ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

pretty sure Putin's intentions before the invasion don't exactly match his current intentions

Pretty sure Putin didn't see any of this coming.

From Moscow Times---Guardian and others also reporting:

A stretch of Russian railroad near the Ukrainian border was destroyed on Tuesday morning, the region’s governor announced.

The destroyed railroad comes after several Russian border regions including Belgorod raised their “terror” threat level to “yellow,” the second-highest in a three-tier system, as Russia’s nearly seven-week invasion of Ukraine shifts its focus toward eastern Ukraine.

Special-operations unit destroys bridge in Kharkiv region as Russian convoy crosses, claims Ukraine
From CNN's Olga Voitovych in Lviv

A Ukraine special-operations unit destroyed a bridge as a Russian convoy crossed it while it headed toward Izium in southeastern Kharkiv region, the Command of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed in a statement Thursday.
...The statement claimed that the Ukrainian unit destroyed the bridge with an explosive charge as a convoy of a Tiger armored vehicle and several trucks crossed it.

CNN could not independently verify the claim. Ukrainian forces destroyed a key bridge in the Kyiv region to slow the advance of Russian forces in the opening days of the war.

Investigating a bridge before crossing it seems like War 101 to me but

Whoops

Russia’s defense ministry admits the Moskva cruiser, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, has sunk.

They claim there was an explosion from a munitions accident on board and it sank in a storm.

Ukraine says it managed to sink the ship in a missile strike.https://t.co/EyBwFZS3SE

— max seddon (@maxseddon) April 14, 2022

How to troll

Russian warship, what are you sinking?

— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) April 14, 2022

the Moskva entered service in the early 1980s according to Russian media.

Seems like a lot of Russian military shit is super old

Not just the military shit:

Thirty years later, over a half of Russia’s top ruling elites are individuals who, through their career trajectories or families, belonged to the privileged classes of Soviet elites, which during the Soviet era constituted only 1%-3% of the population.

Long Soviet Shadows: The Nomenklatura Ties of Putin Elites
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4012474

Russia Is Leaking Data Like a Sieve
Ukraine claims to have doxed Russian troops and spies, while hacktivists are regularly leaking private information from Russian organizations.

Also using Ukraine cell phone towers for field communications: being seeing reports of that from the beginning.

The sinking of Russia’s ‘Moskva’ cruiser is a big symbolic win for Ukraine, but does very little to change the course of the war.

Experts NatSec Daily spoke to since the Kremlin confirmed the news say the Slava-class ship had minimal land-attack capability and was fitted with dated systems. Its main utility was gunning Ukrainian lands like Snake Island — a replaceable capability — taking on carrier strike groups, and protecting nearby Russian ships with its air defenses. The sinking helps explain why other Russian vessels stationed near Ukraine moved further from shore.

The Moskva, then, was never crucial to Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN’s war plans, even if it was the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship. The loss is “pretty embarrassing but otherwise not that significant,” said MICHAEL KOFMAN, an expert on Russia’s military at the CNA think tank in Arlington, Va.

But we should think about the Moskva’s demise the same way actor HELEN MIRREN views QUEEN ELIZABETH II’s role in Britain: “Never underestimate the value of a symbol.”

Ukrainian forces sinking the Black Sea flagship with two Neptune missiles, as a senior U.S. defense official told NatSec Daily today, punctures the narrative of a strong Russian force that will eventually win the war it started last month. It’ll also boost the morale of Ukrainian troops and citizens who, despite fiercely resisting Russian advances, have endured horror after horror.

“A symbolic victory does matter,” said retired U.S. Navy Capt. STEVEN HORRELL, a former naval intelligence officer now at the Center for European Policy Analysis think tank in Washington, D.C. It further lets officials in Kyiv know that if Russia’s best air-defense ship is that vulnerable to a few missiles and drones, then its entire naval force is also assailable, Horrell added.

The most immediate effect, it seems, is that Russia intends to retaliate fiercely for the indignity.

"The number and scale of missile strikes on targets in Kyiv will increase in response to any terrorist attacks or acts of sabotage on Russian territory committed by the Kyiv nationalist regime," Russia's Maj. Gen. IGOR KONASHENKOV said in a Friday statement.

