Russia and its “Special Operation” in Ukraine

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

48 minutes ago, blandy said:

TBH neither side will benefit long term or "win". It's impossible.

A large chunk of Ukraine has been raised to the ground, millions dispersed and millions more forcibly moved to the far end of Russia. Tens of thousands of dead and injured on both sides, Russia sanctioned and more isolated and will be for decades...

It will be impossible for Russia I agree but as with the West Germany project after the war they can come out of this OK ish long term.

In theory the West will help rebuild Ukraine to a high standard only when the West can control the corruption aspect of the money distribution.  I would hope the west go down the "Bullseye" route,  look at what you could have won to Russia and rebuild it in an amazing why right in front of the Russians.  

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, Anthony said:

I've been ruminating on the change for Ukraine, in particular, corruption. Things were rather bad before the invasion, anti corruption being Zelenskyy's main platform, with the possible exception of the armed forces post 2014. I have a feeling he was losing the battle.

If you look at the various causes of corruption, one of them is the feeling that 'the state does **** all for me and means nothing to me, I'm out for everything I can get', then during a war such as this, that feeling diminishes and people act in the interest of society a little more. It isn't black and white; here in the UK we've always had spivs, and the black market was very much a thing during WW2 for example, but I wonder to what extent is this war helping to reduce corruption, and to what extent this reduction will remain after the war is over? We know how it will look if Putin wins, but if Ukraine successfully kicks the invaders out? Will corruption be seen as unpatriotic, or possibly even pro-Russian?

Wartime also gives some pretty great opportunities for corruption. It’s pretty easy to hide all sorts of things in the chaos of war. 

[blandy]

2 hours ago, Anthony said:

anti corruption being Zelenskyy's main platform,

Hmmm. Well I guess, but I'm not sure he really meant it. Obviously now, the way the media works, he's a whiter than white hero, but he was named in the Panama papers as having stashed a chunk of cash offshore

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy

Quote

On the campaign trail, Zelenskiy pledged to clean up Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated ruling system. And he railed against politicians such as the wealthy incumbent Petro Poroshenko who hid their assets offshore. The message worked. Zelenskiy won 73% of the vote and now sits in a cavernous office in the capital, Kyiv, decorated with gilded stucco ceilings. Last month, he held talks with Joe Biden in the Oval Office.

The Pandora papers, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian as part of a global investigation however, suggest Zelenskiy is rather similar to his predecessors.

The leaked documents suggest he had – or has – a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote....

...

Before becoming president, Zelenskiy declared some of his private assets. They included cars, property and three of the co-owned offshore companies. One, Film Heritage, which he held jointly with his wife, Olena, a former Kvartal 95 writer, is registered in Belize.

But the Pandora papers show further offshore assets that Zelenskiy appears not to have revealed. Film Heritage had a 25% stake in Davegra, a Cyprus holding company. Davegra in turn owns Maltex Multicapital Corp, a previously unknown entity registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Zelenskiy, the Shefir brothers, and Yakovlev each held a 25% stake in Maltex.

On 13 March 2019, two weeks before the first round of voting in Ukraine’s election, Zelenskiy gave his quarter stake in Maltex to Serhiy Shefir, documents show.

 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

In theory the West will help rebuild Ukraine to a high standard only when the West can control the corruption aspect of the money distribution.

Another Hmmm. The west is by no means corruption free. The syphoning of money happens all over the world. We might not have leaders with Putin levels of corruption, but we're no saints.

[LondonLax]

It’s also a mad how a Ukraine gas company who was drilling for gas in Crimea lost its drilling rights in March 2014 when Russia took over Crimea, then a month later appointed the  US vice presidents son to their board of directors. That vice President is now the President and supplying the weapons needed to take back those gas fields.

Talk about having friends in high places

[LondonLax]

Ukraine hit a Wagner base in East Ukraine after a Russian journalist posted a photo of himself outside and the street address was visible in the background

[Genie]

It sounds like there’s been another stray cigarette in Crimea. You’d think those things would be banned so close to ammunition stores.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

20 hours ago, blandy said:

Another Hmmm. The west is by no means corruption free. The syphoning of money happens all over the world. We might not have leaders with Putin levels of corruption, but we're no saints.

Agreed but I view the world as the bigger the money involved then there will be corruption as a given % depending on where you are in the world.

Sytems and the mechanics to deliver as much as possible a corruption free re-build right under Russia nose must be done at any monetary cost.

 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

Is it correct that Russians cannot leave anymore to Europe.  Putin has not got long left now I suspect.  A nicely caged population unable to visit family or emigrate. 

Brain drain is almost at 500k allready the silly man.

[magnkarl]

With the recent strike in Dzhankoi, I think it's almost guaranteed that a) Ukraine has received long range rockets from the West or b) they've developed their own long range versions. It's around 200km from the closest 'safe' area.

NATO generals seem quite puzzled at how tech savvy Ukrainians are, they've apparently applied themselves to such a degree that they're better at counter battery radars and high tech equipment than their original trainers. Kyiv had a very active developer community, I guess it goes a long way with the drones and jerry-rigging different equipment into effective systems.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

I can't work out if NATO intelligence is amazingly good or whether simple Ukrainian people are making the difference 

Are NATO finding large stores of weapons by mapping Russian military traffic via satellite? 

