Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The 2022 Russian Invasion Of Ukraine (2 year anniversary)

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When a vehicle is captured and then lost in service with its new owners, it is only added as a loss of the original operator to avoid double listings. When the origin of a piece of equipment can't be established, it's not included in the list. The Soviet flag is used when the equipment in question was produced prior to 1991. This list is constantly updated as additional footage becomes available.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/mar/01/ukraine-haze-propaganda/

Ukraine: The Haze of Propaganda
by Timothy Snyder - March 1, 2014

On January 16, Yanukovych signed a series of laws that had been “passed” through parliament, entirely illegally, by a minority using only a show of hands. These laws, introduced by pro-Russian legislators and similar to Russian models, severely constrained the freedom of speech and assembly, making of millions of protesters “extremists” who could be imprisoned. Organizations that had financial contacts with the outside world, including Catholic and Jewish groups, were suddenly “foreign agents” and subject to immediate harassment.
After weeks of maintaining their calm in the face of repeated assaults by the riot police, some protesters now chose violence. Out of public view, people had been dying at the hands of the police for weeks. Now some of the protesters were killed by the regime in public. The first Ukrainian protester to be killed was an Armenian. The second to be killed was a Belarusian.
Then came the mass killings by the regime. On February 18 the Ukrainian parliament was supposed to consider a compromise that many observers believed was a first step away from bloody confrontation: a constitutional reform to return the state to parliamentary democracy. Instead, the riot police were unleashed in Kiev, this time armed not only with tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets, but also with live ammunition. The protesters fell back to the Maidan and defended it, the way revolutionaries do: with cobblestones, Molotov cocktails, and in the end their bare hands.
On February 20, an EU delegation was supposed to arrive to negotiate a truce. Instead, the regime orchestrated a bloodbath. The riot police fell back from some of the Maidan. When protesters followed, they were shot by snipers who had taken up positions on rooftops. Again and again people ran out to try to rescue the wounded, and again and again they were shot.
Who was killed? Dozens of people, in all about a hundred, most of them young men. Bohdan Solchanyk was a young lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University, a Ukrainian speaker from western Ukraine. He was shot and killed. Yevhen Kotlyov was an environmentalist from Kharkiv, a Russian speaker from eastern Ukraine. He was shot and killed. One of the people killed was a Russian citizen; a number of Russians had come to fight—most of them anarchists who had come to aid their Ukrainian anarchist comrades. At least two of those killed by the regime, and perhaps more, were Jews. One of those “Afghans,” Ukrainian veterans of the Red Army’s war in Afghanistan, was Jewish: Alexander Scherbatyuk. He was shot and killed by a sniper. Another of those killed was a Pole, a member of Ukraine’s Polish minority.
Has it ever before happened that people associated with Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, Armenian, Polish, and Jewish culture have died in a revolution that was started by a Muslim? Can we who pride ourselves in our diversity and tolerance think of anything remotely similar in our own histories?
The people were victorious as a result of sheer physical courage. The EU foreign ministers who were supposed to be treated to a bloody spectacle saw something else: the successful defense of the Maidan. The horrifying massacre provoked a general sense of outrage, even among some of the people who had been Yanukovych’s allies. He did something he probably had not, when the day began, intended to do: he signed an agreement in which he promised not to use violence. His policemen understood, perhaps better than he, what this meant: the end of the regime. They melted away, and he ran for his life. Power shifted to parliament, where a new coalition of oppositionists and dissenters from Yanukovych’s party formed a majority. Reforms began, beginning with the constitution. Presidential elections were called for May.
Still, the propaganda continued. Yanukovych stopped somewhere to record a video message, in Russian, claiming that he was the victim of a Nazi coup. Russian leaders maintained that extremists had come to power, and that Russians in Ukraine were under threat. Although the constitutional transition is indeed debatable in the details, these charges of a right-wing coup are nonsense.
The Ukrainian far right did play an important part in the revolution. What it did, in going to the barricades, was to liberate itself from the regime of which it had been one of the bulwarks. One of the moral atrocities of the Yanukovych regime was to crush opposition from the center-right, and support opposition from the far right. By imprisoning his major opponents from the legal political parties, most famously Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovych was able to make of democracy a game in which he and the far right were the only players.
The far right, a party called Svoboda, grew larger in these conditions, but never remotely large enough to pose a real challenge to the Yanukovych regime in democratic elections. In this arrangement Yanukovych could then tell gullible westerners that he was the alternative to the far right. In fact, Svoboda was a house opposition that, during the revolution, rebelled against its own leadership. Against the wishes of their leaders, the radical youth of Svoboda fought in considerable numbers, alongside of course people of completely different views. They fought and they took risks and they died, sometimes while trying to save others. In the post-revolutionary situation these young men will likely seek new leadership. The leader of Svoboda, according to opinion polls, has little popular support; if he chooses to run for president, which is unlikely, he will lose.
The radical alternative to Svoboda is Right Sector, a group of far-right organizations whose frankly admitted goal was not a European future but a national revolution against all foreign influences. In the long run, Right Sector is the group to watch. For the time being, its leaders have been very careful, in conversations with both Jews and Russians, to stress that their goal is political and not ethnic or racial. In the days after the revolution they have not caused violence or disorder. On the contrary, the subway runs in Kiev. The grotesque residences of Yanukovych are visited by tourists, but they are not looted. The main one is now being used as a base for archival research by investigative journalists.
The transitional authorities were not from the right, or even from the western part of Ukraine, where nationalism is more widespread. The speaker of the parliament and the acting president is a Baptist preacher from southeastern Ukraine. All of the power ministries, where of course any coup-plotter would plant his own people, were led by professionals and Russian speakers. The acting minister of internal affairs was half Armenian and half Russian. The acting minister of defense was of Roma origin.
The provisional authorities are now being supplanted by a new government, chosen by parliament, which is very similar in its general orientation. The new prime minister is a Russian-speaking conservative technocrat. Both of the major presidential candidates in the elections planned for May are Russian speakers. The likely next president, Vitali Klitschko, is the son of a general in the Soviet armed forces, best known in the West as the heavyweight champion boxer. He is a chess player and a Russian speaker. He does his best to speak Ukrainian. It does not come terribly naturally. He is not a Ukrainian nationalist.
As specialists in Russian and Ukrainian nationalism have been predicting for weeks, the claim that the Ukrainian revolution is a “nationalist coup,” as Yanukovych, in Russian exile, said on Friday, has become a pretext for Russian intervention. This now appears to be underway in the Crimea, where the Russian flag has been raised over the regional parliament and gunmen have occupied the airports.