The Kremlin said it struck a missile factory in Kyiv, and that it had captured the Ilyich steel works plant in the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol. Moscow added that its villages in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine had been hit by Ukrainian shelling. Meanwhile, Ukraine said it had repelled Russian offensives in the towns of Popasna and Rubizhne, north of Mariupol.

more: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2022/04/15/on-the-moskva-think-like-helen-mirren-00025585

Interesting that they waited this long to strike the missile factory... not sure I buy that

Also, it's like "no, the ship wasn't sunk by a missile, but we'll retaliate anyway by bombing their missile factory".. sounds like hogwash

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/18/russia-ukraine-war-missiles-00026102

While the response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has not been uniform within the Russian QAnon community, with some followers supporting the war, the largest channels have been conspicuous in opposing it, the Bellingcat investigation found.

The anti-war stance comes as a surprise given the QAnon channel’s avowed pro-Kremlin stance in the past. But like many Russians, the channel’s administrator appears to have been taken by surprise by the invasion.

“Nothing will happen,” the channel’s admin wrote a week before the invasion began. “There will definitely be no war. Ukraine and Russia are one and the same people.”

Update on sanctions and supply chain disruption:

Rare glimpses of honesty from senior Russian officials. (Another 🧵 on sanctions.)

Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Central Bank: logistical blockade hurts even more than financial sanctions. Supply chains are broken. (1/11)

— Ilya Matveev (@IlyaMatveev_) April 19, 2022

Declaring victory, deciding (for now) close enough: will he do this again? Like Assad playing a longer game with Idlib:

Ukrainian fighters remained inside the Azovstal steel complex, one of the biggest metallurgical facilities in Europe, covering 11 sq km with huge buildings, underground bunkers and tunnels. Putin had told the defenders to lay down their weapons and surrender or die.

But in a televised meeting at the Kremlin on Thursday, Putin told Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu: "You successfully completed the combat effort to liberate Mariupol. Let me congratulate you on this occasion, and please convey my congratulations to the troops."
...The decision not to storm the Azovstal steel plant after days of ultimatums to its defenders allowed Putin to claim his first big prize since his forces were driven out of northern Ukraine last month. But it falls short of the unambiguous victory Moscow has sought after months of combat in a city reduced to rubble.

"They physically cannot take Azovstal, they have understood this, they have taken huge losses there," Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych told a briefing. "Our defenders continue to hold it."]

I imagine eventually the holdouts will starve, unless there is some way to get food in?

Wonder how far the tunnels go, can they be connected with anything outside the occupied zone---?

This sounds strangely like a reprise of siege warfare from the middle ages, with Azovstal in the role of the central "keep", where defenders could retreat if the city walls were breached.

The problem on the Russian side of things comes down to holding said extra land, which I suspect is, how you say, not in the firmest of grips.

On top of which

Stat of the day that I wasn’t expecting. Russian tank losses have been so high and Ukrainian so low, (and the Ukrainians have received so many new tanks and seized so many working Russian ones) that Ukraine has more tanks available now in country than Russia. https://t.co/7MDtwElx9i

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) April 21, 2022

Related:

DoD update on Day 57 of 🇷🇺 invasion of 🇺🇦: senior U.S. defense official

• 🇺🇸 could get first howitzer artillery to 🇺🇦 by this weekend
• 🇺🇸 is giving 🇺🇦 121 new "Phoenix Ghost" drones designed specifically for war with 🇷🇺
• 🇺🇦 now has MORE tanks than 🇷🇺 on the battlefield

— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 21, 2022

Yeah, and one reason, maybe the main one, aside from the sheer size of the steel plamt complex, with basic challenge of ferreting through all that, with any number of troops--is that he needs to send a lot of those troops, and machinery, on to the East, while keeping enough in place to keep control. (The Wagners and Syrians have so far barely trickled into combat areas) MSNBC now reporting civilians of all ages in complex too, hundreds of thousands outside not allowed to evacuate frpm Mari, Russian troops in East being ordered to kill Ukraine POVs...

