Some info from the Ukraine

[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.

[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

[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.

[Tx Redneck]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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…

[quikag]

Appreciate your sending these updates. Fascinating to read!

[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.

[68RR]

Today, or more exactly yesterday evening began with a bang. In the Russian Federation village of Krasniy Oktyabr, near the town of Belgorod, about 20 kilometers from the Russia-Ukraine border, there is an ammunition dump. Or, perhaps more precisely, maybe its better to say there WAS an ammunition dump, -because at 20:00 something caused a massive explosion, rattling windows across the border, and throwing a giant fireball into the sky, followed by at least two hours of detonations and fire, before emergency response teams got the blaze under control.
Ukrainian media was quick - like, in less than two hours - to declare it all the work of a Ukraine Armed Forces Tochka-U missile which - and these things are big and slow, they ride on giant trucks - the Ukrainians had managed to get the missile within its 120 kilometer range of the holding facility, and blast it. I posted two images from Russian social media, which, clearly, likes posting pictures of fires and explosions accompanied by vulgar comment, quite as much as their Ukrainian neighbors.
Russian officials led by the local governor seemed to be caught flat-footed. First they said everything was under control, then they said no one was hurt, then they said yes there’s a fire but it’s under control, then they said four service personnel were injured, and ultimately they admitted it took more than five hours to put out the fire, in part because exploding artillery rockets and shells prevented the firemen from getting close enough to put it out.
Later on Wednesday, the Ukraine Army General Staff (AGS) released a cryptic statement: it wasn’t us, probably those Russians mishandled something explosive and possibly beyond expiration date.
Some Ukrainian officials - for example Mykolaiv regional defense commander Vitaly Kim - have claimed that capturing RF ammunition is not as good as it sounds, because much of the RF ammunition dates well back into the Cold War period, and some of it to the Second World War, and either way about a third of it never explodes. Which doesn’t really solve the puzzle of what caused the explosion at Krasnkiy Oktiabr, and all the ammunition that did, somehow, manage to blow itself up.
Kyiv situation part 1: The RF attempts the old football play: Student body left!
The day saw conflicting reports about what force the RF was withdrawing from around Kyiv, where it was going, by what route or routes, and what the Ukrainians were or might be doing about that. The general official view - advanced by for instance the ACS and the Kyiv defense command - was that UAF infantry was mopping up in suburbs just to the north of Kyiv in places like Irpen’ and Brovary, while larger RF formations appeared to be heading back into Belarus, via the town of Ivankiv. Where, readers may recall, the UAF claimed two days ago it had cut a critical bridge. Maybe so, but sources agreed the Russians were moving north, and mostly without hindrance. Eyewitnesses in northern Kyiv reported small arms firing off and on, particularly in the morning. To the west of Kyiv, at about two A.M. - there were no official announcements - the RF put in a rocket artillery strike audible across the most the city. Early on Wednesday (Kyiv time) Pentagon spokesmen were saying the force withdrawal may be just minor, but, by Wednesday afternoon UAF officials, like Presidential advisor Oleksy Arestovych, were stating openly the RF withdrawal had been in progress for 24 hours. Officials of all levels, down to village councils in Vorzel’ and Vyshegorod warned residents who had evacuated earlier to stay away, even if the RF soldiers are departing they are leaving booby traps behind, and in some places the ground is saturated with unexploded shells.
Kyiv situation part 2: What’s next?
For this section I suggest you look at the posted maps on the Kyiv-Chernihiv sector, created by one of the best military cartographers out there, a Twitter user named JominiW. He uses open sources and far more discipline and skill that most normal humans have to cram a massive amount of information into nice, readable situation maps. The one he put out for today shows the situation to the east of Kyiv with some of the best clarity out there, particularly if you read military symbols, which many of you do.
But to get the main point, really all you need to be is not color-blind. In the map, the Ukrainians are green and the Russians are red. If JominiW's estimate is right, and you look immediately to the north-west of Kyhiv, you’ll see several red RF units, and no matter which way the little red RF units turn, it seems like there are green Ukrainian units, at pretty much every direction of the clock.
It’s not a perfect encirclement. But if you look at the road network, the places where the Ukrainians hold a big road junction like in Chernihiv or in Konotop, and think about driving north to Belarus from that part of the world, you are confronted with the question - how exactly to drive north from where the RF is, and get to Belarus, without bumping into some piece of the UAF along the way?
This is probably a big reason why the RF has announced it’s shifting troops away from Kyiv to points east and south. It they stay put where they are, the Ukrainians might cut them off. As the RF has advanced it has lacked the force, please pardon the dreary phrase, to secure its flanks, and now it must pull troops back with all manner of coherent UAF formations in their way.
This is not to say the RF can’t pull its troops out of this sector, but, it is to say that it won’t be easy and the UAF will certainly be looking for opportunities to make it harder for them. This would not be simple to carry out with well-trained, confident troops, and the RF is anything but that. On the other hand, it is probably fair to say that the RF units in north Ukraine down to a man just want to leave the country. Arguably, right now the RF troops in Kyiv sector are as collectively motivated and focused on the mission - get the Hell out of Ukraine - as they have been for the entire war.
Shortly after 1800 Ukraine’s Interior Ministry reporte two columns of RF vehicles, one vicinity Brovary and one vicinity Novy and Stary Basany, had lined up on the road and headed north. 300 vehicles in the first column, 450 in the second, according to the report. It remains to be seen what, if anything, the Ukrainians will do about that. The RF Ministry of Defense announced that “all missions in the Kyiv and Chernihiv area are completed.” Shades of W.
South and East
Compared to yesterday, there were few reports of renewed fighting in either of these sectors. However, as we predicted, confirmation materials - images and eyewitness accounts - appeared over the course of the day confirming the wreck of an RF armored column that, yesterday, left Kherson en route to Mykolaiv but got forced back by artillery. Also, images surfaced of a reported battle with heavy RF losses over the weekend in the vicinity of the town Gulyaipole: it seems the RF indeed lost more combat vehicles there. Further confirmation came today from an RF opposition politician named Ilya Ponamarev, who told independent opposition media that during the battle the RF’s 331st Guards Airborne Regiment - an elite parachute unit - was all but wiped out. I lifted a map from a gentleman named Richard MacKay that shows a possible version of how forces are stacked up in this sector.
Likewise, images came in seemingly confirming that Monday’s engagements in Popasna and Severodonetsk left the UAF holding the positions, and RF tanks and infantry fighting vehicles destroyed or captured at both locations.
From Mariupol, I didn’t see any useful updates at all today.
Other items:
Churn and thrash in British national leadership on the subject of Ukraine - Today a number of Ukrainian politicians said London was on board with the idea of Britain giving Ukraine security guarantees needed for a peace treaty, while Prime Minister Boris Johnson stood up and saying Ukraine needs more and better weapons from the West now. At the same time, a British diplomat at the UN named Tony Radakin (spelling?) saying that while London of course supports Ukraine, extending NATO-type article five protections to Ukraine is something Britain isn’t prepared to do. He did however use the code term “new phase” of Ukraine’s war with Russia, which I think in NATO orgspeak means figuring out ways to get heavy weapons like artillery and vehicle-mounted air defense systems to Kyiv, while tightening down the sanction screws on Russia even more. You watch, a lot of western bureaucrats are going to start using the term “new phase” in coming weeks.
RF hunt for cannon fodder intensifies:
- The “Caucasian” security unit AF intelligence mentioned as heading to Debal’tsevo by train yesterday, has resolved itself, according to the same sources, to “volunteers” from the RF’s 4th military base in Tskhinvali Ossetia (1,200 men), and 7th military base in Abkhazia (800 men). Both of these bases are centers for the Kremlin military footprint in separatist areas it has dug out of Georgia. Neither formation has a reputation for discipline and military professionalism. In this particular case I can speak from personal experience. If either the Ossetians or the Abkhazians get opposite the UAF, it will be very bloody, I fear, and not for the Ukrainians. It would be more like murder.
-

