Thread: Russia launches Ukraine invasion

Originally Posted by nidhogg

bsnub, i kinda have a soft spot for you, but sometimes you can be a fucking idiot.

I understand how worse it can get. I lived in Germany during the Cold War, and the nuclear brinksmanship was there every day, but even back then they understood NATO forces had to keep the Russian bear in check. My response to you was well written and logical, I have no idea what brought out the knee-jerk ad hominem aside from the fact that I disagreed with you.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

Still puts you above sabang who is a complete fucking idiot mind.

Well, at least you clarified that.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

If you think this cannot go a whole lot worse, you are dreaming.

War is won and lost through logistics, not just the fight at the front, those of us who served understand this. Those attacks in Russian territory are having a much bigger effect than you may realize and could in the end be critical to turning the war to Ukraine's favor. Constant reluctance out of fear of what Russia might or might not do is a fool's errand.

The SAS have a motto "who dares wins". During WW2, especially in North Africa, they fought hundreds of miles behind enemy lines and wreaked havoc. Ukrainian SpecOps have been heavily trained by US Special forces, Navy SEALs and SAS. Let the hungry dog eat.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

"Russia is waging a war in Ukraine and the imperative to move away from Russian oil and gas, for the world to move away from Russian oil and gas screams that there is an imperative that we electrify," she added.

i had to read that three times.

Germany imported more than any other country

It is also the largest economy in Europe, roughly double the size of UK & France. Of course it needs to import more energy.

Germany hopes to find a way within days to replace Russian oil with supplies from other sources, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Tuesday, adding that Germany could then cope with an EU embargo on Russian oil imports.Under pressure to reduce its dependence on Russian energy, following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Germany has previously said it could wean itself off of Russian oil by the end of the year. It has rejected, however, the idea of an immediate ban on imports to the European Union. read more

"Today I can say that an (oil) embargo has become manageable for Germany," Habeck told journalists during a visit to Poland for talks about energy security.

Before the war in Ukraine, Russian oil accounted for about a third of Germany's supply. A month ago, Habeck said that Germany had reduced its dependence on Russian oil to 25% of its imports.

On Tuesday he said that Russian oil now accounted for only 12% of Germany's supply and went entirely to one refinery, the PCK refinery in Schwedt near Berlin. PCK is majority-owned and operated by Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM). read more

"The Schwedt business model is based on buying Russian oil. That is a bone of contention, we need an alternative for Schwedt, and we will be working on it in coming days," Habeck said.

Germany aims to find alternative to Russian oil within days | Reuters

Uniper to pay for Russian gas via Russia account- paper

Uniper will transfer payments for Russian gas to a Russian bank and no longer to a Europe-based bank, the German power utility told newspaper Rheinische Post on Thursday.

"The plan is to make our payments in euros to an account in Russia," the daily paper cited a Uniper spokesperson as saying.

Even though Russia has demanded rouble payments for its gas, the payments system it has proposed foresees the use of accounts at Gazprombank, which would convert payments made in euros or dollars into roubles.

The European Commission said last week that if buyers of Russian gas confirmed payment was complete once they had deposited euros, as opposed to later when the euros have been converted to roubles, that would not breach sanctions.

Uniper on Wednesday said it considered Russian gas flows into Germany secure for now despite a halt in supplies to Poland and Bulgaria as transit volumes headed elsewhere would be unaffected, Germany's top importer of Russian gas said on Wednesday.

Uniper to pay for Russian gas via Russia account- paper | Reuters

Probably nearer the truth but of course Putin and the media would never admit it. Be nice if they could spell Defence correctly.

Russian Soldier Confirms 25,900 Trooper Deaths, Including Commanders In Ukraine

More than 25,000 Russian soldiers have died since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, according to an intercepted phone call made by one soldier.

Ukraine’s Security Service on Wednesday released a recording of an intercepted phone call where one Russian soldier was heard discussing the loss they suffered since the war began on Feb. 24.

“So many of our boys have been f**king killed, for f**k’s sake. One thing is what they say officially, but I’ll tell you: 25,900 killed. This is during the f**king 2 months…” the soldier told his friend.

“The brigade commander [general’s position] got hit,” he added.

In another intercepted call published Tuesday, Russian soldiers were heard refuting a story that claimed they have successfully captured the Ukrainian town of Rubizhne. The soldier also admitted that Ukrainian troops made even elite Russian units “suffer.”

“I was also told that they said on TV that Rubezhnoye had been taken. We haven’t taken f***ing anything! We’re standing at the same site,” the soldier said. “Russian ‘spetsnaz’ [special forces] came here… They also got f***ing beaten a bit, last night.”

It is unclear how many Russian soldiers have died in the war, primarily due to a lack of reporting from the Kremlin. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Ukraine claimed they have killed 22,400 Russian soldiers and downed 185 Russian aircraft, 155 helicopters, 939 tanks, 2,342 armored personnel vehicles and 71 anti-aircraft warfare systems as of April 27.

British Defense Secretary George Wallace on Monday said about 15,000 Russian military personnel have been killed since the start of the war. The British Defense Ministry also estimated that Russia has lost over 2,000 armored vehicles and at least 530 tanks since the start of the war.

