The Russia is getting more evil thread

[JMR]

Sadly it looks like the Ukrainian offensive is going to be hindered by a new enemy.

r/UkraineWarVideoReport - Cats on a Ukrainian soldier's car.

[strategy]

Not saying that Ukrianian casaulties are not as high as mentioned, but it’s worth noting that we really don’t know (for either side).

For those of you who don’t mind Google Translate (it really isn’t so bad these days), here is an interesting expose of life as a Russian soldier (“Dima” from Moscow) during some of the past months near Svatove in October.

Rædslen greb Ruslands rekrutter – til sidst trak generalen sin pistol

The sources for the article are entirely Russian btw. They have deliberately not sourced anything from Ukrainian sources.

[KevinC]

He was given a bulletproof vest without armor plates, an old Soviet helmet and an automatic weapon that could only fire if the barrel pointed slightly upwards.

This, after his personally bought gear was stolen earlier. Yikes.

[Grifman]

Ukraine is aiming at the Crimea (a thread):

Mike Martin 🔶

[abrandt]

@JMR

Sadly it looks like the Ukrainian offensive is going to be hindered by a new enemy.

This is just a cultural misunderstanding. It’s just the way that cats greet their liberators.

[spiffy]

@Grifman

https://twitter.com/threshedthought/status/1591901040089202689?s=46&t=QdSVCb_4LSSPs5K7RY3NWA

That’s ambitious, and scarey as shit… no easy retreat if things get out of hand, with your back to the water and reinforcements probably not quick to amass. The Russians have to have a ton of troops to swing around too, after pulling out of Kherson.

[strategy]

There are so many brutal parts to that story. His mother turning him in. Being ditched at the front with no instructions. The equipment situation. Complete lack of C&C.

[Grifman]

According to the thread, it’s a feint/distraction.

[BennyProfane]

@JMR

Sadly it looks like the Ukrainian offensive is going to be hindered by a new enemy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UkraineWarVideoReport/comments/yutplp/cats_on_a_ukrainian_soldiers_car/

Clearly agent purrvacateurs.

[dtolman]

The peninsula is marshy parkland with almost no access roads. The Russians aren’t sending in an army to drive them out, and the Ukrainians aren’t going to be able to use that as a staging area for a major land attack without a LOT of work to build infrastructure under the watchful eye of Russian drones (and satellites)

[Canuck]

I wonder if it would work to keep the Russians from massing too many troops up north around Bahkmut. And the Ukrainians might not want to use it as troop staging area if they can merely use it as an area to lob artillery over into Crimea. I don’t know how feasible it will be to get artillery across that piece of water though.

[Mark_Weston]

Status-6

[Calelari]

I imagine the Russian response will be along the lines of Хуй тебе.

[Dejin]

Overview of the geography of the Peninsula and what the Russians have been using it for:

ChrisO

Analysis of attack from random think tank guy specializing in amphibious warfare (for Paradox game players, this thread was recommended by historian Bret Devereaux of ACOUP):

B. A. Friedman

[Strollen]

Frontline is back with another amazing documentary from a country at war;

It turns out there are a lot of brave Russians, fortunately for Ukraine, many of them are young women in Russia protesting and documenting the war. I understand battlefield bravery, but it is a special type of bravery to risk going to prison for a decade just to report on what is going on inside Russia.

Putin's War at Home | FRONTLINE

[KevinC]

Regarding that sledgehammer video. From ISW:

Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin continues to establish himself as a highly independent, Stalinist warlord in Russia, becoming a prominent figure within the nationalist pro-war community. Prigozhin commented on a Russian execution video of a reportedly exchanged Wagner prisoner of war, Yevgeniy Nuzhin, sarcastically supporting Nuzhin’s execution and denouncing him as a traitor to the Russian people.[6] Most sources noted that Wagner executed Nuzhin following a prisoner exchange on November 10, but a few claimed that Wagner kidnapped the serviceman via Prigozhin’s connections to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian General Staff.[7] Prigozhin claimed that Nuzhin planned his escape to free Ukraine and used the opportunity to compare Nuzhin to Russian elites who disregard the interests of the Russian people and fly away from Russia‘s problems in their personal business jets.[8] The Russian nationalist community overwhelmingly welcomed the public punishment of the supposed deserter, noting that the Wagner command is undertaking appropriate military measures to discipline its forces.[9] Some milbloggers even compared the execution to Joseph Stalin’s “heroic” execution of Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky who had also fled Bolshevik Russia, further confirming Prigozhin’s appeal among the proponents of Stalin’s repressive legacy.[10] Prigozhin is taking actions that will resonate with a constituency interested in the ideology of Russia’s national superiority, Soviet brutalist strength, and distasteful of the Kremlin’s corruption, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has used as a political force throughout his reign.

Prigozhin is steadily using his participation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine to consolidate his influence in Russia. One milblogger voiced a concern that the integration of Wagner mercenaries into Russian society is “the destruction of even the illusion of legality and respect for rights in Putin’s Russian Federation.”[11] The milblogger added that Prigozhin is seizing the initiative to expand Wagner’s power in St. Petersburg while Russian security forces are “asleep.” Such opinions are not widespread among Russian nationalists but highlight some concerns with Prigozhin’s rapid expansion amid the Russian “special military operation” and its implications on the Putin regime. Prigozhin, for example, has requested that the FSB General Prosecutor’s office investigate St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov for high treason after St. Petersburg officials denied a construction permit for his Wagner Center in the city.[12] He had also publicly scoffed at the Russian bureaucracy when asked if his forces will train at Russian training grounds, likely to further assert the independence of his forces.[13] Prigozhin’s unhinged antics in the political sphere are unprecedented in Putin’s regime.

It would be so very Russian to finally get rid of Putin only to be replaced by someone even more awful.

[Scott123]

So if the signs are pointing to a Crimea war (I admit its a ways away and there’s other territory still well in play). I find myself uncertain if I would be ok with ending this dumb war at Crimea. I mean I do of course want them out, screw Putin and his stupid expansionism. But if they at least declared ‘we won, the Nazis are dead’ or some other BS and decided to throw everything left at defending Crimea. What say you all? Is it worth it? I guess no one could answer that.

[TheWombat]

Well, maybe we can convince the Russians to mount a doomed cavalry charge!

[Grifman]

In the Russia doing more evil category:

John Sipher

[KevinC]

Ugh.

What is already apparent, however, is that the Russians here operated a detention system on a scale not seen in any of the dozens of other cities, towns and villages liberated by Ukrainian forces in recent weeks.

An outline of mass incarceration was already appearing on Saturday and Sunday, when a dozen people told The Post that they had either been detained themselves or were searching for someone who had been taken. Many approached reporters on the street, asking for help in finding their loved ones.

A mother was arrested in front of her teenage son and held for two months on a suspicion of helping Ukrainian forces.

A 64-year-old man was detained and beaten with a hammer for fighting — eight years ago.

A priest was arrested and sent to Crimea, according to a congregant. Even the mayor was arrested. Still, no one knows where he is.

“We’re talking about thousands of people,” said Oleksandr Samoylenko, head of the regional council of Kherson. “On any given day, the Russians had 600 people in their torture chambers.”

And, understandably:

“We wanted to kill them so badly but we had to smile to their faces because we knew that one wrong word could land us in there,” Serhiy said.

I don’t think Ukraine is looking for peace anytime soon.