[68RR]

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, the RF high command is grappling with something like a mutiny in 26th Tank Regiment of 47th Tank Division where, per Kremlin procedure, draftees were lined up and told to sign contracts and become professional soldiers, and go to Ukraine. Sending untrained draftees into combat is political dynamite in Russia, if it took place massively and word of it were to get back to the Russians, Putin could faced serious public unrest, and if there were mass casualties - and new draftees by definition are poorly trained - then that is the kind of thing historically that has led to Tsars getting put on trains to Siberia.
- Speaking of Siberia, an audio appeared of an irate police general in Novosibirsk who is apoplectic that his subordinates prefer to quit the special forces police, and get a black “coward” mark in their copy books, than volunteer to go to Ukraine. He even calls them woman and traitors. Unfortunately for him he didn’t collect telephones prior to his tirade, so now his fuming and foul language is in the internet, and no doubt he is wondering which of his insubordinate lieutenants dared to record him secretly.
Kyiv wants to go back to normal, even if it costs: Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko today announced that basically all street and sidewalk businesses like cafes and restaurants and so forth “for the duration” will no longer have to pay the city rent on space, just please get back to work and start serving customers. If the establishment wants to put up patriotic signage, the city will help with materials and maybe even cash.

[Strychnine]

draftees were lined up and told to sign contracts and become professional soldiers, and go to Ukraine. Sending untrained draftees into combat...

Jeez, it's only been 6 weeks, wtf is actually going on in Russia?

[Labora]

Jeez, it's only been 6 weeks, wtf is actually going on in Russia?

The more news that comes out it sounds like they where grossly unprepared and basically lied to about what this was going to actually be. Almost sounds like they expected Ukraine to just roll over and give up as they are struggling to do anything long term and logistically are a mess.