Despite huge losses among the Russians, Ukraine has also suffered from a large number of casualties in the war. As of Tuesday, a total of 2,787 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, including 1,985 adults and 202 children. A total of 3,152 people also sustained injuries in the war.

The figures are estimates made by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner. However, the organization noted that the actual toll could be considerably higher.

https://www.ibtimes.com.au/russian-soldier-confirms-25900-trooper-deaths-including-commanders-ukraine-1812890

Ukraine Prosecutors Lay Out First Criminal Charges Against Russian Soldiers After Bucha Massacre


Ukrainian prosecutors investigating war crimes in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha have laid the first criminal charges against 10 named Russian soldiers, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The men, who are accused of taking civilians hostage or otherwise mistreating them, are all privates or NCOs from the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade—which President Vladimir Putin has since honored. After the Russian retreat from Bucha, searchers have found more than 400 bodies, many of them found to have been shot in the head with their hands tied behind their back. Teams of international and Ukrainian investigators have been working to catalog the crimes and identify the perpetrators. The Journal reports Kyiv prosecutors continue to build cases against Russian officers and others accused of more serious crimes in Bucha and nearby towns.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/first-...=home?ref=home

but this doesn't matter, as Hat has said numerous times Germany isn't reliant on Russian supplies and so its irrelevant....surely OR basically Russia has Germany over a barrel and will do so for the foreseeable. Dance for me......

German energy giant Uniper gives in to Russian rouble demand

One of Germany's biggest energy firms has said it is preparing to buy Russian gas using a payment system that critics say will undermine EU sanctions.

Uniper says it will pay in euros which will be converted into roubles, meeting a Kremlin demand for all transactions to be made in the Russian currency.

Other European energy firms are reportedly preparing to do the same amid concerns about supply cuts.

Uniper said it had no choice but said it was still abiding by EU sanctions.

"We consider a payment conversion compliant with sanctions law and the Russian decree to be possible," a spokesman told the BBC.

"For our company and for Germany as a whole, it is not possible to do without Russian gas in the short term; this would have dramatic consequences for our economy."

Germany's biggest energy supplier RWE declined to comment on how it would pay for Russian gas.

In late March, Russia said "unfriendly countries" would have to start paying for its oil and gas in roubles to prop up its currency after Western allies froze billions of dollars it held in foreign currencies overseas.

Under the decree, European importers must pay euros or dollars into an account at Gazprombank, the Swiss-based trading arm of Gazprom, and then convert this into roubles in a second account in Russia.


The European Commission said last week that if buyers of Russian gas could complete payments in euros and get confirmation of this before any conversion into roubles took place, that would not breach sanctions.

However there are different views among countries on how to interpret its initial guidance, and this week EC boss Ursula von der Lyon sparked confusion when she said firms could still be breaking the rules.

On Thursday, an EU official confirmed that any attempt to convert cash into roubles in Russia would be a "clear circumvention of sanctions" as the transaction would involve Russia's central bank.

"What we cannot accept is that companies are obliged to open a second account and that between the first and second account, the amount in euros is in the full hands of the Russian authorities and the Russian Central Bank, and that the payment is only complete when it is converted into roubles."

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61257846

At a market in the industrial town of Lysychansk in east Ukraine — war-scarred after relentless attacks by Russian forces — one woman quietly hopes Moscow’s army will break through.

“Technically, we’re Ukrainian. But Donbas is not Ukraine,” Olena confided to AFP, referring to swathes of east Ukraine that Moscow has vowed to capture from Kyiv.

“Ukrainians are the foreigners here — not Russians,” she said, giving a pseudonym, concerned that unpopular opinions like hers could land her “in prison”.

Olena’s view on the war is not unique in this part of Ukraine where long-standing ties with Russia, nostalgia for the Soviet Union and hopes for a fast end to fighting mean many would welcome a Russian takeover.

For years the Kremlin has accused Ukraine of discriminating against Russian speakers in the Donbas region, which has been partially controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014.

It says it wants to “liberate” parts of the mining and oil hub still controlled by Kyiv.

Moscow’s forces are closing in, pounding Lysychansk and seizing villages around it.

Ukraine’s army has put up fierce resistance, slowing Russia’s advance, but some wearing blue and yellow patches already feel as if they are in enemy territory.
“Even if we do everything possible to hide our positions, residents here give the other side information about us,” a sergeant in the Ukrainian army, Iryna, told AFP.

– Donbas ‘had everything’ –

Attesting to that, Kyiv’s army regularly announces arrests of “saboteurs” in Donbas territory it controls and many among the rank and file said they were suspicious of residents.

Iryna, whose unit recently withdrew from Russian-controlled Kreminna north of Lysychansk, described this tale-telling as “very, very common”.

“It comes from people who are supposed to be above suspicion — even priests,” she added.

Some Ukrainian troops and officials hope that the Donbas residents fleeing fighting towards Russia are the ones sympathetic to Moscow.

Still, they worry pro-Russia sentiment is lingering among some who have remained.

“These are people who at best don’t mind and at worst are hoping for the arrival of the Russians,” Vadim Lyakh, the mayor of Sloviansk in northwestern Donbas, told AFP.

Lyakh, whose city briefly fell to the separatists in 2014, said however that now was not the time to confront the mainly elderly Kremlin-sympathetic residents who long for the Soviet past.

