s told can be imprisoned for up to 15 years. If true, this is an indicator of how far the rot of the RF’s heavy losses have spread in the Russian army.
- Scraping the bottom of the barrel? - According to military-security analyst Mykola Sungrovsky, the RF might be able to scrape together 5 BTGs’ worth or 5,000 to 7,000 trained soliders, at best, to feed into Ukraine. This would be people on staff assignments, on training duty or in rear area jobs. After that the manpower pipeline is empty. A Luhansk official said that Ukrainian intelligence is tracking several trains carrying “volunteers” from either Dagestan or Chechnya, whose final destination is supposedly Debal’tsevo, where they are supposed to be equipped and sent to the fight. According to Sungrovsky, the equipment pipeline is also running dry and it is very unlikely the RF can find modern tanks and APCs for these latest recruits.
- For some, this war is going to last a lifetime: Ukraine has just preferred chages of war crimes to the commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, for ordering navy cruise missiles fired at, by conservative count, hundreds of Ukrainian homes and businesses. No matter what comes of the peace process (more below), I predict that when the war ends, the hunt for people to blame for the civilian deaths will not, and it won’t stop with Putin. I don’t know Evmenov but I can’t imagine he will ever set food outside Russia again, and he won’t see the inside of a jail cell only if he’s lucky. The war crimes cases from this conflict will outlive most of the people reading this.
The video is of a RF flier named Major Sergei Kosik, who was an high-speed/low drag Su-35 driver, i.e. ground attack jet, until shot down I believe in the Mykolaiv sector. It appears he flew in Syria. The good news is that when he landed the UAF caught up to him before the civilians. Remember the picture of the Mykolaiv administration building? It actually post-dates Kosik’s shoot-down, but it’s still a good image to bear in mind when it comes to his future. He now is in Ukrainian hands and unless exchanged, he will almost certainly go on trial for intentionally bombing civilians. As you can see, the Ukrainian IT people found a propaganda vid (like, the day he was shot down) starring him and his wife: this will probably not help his case in future.
Finally, the Istanbul “peace” conditions, as described by the Ukrainians to media:
- Ukraine gets security guarantees from Great Britain, China, Poland, USA, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Israel similar to NATO Article Five guarantees. If Ukraine is attacked these countries become military allies.
- This guarantee does not hold for LDPR territory or Crimea
- Ukraine becomes neutral, promises not to maintain foreign troops on its soil, not to maintain foreign troop bases on its soil, promises only to train with foreign troops on its soil if the guarantor nations green light it, promises to be non-nuclear, promises not to enter into any military-political alliances
- All signatories commit to supporting Ukrainian entrance into the EU
- Crimea is kicked down the road; Kyiv and Moscow promise to “discuss” Crimea for the next 15 years. Both sides promise not to use military force over Crimea until the 15 years are out.
- Nothing takes effect until the Ukrainian people ratify the treaty agreement in a national referendum
According to the Ukrainians, the RF basically agrees to this, but the questions of where Donbass is and how it should be run, and by whom, are still undecided and the sides are pretty far apart. This would be to be expected, seeing as the RF position is create Little Russia controlled by Russia, and the Ukraine position is all RF troops return to positions held on 23 Feb or earlier. So don’t get your peace firecrackers out just yet…

[68RR]