I lost my temper. A thread on Jacobin and their position on Ukraine. 1/

— Taras Bilous (@ahatanhel) April 22, 2022

KYIV/MARIUPOL, April 22 (Reuters) - Moscow wants to take full control over southern Ukraine, a Russian general said on Friday, a statement Ukraine said gave the lie to Russia's previous assertions that it had no territorial ambitions.

Rustam Minnekayev, deputy commander of Russia's central military district, was quoted by Russian state news agencies as saying full control over southern Ukraine would give it access to a breakaway, Russian-occupied part of Moldova in the west.

Saw that.

And as if in response to that

⚡️ Military intelligence: 2 Russian generals killed near Kherson.

According to Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Directorate, the military hit a Russian command post near occupied regional capital Kherson, allegedly killing two Russian generals and wounding one.

— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 23, 2022

Meantime

Big news. Biden’s Pentagon chief and top diplomat set to meet Zelensky in Kyiv next week.

Austin is heading to Germany first for a meeting of up to 40 nations on arming Ukraine. https://t.co/0RPaJn2v3v

— Jack Detsch (@JackDetsch) April 23, 2022

From Deutsche Welle updates:

Russian forces attempting to storm Azovstal plant in Mariupol
Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych has said Sunday Russian forces are again attempting to storm the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol where Ukrainian forces and civilians are sheltering following a weeks-long siege of the southern port city.

On Facebook, Arestovych wrote, "Russian troops are trying to finish off the defenders of Azovstal and more than 1,000 civilians who are hiding at the plant."

Russian troops have surrounded the plant since early March. On Saturday, Ukrainian officials issued similar warnings and said Russian forces were laying siege to the plant.

Switzerland impedes German arms deliveries: report
Switzerland has blocked the re-export from Germany to Ukraine of Swiss-produced ammunition used in German-made Marder infantry fighting vehicles, according to the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung.

The move by Switzerland, which maintains a neutral status, has held up arms deliveries by Germany at a time when Berlin is already under fire for failing to supply Ukraine with heavy weapons to help fight off Russia's invasion of the country.

Switzerland has gone against previous practice and adopted EU sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for its invasion, but has insisted its neutrality does not allow it to send arms to conflict zones. Swiss officials have previously rejected Poland's request for the Alpine state to send arms to Ukraine.

The Marder vehicles are made by German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall but use Swiss-manufactured ammunition.

Ukraine blames Russian troops for forcibly recruiting civilians
Ukraine has accused Russian troops of forcibly recruiting civilians in occupied regions of eastern Ukraine.

In addition to young people, doctors were being targeted in the Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions, Ukrainian military officials wrote on Facebook.

The UK's Ministry of Defense also noted similar conscription practices in the Russian-occupied Donbas and Crimea.

"Any enlistment of Ukrainian civilians into the Russian armed forces, even if presented by Russia as being voluntary or military service in accordance with Russian law, would constitute a violation of Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention," the UK Ministry of Defense wrote on Twitter.

IAEA to provide Ukraine with equipment to keep nuclear plants running
Ukraine has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for the equipment it needs to operate nuclear power plants during the war with Russia.

The agency says it includes radiation measurement devices, protective material, computer-related assistance, power supply systems, and diesel generators.

"We will coordinate the implementation of the assistance that the IAEA and its member states will provide, including by delivering required equipment directly to Ukraine's nuclear sites," IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said.
Ukraine has 15 operational reactors at four plants.

Grossi was due to visit the decommissioned Chernobyl plant next week, on the anniversary of the 1986 disaster there.

https://www.politico.eu/article/in-the-face-of-war-ukraine-jews-embrace-a-dual-identity/

Thanks for that! And I didn't know about the European edition of Politico, will be reading more.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/25/ukrainian-refugee-left-homeless-after-uk-host-demanded-bill-money

somebody should have told her a refugee isn't just for Christmas

Big hearted Britain.

What the fuck is happening in Ukraine?
Ain’t nothin going on but the rent

Spent this morning visiting a shelter for Ukrainian refugees in Tijuana.

Spent the afternoon at a shelter @ImmDef visits regularly to provide legal services to mostly Haitian & Central American families.