Have we got the ability to chemically detect large stores of explosives?  Something like a bomb sniffing dog on a 200km lead.

Have batches of Russian ammunition had something added to them so they can be tracked electronically.  

Does NATO have almost complete access to Russian communications? 

Or is it the simple man in Crimea living opposite that big warehouse called "Ivan's Artillery Shells Limited." 

 

 

 

 

 

[blandy]

3 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I can't work out if NATO intelligence is amazingly good or whether simple Ukrainian people are making the difference 

Are NATO finding large stores of weapons by mapping Russian military traffic via satellite? 

Have we got the ability to chemically detect large stores of explosives?  Something like a bomb sniffing dog on a 200km lead.

Have batches of Russian ammunition had something added to them so they can be tracked electronically.  

Does NATO have almost complete access to Russian communications? 

Or is it the simple man in Crimea living opposite that big warehouse called "Ivan's Artillery Shells Limited."

A bit of a mix of some of them, I'd wager.

Western intelligence capability in terms of surveillance and SigInt is very good. Plus a lot of the Russian communications is being done by mobile phone and such like, rendering it highly vulnerable to the other side. The next thing is that there's a ton of folk who've been invaded who are in and amongst all the Russian activity - so know where stuff is and really want the Russians gone.

Almost certainly yes

No

No

Quite possibly (though more national than NATO as such) - but how much is encrypted and indecipherable I don't know.

Some of that, too.

I'm interested in the reverse to an extent - a few weeks ago Russia was launching missiles and aircraft attacks against what they said were various UA arms stores and shipped in western kit, but that seems to have died off in terms of news reporting. Clearly there were Russian sympathising people in Ukraine feeding stuff back to Russia - Ukraine has arrested various officials and charged them with doing so.

Then again what we see reported is a sliver of filtered "truth".

[sidcow]

21 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Are NATO finding large stores of weapons by mapping Russian military traffic via satellite?

Does NATO have almost complete access to Russian communications?

I would say 70% the first, 15% the second and 15% on the ground intelligence. 

Every satellite in space must be tracking military movements over Russia and Ukraine.   They can probably track each and truck movement and watch in detail what's being loaded into and off it. 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

There have been some interesting changes in Russian reporting lately.  Today's mystery ammunition explosion in Crimea has been attributed to "sabotage".  Six downed electric pylons near Kursk were similarly reported as "sabotage".  Until recently events like this have been blamed on accidents. 

But the best Russian reporting of the day must be that the UK asked Russia for permission to fly a spy plane over Russian territory.  Asked permission! 

"Excuse me old chap, but we were wondering if you wouldn't mind awfully if Ginger Parkington-Smythe flew over your northern military bases on Tuesday?  How about Wednesday?" 

 

 

[blandy]

6 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

But the best Russian reporting of the day must be that the UK asked Russia for permission to fly a spy plane over Russian territory.  Asked permission! 

They also reported that the plane entered Russian airspace without permission and was chased away and they're all cross n'that.

There's pretty much NATO surveillance aircraft monitoring the region 24/7.

[blandy]

10 minutes ago, sidcow said:

They can probably track each and truck movement and watch in detail what's being loaded into and off it. 

Unless it's cloudy.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

They also reported that the plane entered Russian airspace without permission and was chased away and they're all cross n'that.

There's pretty much NATO surveillance aircraft monitoring the region 24/7.

RAF - trolling level 999.  

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

Unless it's cloudy.

Sure, but they can spot general movements and build ups ove time. 

[bickster]

23 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I would say 70% the first, 15% the second and 15% on the ground intelligence. 

Every satellite in space must be tracking military movements over Russia and Ukraine.   They can probably track each and truck movement and watch in detail what's being loaded into and off it. 

There is of course another factor. Russian f***Ing stupidity

You know the Wagner base talking about that got blown up the other day. It wasn't because of a journalist giving the location away, I mean the poster of the original picture may have been a Russian journo, it then appeared in the r/ukraine subreddit and then the base was geolocated from peoples knowledge and pssed on to the SBU, a day later.... boom. Today in the same sub, a user hasd posted a picture, again very recent from SM showing a railyard and in that railyard is a huge stockpile of artillery shells, expect boom time soon.

Who poses for photos and allows them to be posed on social media (Telegram in this instance) of your operational headquarters in an active warzone. I mean its up there with all the dumb shit Russia does. The airfield of Chernobaivka being classic dumb shit, when it was way behind the lines is was an airfield, they kept parking planes on it - boom. Eventually they realised this was a bad idea so they just used it as an ammo dump instead. That site got hit at least 25 times. Russian military doctrine really is that dumb, you do it by the book, you do as you are told, even junior officers don't have the ability to make decisions.

Also in the dumb as f*** RUssian behaviour, no comms, so they used Ukraines mobile phone network to communicate until they realised then destroyed Ukraines mobile phone network and couldn't communicate at all

[magnkarl]

Here’s what was spotted in the rail yard that Ukraine hit today when someone filmed out of the train earlier in the morning..