March 29 - Day 33 - Maybe the start of the end game..except for Donbass
Hi FB!
By far the most important *obvious* development today came after three hours of meetings on a between Ukrainian and Russian delegations on a ceasefire. Most of the issues dividing Kyiv and Moscow on an end to the fighting, according to the Ukrainian delegates talking to media in Istanbul, seem agreed upon. RF delegates were a little more conservative, calling the talks “extremely constructive”. You’ll find a write-up of the details below, because there are a couple of giant issues still outstanding.
The key issues NOT decided, clearly, are (1) whether or not the Russian Federation (RF) should have to pull its forces back into pre-February 24 positions before the agreement goes into effect and (2) particularly, if and when the Russians pull its troops back, does that mean to the western borders of Donetsk and Luhansk regions? To the 2014 ceasefire line? To the Donbass-Russia border? Wherever it suits Vladimir Putin? The Ural Mountains?
According to the Ukrainian delegation “Donbass is an issue that will be discussed by the two Presidents.” Meaning, first, no matter how well the talks went, Donbass and its status and borders are not defined. And also meaning, second, that whoever holds what ground in the east of Ukraine now - already militarily important terrain - is now going to be increasingly important from a diplomatic point of view. Modern wars if they are short and even more if they are ended by negotiated ceasefire, pretty much always end in a frenzy of ground-grabbing. If Russia holds the Donbass hard and fast and complete if and when a deal is signed, that will be one thing. If Ukraine has cleared the place of Russian troops, that will definitely be another. So, bottom line here, as the diplomacy ramps up, both sides have real incentives to fight hard and grab ground in Donbass, in coming days.
The Kyiv sector, on the other hand, looks on track to see reduced pressure, which is the most important *not-quite-obvious* development today. No less than the Vice Minister of Defense of Russia announced today that, because of the progress of the talks, the Kremlin has decided to drastically reduce troop presence in the Kyiv and Chernhiv sectors “because talks have now moved to a practical level”. The UAF formally acknowledged the RF was thinning Kyiv sector with its 0600 Tuesday situation report. By evening Kyiv time, CNN was reporting the same thing, and that US intelligence confirmed the RF troops were, in fact, moving north.
Readers of this report series will recognize that Moscow is almost certainly making a virtue of a necessity here, because the UAF already was advancing in this sector, albeit slowly and carefully. Someone or something is now attacking roads leading from Kyiv back to Belarus, which is not good for the RF, and by many accounts several hundred to possibly several thousand RF soldiers are effectively trapped in Gostomel’ and the forests and swamps to the north. Kyiv defense region commander Oleksandr Pavliuk said mopping up of towns near Kyiv was moving forward, that yes RF resistance seemed to be lessening, but it would all take time so could civilians please refrain from driving back to Irpen’ and Bucha for a few days yet, please?
Very careful readers may recall that we predicted this RF move north. Good for us!
This RF-walking-quicky-north situation offers a difficult, but for a change not life-or-death decision to the UAF. If the RF is thinning out its front particularly north of Kyiv, then a time is approaching, or may even have arrived, for the UAF to shift to a major counterattack, and push to cut off and into RF units moving north. The road network supports it and the UAF has a pair of powerful brigades - 14 Mechanized and 25th Airborne - seemingly ideally positioned to make the lunge. If successful, then the RF POW count would almost inevitably spike from a few dozen at a time to hundreds or even more. It would be a real, ground force victory precisely at the time Ukraine and the UAF is negotiating with Russia - there is no better negotiating leverage with the Kremlin than that.
But, the risk is that the RF is capable of organizing a rear guard defense as its people and machines move north, and if it is, the UAF could hand itself a defeat at exactly the wrong time. So far, the UAF has played things conservatively. If we hear of UAF forces pushing towards places like Borodyanka, Ivankiv and (less possibly) Narodychy, that will be a hint that the Ukraine Army General Staff decided to roll some very serious dice.
Fighting in the Kharkiv sector today was still focused on Izium, with exchanges of fire reported at Kamyanka, Sukha Kamyanka and Tykhotske. According to the GCS, near Kharkiv (location not mentioned) a major battle took place. The RF according to the report sent a pick-up force using unis from 1st Tank Army and 200th separate motorized infantry brigade, and over the day more than 1,500 service personnel and 200th brigade’s commander, Colonel Denis KurilIt. I haven’t seen outside sources supporting this claim, but a fight of that scale should generate images and reports over the next 24 hours.
In the Donetsk sector, according to the GCS, RF forces carried out a series of air strikes on the villages Voevodivka, Rubizhne, Lysychansk, Kreminna, Zolote-4, Popasna, Toretsk, and Novhorod. Ground attacks took place over the course of the day gains Popasna and Mariupol - at both locations RF forces suffered losses and failed to gain ground. Mariupol, though surrounded, still holds.
In the Dnipro/Krivoi Rih sector, Oleksandr Vykup, head of the Krivoi Rih regional defense command, said UAF forces in a series of battles on Monday and early Tuesday morning threw back RF armed columns “40-60 kilometers”. The statement if accurate would mean an RF push towards the city kicked off last week had at least returned to starting positions in the vicinity of the villages Bashtanka, Bereznehuvate and Velyka Oleksandrivka. Social media posts and reports from the region seemed to confirm a UAF advance and an RF retreat, but it was not possible to determine with accuracy where battle lines had settled. As with the Kyiv sector, if the report of RF retreat is accurate, then the UAF at least theoretically may have an opportunity to conduct a pursuit, which if it works is really the time to destroy enemy units, because they’re running. If it works.
Mykoaliv saw a missile or perhaps an air bomb slam into a 9-story regional administration building, blowing a hold the size of a swimming pool in the middle. The strike came just as people were going to work, seven dead. Over the course of the day another RF armored column rumbled west from Kherson, duly photographed and placed on social media by Khersonites, to reach UAF positions east of Mykolaiv, where - once again - it turned out the UAF has artillery and knows how to use it. According to one unconfirmed report, a UAF lieutenant at one point had to call fire down on his own positions, before the RF backed off. Images are already surfacing of the trashed RF column. Most likely the hero was from 81st Assault Brigade, a tough formation out of Lviv. Two of today’s images are of the Mykolaiv administration building. Again, seven office workers killed.