“Now is not the time to quarrel with them,” he told AFP.

Language is regularly pointed to as a sticking point in the predominantly Russian-speaking Donbas, where Moscow dispatched many ethnic Russians to work after World War II.

But residents said the issues at hand centred on values, identity and the region’s economy that was shattered during the Soviet collapse in 1991 and blamed on Kyiv.

Donbas “had everything: coal, salt, chemical industry,” said Olena, who worked at an oil refinery in Lysychansk for two decades.

– Communist flags and portraits –

“While the Ukrainians protested on Maidan, we were working!” she said of historic street demonstrations in 2014 that toppled Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader.

A Russian takeover of Donbas would restore the struggling region’s economic prowess, says Olena, lighting up as she recalls old Soviet glories.

A bunker built for employees of the Ost Chem nitrogen plant in Severodonetsk, across a river from Lysychansk, is filled with regalia from that era.

Communist flags and portraits of Alexei Stakhanov — a legendary Soviet worker from Donbas hailed by authorities as a model for efficiency — line its walls.

More than 160 residents of the frontline town have been sheltering in the bunker for two months. Most accuse Ukraine of shelling their town, not Russian forces.

Tamara Dorivientko, a retired English teacher, is reading Jane Austen on her makeshift bed while she waits for the shelling to end.

“Why would I be afraid of the Russians? We lived in the Soviet Union for 70 years,” she said. “We’re the same.”

She says she sympathises with Moscow but also “loves” Ukraine.

“I’d have preferred to stay there,” she said, describing it as “a beautiful country with a lot of freedom”.

“The decision has been made for us,” she told AFP.

Sloviansk mayor Lyakh said there is little Ukrainian authorities can do to counter the pro-Russian sentiment.

“They want the war to end but don’t see a problem with Russia’s conduct of hostilities,” he said.

Hopefully, he said, Russia’s destruction of other Ukrainian cities “will make them change their minds”.

'Donbas is not Ukraine': in industrial east, hopes for Russian rule - Digital Journal

Originally Posted by sabang

It says it wants to “liberate” parts of the mining and oil hub still controlled by Kyiv.

Says it all, really.

^ Early on there were reports the Russians were deploying their battlefield cremation vehicles. They won't bring their sons home to their families as that would confirm the West's media reporting and stir up discord - they are either cremating them and/or burying them in "safe zones" i.e. in the areas they control or as was mooted, back in Belarus but whatever the case i suspect any ID will have been removed and sadly for the families back in Russia they'll never get to bury their children and will probably be told some Ukrainian war atrocity accounts for their disappearance.

Ukraine hopes to evacuate civilians holed up with fighters in Mariupol steel works



An operation is planned to evacuate civilians trapped in Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant on Friday, the Ukrainian president’s office has said, without providing further details.


At least one person has been killed after two explosions hit the capital Kyiv during UN’s chief Antonio Guterres’ visit who was left “shocked“.


Moscow regards winning the “Battle for Donbas” as crucial if it is to achieve its stated objective of securing control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the east, Britain’s defence ministry has said.


A local police official says the bodies of 1,187 dead civilians have been found so far in Kyiv region.


Some 8,000 UK soldiers will conduct a series of planned exercises across Europe this summer, the British ministry of defence has said, noting it will be the “largest deployment since the Cold War”.


US President Joe Biden asks Congress for $33bn to support Ukraine.

MORE Russia-Ukraine live news: Kyiv plans Mariupol evacuations | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera

Russian rockets hit Kyiv as UN chief visits, but besieged Mariupol main target


KYIV, April 29 (Reuters) – Two Russian missiles struck Kyiv during a visit by the head of the United Nations, Ukrainian officials said, but the West believes the battles for the besieged port of Mariupol and other areas in the east and south may determine the war’s outcome.


Russia withdrew its forces from outside Kyiv last month after failing to take the capital and launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.


But Thursday’s blasts in Kyiv, heard soon after U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres completed talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, highlighted concerns that the capital remains vulnerable.


Zelenskiy said the blasts “prove that we must not drop our vigilance. We must not think that the war is over.”


The rockets shook the central Shevchenko district of the city and one struck the lower floors of a 25-storey residential building, wounding at least 10 people, Ukrainian officials said.


Reuters witnesses heard two explosions, but their cause could not be independently verified. There was no Russian comment on the blasts.


Russian forces are now entrenched in the east, where Moscow-backed separatists have held territory since 2014, and are holding onto a swathe of the south that they seized in March.


Ukraine’s general staff said Russia was stepping up its military assault in the Donbas.


“The enemy is increasing the pace of the offensive operation. The Russian occupiers are exerting intense fire in almost all directions,” it said.


Moscow’s assault in the east drew new U.S. pledges of military and humanitarian aid for Ukrain on Thursday.


Heeding repeated Ukrainian pleas for heavier weaponry, U.S. President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion to support Kyiv, a massive jump in funding that includes over $20 billion for weapons, ammunition and other military aid.


“We need this bill to support Ukraine in its fight for freedom,” Biden said. “The cost of this fight – it’s not cheap – but caving to aggression is going to be more costly.”


Putin calls Moscow’s actions a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine, defend Russian-speaking people from persecution and prevent the United States from using the country to threaten Russia.