The differences between the two are stark and soul-shattering. 🧵

— Lindsay Toczylowski (@L_Toczylowski) April 22, 2022

A story about the preservation of Ukrainian culture during the war:

https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/putin-russia-destruction-ukraine-culture-heritage-isis-shadows-project-1589358

The latest news from the "European values" front:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/20/germany-refugee-policy-afghanistan-ukraine/

Germany Is Displacing Afghan Refugees to Make Way for Ukrainians

But also more news about Ukraine:

https://english.nv.ua/nation/terror-and-looting-in-the-farming-villages-that-bore-the-brunt-of-russia-s-eastern-push-towards-kyiv-50236045.html

Bumping this up

i expect this will be good in helping to determine what the fuck is going on in the ukraine

I'm surprised more people aren't more bothered about this:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/27/boris-johnson-tempting-evil-revealing-ukrainian-soldiers-trained-poland

It seems a total dick move.

Well, Boris Johnson is a total dick after all.

Of course.

It just seems like a move that will get people killed.

A somewhat thorough rundown on diplomatic negotiations so far, and the effects of Bucha atrocities, sinking of the Moskva, and other events on said discussions for either side:

(article is in Russian but chrome has a useful translate function, hope it's available in other browsers)

https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-61241525

"The Ukrainian work that pre-dated the seizure of Crimea was a continuation of existing programmes, and we know the Russians seem to be using other marine mammals, including belugas in the Arctic," Lambert added in an email.
And Russia isn't the only country to do this kind of work with marine mammals. In fact, the U.S. Navy has a history of similar programs, and it trains dolphins as well as seals for similar purposes to this day. Here's a look at why dolphins make good defenders and which countries rely on them.

Reminds me of this movie, and Dr. John Lilly, who I knew via his writing about acid and dolphins, which the Pentagon wanted him to train for Vietnam, but he was like gross fuck you---as wiki sez:

As of March 2022, The Day of the Dolphin holds a rating of 43% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews.[17]

Differences from the novel and other sources of inspiration
Merle's novel, a satire of the Cold War, is supposedly the basis for this film, but the film's plot was substantially different from that of the novel. The movie is instead inspired in part from the scientist John C. Lilly's life. A physician, biophysicist, neuroscientist, and inventor, Lilly specialized in the study of consciousness. In 1959, he founded the Communications Research Institute at St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and served as its director until 1968. There he worked with dolphins exploring dolphin intelligence and human-dolphin communication.

See also Bottlenose dolphin communication and John Lilly and cetacean communication.

Let’s talk about the state of the war and one of the most underreported yet crucially important issues:

Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports and resulting strangulation of the country’s economy 🧵

— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) April 30, 2022

Really interesting bigger pic

As ever it's second hand and then some but the Twitter feeds I've been following on the conflict have been noting over the last couple of days that whatever the Russian big advance was supposed to have been seems to have slowed noticeably. Probably explains why Gerasimov's been sent there but it doesn't seem to have changed anything else. Some points of note:

Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 30 April 2022

Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/TU1DzgHpEu

🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/mfMgJGMqAL

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) April 30, 2022

If these Ukrainian claims are at all accurate (it should be noted that documented, photographed claims of Russian losses are about two thirds of those claimed, so they certainly should not be out by much) then the Russians have lost 217 tanks and 404 APCs since the battle started

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) April 30, 2022

Even if they are exaggerrated by 20 percent, Russian losses would be extreme, around 20 full strength BTGs worth? And according to the Pentagon, the Russians have 92 BTGs in Ukraine. https://t.co/OfxADElCBF

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) April 30, 2022

Meantime, supposedly another Russian general's been killed:

Ukrainian sources are claiming this artillery strike on a 2nd Army Russian command post near Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast, killed Major General Andrey Simonov.

It's yet to be confirmed by Russian sources but it's significant they named a specific general. pic.twitter.com/bohq0iX56G

— Jimmy (@JimmySecUK) April 30, 2022

Those O'Brien tweets are excellent quality.

He's been solid these past few months. And I appreciate his regular noting that what happened with Syria shouldn't be ignored now that everyone's paying more attention.