[68RR]

Monday Ukraine Update:
1. Russian forces northwest of Kyiv pulled some elements back into Balarus over the weekend, indicating that the Ukrainian counter-attack has not effectively surrounded the forces there.
The Russian units NW of Kyiv originally came from units based in the Eastern Military District of Russia. These units, when sent to Belarus earlier in the year for "training" were cherry-picked battalion level formations from a variety of different brigades and divisions. According to one source, Fred Kagan (Critical Threats Director of the American Enterprise Institute), the Russians sent those units to Belarus without command and control headquarters above the battalion level. Additionally, these battalions had never served together. One active duty US logistics officer has written a study on these forces NW of Kyiv and concluded that after the field exercises in February, the units there in Belarus went into combat with about half their normal supply load-out. Additionally, Kagan has pointed out that the Russians had not established many, if any, forward supply bases in Belarus along the border before the invasion.
All of these things help explain the poor performance the Russians have displayed NW of Kyiv.
However, as of about 5 hours ago, reports of renewed Russian attacks in both the NW and Eastern fronts of Kyiv have begun to flow onto the internet. The Russians have brought into these areas a host of new formations--some estimates I've seen say at least 10-15 fresh battalion combat teams of between 500-800 men each.
No details on where exactly these new attacks are taking place on these two fronts, or the results so far.
2. Russians continue to advance, block by block, in Mariupol. A Russian major assigned to a naval infantry unit was killed in the fighting over the weekend. Lots of casualties here. The level of violence, misery and human suffering among the Ukrainians in the city cannot be underestimated. This is one of the worst moments of the 21st Century.
3. No further word on the joint plan Macron was discussing to evacuate civilians from Mariupol via sea.
4. Further heavy fighting around Sumy took place over the weekend. In Kharkiv, Russian bombardment hit a major gas line. The fighting around Kherson was characterized today as "partisan operations" by Ukrainian sources.
5. Several sources report that the Russians and Russian-backed forces in the Donbas launched a series of attacks again over the weekend that were all repelled by Ukrainian defenders.
6. Belarus has not entered the war and sent troops into Ukraine as of Monday morning.
-----------
Strategic:
1. President Biden's last line in his speech in Poland, "For God's sake this man cannot remain in power" has dominated the news cycle for the last few days. I won't go into it except to say there are conflicting reports over whether the line was part of the speech, or ad libbed by the President. The White House and Dept. of State walk back has assured Russia and the world that regime change in Moscow is not a U.S. foreign policy objective.
2. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia will continue this week.
3. There was an unusual meeting at the Russian Ministry of Defense last week between US officials and several Russian officials, including at least one general. It is hard to figure out what happened here, and the CNN article linked below is vague and contradictory. But the bottom line seems to be the Russian general they met with was in a state of agitation. Whether that is rage against the US, or despair over the situation in Ukraine, or both, is not clear. Read it here:

https://www.cnn.com/.../us-russia-general-meeting/index.html

4, The Russians are pulling units out of many different areas to reinforce their effort in Ukraine. This has destabilized the situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where a 2020 war resulted in Russian peacekeepers being deployed and a Russian-brokered peace. More on this later in the week.
Armenia has supplied 4 Su-30 fighter-bombers to the Russians--with Armenian crews--for use against the Ukrainians.
------------
Oryx, which is a team that has been documenting the losses on both sides very closely, has posted what they believe to be Russia's vehicle losses so far. That is photo/slide #1 today. #2 is the Ukrainian casualty estimate for 3/28. Last slide is the UK Ministry of Defense's brief.
Morale: Lots of anecdotal reports on poor Russian morale. There have been many conflicting versions of a fragging incident where Russian troops may have either incapacitated or murdered the colonel in command of their regiment. Reports that Russians have been ordered to shoot deserters are circulating as well. Some stories, which were mentioned in a Pentagon brief last week, indicate some Russian units are dealing with significant numbers of frostbite casualties and do not have the capacity to treat them. Captured Russian field medical supplies have been described as "on par with WWII" medicine. Some reports are speculating that the Russian field hospitals are overwhelmed and cannot keep pace with the casualties. Additionally, CNN reports that getting the bodies of dead Russian soldiers out of Ukraine and back to Russia has become a logistical nightmare, and the corpses are being stored in unrefrigerated facilities. This again is a data point against the stories circulating last month of Russian mobile crematoriums, underscoring the fact that this war is awash in propaganda and rumors, and finding hard news on what is going on is very, very tough.

[AnthonyS]

Hey if you listen to klaus, it certainly doesn't sound good. They appear to have "installed" many top ranking officials in most western governments. Explains why they hated Trump so much. To hear him talk they've got big plans, and that involves depopulation.

F that clown and all his cronies.

[Gasser64]

So globalist scum want nuclear war so they can enslave everyone via one world gov, banking and digital currency….. Are we supposed to be scared? I’d love to see actual video and photos of all this BS.

Hey if you listen to klaus, it certainly doesn't sound good. They appear to have "installed" many top ranking officials in most western governments. Explains why they hated Trump so much. To hear him talk they've got big plans, and that involves depopulation.

[Tx Redneck]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/814560608363347969/956556816731471892/NWO.mp4

[AnthonyS]

So globalist scum want nuclear war so they can enslave everyone via one world gov, banking and digital currency….. Are we supposed to be scared? I’d love to see actual video and photos of all this BS.

[black50]

Certainly we have some boomers sitting in the waters over there

Apparently not, https://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/...oogle_vignette

looks like theres only 1 Ohio class near there....but then again, it would probably only take 1 sub to pretty much lay waste to to Russia ...They have 20 ballistic missiles, with each one having "mirv" warheads

[68RR]

Strategic Update:
Today's post will deal with the unthinkable--use of nuclear weapons. Lots and lots of scary articles in the mainstream media, talk and chatter on the web right now. It all looks super alarming.
It is important to remember that the threat of nuclear war is still very low. Not impossible, but remote.
There have been no reported movements of tactical warheads out of Russian storage facilities. I have not seen any NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) gear captured by the Ukrainians. They've captured everything else, so either the Russians did not deploy with it, or the Ukrainians are censoring images of that stuff.
Putin's "Special combat alert" for his nuclear forces has not appeared to make any difference in their posture, and it is still unclear if it actually meant any concrete steps were taken, or if it was just part of Putin's brinksmanship to scare the West.
Here's some of the more recent developments on this front, along with the different range of viewpoints on this that I've found. Keep in mind the context: the threat right now is low.
---------------------------
1. A Russian lawmaker, Alexei Zhuravlyov, stated publicly that if NATO sends a "peacekeeping" force into Ukraine, the Russians will strike back with nuclear weapons against those troops and target Warsaw. Zhuravlyov is a member of the Rodina ultra-nationalist, communist party, and advocated kidnapping U.S. Congressman Ruben Gallego in December for being an advocate of aid to Ukraine. Gallego's public response was, "F-- around and find out." So, two super geniuses of statesmanship right here. He has appeared on camera in a military uniform telling people he was going to the front (in February) and urged everyone to fight to liberate the Donbas. He's stated publicly that the world is Russia's to own and dominate.
Here is his appearance on Russian TV where he advocates nuclear war in the event of NATO intervention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueQTxtWV-AU
2. One of Russia's diplomats at the UN did an interview with conservative Australian TV station Skynews and said the West should not threaten a nuclear power (Russia). See that here at CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/.../h_8ba993d756995db160191a26152f396f