Ukraine dismisses Putin’s claims of persecution and says it is fighting an imperial-style land grab that has flattened Ukrainian cities, forced more than 5 million to flee abroad and killed thousands since the invasion started on Feb. 24.


Washington, which together with its allies has placed sweeping sanctions on Moscow, hopes Ukrainian forces can not only repel Russia’s assault in the east but also weaken its military so that it can no longer menace neighbours.


Russia regards NATO’s actions as tantamount to waging a “proxy war” against it, and has made a number of threats this week of unspecified retaliation.


It cut gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria on Wednesday after they refused to pay in roubles, marking Moscow’s toughest response yet to Western economic sanctions.


Russia has reported what it says have been a series of Ukrainian strikes on Russian regions that border Ukraine and has warned that such attacks risk significant escalation.


On Thursday, two big explosions were heard in the Russian city of Belgorod near the border with Ukraine, two witnesses told Reuters. It was unclear what caused them and whether there were any casualties or damage.


Ukraine has not directly accepted responsibility for strikes inside Russia but says the incidents are payback. Russia has taken umbrage at statements by NATO member Britain that it is legitimate for Ukraine to target Russian logistics.


“In the West, they are openly calling on Kyiv to attack Russia including with the use of weapons received from NATO countries,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow.


“I don’t advise you to test our patience further.”


Kryvyi Rih, Ukrainian officials said.


The U.S. mission to the OSCE security body said the Kremlin might attempt “sham referenda” in southern and eastern areas it had captured since the Feb. 24 invasion, using “a well-worn playbook that steals from history’s darkest chapters”.


“These falsified, illegitimate referenda will undoubtedly be accompanied by a wave of abuses against those who seek to oppose or undermine Moscow’s plans,” the U.S. mission said. There was no immediate Russian comment.

Russian rockets hit Kyiv as UN chief visits, but besieged Mariupol main target | Thai PBS World : The latest Thai news in English, News Headlines, World News and News Broadcasts in both Thai and English. We bring Thailand to the world

Puffy really has lost the plot hasn't he.

In the two months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the silence — and even acquiescence — of the Russian elite has started to fray.

Even as opinion polls report overwhelming public support for the military campaign, amid pervasive state propaganda and new laws outlawing criticism of the war, cracks are starting to show. The dividing lines among factions of the Russian economic elite are becoming more marked, and some of the tycoons — especially those who made their fortunes before President Vladimir Putin came to power — have begun, tentatively, to speak.

For many, the most immediate focus has been their own woes. Sweeping sanctions imposed by the West have brought down a new iron curtain on the Russian economy, freezing tens of billions of dollars of many of the tycoons’ assets along the way.

“In one day, they destroyed what was built over many years. It’s a catastrophe,” said one businessman who was summoned along with many of the country’s other richest men to meet Putin on the day of the invasion.

The White House further turned the screws on the oligarchs Thursday, announcing a proposal to liquidate their assets and donate the proceeds to Ukraine.

At least four oligarchs who made it big in the more liberal era of Putin’s predecessor, President Boris Yeltsin, have left Russia. At least four senior officials have resigned their posts and departed the country, the highest ranking among them being Anatoly Chubais, the Kremlin special envoy for sustainable development and Yeltsin-era privatization czar.

But those in top positions vital to the continued running of the country remain — some trapped, unable to leave even if they wanted to. Most notably, Russia’s mild-mannered and highly regarded central bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina, tendered her resignation after the imposition of Western sanctions, but Putin refused to let her step down, according to five people familiar with the situation.

In interviews, several Russian billionaires, senior bankers, a senior official and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, described how they and others had been blindsided by their increasingly isolated president and feel largely impotent to influence him because his inner circle is dominated by a handful of hard-line security officials.

The complaints aired in public so far are mostly muted and focused primarily on the government’s proposed economic response to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West. No one has directly criticized Putin.

Vladimir Lisin, a steel magnate who made his fortune in the Yeltsin years, slammed a proposal in the Russian parliament to counter sanctions by forcing foreign buyers to pay in rubles for a list of commodities beyond gas. In an interview with a Moscow newspaper, he said the measure risked undermining export markets that Russia “fought for for decades,” warning that “a transfer to payments in rubles will just lead to us being thrown out of international markets.”

Vladimir Potanin, the owner of the Norilsk Nickel metals plant who was an architect of Russia’s privatizations in the 1990s, warned that proposals to confiscate the assets of foreign companies that exited Russia in the wake of the war would destroy investor confidence and throw the country back to the revolution of 1917.

Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum tycoon who also made his initial fortune during the Yeltsin era, has gone furthest, calling the war in Ukraine “insanity,” though he too has focused on the invasion’s economic toll. He has predicted that the economic crisis resulting from the sanctions would be three times worse than the 1998 financial crisis that rocked the Russian economy, and he has thrown down the gauntlet to the Putin regime, saying its state capitalism policies of the past 14 years have “led neither to economic growth nor to the growth of the population’s incomes.”

In a subsequent post on his Telegram channel, Deripaska wrote that the current “armed conflict” was “a madness for which we will long be ashamed of.” In the next sentence, however, he indicated the West was equally to blame for a “hellish ideological mobilization from all sides.”

