Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

FireballXL5 said:
Did the Ukrainians have solid intel that Vlad was going to be on the Kremlin roof?
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If something like this were actually true it would be more because the Ukrainians wanted to send a psychological message that they have the ability to strike at the heart of Russian territory.
 
Ukraine already denied their involvement in the night attacks on the Kremlin and fear it's only a pretext for a large terror attack on Ukraine. I fear that too, it would be by the Kremlin's playbook right before their counteroffensive to harm their morale. If the soldiers fear for their families at home, they can't really focus on what lies ahead. The Crimean bridge "attack" repeats itself.
 
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According to Prigozhin, the counteroffensive has already begun.
 
Raoul said:
How long before baldie walks the plank for disappointing Vlad ?
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I think he will be one of the last to walk the plank to be honest, because since last summer, his Wagners are more or less the only ones who advance. Of course Putin will throw him and Wagners under the bus once the war ends, but as long as he needs those human wave tactics, Prigozhin is safe I assume.
 
Ragnar123 said:
I think he will be one of the last to walk the plank to be honest, because since last summer, his Wagners are more or less the only ones who advance. Of course Putin will throw him and Wagners under the bus once the war ends, but as long as he needs those human wave tactics, Prigozhin is safe I assume.
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That makes sense, although they don't have an unlimited number of convicts willing to die in the meatgrinder, so I assume Prigozhin's demise may come sooner rather than later.
 
Ragnar123 said:
I know that there are many cameras, that's why I wrote about the perfect angle. Look at this video, what kind of camera would film exactly like that? You don't see the street, only a bit of the stands and otherwise just the wall and roof where the attack happened. Also as soon as the drone appeared, the camera moved a bit to the left for a better picture. So either it's some sophisticated radar camera or a person filmed this in the middle of the night.
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It's a cropped shot that someone is taking from a screen of a recording, so the angle itself isn't dubious at all. There are millions of different cameras near the Red Square. The rest doesn't make sense, but the camera angle isn't the biggest argument for the false flag operation.
 
Question about the coming counter-offensive if anyone could answer. In reading about the war, it seems clear that US intelligence is quite good at anticipating Russian actions. The leaks recently have reinforced this and shown the US has immense amount of information on Russian capabilities, intentions and its reactions to Western aid. Also, during the Kharkov counter-offensive, Russian intelligence seemed to be completely lost and failed to correctly interpret the direction of the true offensive, including troop massing and movements. Again, the US seems to be very good at this - in fact, it would appear at times that independent organizations/think tanks are better equipped than Russia when it comes to troop movement and concentration. Ukraine seems to have a massive advantage in intelligence and counter-intelligence.

So, with the coming counter-offensive, are there any indications that Russia has improved in this regard since the Kharkov offensive? There has been a lot of talk lately about a counter-offensive occurring, but this seems in line with what happened in Kharkov. The idea of a counter-offensive is well known, but its place and time seem to be a mystery.
 
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Wittmann45 said:
Question about the coming counter-offensive if anyone could answer. In reading about the war, it seems clear that US intelligence is quite good at anticipating Russian actions. The leaks recently have reinforced this and shown the US has immense amount of information on Russian capabilities, intentions and its reactions to Western aid. Also, during the Kharkov counter-offensive, Russian intelligence seemed to be completely lost and failed to correctly interpret the direction of the true offensive, including troop massing and movements. Again, the US seems to be very good at this - in fact, it would appear at times that independent organizations/think tanks are better equipped than Russia when it comes to troop movement and concentration. Ukraine seems to have a massive advantage in intelligence and counter-intelligence.

So, with the coming counter-offensive, are there any indications that Russia has improved in this regard since the Kharkov offensive? There has been a lot of talk lately about a counter-offensive occurring, but this seems in line with what happened in Kharkov. The idea of a counter-offensive is well known, but its place and time seem to be a mystery.
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I would guess the Russians have gotten worse as the war has gone on since they are depleted of well trained soldiers and military hardware.
 
B20 said:
satellite imagery and intercepted radio communications is how they know. I am sure the investigate department has known for a while. They will not say anything of course until the investigation has concluded.
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I work in an industry that one of our services has to do with satellite imagery and you can access anytime and with historical records. Imagine what military satellites can get in a matter of ours knowing the area that was sabotaged. And it took them 8-9 months?

And "...they will not say anthing of course until the investigation has concluded" but they are just saying that when is not concluded?

