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Русский корабль - иди нахуй


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2 minutes ago, Parliament said:

Why in God's creation would any American's be left in Russia.  Other than Edward Snowden of course.

Anyone without a valid reason to be there at this point in time has very little sympathy from me if shit goes south.   Don’t walk past 15 “Do Not Swim - Piranhas in Lake” signs and then scream for help halfway through your swim because you’re being eaten alive.  

OK, you can scream, but don’t expect me to jump in to help you at my peril. 

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The other reason that Americans would still be in Russia is the unfortunate cliche of a sick parent/grandparent/sibling.   

All the Russian hotties that escaped and found their American Spankytoes husbands still dutifully go home when Mom or Dad is sick (but of course, being stubbon Russians) refused to leave Russia prior to all the bullshit,  so now the American citizen gets to choose between staying in russia to take care of Grandma and  maybe never leave again... or fucking leave with the complete understanding that they would probably never see that sick family member again. 

 

 

Edited by AUS-97HORN
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17 minutes ago, MillerEP said:

 

 

 

 

 

Well this could be a problem, although I am sure western intelligence has been well aware of this for some time.  Short of just paying all their bills via western funds (not a great idea I admit), but hell it is Moldova, it can't be that much.  Population 2.7 million, so roughly 900k households, assuming even $500 per household would be $450 million.  Lend/lease type offer?  Squashing a putin lead coup for a bit of money seems like an easy win for us, although it comes off as a blackmail deal.  

Or could intelligence just swoop in and arrest the "protesters" as foreigner actors of espionage?  Admittedly, I know nothing about Moldovan law. 

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16 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Well this could be a problem, although I am sure western intelligence has been well aware of this for some time.  Short of just paying all their bills via western funds (not a great idea I admit), but hell it is Moldova, it can't be that much.  Population 2.7 million, so roughly 900k households, assuming even $500 per household would be $450 million.  Lend/lease type offer?  Squashing a putin lead coup for a bit of money seems like an easy win for us, although it comes off as a blackmail deal.  

Or could intelligence just swoop in and arrest the "protesters" as foreigner actors of espionage?  Admittedly, I know nothing about Moldovan law. 

Sounds like someone’s angling for a 51st state.  

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2 hours ago, Superhero said:

How many times did he shoot himself in the back of the head?

I'm curious as to what he knows knew, since he was supposedly in charge of going after opposition activists..

At some point, if he hasn't already, Putin is going to outright start having his opponents in prison murdered, instead of just jailed.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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8 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

I was wondering if that bizarre video from Kadyrov about how great the military was doing and how they were going to take Poland was just him sucking up to the MoD and Putin because he knew that one of the anti-MoD triumvirate, Prigozhin, was in serious disfavor?

It’s Olga Skabayeba on state TV. Kadyrov’s style has always been to say crazy shit on tv. I’d just view this as the Kremlin reminding everyone that Putin’s mad Chechen dog is still all in. He has to do it every now and again. 
 

Putin and Kadyrov are locked in to each other. Putin can’t control Chechnya without him and Kadyrov can’t fend off the rival clans or stop Islamism from abroad without the Russian state. 
 

 

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17 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Do they think the Russians are going to start rounding up any remaining Americans, including those married to Russian citizens (I've seen a few on YT who stuck around Russia)?

It's an odd thing given that it's a landlocked area. I'd like to think we've been training/helping Moldova to prepare to oust them, although I don't know why they couldn't move in and just isolate those 1,500 troops.  Seems like without any outside support, those Russians would fold just as fast as the ones in Ukraine.  Then again, they may have been told that if they surrender, don't bother coming back unless their moms want to hold a stolen fur coat for a few minutes in front of the cameras.

1500 is more than enough to be a speed bump— the Russians there are like the NATO battalions in the Baltics. Just enough to make the opponent know they can’t move without triggering a wider war. Russia would also be able to count on the support of the ersatz Transnistrian security services and forces, just as it did with the LNR/DNR. And Moldova can’t move on Russia with the backing of NATO, it’s not a member. It would be a tiny, poor nation picking a fight with the bear. They might be able to force out the 1500 but they wouldn’t withstand the consequences. 
 

I don’t like the term “frozen conflict” for Transnistria, Abkhazia, or South Ossetia. “Manipulated conflicts” is better. Russia and Russia alone decides the intensity and prevents their resolution. 

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 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/02/14/7389295/ 

  .

A frame-by-frame analysis of the footage suggests that the attack was carried out with an 9M133 Kornet anti-tank laser-guided missile, that has a range of 4,8 kilometres. The publication emphasises that such a weapon is used mostly when the soldier sees and chooses the target.    

