ok what the fuck is happening in ukraine

?? the greater glory of Mother Russia??

Profit ... in the marketplace of ideas, man.

Just past halfway in the Wagner interview, not the easiest to follow and the interviewer lapses into leading questions a few times, which he managed to avoid last time out

- Radicalised by anti-russian Ukrainian propaganda not by Russian propaganda. Russian propaganda absolutely useless, has no truck with SImonyan or any of the Kremlim talking heads. Sees them as clowns. Decided he wanted to destroy the enemy of his nation due to the Russophobia he was seeing on telegram. This seems to start around 2019

- Ukraine wasn’t just planning to take back Crimea and Donbas, but also Kuban (Krasnodar), Rostov, Belgorod, and others were on the table (they were already carrying out kidnaps and assassinations not just in Donbass but officially recognised territories). Assasinations increased under Zelensky

- Interview goes into the weeds with some difficult to follow stuff about Ukrainian women preferring to become prostitutes in Hamburg, men doing drugs, nazis, the dark web in Germany, lynchings

- Doesnt believer Prigozhin was killed by Russia (no follow up on this for some reason)

- In Wagner there are foreign units, there is a unit of English speakers, a unit of French speakers, a unit of German speakers, and a unit of Arabic speakers. There are no Australians.

- In his particular unit there are no foreigners, only foreigners he has comes across are Poles and Georgians on the other side but they didn’t talk because he had killed them

- Poland has sent good sappers and technical specialists to Ukraine. But Ukrainian skill level has gone down since Americans started training them. Couldn’t tell if serious comment or not because also British, France, Americans good at technical expertise

- Why Russia doing badly? Something about a behind scenes agreement between Rus gov and Ukr gov so they didn’t prepare for longer war. Says the high Russian casualty rates are as high as is reported, but ratio is 4-1 and in some cases 7-1

Ugh, just come across the word (verb) "attrit" in an article about Ukraine. Inevitably, one feels, it's a word used by the US military.

can confirm via watching terrible youtubes

Something about Bucha that was difficult to follow - and was brought up by the Wagner guy, not the interviewer.

- Says the civilians there were killed by Ukrainian artillery but then Russian soldiers who had been there ran into trouble with the FSB because of it and were 'negotiated into Belarus" where they faced physical consequences that went beyond simple broken bones. The FSB seemed to have heavily interrogated some Russian soldiers based on western media reports. He knew this because he was later in trenches with people who had been at Bucha

Ukraine Special Forces conducting attacks in Sudan? WTF
Maybe we are heading to WWIII after all

Exclusive: Ukraine’s special services ‘likely’ behind strikes on Wagner-backed forces in Sudan, a Ukrainian military source says

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/africa/ukraine-military-sudan-wagner-cmd-intl/index.html

😕

Israel we know what you feel today.
Be strong.
Ukrainians with you.

— Ukraine Front Lines (@EuromaidanPR) October 7, 2023

Uh???

after Israel didn't lift a finger to help Ukraine last year too

true, but I think this attack is being backed by Iran and that's not good for anyone.

lol

Do we have much of an idea of how much population transfer there has been in Mariupol over the last year? My assumption is that most of the people that have been moved into Russia were moved out of Mariupol and that this is also where resettlement and replacement from Russia has been concentrated - especially with it being the only major city under Russian control that is out of the originally occupied territories

I don't really have a handle on just how many people currently living in Mariupol are settlers in comparison to the pre-2022 population, because that seems a massively complicating factor

Strange chess game going on here

Ukrainian special forces are reportedly operating in Sudan in support of the country’s army against Russian Wagner mercenaries aligned with the rebel Rapid Support Forces (RSF), according to a video released on Monday... it has surfaced following months of speculation that Ukrainian forces are operating in Sudan as part of an emerging campaign by Kyiv to strike at Russian interests far beyond the Ukraine war’s frontlines.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/06/ukrainian-special-forces-sudan-russian-mercenaries-wagner

Ukraine is reportedly struggling to train enough troops for its own front lines and keep them supplied. Sending some of their best trained troops to Sudan seems like a strange tactic, if that is true.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking as well... their expertise would seem to be more useful on the home front

Not sure what the strategy is here

theyre fighting russia

i think thats the basic idea, as to why they would choose to fight them in sudan specifically my guess would be russias african operations are a big profit center and a fairly soft target so they are maybe thinking they can inflict some damage on russias bottom line without that much effort

much more detailed reporting here:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/19/africa/ukraine-military-sudan-wagner-cmd-intl/index.html

that footage of the pickup is crazy

CNN--Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence claims it has confirmed the use of Starlink satellite communications by Russian forces in occupied areas.

It says it has intercepted conversations which indicate the Starlink terminals are being used to provide internet access to Russia’s 83rd Air Assault Brigade operating in the Donetsk region.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, which owns Starlink, says it does not do business of any kind with the Russian government or its military.

“If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,” the company said in a statement.
Starlink, which uses a network of satellites to provide broadband, says its service will not work in Russia, although the statement didn’t address whether it would work in occupied Ukraine.

The service plays a crucial role in Ukrainian battlefield communications. Last year, Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Main Ukrainian Intelligence Directorate, said “absolutely all front lines are using them.”

Ukraine’s claim follows revelations about the satellite system’s use in the war made in a biography of Starlink’s owner Elon Musk, written by Walter Isaacson.

According to an excerpt from the book, Musk secretly ordered his engineers to turn off his company’s Starlink satellite communications network near the Crimean coast last year to disrupt a Ukrainian sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet.

As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes.

Musk’s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials, according to Isaacson.

A more detailed quote in Reuters. coverage:

"Cases of the Russian occupiers' use of the given devices have been registered. It is beginning to take on a systemic nature," the Ukrainian defence ministry's Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) quoted spokesman Andriy Yusov as saying.

Situation worsening in Avdiivka. Media attention is more focused on funding and support rather than situation on ground right now, but fairly intense at the moment and potentially quite consequential

Situation in Avdiivka getting the most media attention, but Kupyansk looking bad as well now, Ammunition shortage starting to bite. I don't know just how consequential this is, but I presume this starts to make Kharkiv more vulnerable?