Didn't buy the ukranian/polish theory, don't buy this either because they well know who was and I doubt that we will never know for certain
 
Ragnar123 said:
NS1 was blown up shortly after Germany announced they will stop the NS2 project because of the invasion. It's crystal clear, that Putin thought Germany depended so much on his gas, that he could drive a wedge between them and the rest of Europe by forcing them to open NS2. How is that not obvious?
NS2 was always criticized by the western world, so Putin thought he can force the project. In reverse, that's also the best reason why not US, Poland or Ukraine did it themselves. Because they would have risked exactly that scenario, that Germany opens NS2 and weakens the alliance. If they would have done it, then they would have blown up both streams. But only one was blown up, so the other had to be opened (by Russian logic).
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That is something that you decided that made sense. As far as I know even if 1 pipe is sort of operable, nordstream 2 was the first to be attached partially succesfully blowed up. How you pretend to pressure anything if the attempt was blowing everything up?
 
Other Biden administration officials insist that Ukraine has never been fully open with the United States about its military plans. While Washington and Kyiv are in close touch, they naturally don’t share everything, and so there was never an expectation that Ukraine would call up the White House and say the counteroffensive begins on X day at Y time.

“They’ve been stingy with information from the beginning,” a U.S. official said.
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https://www.politico.com/newsletter...counteroffensive-details-from-allies-00094828
 
Wittmann45 said:
Question about the coming counter-offensive if anyone could answer. In reading about the war, it seems clear that US intelligence is quite good at anticipating Russian actions. The leaks recently have reinforced this and shown the US has immense amount of information on Russian capabilities, intentions and its reactions to Western aid. Also, during the Kharkov counter-offensive, Russian intelligence seemed to be completely lost and failed to correctly interpret the direction of the true offensive, including troop massing and movements. Again, the US seems to be very good at this - in fact, it would appear at times that independent organizations/think tanks are better equipped than Russia when it comes to troop movement and concentration. Ukraine seems to have a massive advantage in intelligence and counter-intelligence.

So, with the coming counter-offensive, are there any indications that Russia has improved in this regard since the Kharkov offensive? There has been a lot of talk lately about a counter-offensive occurring, but this seems in line with what happened in Kharkov. The idea of a counter-offensive is well known, but its place and time seem to be a mystery.
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Whenever it starts I think we can expect a lot of misdirection to spin the Russians in circles, they've had a long time to plan, I'm expecting operation overlord type stuff.

I don't know that we have much to go on in judging whether Russia has smartened up in the last 9 months, we'll have to wait and see. They have however focused heavily on defences since Kharkiv, we've no idea how effective those are, again have to wait and see. Misdirection aside, the success of this offensive is on the engineering effort.
 
I don't understand why everyone is assuming the drone incident is a false flag operation, this is is massive humiliation to the Russian air defences and makes Putin and his armed forces look even weaker infront of the Muscovites. Russia has always considered it's air defences among the best in the world, the fact that someone is able to fly a cheap drone over what should be the best protected place in the country is another huge failure for the armed forces and makes Putin and his generals look even weaker.
 
the hea said:
I don't understand why everyone is assuming the drone incident is a false flag operation, this is is massive humiliation to the Russian air defences and makes Putin and his armed forces look even weaker infront of the Muscovites. Russia has always considered it's air defences among the best in the world, the fact that someone is able to fly a cheap drone over what should be the best protected place in the country is another huge failure for the armed forces and makes Putin and his generals look even weaker.
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Maybe because Putin has utilized at least one false flag operation before to his potential advancement benefit?
 


Props to Germany, the IRIS-T system is looking really good. I am sure that the manufacturer will receive many orders in the near future

the hea said:
I don't understand why everyone is assuming the drone incident is a false flag operation, this is is massive humiliation to the Russian air defences and makes Putin and his armed forces look even weaker infront of the Muscovites.
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Because he benefits far more from the "Ukraine are terrorists" narrative than suffers from some short humiliation because of 2 drones. It's the same play as Crimean bridge again, which "allowed" him to start his missile terror. Let's see what those drone attacks will allow him to do. Also the timing couldn't be better for him to strike Ukraine with a huge terror wave right before their 9th May celebrations to show strength.
I'd even imagine he could go that far and strike Kiev's presidential palace in retaliation. "You attack the Kremlin, so we do the same in Kiev". I don't know if IRIS-T and Patriot systems are capable to intercept Russian Kinzhal missiles. So far, Ukraine couldn't intercept even one of them.
There is of course also the possibility that this attack was carried out by some hardliner group to try to escalate the conflict. But Ukraine doesn't benefit at all. Everyone knows Ukraine has neither the possibilities, nor the western support to attack Russian soil apart from some near border oil depots and other minor skirmishes.
 