3. The French reportedly cycled onto a higher nuclear alert last night. The French reportedly surged three of their four nuclear-weapon-armed submarines to sea. Normally, they rotate to keep one at sea at all times. France has about 300 warheads.
4. The Biden administration has not escalated or put American strategic forces at a higher DEFCON. 5= no threat, 1= war imminent. Exactly where they are on the DEFCON scale is conjecture--mainly that STRATCOM is at DEFCON 4.
However, Peter Pry just wrote an article here that is an outlier among most of the nuclear war/threat analysts. In it, he states the U.S. strategic forces are at DEFCON 5 and ripe to be destroyed by a Russian first strike.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/.../the_nuclear_911_in...
Pry is a late Cold War warrior, serving in the CIA from 1985-95 as a nuclear plans/threat analyst. He's also been a member of the nuclear verification team post-Cold War. He is currently the executive director of a Congressional advisory task force on homeland security.
Pry is an outlier and represents a minority viewpoint on the current threat of a nuclear attack. There are a few others, most late Cold War warriors who are now retired who believe we are heading toward a collision, but the vast majority of the current analysts and nuclear warfare specialists seem to believe the threat is low, and mainly focused on a Russian use of tactical (Non Strategic Nuclear Weapons) in Ukraine.
Also, as Jon Parshall has pointed out, a Russian first strike would not be able to eliminate our submarine-based warheads, and they would destroy Russia. So, the threat of this seems very, very remote.
The prevailing that counters Pry's, as far as I've found, is best represented by Prof Matthew Kroenig. He is a director at the Atlantic Council and teaches at Georgetown. His bio is here:

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/expert/matthew-kroenig/

His Twitter feed is here:

https://twitter.com/MatthewKroenig

His view is that the threat of nuclear war is low, but if it happens the weapons used will likely be used in Ukraine. That will put the United States and NATO in a position where they must choose how best to respond to this. Kroenig believes the US and the Biden Administration would find a non-nuclear option to respond to such an attack.
That said, Biden announced after the meeting in Brussels that NATO/US would respond "in kind" to a nuclear, chemical or biological attack. The U.S. has no functional chemical weapons anymore--all but about 5% of the stockpile has been destroyed. The remain 5% is scheduled to be destroyed and they're old and non-combat ready. So, we can't respond in kind to a chemical attack. Thus, the position Biden is really talking about using a nuclear weapon in response to a Russian nuclear attack in Ukraine.
Kroenig lays out the most likely possible scenarios in a recent School of War podcast. The challenge as he sees it is this:
Putin uses nuclear rhetoric and brinksmanship to force the West into a choice: Surrender or face Suicide by massive nuclear war because he's willing to use them first. How to counter that strategy is an exceptionally difficult strategic issue, and there are divergent opinions on the best way to proceed.
The podcast can be found here and is really worth a listen:

https://nebulouspodcasts.com/shows/school-of-war

5. A small group of civilians, including engineer Ivan Stepanov and former RISOP analyst David Teter. have been building a new open source RISOP. What is RISOP? Red Integrated Strategic Offensive Plan (RISOP). This is essentially a probable target list in the US in the event of different kinds of retaliatory strikes. There are some old FEMA maps from 1990 and 1996 showing various possible targets in the event of a limited exchange or full exchange. These guys are trying to fill the gap. Teter is a former Cold War-era analyst whose job was to divine probable Russian targets in the even of nuclear war. Ivan grew up next to the Soviet-era nuclear test ranges. Their simulator is here:

