They did last time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
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They did last time.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
A massive blast and fire in Sevastopol. The ruzzians are going to have a hard time gassing up the Black Sea fleet. :)
Attachment 101263
Dramatic video footage has shown a fuel tank ablaze in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from a suspected drone attack.
The peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 has come under repeated attacks since the start of Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year for which Moscow has blamed Kyiv.
Clips shared on social media on Saturday show flames ripping through the facility in the Kazachya Bay district and smoke billowing into the sky. By daylight, the plume of smoke was still rising over the city.
The Moscow-installed governor of Crimea, Mikhail Razvozhaev, said on his Telegram account that preliminary information suggested two drones had caused the fire. Tass news agency reported it engulfed around 21,500 square feet.
There were 60 firefighters trying to control the blaze, which Razvozhaev said was under control but would not be fully extinguished until 6 p.m. local time, around 14 hours after it started. No one had been injured and there would be no evacuation of nearby residents, the governor added.
He said that the fire will not affect the fuel supply situation in Sevastopol, adding, "I want to emphasize once again: the main thing is that no one was hurt. With the rest—we'll figure it out."
Over the last six months, there have been regular reports of fires and attacks on the Russian-occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, its largest city and the main naval base for Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
Ukraine has repeatedly said it intended to recapture the peninsula as part of its aims to fight against Russian aggression. Ukraine's armed forces, which Newsweek has contacted, have not commented on the latest blaze, but Ukrainian social media users reveled in the reported strike.
"The Ukrainian nights can be a bit chilly in the Springtime, so the Armed Forces of Ukraine generously helped the Russian invaders get warmed in the occupied Sevastopol," tweeted Operation Starsky, the account of a Ukrainian national guardsman.
"Nothing brings me more pleasure on the weekend morning than burning accidents at Russian occupiers' bases in temporarily occupied Crimea. Nothing," tweeted Maria Drutska.
"Is this the official start of Ukraine's spring counteroffensive to liberate Crimea from Russian fascists?" tweeted Igor Sushko, a Ukrainian racing car driver.
It comes a day after Russian missiles hit residential areas in Ukraine which authorities said have killed 25 people. In the attacks, buildings were hit by missiles in Uman, in the Cherkasy region.
Following the strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Kyiv's allies to provide better air defenses, including fighter jets "to provide security to our cities, our villages, both in the rear and on the front lines."
Crimea Oil Depot Engulfed in Fire After Drone Attack
Some video footage here...
https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status...46956909658114
‘Stop Deceiving the Population’: Russia’s Mercenary Boss Threatens Full-Blown Mutiny
Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is back to humiliating the Kremlin and threatening to sabotage Vladimir Putin’s war effort.
“Russia is on the brink of catastrophe,” he said in an interview with a pro-war military blogger on Saturday, openly calling B.S. on the Kremlin’s repeated claims that all is going according to plan in Ukraine.
“We need to stop deceiving the population and telling them that everything is fine,” he said, accusing Russia’s top military brass of deluding themselves about the war or “not giving a damn.”
Prigozhin blamed his foe, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for a lack of ammunition that he said could cost Russia the war.
In the nearly hour-and-a-half long video interview—apparently filmed days earlier—he read out a letter he said he’d sent to Shoigu on Friday, in which he issued a brazen ultimatum threatening to pull his mercenaries out from Bakhmut if the defense ministry does not immediately provide the required ammunition.
Apparently for added effect, he also threatened to tattle on Shoigu to Putin personally.
“The bell is already ringing, we’re sounding the alarm,” he said.
The group, he said, has enough rounds of ammunition left only “for days, not weeks.”
When asked if perhaps the military didn’t want to provide weapons to Wagner out of a fear that the mercenary group “might storm the Kremlin” and seize power, Prigozhin conceded that the idea is “interesting” but said he wasn’t focused on staging a coup.
But he made his scorn for military leaders abundantly clear, admitting that the Russian army’s military gains in Ukraine have been laughable.
“What have we even done [since Feb. 24]? We’ve turned the Russian army – the second army in the world – into what? Who the hell knows. … What kind of army are we if we couldn’t even manage with itty bitty Ukraine?”
“It’s a complete mess everywhere, there’s no discipline. The army has everything, but there is absolutely no control, while there is an absolute paranoid gap between that which is happening in the trenches, and that which they know and think about in headquarters.”