Last piece from my notes.

Repeating from your reply:

"quote from Dec. 2005:
'[Andrei] Illarionov, a senior economic advisor to President Vladimir Putin, worked for years to get the government out of the Russian economy. This year he stood by as the Kremlin did the opposite, consolidating its control of the energy sector and other strategic industries.
In a broad attack on the new policy Wednesday, Illarionov said Russia was now dominated by big murky state-owned companies, its democracy was in decline and a ‘neoimperialistic' Kremlin was using natural gas as a ‘energy weapon' against its neighbors.' [original source, WSJ]

Adding from the AP, January 4, 2005:

Jan 4, 2005
By The Associated Press
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday stripped many of the duties from his top economic adviser, an outspoken critic who has accused the Kremlin of trying to muzzle voices of dissent and civil society in Russia.
Andrei Illarionov, who last week said Kremlin efforts to censure the public would eventually spark mass protests, was stripped of his responsibilities as Russia's envoy to the Group of 8 industrial nations, the Kremlin said. Another top adviser, Igor Shuvalov, was given Illarionov's duties. The Kremlin gave no reason for the shift in responsibilities.
But after the Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko soundly won Ukraine's court-ordered presidential revote last month, Illarionov said Yushchenko's victory should help Russia lose its "imperial complex" toward former Soviet republics such as Ukraine.
Illarionov has become a lone dissenter in the Kremlin, which increasingly is dominated by Putin's fellow KGB veterans.
They are widely seen as a driving force behind the probe against the embattled Yukos oil giant, which has been all but crushed by a legal onslaught of back taxes and criminal charges against its owners.
Illarionov called last month's Kremlin-orchestrated auction of Yukos' main production unit the "fraud of the year" and said the government's actions "have inflicted a colossal damage to the country."
Shuvalov is widely considered a more loyal adviser to Putin and has stoutly defended the crackdown on Yukos.