https://nuclearwarsimulator.com/

David tweets here:

https://twitter.com/.../status/1502806224215351300/photo/1

Ivan tweets here:

https://twitter.com/ivnstepanov

6. Lastly, the Biden Administration has assembled a group of policy and security experts to look for ways to respond to a Russian first-use of chemical or nuclear weapons in Ukraine. According to the New York Times, this is called the "Tiger Team" and was designed to arm President Biden with options and discussion points on this front when he meets with the other NATO leaders in Brussels this week. See the article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/.../biden-ru...uclear-weapons...
It is important to note that the administration members interviewed for the article state they have seen nothing from the Russians that merit raising our alert level.

[Gasser64]

I'm sure this will be agonizingly studied for 100's of years just like every military conflict, and it looks like yall are already getting started. But we can just jump straight to the end, Putin/Russia wins. Nobody dares stop him, and the inept bidet admin practically rolled out the red carpet for him. It's funny that they seem to think he's doing something wrong, because their every action would indicate that they wanted this to happen. I guess that's standard leftist logic though. Which is, don't have or use any logic. And damn sure don't think about it from someone else's point of view, in this case russia's. The EU too, what with their buying gas in Rusky money now instead of dollars. Guess it's not the petro dollar anymore lol

Putin is kicking everyone's ass right now, politically speaking. The grand chessboard or whatever you might want to call it. Can't say I feel sorry for the leadership of these governments. They asked for it, now they're getting it.

[68RR]

latest...

Morning Update:
I'm going to break today's post into two pieces, as a bunch of very significant things have happened over the past 24-48 hours. Here's the big picture:
Strategic Update:
1. Belarus is currently expelling Ukrainian diplomats, another sign it will enter the war.
2. Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, has grown exceptionally hawkish with his rhetoric. He was once considered one of the moderates among the senior Russian leadership when he was President. Lots of threats, claims the US wants to break Russia up, nuclear holocaust references, etc. in his latest statements. He also went after Poland, hammering it for supporting Ukraine and stated that one way or another, Poland will lean to Russia again.
See here for a summary: https://www.osw.waw.pl/.../dmitri-me...attacks-poland
This comes after Poland has identified over 40 Russian diplomats as spies and ordered them out of the country. The Russians began burning documents at their embassy in Warsaw either just before, or just after, that accusation. See the photo of the smoke rising over their embassy.
3. China has now publicly stated it will not sustain Russian with military or financial aid to Russia. They then blamed the United States for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
If the Chinese are serious about this, the Russians have no way to replace their vehicle and aircraft losses in the short-term. Funding the war will also become a problem. Lack of Chinese support will limit options for the Russians and make it harder for them to achieve anything significant with conventional forces.
4. Russian oligarch and climate ambassador Anatoly Chubais quit the Putin administration in protest of the war and fled the country.
5. Significant Intelligence Coup: The Ukrainians captured what appears to be an intact Krasukha-4 electronic warfare system about 48 hours ago. Deployed operationally in 2014, it is designed to jam airborne radars, block GPS transmissions to drones and can even block/jam reconnaissance satellites over a battlefield to create an electronic blackout to hide movement of troops and vehicles. This is an absolute state of the art, extremely significant Electronic Warfare system that has been very successful in the past. In its first active deployment, one system destroyed nine drones in a week by severing their connections to GPS sats guiding them.
The importance of getting this system cannot be overstated. Studying it will ensure NATO can find ways to counter this jamming system and render it ineffective. As one former DoD analyst said, "I cannot begin to tell you how big of a loss this is for Russian forces." And, "Ukraine now has the political leverage to get MiGs and SAMS from NATO."
Read more about this here: https://www.thedrive.com/.../ukraine-just-captured-part...
6. Another Russian general got relieved, is under house arrest and is being interrogated. This is the (former) commander of the 6th Combined Arms Army, Lt. General Vladislov Ershov. He is one of the first of the post-Cold War era cadets to rise through the ranks and become a Lt. Gen. He's 46 years old. He is a veteran of the Syrian conflict.
The 6th Combined Arms Army is deployed in the east part of Ukraine, around Kharkiv. It has made little progress, and his relief & arrest was due to "excessive casualties." Allegedly, the 6th CAA lost 2,000 men KIA.WIA, MIA, including 180 conscripts who by Russian law are not supposed to be deployed outside the country.
I think this makes the 10th Russian general relieved. Five Russian and one Chechen generals have reportedly been killed in action.
7. Russian rhetoric about nuclear apocalypse has triggered what the editor of the War Zone has called "Let's talk about nuclear Armageddon day" on social media. Lots of comments and opinions floating around. I'll have a separate post ready later today or tomorrow to lay out the range of insight from various analysts and nuclear security specialists.
Ukraine update will be teed up soon.
Photos: a.) Smoke rising over the Russian embassy in Warsaw, strongly suggestive of document burning. b.) The Krasukha-4 electronic warfare system captured by the Ukrainians. c.) Russian General Ershov, who is now under arrest.