‘We’ve lost everything’

When 37 of Russia’s wealthiest business executives were called to the Kremlin for the meeting with Putin hours after he launched the war on Feb. 24, many of them were depressed and shocked. “Everyone was in a terrible mood,” one participant said. “Everyone was sitting there crushed.”

“I’d never seen them as stunned as they were,” another participant said. “Some of them could not even speak.”

They’d been kept waiting, as usual, for more than two hours before the president appeared in the Kremlin’s ornate Ekaterininsky Hall — ample time to consider their fate. For some of the executives, as they quietly discussed the consequences of Putin’s war, it was the moment they realized that it was all over for the business empires they’d been building since Russia’s market transition began more than 30 years ago.

“Some of them said, ‘We’ve lost everything,’ ” one of the participants said.

When the president arrived, no one dared issue a whimper of protest. Stone-faced, they listened as Putin assured everyone Russia would remain part of global markets — a promise soon made hollow by the series of Western sanctions — and told them he’d had no other choice than to launch his “special military operation.”

Since then, Putin has ratcheted up threats against anyone criticizing the war, hastily issuing new laws that include a potential 15-year prison sentence for anyone saying anything the Kremlin deems false about the Russian military. His administration has proposed instituting a new system of deputies in Russia’s ministries to report back to the Kremlin on the “emotional climate and mood.” One tycoon said he expected the coming crackdown to be “cannibalistic” compared with the “vegetarian period” of previous years.

Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion appears to have stunned not just the billionaires but the breadth of the Russian elite, including senior technocratic officials and some members of the security services, according to two of the Russian billionaires and a well-connected Moscow-based former state official.

“Apart from those directly involved in the preparations, [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu, [chief of the army’s general staff Valery] Gerasimov, and some from the FSB, no one knew,” said one of the billionaires.

Despite the escalating warnings by U.S. intelligence, many in the Moscow elite had believed Putin was limiting his aims to the separatist areas of eastern Ukraine. Economic and financial officials “thought it would be limited to action in Donetsk and Luhansk and this is what they had prepared for,” the senior official said. They had prepared for Western sanctions, including a suspension from Swift, the international financial messaging system, he said, “but they hadn’t prepared for this.”

With casualties mounting and Russian troops forced to turn back from Kyiv, the war is now being viewed with increasing dismay not just by billionaires sanctioned by the West but even by some members of the security establishment, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.

One referred specifically to Shoigu, who took part in the war preparations. “They all want to have a normal life. They have homes, children, grandchildren. They don’t need war,” this person said. “They’re all not suicidal. They all want to have a good life. They want their children to have everything and be able to travel to the most beautiful places.”

The mounting pressure on their foreign bank accounts is a source of particular chagrin for the elite. Even officials who tried to protect themselves by moving their money into accounts belonging to business partners now find that these accounts are blocked, one of the Moscow executives said.

Trapped in Moscow

Western sanctions to freeze $300 billion — or nearly half — of the Central Bank of Russia’s hard currency reserves left Moscow reeling, including central bank governor Nabiullina, whose resignation attempt was rejected by Putin, according to the five people familiar with the situation. (Bloomberg News first reported her attempt to resign.)

Nabiullina “understands very well she can’t just leave. Otherwise, it will end very badly for her,” one of these people said.

“No one can say ‘That’s it’ and then slam the door,” said Vadim Belyaev, the exiled former main owner of Otkritie, Russia’s biggest private bank until its takeover by the state in 2017. “Everyone will continue working right up to the next Hague tribunal,” he said, referring to a possible war crimes trial. The central bank has denied that Nabiullina tried to resign.

Only those officials who are superfluous to the running of the state — and are relative outsiders — have been allowed to leave, economists said. “No minister is allowed to step down,” said Maxim Mironov, an associate professor at IE University in Spain. “It is like a mafia.”

If Nabiullina epitomizes Moscow’s senior technocratic officials, then Alexei Kudrin is the one closest to Putin. Kudrin — a former member of Putin’s inner circle from St. Petersburg who served as finance minister for the first two terms of his presidency — also appears to be among those unable to step down.

One person close to Kudrin said he met with Putin a month before the invasion. Although it was clear that preparations for war were underway, Kudrin had believed the plans would not be carried out, one person familiar with his thinking said. “He counted on things not reaching such a head,” the person said.

Kudrin — who now heads the Audit Chamber, Russia’s financial watchdog — has told allies it would be a betrayal by him to leave for good. He’d appeared in Tel Aviv the weekend of April 9 but took to social media to telegraph to all that he intended to return to Moscow to speak at Russia’s upper chamber the following week. He gave his address according to plan, warning that Western sanctions were confronting Russia with the worst economic downturn in 30 years.

Another former senior state official said he felt a responsibility to remain in Moscow, even though he was taken aback and horrified by the war. “If everyone leaves, then who is going to be here to pick up the pieces,” he said. “It’s like working at a nuclear power station. Who is going to run it if you leave? If you leave, then there is a chance it can explode.”

Yeltsin’s tycoons and Putin’s tycoons

Among the billionaires who left Russia in the immediate aftermath of the invasion are several who grew wealthy during the Yeltsin era, including Alexander Mamut and Alexander Nesis, who own the Russian gold company Polymetal, and Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven of Alfa Group.