He went on to warn that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is right around the corner, but said that among Russia’s military brass, “nobody gives a damn.”
Wagner, he said, is recovering “thousands and thousands” of bodies of its dead fighters “every day.”
According to him, it won’t be long before he will hold “those accountable who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Russian guys.”
Prigozhin’s latest outburst follows a string of earlier public criticisms of Shoigu and defense ministry officials. The Wagner boss’s repeated—and very public—rants against top military brass have sparked some speculation that he’s angling for political office, a cushy job in the government, or simply preemptively laying blame for future embarrassing war losses.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/stop-d...=home?ref=home
and so endeth his time on earthQuote:
Originally Posted by misskit
KYIV — “After Ukraine, Chechnya,” says the Chechen commander fighting on Kyiv’s side.
The Chechen soldiers are clear they’re in Ukraine to make up for around two centuries of Russian oppression of their mountainous and frequently mutinous homeland — from Joseph Stalin’s population deportation in the 1940s to Boris Yeltsin’s razing of their capital Grozny to the current, brutal rule of Moscow’s satrap in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
“We are tired of Russia,” adds the 45-year-old commander, who asked to be identified only by his military call sign Torto, a reference to a castle near his hometown back in Chechnya, which he left as a young rebel soon after the Second Chechen War ended in 2009.
“Russia is like a drunk neighbor. One day he comes to your home and wants to burn it. You catch him, he runs away. Another day he comes back sober and begs for forgiveness. And then he returns drunk with a pistol and kills your wife and kids,” he says.
“This is the Third Chechen War — and this time we will win,” interjects one of Torto’s soldiers, a 20-something who goes by the call sign Maga. A husband and father, he says his partner fully supports his decision to fight, although she “worries about me but knows this fighting needs to be done.”
There are around 150 to 200 Chechen volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian side, most the émigré sons and grandsons of fighters who fought in the First or Second Chechen Wars.
They are divided into three formations — the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion, named after the first post-Soviet president of independent Chechnya; the Sheikh Mansur battalion, which has been criticized for ties with Islamist groups; and a more secretive battalion that works with Ukraine’s military intelligence service, GUR, and whose members dress in black and even when in the safe confines of Kyiv move around armed and wearing ski masks.
The consensus among the foreign volunteers here is that the Chechens are among the most committed and ideological about the fight, as much as the 200 or so Belarusians who fight for Ukraine, and much more so than most of the Westerners and Latin American volunteers. The latter tend to be here for the money. The former — mainly Americans and Brits — are generally veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, and with a few exceptions acknowledge they’re here because they didn’t fancy civilian life and don’t want their experience and training going to waste, although they also subscribe to the rightness of the Ukrainian cause.
The Chechens are currently engaged largely in Bakhmut, the monthslong bloody battle that’s led to high casualties on both sides and has been compared to clashes in World War I for its gore. A keen student of military history, Torto says, “it is Verdun,” a reference to the longest battle of World War I.
“It is sheer hell,” adds Torto, who has lived in Ukraine since 2016 and before that in Germany.
We are sitting in the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion’s so-called clubroom, a basement in the suburbs of Kyiv, discussing why they’re fighting in this war far from their homeland as well as discussing the qualities and characteristics of other foreign volunteers battling in Ukraine against Russia and what they think about the Chechens fighting for Vladimir Putin — an estimated 12,000 of them at various times since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Both Torto and Maga are in no doubt that they ultimately are here to fight for Chechnya — a defeat in Ukraine for Russia will lead inexorably to an armed uprising in their homeland in the North Caucasus, they argue, and not just there but right across the Caucasus region sandwiched between the Sea of Azov, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. “Sooner or later, we will all be free,” says Torto, a large bearded man who strokes gently a gray tabby cat clawing on his fatigues.
“Believe me, when Russia loses this war with Ukraine, it cannot exist as a state. It’s impossible. It will fall apart,” he adds, a view echoed by Belarusian volunteers POLITICO interviewed two days before. “We just need freedom. People need freedom,” Torto says.
