https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1741844787601248570
Posted on 12/24/2023 12:20:02 PM PST by SpeedyInTexas
https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1741844787601248570
https://twitter.com/front_ukrainian/status/1741732560093237283
The key to success is a thermal imaging drone to locate the enemy.
"After the failed assault on the AFVs, which were blown up by mines, the Russians once again pretended to be dead. After waiting for darkness, they set off to storm the positions of the Ukrainian defenders. But they didn't get there."
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1741873336672538956
https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1741889616993472862
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-stalin-putin-legacy/32755048.html
Stalin Photo above from this article in Russian:
A bronze monument to Joseph Stalin was erected in Naberezhnye Chelny
Shalamov, who died in 1982, spent most of the time from 1937 until 1951 as a prisoner in the Kolyma region. He survived because a doctor decided to train him as a medic, enabling him to work at the hospital for the last five years of his imprisonment. He was not allowed to return to European Russia, west of the Urals, until after Stalin’s death in 1953.
His six-volume collection of stories, Kolyma Tales, was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987, in the glasnost era. The collection has been called “the definitive chronicle” of the everyday reality of Stalin’s labor camps.
“Shalamov’s is a powerful, tragic fate,” said Magadan geology professor Irina Zhulanova. “His tragedy is the tragedy of our entire country. And no one but him wrote so precisely and capably about Kolyma and the entire essence of the Stalinist machine. No one. Not even [Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn, in my opinion, told us so much about the repressions.” '
Free: Kolyma Tales 2019, 488 p.
“This would be a significant achievement if these JDAMs were dropped from Ukrainian SUs.”
Let’s start a rumor, that the Ukrainians are already operating the first of 128 F-35 they will be getting for the Spring offensive (the funds were secretly authorized, and pilots have been secretly training in NATO uniforms for a year).
Happy New Year.
Will those F-35s be accompanied by B-2s or B-21s? Perhaps a compliment of B-52s?
“Putin knows the Russian people are growing restless”
Putin is (naturally) having a tough time selling his quagmire war, and now has to kiss up to his restive minorities (Free Tatarstan! Buryatia for the Buryats!)
ISW (31 Dec) reports:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin used his annual New Year’s address on December 31 to concretize Russian ideological priorities for 2024, notably omitting any mentions of the war in Ukraine and instead focusing on setting ideological conditions for the upcoming year.
In stark contrast to last year’s New Year’s address, wherein Putin addressed the nation at the headquarters of the Southern Military District surrounded by uniformed military personnel and talked explicitly about Russia’s goals in Ukraine, Putin’s 2023 address shows him standing alone against the backdrop of the Kremlin, without a single mention of the “special military operation.”
Putin instead opted to very briefly thank Russian military personnel for fighting for “truth and justice,” and otherwise focused on emphasizing Russian national unity. Putin also stated that 2024 will be the “Year of the Family,” emphasizing that the Russian family is the backbone of “the multinational people of Russia,” and that Russia is “one big country, one big family.”
Putin has in recent weeks frequently discussed Russia’s continued maximalist intentions for the war in Ukraine, and Putin likely sought to set more domestically-oriented ideological conditions during his New Year’s speech.
Putin’s invocation of 2024 as the “Year of the Family,” as well as his emphasis on Russian “multinationalism,” further serve to clearly delineate the Kremlin’s ideological line going into 2024, orienting domestic policy around the preservation of traditional Russian family values and the protection of Russian multinationalism, which both fit into Putin’s wider ideology of a Russian World (Russkiy Mir) inclusive of groups within and beyond Russia.
ISW has recently assessed that Putin is trying to re-establish the conception of the Russian World as the backbone of Russian domestic and foreign policy, and the 2023 New Year’s address identifies Russian families and Russian multinationalism as pillars of this concretized Russian World. The Kremlin’s conceptions of the Russian World will undoubtedly impact Russian administrative, bureaucratic, and sociocultural priorities in occupied Ukraine, as well as military goals on the battlefield in the year to come.”
“Will those F-35s be accompanied by B-2s or B-21s?”
The sky is the limit (little pun there) when formulating rumors...
Let the wild goose chase begin!
Kremlin snuff box
https://t.me/s/kremlin_secrets
Putin wanted to record a New Year’s address together with the military, but they didn’t let him. And they asked to “forget” about the SVO. We warned back in the fall that this would happen.
We get asked a lot about why the President in his New Year’s address said little about the war and recorded the video himself, and not together with the military, as last year.
It turns out that the idea to issue just such an appeal belonged to Sergei Kiriyenko and his team. Back in November, we wrote that political strategists advise the President to “forget about the SVO” during the election campaign - talk less about the war and try to be more associated with other topics. Vladimir Vladimirovich began to implement this advice. True, not very consistent.
“There are big problems with the Northern Military District. Firstly, there are no serious victories. Many people consider it to be that we repulsed the counter-offensive of Ukraine, but for a country like Russia it is ridiculous to be proud of this.
“Secondly, the war is becoming less and less popular in society. And the military cannot guarantee new victories at the front. That’s why this particular strategy was chosen,” a source from the President’s close circle explained to us.
According to him, these same circumstances are forcing Putin to take other peace-loving steps - in particular, starting the demobilization process and giving signals to the West about readiness for a truce in Ukraine. This could not only help in the elections, but also “prepare Russia for future battles.”