But many other tycoons high-tailed it to Moscow as soon as they were hit with sanctions, which have barred them from travel in the West. Other business executives fear that if they leave Russia, their companies will be seized by the government, one of the Moscow business executives said.

Some of the billionaires now stuck in Moscow are seeking only to emerge unscathed. “You may not support the war but you have to keep quiet and be with your countrymen because some of your soldiers are dying,” said one person close to one of the billionaires present at the Feb. 24 Kremlin meeting. “If you are living in the country, you may not be happy — nobody is happy about what’s going on — but don’t voice your opinion.”

Those billionaires who have been willing to speak out publicly are those who remember a different era; they made their first fortunes in the Yeltsin years, before Putin became president.

Sergei Pugachev, a Kremlin insider until he left Russia in 2011, pointed out that these tycoons were still careful in their public comments not to directly criticize Putin for going to war. “What they say is subtle: The context is that the West, NATO is to blame. … They are talking about this as though it is a conspiracy against Russia,” he said.

By contrast, those closest to Putin — who are from St. Petersburg and became fabulously wealthy after his rise to the presidency — such as Gennady Timchenko, Yury Kovalchuk and Arkady Rotenburg, are resolutely silent. They “would never go against Putin. They started with Putin, and he made them gazillionaires. Why would you bite the hand that feeds you?” said a former senior Western banker who worked with Russian oligarchs.

Apart from these tycoons, there is an army of officials and business executives in Moscow who are not troubled by Russia’s increasing economic isolation as a result of the invasion, Pugachev said, and many of the contacts he retains in Moscow have not faulted Putin for going to war. They have complained instead that the army should have been better prepared.

He said many members of the current elite are mid-level government ministers who have stashed millions of dollars in private accounts and maintain homes elsewhere in Europe. If sanctions prevent them from traveling to these countries, they’ll still be fine. “He’s still a minister in Russia, and instead of going to Austria, he’ll go to [the Russian resort] Sochi. They don’t suffer very much,” Pugachev said.

On the surface, moreover, the Russian economy has appeared to stabilize since the initial salvo of sanctions, buoyed by estimated revenue of more than $800 million a day from the sale of oil and gas to Europe. The central bank’s policy to force exporters to sell 80 percent of their hard-currency earnings has prevented a ruble implosion, while Putin has declared that the “economic blitzkrieg” against Russia has failed.

But earlier this month, Nabiullina warned the impact of sanctions was yet to be fully felt and said the worst was still to come. The manufacturing plants, where “practically every product” depended on imported components, were beginning to run out of supplies, while reserves of imported consumer goods were dwindling, too. “We are entering a difficult period of structural changes,” she told parliamentary deputies. “The period during which the economy can live on reserves is finite.”

In these conditions, Putin’s position is precarious, Pugachev said. The population has so far been lulled by the state propaganda machine, which has covered up the level of deaths in the Russian military, as well as by the sanctions’ lack of immediate bite. “But in three months, the shops and factories will run out of stocks, and the scale of deaths in the Russian military will become clear,” he said.

Despite the near-fatal blow to their interests, for now, the Russian business elite appears to be still frozen in fear. “I don’t know who has the balls to fight back,” said one of the business executives.

“But if the war is long, and they begin to lose, then the chances will be greater,” he said. “There will be a serious battle for Donbas and, if it is not successful, then there will be a big battle inside Russia” among elites.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...asion-dissent/

Russia’s Donbas offensive has made little progress in fierce combat, Western officials and analysts say.


The clenched fist of military forces that Russia mustered in eastern Ukraine appears to be losing some of its punch, with the effort to capture all of the Donbas region stalling, according to a senior Pentagon official and other military analysts.

The Russian offensive seems to be several days behind schedule, the Pentagon official said on Friday. It is facing stiff resistance from Ukrainian forces and suffering from some of the same problems with logistics and low troop morale that have plagued the Russian military since it launched a sweeping invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the official said.

That assessment of the fighting across a broad swath of eastern Ukraine, from the southern coast to the city of Kharkiv in the north, largely comports with what Ukrainian officials have said. But claims from both sides are difficult to confirm on the ground, given the lack of access to the battlefield.

In this latest phase of the nine-week war, Russia’s military is trying to exploit its advantage in the quantity and range of its artillery systems in fights against the more motivated and mobile — but also more lightly armed — Ukrainian defense forces.

Moscow announced the start of the renewed offensive in Donbas nearly two weeks ago but has yet to score any major territorial advances. Despite a three-pronged attack from the north, south and east, Russian forces have only made incremental progress at best, the Pentagon official said.

At the start of its invasion, Russia attempted lightning advances to seize cities and strategic sites, only to see its forces bogged down with heavy losses. Though they were able to secure territory in the south, they were forced to retreat in the north.

Now, using a strategy dating to Soviet times, Russia is relying on artillery to pound Ukrainian forces all along a 300-mile front. Ukrainian forces are ceding small patches of territory only to reclaim them.

“It’s a knife fight,” said the official, with the two sides waging fierce combat in the flat, wide-open terrain that distinguishes this phase of the war from the urban battles in and around northern cities, separated by hills, woods and marshes, that defined the first several weeks.

