Posted on 06/23/2023 5:38:19 AM PDT by SpeedyInTexas
Finally, some info
“The first deliveries of high-precision GLSDB missiles to Ukraine will be implemented no earlier than autumn. Delays are associated with the development and production of these weapons. - Pentagon representative Laura Cooper in the US Congress.”
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1672199430655684608
Previous day’s thread: https://freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/4162694/posts
Calling someone a RuZZian on FR is considered an insult.
“Ukraine’s Western-Trained Brigades Begin to Enter the Fight”
“They are fighting more effectively at night than their Russian counterparts, U.S. officials say.
They are using American-made Bradley fighting vehicles to destroy Russian armor with anti-tank missiles. And they are deploying combined arms tactics — synchronized attacks by infantry, armor and artillery forces — that they learned from American and other Western troops.
It is, finally, showtime for the 36,000 Ukrainian soldiers — nine brigades — that have been armed, equipped and trained outside of Ukraine over the past several months by the United States and its NATO allies.”
Counting Russia’s dead
“Russia has a history of extraordinary secrecy over its wartime losses.
So when it invaded Ukraine, the BBC and its partners began painstakingly verifying and counting as many deaths as possible.
We identified more than 25,000 named individuals - people we know to have died - setting a bare minimum for Russia’s total losses. Some of them are pictured here.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-829ea0ba-5b42-499b-ad40-6990f2c4e5d0
“The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia”
“Ukraine’s Future and Putin’s Fate”
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” U.S. President Joe Biden said of his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, a month after Russia launched a brutal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Biden’s off-the-cuff remark, which his administration swiftly sought to walk back, did not merely reflect anger at the destruction unleashed by Putin’s war of choice. It also revealed the deeply held assumption that relations between Russia and the West cannot improve as long as Putin is in office. Such a sentiment is widely shared among officials in the transatlantic alliance and Ukraine, most volubly by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, who last September ruled out peace talks until a new Russian leader is in place.
There is good reason to be pessimistic about the prospects of Russia’s changing course under Putin. He has taken his country in a darker, more authoritarian direction, a turn intensified by the invasion of Ukraine. The wrongful detention of The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in March and the sentencing of the opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza to a 25-year prison term in April, for example, are eerily reminiscent of measures from Soviet times. Once leaders grow to rely on repression, they become reluctant to exercise restraint for fear that doing so could suggest weakness and embolden their critics and challengers. If anything, Putin is moving Russia more and more toward totalitarianism as he attempts to mobilize Russian society in support of not just his war on Ukraine but also his antipathy to the West.
If the West’s relations with Russia are unlikely to change while Putin is in power, perhaps things could improve were he to depart. But the track record of political transitions that follow the exits of longtime authoritarian leaders offers little room for optimism. The path to a better Russia is not just narrow—it is treacherous. Authoritarian leaders rarely lose power while still waging a war they initiated. As long as the war continues, Putin’s position is more secure, making positive change less likely. What is more, authoritarian regimes most often survive in the wake of the departure of longtime leaders such as Putin; were Putin to die in office or be removed by insiders, the regime would most likely endure intact. In such a case, the contours of Russian foreign policy would stay largely the same, with the Kremlin locked in a period of protracted confrontation with the West.
One development, however, could spark more substantive change in Russia: a Ukrainian victory. Kyiv’s triumph in the war raises the possibility, even if only slightly, that Putin could be forced out of office, creating an opening for a new style of Russian government. A Russian defeat in the war could galvanize the kind of bottom-up pressure that is needed to upend Putin’s regime. Such a development carries risks—of violence, chaos, and even the chance of a more hard-line government emerging in the Kremlin—but it also opens the possibility of a more hopeful future for Russia and for its relations with its neighbors and the West. Although fraught, the most likely path to a better Russia now runs through Ukrainian success.”
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/treacherous-path-better-russia
“’ Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 13 Russian cruise missiles headed for a military airfield in the country’s the western Khmelnitskyi region, Ukraine’s air force said.
Serhiy Tyurin, the regional governor, said the missiles were aimed at the Viysk airfield near Khmelnitskyi. Ukrainian military officials said the missiles were fired from Russian Tupolev Tu-95 bombers in the Caspian Sea area, Reuters reported.”
Tick tock. Tick tock.
“A modern T-90M “Proryv” tank of the Russian Forces is stepping on a mine even though it is visible.”
https://twitter.com/BarracudaVol1/status/1672188091543736321
“Russian MT-LB was destroyed in the Avdiivka direction.”
https://twitter.com/PaulJawin/status/1672178057128321024
“Soldiers of the 77th OAeMBr fried the enemy tank”
https://twitter.com/small10space/status/1672165470013628416
It comments to itself.
“Video of the work of shock drone operators of the 73rd naval center of the Special Operations Forces of Ukraine. In just a few days, 8 pieces of equipment were destroyed”
https://twitter.com/AlexRaptor94/status/1672125732288360448
“Prigozhin says again that Rusian lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are falling, and it is only a matter of time until moves similar to Kherson and Kharkiv regroupings take place. Local Russian commanders are forced to provide false reports on their positions so as to not antagonise the high command.”
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1672203268796055554
Droned
https://twitter.com/antiputler_news/status/1672071775973257217
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1672157575297605633
“Two explosions are reported in Heniches’k, occupied Kherson region”
“Black smoke rises. Initial reports say that a Russian base from the National Guard was hit.”
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1672202314906497025
“A Russian MT-LB was discovered and destroyed.”
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1672191750364880896
“AFU has advanced east of Krasnohorivka, up to 1.5km. This area has been in the grey zone since 2014. Also the area south of the liberated area is currently subject to battles. Ukrainian forces are getting closer to the outskirts of Donetsk city.”
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1672149811921821697
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