“Negotiations do not mean that we do not hope to win. It means that it is difficult to achieve victory now. Therefore, you can retreat a little, and after a while go on the offensive.
“Moreover, such that both Ukraine and NATO will not find it enough. Don’t think that we don’t believe in victory, it will happen,” a source close to Putin in the AP said about this.
By the way, Vladimir Vladimirovich himself (who, according to sources, “is painfully aware of what is happening on the battlefield”) decided to “correct” the situation with his appeal.
And on January 1, he organized several meetings with participants of the North Military District, including with wounded soldiers in the Vishnevsky hospital. There he praised the army and again hinted at negotiations, noting that “Ukraine is not our enemy.”
“This is a mistake. You will need to communicate more with the army when it wins, and not now. We hope that Vladimir Vladimirovich will not make such mistakes in the future,” a political strategist from Kiriyenko’s team told us about this.
Happy New Year.
https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1741890942431318423
Looks like my neighbors place in the woods when I was a kid
“My rumor is”...
This could become a meme.
“the average daily number of Russian casualties in Ukraine has risen by almost 300 during the course of 2023” (UK MoD, 30 Dec 2023)
Infantry compensating for relative declines in Artillery, Armor and Aviation.
Russian Airborne Forces (in particular) continue to be fed into the meatgrinder, becoming less and less like their former self.
ISW (31 Dec) reports:
“Russian forces, particularly Russian airborne (VDV) Forces, are reportedly suffering heavy losses in simultaneous infantry-heavy Russian offensive operations on multiple fronts.
A Russian milblogger claimed on December 31 that units of the Russian VDV forces are suffering heavy losses and are unable to rest and recover. The milblogger claimed that experienced and trained VDV contract servicemen (kontraktniki) form a lower proportion of the VDV’s personnel, and that the VDV has suffered high losses amongst experienced members of the command cadre that had previously made up the core of the VDV forces.
Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets assessed on December 31 that elements of the newly formed 104th VDV Division, particularly its 328th and 337th VDV Regiments, will have to withdraw from the Krynky area in the east (left) bank of Kherson Oblast for rest and replenishment after a month of almost continuous fighting in the area.
The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) assessed on December 14 that elements of the 104th VDV Division likely suffered exceptionally heavy losses near Krynky due to inadequate air and artillery support and the inexperience of many of its personnel.
VDV Commander Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky implied on December 23 that the Russian military command is deploying new VDV officers and troops directly from graduation from initial training to the frontlines, without having them complete pre-combat training. Teplinsky stated that some recent graduates of the Ryazan Higher Airborne Command School will join the 104th Division in the Kherson direction.
The high casualty rate, particularly among units such as the VDV that were considered elite before 2022, is largely a reflection of the fact that the Russian military command has chosen to pursue simultaneous offensive operations along the entire frontline, often prioritizing marginal gains at the cost of disproportionate losses.
The UK MoD stated on December 30 that “the average daily number of Russian casualties in Ukraine has risen by almost 300 during the course of 2023” and that if the current casualty rate continues Russian forces will have lost over half a million personnel total in Ukraine by the end of 2024. A declassified US intelligence assessment reportedly shared with Congress on December 12 stated that Russian forces have lost 315,000 personnel since the beginning of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The current tempo and style of Russian offensives in Ukraine are reflective of these estimated casualty rates. Russian forces have conducted multiple waves of mass mechanized assaults and infantry-led assaults to capture Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, since October 10 despite heavy personnel losses, for example, and have rushed untrained VDV elements to defend against Ukrainian ground operations in the east bank of Kherson Oblast, where they have also taken heavy losses.
The Russian military leadership has undertaken extensive force generation measures as part of efforts to offset manpower losses, however, including partial mobilization since September 2022 and ongoing crypto-mobilization efforts.
The current casualty rate should not be taken as permanent—the Russian military command could change the tempo and pace of offensive operations or take time to reconstitute its forces for more effective future offensive operations. Ukraine’s Western partners must guard against complacency when assessing Russian losses and operational failures in Ukraine, as ISW has previously assessed.”
Scandinavia is boosting its defense spending
(from The Hill)
“Early in December, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signed a new Defense Cooperation Agreement...
...The agreement with Sweden followed upon a Defense Cooperation Agreement that the United States had reached with Norway in 2021. And last week, Washington signed two more such agreements, with new NATO member Finland and with Denmark...
...In June, the Norwegian government announced that defense spending would reach the NATO target of 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2026, a real increase of some 45 percent over 2023 levels.
In September, the Swedish defense ministry announced that its 2024 defense budget would increase by 28 percent over the previous year’s, enabling Sweden to meet the NATO percent target that very year. The Swedish increase is especially noteworthy as 2024 defense spending will also result in a doubling of the defense budget in just four years.
In October, Finland announced its own 5 percent increase in defense spending. Helsinki’s defense spending already had virtually reached the 2 percent threshold in 2022; the 2024 defense budget would amount to 2.3 percent of GDP...
...in conjunction with the agreements reached this month, all three Scandinavian states recommitted themselves to support Ukraine.”
I guess those freepers who were fawning and drooling over the VDV recruitment commercials posted on FR a couple years back must be crushed to learn those guys are all dead now. Invaders killed by men fighting for their homes, families and the very existence of their country.
A lot of our SOF guys still can’t throw a hatchet into the straw target while doing a backward flip, if our men ever have to conduct a mission that results in direct contact with Spetsnaz, we would have to rely purely on guns and explosives.
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