Russia now has 92 battalion groups fighting in eastern and southern Ukraine — up from 85 a week ago, but still far fewer than the 125 it used in the first phase of the war, the Pentagon official said. Each battalion group has about 700 to 1,000 troops.

Many of Russia’s battalions suffered heavy casualties and equipment losses in the early fighting and were withdrawn to Russian territory. Efforts to reinforce and resupply the battered battalions were hurried, and as a result, many of the units rushed back into the fight are likely not at full strength, the Pentagon official said.

In light of these troubles, one British military expert said the Russian assault on the Donbas had “sort of fizzled,” and that Russia risks running out of new troops to deploy there.

“They pulled all of these mauled units out of Kyiv, and then tried to reconstitute them for combat in the east,” said the analyst, Mike Martin, a visiting fellow in war studies at King’s College London. The Kremlin has thus far resisted implementing a general mobilization that would entail wider conscription of Russian men.

An assessment of the combat in Ukraine by Britain’s Defense Intelligence agency released on Friday also suggested sluggish movement by the Russian forces.

“Due to strong Ukrainian resistance, Russian territorial gains have been limited and achieved at significant cost to Russian forces,” the agency said in a statement.

North of Donbas, Ukrainian forces have been waging a campaign to push Russian troops away from Kharkiv, once Ukraine’s second-largest city. Fighting has been fierce there, and Ukraine’s military hopes to force the Russians out of artillery range of Kharkiv, which is just 20 miles from the Russian border.

The Ukrainians there have been fighting to retake territory that Russians have held since early in the war. In recent days, they wrested back control of Ruska Lozova, a town of 6,000 people some 12 miles north of Kharkiv, enabling scores of its residents fleeing down an open road to Kharkiv. It was not clear whether they were able to hold the town in the face of a Russian counterattack.

The Ukrainian military, in a briefing in Kyiv on Friday evening, also noted logistical setbacks for the Russian army, but suggested that they had been surmounted in some instances. A presidential aide suggested the Russian forces had already suffered “colossal losses” in Donbas, though that assessment could not be immediately confirmed.

Latest Russia-Ukraine War News: Live Updates - The New York Times

• Russia has carried out missile attacks across southern and eastern Ukraine, including one that destroyed the runway at Odesa airport.
• A group of 20 civilians have left the Azovstal steelworks, where the last Ukrainian troops are holed up in Mariupol, according to the Azov regiment.
• A Russian reconnaissance plane briefly violated Sweden’s airspace, Swedish defence officials said.
• A Russian official told state media that the risks of nuclear war should be kept to a minimum amid conflict in Ukraine.
• Fourteen Ukrainians including a pregnant soldier have been freed in the latest prisoner exchange with Russian forces, Ukraine says, without revealing the number of Russians returned to Moscow.

Russia-Ukraine live: Russian attack destroys Odesa airport runway (msn.com)

KYIV, Ukraine — A fuel depot in Russia burst into flames, moments after surveillance video captured the bright streaks of rockets fired from low-flying helicopters. A fire broke out at a military research institute near Moscow. Additional fuel tanks have exploded.

These and other similar attacks in Russia have been some of the most intriguing, and opaque, military developments in the last month of the war. If carried out by Ukraine, they represent acts of once nearly unimaginable audacity; one of them prompted the first air raid siren on Russian soil since World War II.

Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out the helicopter strike and military analysts have suggested that Ukrainian sabotage is very likely responsible for the other fires. Ukraine, for its part, has made no official admissions but instead has winked at the possibility of its involvement, with one official suggesting the fires were just Russia’s bad “karma.”

Now, a senior Ukrainian official has described in the clearest terms yet his government’s policy on strikes inside Russia, calling it one of strategic ambiguity.

“We don’t confirm, and we don’t deny,” said the official, Oleksei Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff.

Mr. Arestovych, in an interview, compared the approach to Israel’s longstanding policy of ambiguity on nuclear arms, another issue of extraordinary geopolitical sensitivity.

“After what has been happening, officially we don’t say yes and we don’t say no, just like Israel,” he said.

Any escalation of attacks on Russia by Ukraine could have far-reaching implications, perhaps influencing public opinion about the war in Russia, or inflaming the Kremlin to the point of escalating its own strikes.

If Western weaponry were deployed in striking Russia, it would fuel Russian propaganda that blames the West for the war and enhance the possibility that the conflict could spill past Russia and Ukraine’s borders.

The fires at Russian military sites, beginning with the April 1 helicopter assault on the fuel depot in Belgorod, about 15 miles from the Ukrainian border, have injected a new element into the military equation of the war. They raise the possibility that Russia, after weeks of inflicting devastating damage in Ukraine, might start to suffer losses on its own land.

The strikes come in two forms: the clear military attack with low-flying helicopters near the border, and sabotage deeper inside Russia.

Russian and Ukrainian media reports have attributed a dozen or so blazes to strikes or sabotage. In addition to the helicopter strike there have been at least three other fires at military sites that seem suspicious, and which military analysts have said were very likely set intentionally.

And while some fires point clearly to an assault or an act of sabotage — such as the two fires that broke out in quick succession at fuel tanks in Bryansk on April 25 — others have remained inscrutable, with neither Russia nor Ukraine suggesting a relation to the war.