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calodo2003 said:
Maybe because Putin has utilized at least one false flag operation before to his potential advancement benefit?
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Ragnar123 said:
Because he benefits far more from the "Ukraine are terrorists" narrative than some short humiliation because of 2 drones. It's the same play as Crimean bridge again, that "allowed" him to start with his missile terror. Let's see what those drone attacks will allow him to do.
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Russian missile terror started long before the Kerch bridge explosion, infact by that point Russia had already used up all their Iskander-M missiles and where almost exclusivly relying on cruise missiles which are much easier to intercept for the Ukrainians. If Putin wanted a false flag I think he would perfer to just blow up a bunch of civilians like he did last time instead of making his precious military look weak infront of the home crowd.
 
4bars said:
I work in an industry that one of our services has to do with satellite imagery and you can access anytime and with historical records. Imagine what military satellites can get in a matter of ours knowing the area that was sabotaged. And it took them 8-9 months?

And "...they will not say anthing of course until the investigation has concluded" but they are just saying that when is not concluded?
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"they" are not saying anything. these are the findings of Danish media.
 
the hea said:
Russian missile terror started long before the Kerch bridge explosion
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Their missile terror started when Russia appointed Surovikin as the new commander, which was on the same day the Crimean bridge exploded.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ts-notorious-general-sergei-surovikin-ukraine

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/10/12/missile-war-for-the-russian-throne-begins

I don't deny, that Russia used missiles since the start of the war. But Surovikin ordered those specific missiles waves aimed at Ukraine's civilian and energy infrastructure right before and during the winter. Those terror waves were the official and direct answer to the Kerch bridge explosion. Even Putin acknowledged it on TV.
 
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Ragnar123 said:
I remember that their missile terror started when Russia appointed Surovikin as the new commander, which was on the same day the Crimean bridge exploded.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ts-notorious-general-sergei-surovikin-ukraine

https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2022/10/12/missile-war-for-the-russian-throne-begins

I don't deny, that Russia used missiles since the start of the war. But Surovikin ordered those specific missiles waves aimed at Ukraines civilian and energy infrastructure right before and during the winter. Those terror waves were the official and direct answer to the Kerch bridge explosion. Even Putin acknowledged it on TV.
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Whatever Putin and Surovkin said doesn't matter since all they do is lie. The facts are that Russia has been bombing civilian targets as a tactic since the start of their SMO. The Kerch bridge explosion was used as an excuse but they only continued to do the same thing they had been doing since February 25th. If the bridge attack never happened I can promise you that they would still have bombed Ukrainian cities through out the winter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_railway_station_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_theatre_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol_hospital_airstrike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasiv_Yar_missile_strike
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilohorivka_school_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremenchuk_shopping_mall_attack
 
I recall reading that coordinating a missile attack like the one directly after the Kerch bridge explosion took an amount of days. Therefore, it likely wasn't a "response" to the Kerch bridge explosion.

Contrary to the claims made by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, the recent massive Russian barrage of missile and air strikes across Ukraine was planned before the Kerch Bridge explosion, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told CNN on Oct. 11.
“It likely was something that they had been planning for quite some time,” said Kirby.

“Now that’s not to say that the explosion on the Crimea Bridge might have accelerated some of their planning.”
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https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia...imea-bridge-bombing-ukraine-war-50275985.html
 
the hea said:
The Kerch bridge explosion was used as an excuse
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Yes, that's my whole point. They used it as an excuse to intensify civilian terror. The terror, they've planned weeks and months beforehand probably and they needed a trigger. How convincingly, that Ukraine gave them that excuse, right? And it's again the same play with those drone attacks on the Kremlin. Your examples are not comparable with the hundreds of missiles per wave Surovikin ordered. That was clearly a new escalation in this war.

VorZakone said:
I recall reading that coordinating a missile attack like the one directly after the Kerch bridge explosion took an amount of days. Therefore, it likely wasn't a "response" to the Kerch bridge explosion.


https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia...imea-bridge-bombing-ukraine-war-50275985.html
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Of course it was planned before. That only supports the Kerch bridge was a false flag narrative to have an excuse for a new escalation they've planned weeks beforehand.
 
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Ragnar123 said:
Yes, that's my whole point. They used it as an excuse to intensify civilian terror. The terror, they've planned weeks and months beforehand probably. And it's again the same play with those drone attacks on the Kremlin.



Of course it was planned before. That only supports the Kerch bridge was a false flag narrative.
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You believe Russia blew up one of it's most important logistics routes as a false flag?
 
the hea said:
You believe Russia blew up one of it's most important logistics routes as a false flag?
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If I take everything into account, then yes.