Torto expresses disgust at Russia’s Chechen fighters, nicknamed Kadyrovites — and especially at the atrocities they’ve been associated with. Tagged the “TikTok army” for their online promotion of their brutality, the Kadyrovites have been accused of rapes, killings and looting in Bucha, and in July were accused of the torture and castration with a box cutter of a Ukrainian POW in Pryvillia, Luhansk region, which they posted on their Telegram channel.
Some investigators suspect it might have been Kadyrovites rather than Wagner group mercenaries who beheaded a Ukrainian captive earlier this month, which was also posted online. Maga and Torto disparage the Kadyrovites as “not real soldiers” who are only in Ukraine for the money.
The Kadyrovites are useful for Moscow as propaganda — a warning that Russia will treat Ukraine as it did Chechnya and destroy everything it can. And for Kadyrov they help promote his image as a warrior, they say. The TikTok army is seldom near the front lines, the pro-Ukrainian Chechens note, and are only used just for mopping-up operations to sow fear, say the pro-Ukraine fighters.
Aside from Bakhmut, where they have given no quarter, their proudest moments so far in the war have been running sabotage and reconnaissance operations north of Kyiv soon after Russia’s invasion and participating in the operation to liberate Izium, in northeast Ukraine.
But for all their diehard commitment to the fight, the Chechens are the poor relations of the foreign volunteers fighting here. Unlike the other foreign formations, they are not formally part of the international legion, aren’t paid by the Ukrainian government and must equip themselves. “They do give us ammunition when we are at the front lines,” says Maga.
To stay in the fight they are resourceful, appealing widely for donations and selling online war items collected from the battlefield. Other foreign and Ukrainian units are generous, often allowing the Chechens to keep the lion’s share of any arms and ammunition left behind by Russian forces when they retreat. “Russia is our biggest arms supplier,” chuckles Torto. Requestioned equipment includes some heavy machine guns grabbed from disabled tanks.
Why they’re treated differently isn’t fully explained by Ukrainian officials, who mention there are legal problems as they are technically Russian citizens. But Torto suspects it’s a lot to do with the widespread perception of Chechens as cutthroat rogues and thieves.
That hasn’t deterred members of the Dzhokhar Dudayev battalion or dampened their enthusiasm for the fight, and they hope their participation in this war will slowly change how many Ukrainians view Chechens — although the cruelty of the Kadyrovites, of course, isn’t helping.
And of the expected major Ukrainian counteroffensive? They have high hopes but say it is not going to be easy to defeat Russia, which will mobilize more men. But the fight must go on, says Torto.
“When I hear French or German experts talking about how Russia must be saved and not be allowed to fall apart and how it can be rebuilt as a democratic state, I just shake my head,” he says.
When Russia is defeated in Ukraine, look to Chechnya – POLITICO
The second army in Ukraine?Quote:
Originally Posted by misskit
Analysis: A chaotic 72 hours show Russia's lacking readiness for Ukraine's counteroffensive
Ukraine's much-anticipated counteroffensive appears imminent — and the way each side is preparing speaks volumes about their readiness.
Kyiv’s frontlines are abuzz with vehicle movement and artillery strikes, with regular explosions hitting vital Russian targets in occupied areas.
Its defense minister has said preparations are "coming to an end" and President Volodymyr Zelensky has assured a counteroffensive "will happen," while demurring on any exact start date.
It may have already started; it may be weeks away. We don’t know — and that fact is a strong measure of Ukraine’s success as this begins.
Moscow, on the other hand, is in the closing-time bar brawl stage of their war. After losing Kharkiv and Kherson, they have had at least seven months to ready the next likely target of Ukrainian attack: Zaporizhzhia.
That has happened, with vast trench defense networks that can be seen from space. That recognition of their enormity is not necessarily a compliment in 2023. They are big, yes, but they are also something anyone can peruse on Google. That’s not great in an era of precise rockets and speedy armored advances.
But it's the last 72 hours that have perhaps most betrayed Russia's lacking readiness:
First, the apparent firing of the deputy defense minister in charge of logistics, Mikhail Mizintsev. The Russian Ministry of Defense has not spelled out his dismissal, merely issuing a decree that Aleksey Kuzmenkov now has his job.
The "Butcher of Mariupol," as Mizintsev is known, surely had enough failings over Russia’s disastrous war to merit his firing. But this fails to satisfy the question: Why now?