[Strychnine]

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/zelensky-urges-pope-francis-to-intervene-in-war-as-he-says-there-is-nothing-left-of-mariupol-after-russian-onslaught-41472840.html

Russia ‘accidentally reveals’ 10,000 of its soldiers have been killed

Russia’s ministry of defence appeared to accidentally reveal that nearly 10,000 of its soldiers have been killed in Ukraine.
The figure was contained in a report on March 20 by the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, which has since been deleted from the paper’s website.

Before it was removed, the article quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying that 9,861 Russian soldiers had been killed, and 16,153 were injured, in more than three weeks of fighting. Previously, the Russian military had only admitted that around 500 soldiers had been killed.

The article was taken down from the paper’s website and replaced with a version not including casualty numbers. The newspaper quickly removed the article from its website, describing it as the work of hackers.

Asked about the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on it at Tuesday’s conference call with reporters, referring questions about the military casualties to the defense ministry.

On March 2, the defense ministry reported 498 soldiers had been killed and hasn’t released any casualty numbers since then.

[68RR]

Tuesday Update:
Strategic:
1. Zelensky has said if this round of talks fail, it will mean WWIII. He keeps insisting to meet with Putin personally.
2. Belarus has not entered the fight yet. From reports I've seen, the Belarus government is not thrilled with the idea of invading Ukraine too and is trying to delay/postpone while making enough noise in that direction to appease Putin. There is widespread sabotage going on throughout the country, mostly aimed at the rail network. The rail connections with Ukraine have indeed been severed, but there are examples from all over the country where the rails have been damaged in hopes of derailing trains carrying Russian troops/equipment/supplies. It is reflective of much of the sentiment inside Belarus, where the opposition to the current government is more robust than in Russia, and it is anti-war.
3. Yesterday, the Russians officially protested President Biden calling Putin a "war criminal." Reportedly, they threatened to severe all diplomatic communications with the United States over it.
4. A US Defense Department official estimated that the Russians are very desperately trying to recapture the strategic initiative and gain some momentum on the ground. This is probably the reason for increased Russian aerial activity over the last two days--they flew 300 sorties in one day over the weekend. However, most of the Russian flights are either along the border or just inside Ukrainian territory, suggesting RU air is very conscious of the MPAD/SAM anti-aircraft threat.
5. Same DoD official pointed out the US estimates put the Russians have much of their ballistic missile force left and their cruise missile stockpile at 50%. They've fired half of their country's cruise missiles into Ukrainian targets. Those attacks have shown weaknesses in their precision guided weapons systems that include a.) a higher than expected percentage of duds that failed to explode. b.) A lack of accuracy resulting in many missed targets.
A report from Kyiv today showed photos of a Russian anti-ship missile had been fired into the city. This particular weapon has a secondary surface-to-surface role, but the fact they're using something primarily designed to blow ships up against the Ukrainian capital does lend credence to the many reports that the Russians are running out of precision guided munitions.
See it here: https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status...05464852664320
6. US DoD estimates put the total force committed to Ukraine as 75% of Russia's available combat battalions and 60% of its air assets. DoD estimates believe Russia still has about 90% of its committed forces left, but they are having trouble feeding and supplying their forward units, morale is low and the messaging to the troops as to why this is necessary was poor and non-motivational at best.
Note: The DoD estimates vary significantly and are more conservative than the Ukrainian ones.