 

 

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Exclusive: Ex-Russian military bomber engineer seeks asylum at U.S. border, offers military secrets

Government officials told Yahoo News that the man was deemed credible and potentially of interest to the U.S.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-ex-russian-military-bomber-engineer-seeks-asylum-at-us-border-offers-military-secrets-220728915.html 

Spoiler
 
 
A gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall is illuminated at night, Yuma, Ariz.
 
A gap in the U.S.-Mexico border wall is illuminated at night, Yuma, Ariz. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

A Russian military bomber engineer drove up to the U.S. Southwest border in late December, asking for asylum and offering to reveal some of Russia’s most closely guarded military secrets, according to an unclassified Customs and Border Protection report obtained by Yahoo News.

The man and his family arrived in an armored SUV and asked to be admitted into the U.S. because he feared persecution for participating in anti-Putin protests in support of Alexei Navalny, an imprisoned Russian dissident. He then told CBP officials that he had information wanted by the U.S. government.

He said he was a civil engineer and that “his past employment had included working ... from 2018 to 2021 in the making of a particular type of military airplane at the Tupolev aircraft production facility in the city of Kazan in west-central Russia,” according to a Jan. 11 unclassified CBP report obtained by Yahoo News.

“He described the aircraft type as ‘an attack jet’ and said it ‘was called White Swan-TU160, the largest military aircraft.’”

Protesters in Düsseldorf, Germany, rally to support Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, April 21, 2021
 
Protesters in Düsseldorf, Germany, rally to support Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, April 21, 2021. (Ying Tang/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The CBP report is a daily roundup of items compiled by the agency’s National Border Security Intelligence Watch and is produced to highlight emerging trends or notable events for leadership. The agency added a comment in bold italics after the paragraph detailing the engineer’s arrival and employment and explaining why his information could be valuable.

“The TU-160 White Swan, also known by the NATO reporting name ‘Blackjack,’ is reportedly the most advanced strategic bomber in the Russian inventory and has been also used in a tactical airstrike role in the Ukraine war. According to open-source reporting, a major new construction program of an improved version of the aircraft as well as an upgrade program of existing aircraft got underway at the Tupolev facility during the past few years,” according to the unclassified “CBP Indications and Warnings Daily.”

CBP declined to answer Yahoo News’ questions or otherwise comment, citing agency policy “to neither confirm nor speak to potentially improperly disclosed internal documents marked as law enforcement sensitive or for official use only.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents
 
Customs and Border Protection agents at a processing facility in Brownsville, Texas. (Eric Gay/Reuters)

Russian military expert Michael Kofman said he had no independent knowledge of this Russian engineer but spoke generally about the kind of information someone in his position could provide.

“An individual working at a defense industrial facility such as Tuplov could have access to a range of information on defense industrial production, specifications related to the Tu-160 bomber and its more recently developed modernized variant, various production processes, dependencies and where their limitations lie,” said Kofman, director of the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses.

“Someone in such a position could accumulate knowledge by virtue of the types of information they’re exposed to on the job, some of which could prove valuable,” he told Yahoo News.

As the U.S. continues to lobby allies to send military equipment to Ukraine, details about this particular fighter jet, which underwent reproduction and upgrades during the time of the engineer’s stated employment, would constitute valuable information, said a senior military intelligence official.

“Would a site manager know if they modified the remodeled bombers to shoot hypersonic missiles? He might. And that would be a really big deal, if the White Swan was retrofitted to fire hypersonic missiles. They are fast and launched from much farther away,” the official explained. “We don’t have anything that can defend against hypersonic missiles — meaning, Patriot systems and all the rest of what we are supplying Ukraine, it’s useless.”

A Russian Tupolev Tu-160 jet bomber
 
A Russian Tupolev Tu-160 jet bomber in flight. (Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The man’s name and details of his arrival in the U.S. were included in an unclassified daily roundup of items of interest from around the country and the world. It is highly unusual and possibly unprecedented for this particular report to include the full name and detailed information of an asylum seeker, let alone of someone offering up military secrets of a foreign adversary that hunts down and poisons, launches from windows or otherwise kills its defectors.

Yahoo News is withholding his name and details of where he arrived and applied for asylum after several officials raised concerns about the man’s safety.

Everyone Yahoo News spoke to said they were surprised the man’s identity and detailed work history was included in an unclassified CBP report. There were several classified briefings around the time the CBP report was circulated that appear to have included information on this same man, according to three U.S. government officials to whom Yahoo News read the CBP report. The officials would not provide any additional details, citing the highly classified nature of foreign military defectors.