November 25, 2014

BRUSSELS - Andrei Illarionov said that Putin began planning the invasion of Ukraine, in 2003.

"So, they were preparing the war for a long time. The other matter is that it is a long war that has been continuing for more than 16 months. It was officially launched on July 27, 2013, by Putin’s speech in Kyiv on the occasion of the anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus,” he said.
The speech cited by Illarionov was on the topic of Ukraine’s “civilizational choice” and “orthodox Slavic values.” In it, Putin bloviates on alleged “common spiritual values” which make Russians and Ukrainians a “single people,” calling for the preservation of ‘ancestral traditions.’ He also convincingly ignores centuries of persecution, telling listeners that subjugation (“union”) under Russia “changed the lives of Ukraine’s population and its elite for the better, as everyone knows.”

Ukrainian Sunrise: Stories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from the Early 2000s
by Kateryna Zarembo

https://kyivindependent.com/donbas-is-fiction-kateryna-zarembos-book-dismantles-russian-myths-about-ukraines-east/

Excerpt from Kiyv Independent review:

For some, Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts evoke images of coal mines, industrial sprawl, and Russian-speaking culture oriented toward Moscow. Yet to accept this as the regions’ defining reality is to ignore a deeper truth: a Ukrainian heritage that Russia has spent centuries attempting to erase.
In the wake of independence, locals — navigating the complexities of a democratic transition after decades of authoritarian rule — sought to reclaim this identity, fostering a cultural revival that would gradually weave these regions more firmly into the national fabric. But in 2014, war brought that resurgence to a brutal halt.
As Russia's war of aggression continues to devastate cities in both regions and force the remaining locals into occupation under the pretext of “protecting” the local Russian-speaking population from the Ukrainian government, understanding the true story of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts has never been more important.
Kateryna Zarembo’s “Ukrainian Sunrise: Stories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Regions from the Early 2000s,” now available in English translation, challenges the long-standing Soviet-era myths about Ukraine’s east. Drawing from field research conducted leading up to the full-scale invasion, Zarembo illuminates how locals were in the process of reclaiming their regions’ Ukrainian identity.

21NOV2014 Andrei Illarionov: Putin was preparing war for 11 years, it will be long

The expert is confident that the events in Ukraine cannot be called “the crisis in Ukraine or the Ukrainian crisis”. “This is not a crisis. This is a war. The war in the simplest meaning of the word,” he said. “This is a Russian-Ukrainian war. To be more precise, this is Putin's war against Ukraine. Most Russians do not support the war. Putin's war against Ukraine is already a long-term one,” the expert is confident.

Speaking about the duration of the war, Illarionov said he was sure that the preparation took at least 11 years. “Since 2003. I can say that certain questions relating to the future war with Ukraine were discussed in my presence. I didn't think the talks would really lead to a real war,” he said. The expert recalled the year 2004, when preparations for the future occupation and annexation of Crimea were checked during the Orange Revolution. In 2008, Russian JOurnal published the leaked plan of the military command, “in which you will see a detailed draft project of a war against Ukraine”. Information about actions to support separatists in Ukraine began to appear in 2009. “So, they were preparing the war for a long time. The other matter is that it is a long war that has been continuing for more than 16 months. It was officially launched on July 27, 2013, by Putin's speech in Kyiv on the occasion of the anniversary of the baptism of Kyivan Rus. You can find here clear remarks about the start of the hybrid campaign, an intervention, but not a war,” he thinks.