The incidents have stirred debate over whether a wider set of targets in Russia may drive home to the Russian people that the war, seen for now only on television and filtered through state propaganda, has a cost at home.

Alternatively, the fires and explosions might cause Russians to rally around the flag in ways damaging to Ukraine, such as in building support for a general mobilization in Russia. That would enable the Kremlin to dispatch more soldiers to the battlefields, despite heavy losses so far.

Ukrainian officials, for their part, have hinted at their involvement with dark humor.

A deputy interior minister, Anton Gerashchenko, posted on Twitter a “no smoking” sign beside a picture of the fuel depots in Bryansk engulfed in flame.

Kyiv has also signaled that any counterattacks in Russia are simply part of a war Russia started, and asked, perhaps fatalistically, what more could Russia do to Ukraine? After all, the Russian army is already engaged in a full-scale assault.

“If you decided to attack another country, commit mass murder, crush peaceful people with tanks, and to support murder using warehouses in your region, then sooner or later the time will come to repay that debt,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a negotiator for President Volodymyr Zelesnky. “So, the disarmament of the killers’ warehouses in Belgorod and Voronezh regions is just a completely wholesome, natural process. Karma is a harsh thing.”

Mr. Arestovych’s comment on Ukrainian policy was the most forthright so far laying out the Ukrainian government’s position of ambiguity, even as officials in Kyiv have been openly suggesting Russians should expect a continuing spat of mysterious fires.

So far, Ukraine has received public support from Britain for directly attacking Russia, with James Heappey, an official in the Foreign Secretary’s Office, saying the strikes were “completely legitimate” given the role of fuel and ammunition depots in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Heappey also endorsed the use of British-supplied weaponry, saying its use to strike inside Russia was “not necessarily a problem.”

The Russian military, which has been firing missiles and artillery at Ukrainian cities and military targets including fuel depots, continuously for two months now, warned on April 13 against Ukraine striking back.

The ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, told Russian news agencies that Russia would respond by targeting the Ukrainian leadership. “We see efforts at diversions and strikes by the Ukrainian military at objects in the Russian Federation,” he said. “If these instances continue, the Russian army will target decision making centers, including in Kyiv.”

Three major fires inside Russia followed that warning, including near Moscow, at a military research institute in the city of Tver.

In the Ukrainian military, the arson fires and helicopter assault into Russian territory have also served the purpose of lifting morale. Having seen the effectiveness of their small unit tactics against the Russian army in the battle for Kyiv in March, midlevel Ukrainian commanders have suggested continuing this strategy inside Russia.

“It will not end until we bring the war to Russia,” said the commander of a Ukrainian brigade, who asked that he be identified only by his nickname, Akula, because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

“It’s not a secret that the Russian people support the war, that it is not just Putin and the rest of the Russians are peaceful,” he said.

“We need to make Russian society fear” attacks on their own country to shift perceptions, he said. “They need to send people like me to Russia.”

Ukrainian Official Outlines Intentional Ambiguity on Strikes Inside Russia - The New York Times

Got that right! Karma is a harsh thing!

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Got that right! Karma is a harsh thing!

Some pretty daring raids if it turns out to in fact have been Ukrainian spec ops. We haven't seen this type of stuff since WW2.

Russia has exaggerated Ukrainian combat losses to such and extent, that combat aircraft, tanks and armored vehicles now amount to 600% of agreed assets held by Ukraine prior to the war.

Ukraine have also claimed Russian losses higher than those provable by independent sources. No where near the scale of claimed losses by Russian official figures, but this is normal in wartime.

Putin needs his people to remain supportive back home. The Ruble and the stock market have been supported by high interest rates and economic skullduggery, that will come back to haunt him.

Sanctions can only do so much, but when foreign investment ceases because Russia has become a failed state, where will Putin get the funding and troops/equipment required to sustain such an expensive war?

China has been both reticent and patient with its tacit support of Putins War. India benefits from low cost gas and oil now, but what will happen when the west turns the screws. It took one visit by US Sec of State and Defence, to change Germany’s decision on weapon supplies. NATO is finally showing a sense of urgency appropriate to its financial status.

Ironic that Putin should shift emphasis to the East of Ukraine where there are known reserves of gas and oil. Relying on fossil fuels to finance his war, is a major error. Those resources cannot be exploited without major funding, and western resources, neither of which are likely to be forthcoming.

The loss of export income is affecting manufacturers at home, and their big earners of oil, gas and arms sales are all being hindered by sanctions. Japan and Australia are not NATO members, but their funding and resources are no longer available to Putin, who is now an international pariah.

Perhaps our financial expert can explain how 17% interest rates in Russia can help the Russians back home, and ease the increasing burden on Putins ruthless ambition? NATO countries and other western sympathizers have interest rates in low single figures or less. They are not hampered by sanctions of any kind. They can continue supplying heavy weapons to Ukraine unhindered by any financial restrictions.

This could develop into a very long and costly war in humanitarian and economic terms. Putin will still be there at the end, in order to face lawyers at The Hague.

Originally Posted by Switch

Putin will still be there at the end, in order to face lawyers at The Hague.

I truly hope that is how it turns out.

Originally Posted by bsnub

I truly hope that is how it turns out.

I'd rather someone slipped him a cup of his own glowing tea.

That would be rather poetic and finish things sooner.