When someone shows up at a U.S. port of entry asking for admission and claiming to have information of interest to the United States, CBP and the Department of Homeland Security are tasked with verifying the information provided. If the information is confirmed as true and the person is deemed credible, they are then passed off to the FBI.

“The deal with a walk-in is his ID has to be verified and his story checked as well — that could take some time,” explained one U.S. intelligence official.

An FBI agent
 
Getty Images

“If and only if he checks out, meaning he is who he says he is and worked where he said he did, if that were to happen, then the FBI would take over and whisk him away to probably a safe house where he’d be questioned.”

For about a week and a half, CBP and the DHS worked to verify the man’s identity and former place of employment. By around Jan. 11 he was deemed credible and of potential interest to the U.S., and was passed to the FBI for further questioning, according to two government officials.

The DHS and the Department of Defense did not respond to Yahoo News’ requests for comment. The FBI also declined to comment.

The engineer is believed to be inside the U.S. and is still being questioned by U.S. officials. He is likely being questioned about the restart of the Blackjack production, and the revamped or upgraded versions believed to have been worked on during the time of the Russian engineer’s employment."

He is also likely being asked about matters unrelated to the bomber jet, which could include everything from the email system, software, staffing and manufacturer used by the aircraft production facility — information that could be used to carry out targeted cyberattacks or for intelligence gathering or other efforts.

“We of course know the Russian bomber well. But specs, the real specs, nuclear capabilities — there are certainly things we would be interested in hearing about, if this guy is credible. The big thing is: Did they retrofit it for hypersonic missiles?” a military official explained to Yahoo News.

Espionage photo-illustration
 
Getty Images

“I’m not saying he does [know the answer] and I’m not saying he doesn’t. I’m not even saying we know if he does or does not have that information. I’m just saying if he had anything that speaks to that, that would be significant.”

Retired CIA senior clandestine services officer Daniel Hoffman said that he didn’t think this Russian engineer’s case was anything out of the ordinary.

“The guy’s here so he’ll be processed, he’ll go through our system and they’ll talk to him and hear about what he used to do and that’s it, it’s pretty simple,” Hoffman said.

“You know, you'll talk to the guy about where he used to work and see what his access was and if there’s anything valuable. Maybe we have that information, maybe we don’t, I don’t know. There’s nothing more that he’s going to do for you, it’s all historical,” Hoffman told Yahoo News. “This kind of thing happens all the time.”

 

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Bakhmut will fall. What does it mean? Sometimes it’s useful to just list objective facts and see where that leads-

1. The active battle for Bakhmut, a town that once had a population of 70,000, has been raging since early August. We are going on seven months. 
2. Wagner has been the bulk of the Russian forces. They are on the offensive. Regular Ukrainian troops are defending. 
3. The fighting has been brutal. Wagner has used tactics that expend a lot of lives, tens of thousands. There is real time data to support that. Ukraine, fighting defensively, has lost thousands. 
4. Russia doesn’t give a shit about Wagner KIA. They are convicts and foreign mercs. They figure not at all in the Kremlin calculations. 
5. Bakhmut is of questionable strategic importance, to either side. Sure, Russia can stage the next offensive from there, Ukraine can advance and attack supply chains, yada yada. If Bakhmut was really in a truly significant location, a nexus for travel and commerce, it would have been bigger than Longview. 

I suspect that both sides are using the battle to occupy the other side while they prepare for the next phase. Russia is trying to mobilize more forces and get its shit together in a way it wasn’t before, for a new and more effective offensive. Ukraine is trying to train up some fresh troops and integrate some new weapons as fast as they can. In other words- Bakhmut is the second and third quarter. When it falls, the fourth quarter to decide this war begins. We really need to get Ukraine what it needs. 

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11 hours ago, MillerEP said:

 

 

 

 

Really good interview there. Here's an interesting quote that addresses something I've wondered about: 

Spoiler

(I): What should be the minimum target for you to open fire on it? How many people, what type of fortification, and what kind of equipment?

 

(O): It all depends on the situation. You may need to open fire on three people, for example, if they are UAV operators.

 

There is no need to spare shells for “worms”, as Magyar calls them, because they will do more damage if left. That is, there is no “less than 10 people – we do not open fire” policy.

 

For example, in Soledar, the Wagner PMC developed a tactic of acting in small groups without equipment so that we would not use artillery against them. That is, 3-5 people with shovels go to “bury themselves”, and assault groups immediately join them, and so they gradually move forward. There is no classical offensive – columns, companies, platoons with equipment – in our area.

....

The fact is that the Russians, as I said, changed their tactics. At first, they came in with equipment and many people, and then they started working in small groups.