By removing key ministers in the moments before its army faces Ukraine's counter-assault, Moscow sends a message of disarray.
And then there's Yevgeny Prigozhin's new round of criticism. The Wagner mercenary warlord chose Sunday to give another long interview in which he laid bare the sheer extent of the issues his mercenaries face.
According to the Wagner head, his fighters are so low on ammunition that they may have to withdraw from Bakhmut — the strategically unimportant city they have squandered thousands of lives trying to take.
(A caveat: Prigozhin is not the most trustworthy source, and provides little evidence for what he says. But this sort of public spat isn’t something Moscow would encourage at this sensitive moment).
Russia’s eroding ammunition supplies were long known, but to suggest imminent failure just ahead of the counteroffensive smacks of a major bid to shift blame.
Bottom line: The hours before Ukraine moves are shrinking. The amount we know about their emotional state, or target, is almost zero. And the extent of Moscow’s internal indecision, rivalries and disunity only grows.
April 30, 2023 Russia-Ukraine news | CNN
I am afraid I don't understand this reply.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
What last time. Was a nuclear device explode in the Ukraine and I missed it?
Are you just being pedantic, or have you not heard of Chornobyl?Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
I am sure Harry can defend himself, but since you decided to come to his defence .Quote:
Originally Posted by pickel
Please try to pay attention, listening is IMO more important than talking
sensors and other techniques have been used to detect nuclear leaks all over the world, but that's not what we are talking about . Are we?
The article I was replying to said "The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker. "
So if a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb was detonated in the Ukraine , unless of course it was a false flag attack, I would be pretty safe to assume it was the Russians,,
How about you? who would you think it was?
'
Attachment 101286Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/statu...647861249?s=19
Seems Russia is throwing out all they have ahead of the anticipated counter offensive. Let's see if these strikes are against military targets or against civilians again as they usually are.Quote:
BREAKING:
Russia has just launched a massive wave of missile strikes against Ukraine.
More than 20 TU-95/TU-160s bombers are in the air and Kalibr missiles have also been launched from ships/subs
The missiles will reach Ukraine in 20-30 minutes
It’s 3AM and people are asleep
And who do you think would be calling it a "false flag attack"? Safe to assume it would be the Russians, hence the need for the detectors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and guess he didn't know Chernobyl was in Ukraine.Quote:
Originally Posted by pickel
Pay attention. That's not what you said:Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
Quote:
https://teakdoor.com/images/TD/misc/quote_icon.png Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai https://teakdoor.com/images/TD/butto...post-right.png
Not an expert in the subject, but I am sure we would not need radiation sensors to detect a nuclear blast in the Ukraine.
Clearly, 1986.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
I did not say it. the article said it.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
I am afraid you are confusing a nuclear power plant failure, with a Nuclear device detonation.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
I am tiring of this dance, don't expect any further replies on this subject from me,
You can have the last word if you so wish.
Ukrainian military says fuel depot fire in Sevastopol part of ‘preparations’ for counteroffensive
The attack on a fuel depot in Russian-annexed Sevastopol was part of the Ukrainian army’s “preparations” for a counteroffensive, according to Nataliya Gumenyuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Gumenyuk said that the “enemy’s logisitics were undermined” and that the attack was carried out “in preparation for the broad, full-scale offensive that everyone expects.” According to Gumenyuk, the fuel depot fire allegedly caused the Russian military to try “to evacuate their families and leave Crimea themselves.”
Ukrainian military says fuel depot fire in Sevastopol part of ‘preparations’ for counteroffensive — Meduza
I will. You're clearly oblivious to that there was a nuclear blast at Chernobyl and it was in Ukraine; No-one in the West knew about it until people started turning up for work at nuclear plants in Scandanvia setting off the radiation detectors on their way *into* work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai
Otherwise you would have said "Ah yes, silly me".
But now you've just made yourself look even sillier.
:)
Another smoking incident, no doubt. :)
A fire broke out Saturday on the property of a sanctioned Russian factory that is the country's sole manufacturer of multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS).The incident was first reported by Kommersant, an oligarch-owned Russian newspaper, which cited a statement from the Kremlin's Ministry of Emergency Situations. The fire broke out on the grounds of the PJSC Motovilikha Plants in the central Russian city of Perm at around 8 p.m. local time, reportedly stemming from a transformer booth. A team was dispatched, according to the ministry, to handle the blaze, which had reportedly reached a size of 10 square meters.