• Only one driving lane of the bridge was destroyed, the other one was still usable. The bridge was repaired fairly quickly.
• Putin appointed Surovikin, the butcher of Syria, on the same day to bring Ukraine with civilian terror to its knees after they started to retake regions (in the same way Surovikin performed in Syria, bombing civilians).
• Putin needed an excuse for the new escalation level he was planning, because Russia was losing ground.
• The appointment of a new commander + programming hundred of missiles takes weeks in preparation and planning. Having this answer ready just days after the bridge explosion shows Putin was prepared.
• Russia scans every truck passing the bridge for exactly that reason, as well as controls the black sea. How could have Ukraine put that huge bomb on or under that bridge? For a truck bomb, they needed to go through the scans, for a naval attack, they needed to go around Crimea unnoticed. Thats a pretty long way in Russian controled territory to go unnoticed, wouldn't you say?
• Ukraine gained absolutely nothing out of it but a short joy maybe, but suffred hundreds of missiles in retaliation and after that incident, that bridge was never touched again. So who benefited more in the end?

Everyone can make up his own mind, if that is enough to believe it was a false flag operation or not.
 
Ragnar123 said:
Because he benefits far more from the "Ukraine are terrorists" narrative than suffers from some short humiliation because of 2 drones. It's the same play as Crimean bridge again, which "allowed" him to start his missile terror.
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So the Crimean bridge was a false flag then?

I wouldn't confuse cause with the lies that the propaganda creates after the fact. The missile terror started way before the Crimean bridge attack but it "allowed" the Russian propaganda to push the response angle that some people, including yourself, have picked up. Russia and Putin doesn't need excuses to initiate attacks, they create them after the fact, usually quite poorly.
 
Ragnar123 said:
Everyone knows Ukraine has neither the possibilities, nor the western support to attack Russian soil apart from some near border oil depots and other minor skirmishes.
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That's simply wrong. Ukraine definitely attacked the Engels air base, which is a similar distance as Moscow. So we know they can do it.

And of course they have western political support for doing that, although I acknowledge that it looks like NATO does not want Ukraine to use heavy NATO weaponry for this kind of attack, probably to prevent and escalation of the war.
 
B20 said:
"they" are not saying anything. these are the findings of Danish media.
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Same media that was saying something completely different woth proofs abd receipts of rental of boats with scuba gear.
 
the hea said:
I don't understand why everyone is assuming the drone incident is a false flag operation, this is is massive humiliation to the Russian air defences and makes Putin and his armed forces look even weaker infront of the Muscovites. Russia has always considered it's air defences among the best in the world, the fact that someone is able to fly a cheap drone over what should be the best protected place in the country is another huge failure for the armed forces and makes Putin and his generals look even weaker.
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cos... it pretty obviously is.

On the narrative it creates: The biggest threat to Putin is, and always has been, the Russian people. Stuff like this gives them an enemy that all Dictators need to survive. The reputation of Russian air defences is probably a bit lower down on his priorities.
 
Ragnar123 said:
If I take everything into account, then yes.

• Only one driving lane of the bridge was destroyed, the other one was still usable. The bridge was repaired fairly quickly.
• Putin appointed Surovikin, the butcher of Syria, on the same day to bring Ukraine with civilian terror to its knees after they started to retake regions (in the same way Surovikin performed in Syria, bombing civilians).
• Putin needed an excuse for the new escalation level he was planning, because Russia was losing ground.
• The appointment of a new commander + programming hundred of missiles takes weeks in preparation and planning. Having this answer ready just days after the bridge explosion shows Putin was prepared.
• Russia scans every truck passing the bridge for exactly that reason, as well as controls the black sea. How could have Ukraine put that huge bomb on or under that bridge? For a truck bomb, they needed to go through the scans, for a naval attack, they needed to go around Crimea unnoticed. Thats a pretty long way in Russian controled territory to go unnoticed, wouldn't you say?
• Ukraine gained absolutely nothing out of it but a short joy maybe, but suffred hundreds of missiles in retaliation and after that incident, that bridge was never touched again. So who benefited more in the end?

Everyone can make up his own mind, if that is enough to believe it was a false flag operation or not.
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This is just wrong. The Kerch bridge railway was one of the most important logistics routes for Russia and it's not expected to be fixed until July, the road section is of minor importance militarily speaking as Russia almost exclusively rely on railways for their logistics. I would even say that this logistics interuption was the main reason they pulled back from the west side of the Dnepr one month later.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/la...n-of-rail-bridge-as-repairs-begin-07-03-2023/

And on the question about how they where able to get the truck past the controls. Probably the same way you get anything done in Russia, Corruption.
 
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