 

Do you remember back in 2015-2017, when they used the frog-jumping tactic? Now they have started using it – they are climbing in small groups of 100-200 meters.

 

If they were marching in a column, I opened fire and destroyed their equipment. Half of them would be wounded, and half would run away. And it’s hard to catch three people. The only option is to find a place where they are dropped off and from where they disperse in these small groups.

 

The weather also played into our disadvantage. Warm winters, low cloud cover, and UAVs that can fly long distances rarely work. Speaking for myself, I rarely have situations where I can see 15-20 kilometers ahead.

 

That’s why it’s very difficult to track two Kamaz trucks that bring the Wagner workers to the unloading point, from which they disperse. So if the weather is good, we will work differently.

12 hours ago, MillerEP said:

 

 

 

Dang, I missed it. If anyone has another source, please post.

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26 minutes ago, statsman said:

Bakhmut will fall. What does it mean? Sometimes it’s useful to just list objective facts and see where that leads-

1. The active battle for Bakhmut, a town that once had a population of 70,000, has been raging since early August. We are going on seven months. 
2. Wagner has been the bulk of the Russian forces. They are on the offensive. Regular Ukrainian troops are defending. 
3. The fighting has been brutal. Wagner has used tactics that expend a lot of lives, tens of thousands. There is real time data to support that. Ukraine, fighting defensively, has lost thousands. 
4. Russia doesn’t give a shit about Wagner KIA. They are convicts and foreign mercs. They figure not at all in the Kremlin calculations. 
5. Bakhmut is of questionable strategic importance, to either side. Sure, Russia can stage the next offensive from there, Ukraine can advance and attack supply chains, yada yada. If Bakhmut was really in a truly significant location, a nexus for travel and commerce, it would have been bigger than Longview. 

I suspect that both sides are using the battle to occupy the other side while they prepare for the next phase. Russia is trying to mobilize more forces and get its shit together in a way it wasn’t before, for a new and more effective offensive. Ukraine is trying to train up some fresh troops and integrate some new weapons as fast as they can. In other words- Bakhmut is the second and third quarter. When it falls, the fourth quarter to decide this war begins. We really need to get Ukraine what it needs. 

Everything I've read indicates that Bakhmut isn't an area where they can stage a new offensive.  It sits in a swell and is covered with higher ground artillery fire from several miles away.  Without taking both Bakhmut and that high ground, Bakhmut itself therefore couldn't really be used as a staging area for anything; which makes this all the more bizarre.  From Ukraine's perspective, making them bleed with limited losses would be ideal, I suppose it at least keeps the russians occupied in a limited area.  For russia, it seems to make little to no sense to fight there and bog down.  For wagner, its long been rumored to be about the gypsum mine and control of that.  

If that is true, its the craziest use of loss of life I can think of.  All to control a gypsum mine.  

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33 minutes ago, statsman said:

4. Russia doesn’t give a shit about Wagner KIA. They are convicts and foreign mercs. They figure not at all in the Kremlin calculations. 

Convicts may not mean much to Russia (great way too save on incarcerating them), but they are using up supplies and vehicles that the Russian military would probably rather have in the coming months, and whatever they may think of the convicts, those convicts could have been used in the coming months as well, even if just for cannon fodder.

Just now, BamaATL said:

If that is true, its the craziest use of loss of life I can think of.  All to control a gypsum mine.  

If you actually thought the Russian military could take a chunk of Ukraine (up to the Dnipro or whatever), and the gypsum mine would be your reward, it could be very profitable, similar to how Wagner has taken over certain areas in Africa for their natural resources.  Oligarchs have gotta get paid.

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12 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Convicts may not mean much to Russia (great way too save on incarcerating them), but they are using up supplies and vehicles that the Russian military would probably rather have in the coming months, and whatever they may think of the convicts, those convicts could have been used in the coming months as well, even if just for cannon fodder.

If you actually thought the Russian military could take a chunk of Ukraine (up to the Dnipro or whatever), and the gypsum mine would be your reward, it could be very profitable, similar to how Wagner has taken over certain areas in Africa for their natural resources.  Oligarchs have gotta get paid.

I suppose it speaks more to the problematic nature of having almost warlord control of parts of a military.  What you really have is a warlord with their own objectives, with seemingly little to no interest in the larger conflict.  Its good in a sense for the Ukrainians because rather than looking at the larger conflict, they are wasting resources on a  massive level.  This of course is incredibly stupid, when one considers that the conflict itself is still highly in doubt.  As one Ukrainian famously stated earlier, "thank god they are so fucking stupid."  

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