"Today, a fire broke out at the transformer substation on the territory of the enterprise," the factory's press office said in a statement to Pravda. "The fire was promptly contained by the specialists of the Ministry of Emergency Situations who went to the spot."
Numerous photos and videos have also begun circulating online showing the fire, including a brief clip posted to VK Video, in which the fire and a massive plume of smoke can be seen from close by.
The plume can also be seen at a much greater distance in a series of photos and videos shared to Twitter by the Perm 36.6 independent news project.
A video of the fire was also shared to Twitter by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs.
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/...96944843501577
The PJSC Motovilikha Plants is notable, according to Kommersant, in that it is the only factory in Russia that manufactures MLRSs, common fixtures on the modern battlefield that are capable of launching rapid volleys of missiles over long distances.
Last December, the plant was sanctioned by the European Union (EU) for providing these systems to the Russian armed forces during its brutal ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Kommersant also reported that the factory has been in bankruptcy proceedings since 2018.
Newsweek reached out to Russian officials via email for comment.
Perm is situated close to the center of Russia, roughly 1,500 kilometers east of Moscow. As such, it is unclear how likely it is that the fire was potentially caused by Ukrainian forces. Numerous strikes, both accidental and allegedly intentional, have been reported within Russia's borders since the start of the invasion that the Kremlin has blamed on Ukraine. However, these incidents have happened much closer to the border between the warring nations.
In a statement to Newsweek on Sunday, European defense expert Rajan Menon with the Defense Priorities think-tank, said that the attack fit a pattern of suspicious incidents at Russian military-affiliated facilities, but that evidence did not exist to suggest Ukraine was responsible this time around.
"This is but one of the mysterious fires that have occurred over the past several weeks in Russia," Menon wrote. "The fire in Perm was followed by the most recent episode, which occurred at an industrial site in the Kystovsky district of Nizhni Novgorod. There has inevitably been speculation about whether these fires are the result of Ukrainian covert operations (especially because some fires have occurred at military production facilities) or the work of resistance groups withIn Russia. I know of no hard evidence that points to, or rules out, either."
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-mlr...eports-1797569
I was in Germany at the time as a teenage army brat. It was a scary time indeed.Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
Railroad explosion in Russia's Bryansk region causes cargo locomotive to derail
An explosive device was detonated on railroad tracks in Russia’s Bryansk Region, which borders Ukraine, Governor Alexander Bogomaz reported on Monday.
According to Bogomaz, the blast caused a freight train’s locomotive to derail, though no people were injured. The section of the track where the explosion occurred has been temporarily closed to traffic.
The Telegram channel Baza reported that in addition to the locomotive, seven or eight freight cars carrying petroleum products and lumber derailed as a result of the explosion and caught on fire.
Railroad explosion in Russia'''s Bryansk region causes cargo locomotive to derail — Meduza
This can't be possible. According to Comrade skiddy there is no resistance in ruzzia or Ukraine. But then again, he did claim that ruzzia would take Kyiv in three days.Quote:
Originally Posted by misskit
:rofl:
Power transmission pole blown up in Russia's Leningrad region
Leningrad Governor Alexander Drozdenko reported Monday that a power transmission pole in the region’s Gatchinsky District was blown up just after midnight on the night of April 30–May 1. A second explosive device was found at another transmission pole, he said, but bomb technicians managed to de-mine it.
Drozdenko said the explosion didn’t cause any power outages.
Power transmission pole blown up in Russia'''s Leningrad region — Meduza
Alarming perhaps, but I wouldn't have called it scary. In fact, I can't even recall what I was doing when it happened, my last year in the forces.Quote:
Originally Posted by bsnub
You do understand the difference between a detonation and an explosion ?Quote:
Originally Posted by harrybarracuda
There was an explosion at Chernobyl, and an explosion at the Mayak, and Fukushima. But none was caused by a dirty bomb or nuclear device detonation that needed to confirm confirm the identity of the attacker.
You know why? BECAUSE THERE WAS NO ATTACK.
Detonation is the action, explosion is the result. A volcano can explode but it was not detonated
Anyway I said everything I had to say on the subject.