7. Russia's primary tank-producing company has suspended production at the moment due to lack of available foreign parts.
8. Russia's largest airport just furloughed 40% of its staff due to the sanctions and reduced number of flights in and outbound.
9. President Biden and the US Government have been warning there is an increased risk that the Russians will launch cyberattacks in response to sanctions. There are additional warnings that they might use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
10. Putin announced an increase in pension payments over the weekend to counter some of the economic hardships the sanctions have imposed on the Russian people.
11. The Russian tabloid that posted the shocking level of Russian losses in an article yesterday has stated they were hacked and the numbers did not come from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
I've tried to directly post the link to the archived story, but Meta is telling me it is fake news and threatening to censor me. Incidentally, the Russians declared Facebook and Meta an "extremist organization" yesterday.
Try this to read for yourself. Maybe this will get around the censors:
https://twitter.com/IAPonom.../statu...01885739765768...
Ukraine:
1. A Russian attack west of Kherson was thrown back. It now appears the Ukrainians are advancing slowly on the city along two axis, and this repelled attack was a local Russian attempt to stop that.
2. I am struggling with this one. The Russians apparently ordered its helicopter units in the south to re-occupy the airfield just outside of Kherson. The Ukrainians have attacked this field six times, and their forward elements involved in the counter offensive are closer to the facility today than they were over the weekend.
Nevertheless, the Russians sent their helicopters back there--and promptly got attacked for a 7th time. No numbers on helicopters destroyed, but some clearly were.
That's either a move of desperation, or the result of sclerotic and inflexible chain of command.
3. A good example of what the Russians are facing behind the lines can be seen here. Ukrainian civilians, armed with AK variants and RPG's can be seen going to ambush Russian convoys near Sumy.
https://twitter.com/TheDead.../statu...42172080861185...
4. The full weight of conventional Russian firepower is falling on those civilians. Entire city blocks are being wiped out in rocket artillery and bombing attacks. The Russians are using thermobaric weapons against civilian targets, and the death toll among Ukraine's population is rising sharply. Currently, there are over 3.3 million Ukrainian refugees in Eastern Europe and 10 million displaced Ukrainians total.
5. Ukrainian resistance has stunned the world, but it is important to remember that in those 3.5 million people in Eastern Europe, there are lots of military aged males who have yet returned to report for conscription and are thus "dodging the draft." So, not everyone is on board with standing and fighting with Zelensky.
6. To counterbalance that, an unconfirmed report is circulating that 300 Russian soldiers refused to continue fighting and deserted en mass near Sumy in the East.
7. Examples of wrecked, abandoned or destroyed Russian main battle tanks are being photographed and circulated on-line, suggesting the best-equipped armored units the Russians have are now in the fight. Most of the tanks destroyed so far have been either ancient T-72s or T-80s.
8. Bottom line: The Russians have made little forward progress anywhere except Mariupol for days now. They're unable to effectively resupply their forward units, there was no offensive activity NW of Kyiv, or NE. Kherson is threatened by Ukrainian counter-attacks and the siege of Mariupol has devastated 80% of a city the size of New Orleans. Fresh units from the Russian eastern military districts are arriving in Belarus and presumably elsewhere along the Ukrainian border, but the reports I've seen suggest these units have low readiness and are not of the quality level of the units already deployed.
Photos; Ukrainian estimates of Russian losses for today. An unexploded Russian rocket near Kharkiv. Interesting markings on a Russian helicopter. Before and after shots of a Ukrainian shopping mall in Kyiv that was struck by the Russians this weekend. Lastly, a chart, unconfirmed, showing what the identification markings mean on the sides of Russian vehicles.