“Unfortunately, the war won't end in the nearest time,” Illarionov thinks. “We see what Putin says and what he does. We have faced a long-term war. But this is not only Putin's war against Ukraine,” the expert is confident. He recalled problems with Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Transnistria and Kazakhstan. “Putin said Kazakhstan didn't have historical statehood. It means that the state without historical statehood can lose it when Nazarbayev is not here,” the expert said, pointing at the events in Latgale, a region in eastern Latvia with Russian-speaking population, in the past few weeks. “He [Putin] has the same intention he had in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. He uses the same approach. This is not a challenge only to post-Soviet countries. This is a challenge for the entire EU and NATO. And there's no answer to the challenge,” Illarionov said.

The expert says these actions are aimed at “breaking Europe's order of the last few decades”. Illarionov also turned attention to Putin's latest speeches in Valdai and Sochi “that are important for any European policy”. He compared the speeches to Adolf Hitler's letters to UK prime minister Chamberlain on 23 and 25 August 1939, in which Hitler offered to change the world order. The expert says the letters and Putin's speeches have 25 common points. “Almost the same words, sentences and ideas. We spoke some months ago about Putin's idea to restore the so called “Russian world”. The idea is out-of-date now. Ambitions are more far-reaching. They include the proposals to change the world order, the international system existing since World War II. We now see not just regional problems, such as Putin's war against Ukraine or a war against neighbours in the post-Soviet area, but a war against the EU and NATO. It is an intention to change the entire world order,” Illarionov said.

According to him, Putin and “his propaganda machinery said clearly that it is the fourth world war”. “It is obviously for you if you listen to them. They regard the cold war as the third world war and say the fourth world war must change the game rules,” the expert thinks. Illarionov is confident the war can end “only when Russia becomes a free democratic state”. “Risks and threats will exist for as long as Russia remains dictatorial,” Illarionov thinks.

https://charter97.org/en/news/2014/11/21/127194/

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 12, 2025

Russia launched another large-scale drone and missile strike against Ukraine on the night of July 11 to 12 — the third combined strike with over 500 drones and missiles in July alone. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched 339 Shahed-type drones and 258 decoy drones (597 drones total) from the directions of Bryansk, Kursk, and Oryol cities; Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai; and Millerovo, Rostov Oblast.[1] The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces also launched 26 Kh-101 cruise missiles from the airspace over Saratov Oblast. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian forces downed 319 Shahed-type drones and 25 Kh-101 cruise missiles and that 258 drones were “lost” or suppressed by Ukrainian electronic warfare (EW) systems. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian strikes damaged critical electrical networks and administrative and civilian infrastructure in Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Lviv, Sumy, and Volyn oblasts.[2] Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported that Russian strikes killed two civilians in Chernivtsi City and injured 14.[3] Kyiv Oblast Military Administration Head Mykola Kalashnyk reported that Ukraine's Clean Sky program, which uses interceptor drones to defend Kyiv Oblast against nightly Russian long-range drone strikes, downed over 50 drones during Russia's overnight strike.[4] ISW continues to assess that Russia's ongoing large-scale strikes are intended to degrade Ukrainian and Western morale and underscore Ukraine's need for continued Western support for Ukraine's interceptor drone program and for the continued supply of Western air defense systems, especially US-provided Patriot systems.[5]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-12-2025

Кремлевская табакерка

“The main thing is that they don't do what Starovoit did.” The Kremlin is considering the dismissal of two ministers

According to our sources in the Presidential Administration, the head of the Ministry of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov and the Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov are under threat of dismissal. Reshetnikov may “suffer” for his statements that Vladimir Putin is unhappy with. Let us recall that the minister hinted at the need to quickly complete the SVO, saying that our economy is on the brink of recession. And recently he made a statement that, according to many, insulted Russia.

“A strong ruble is the result of low demand within the country and a tight monetary policy. This does not mean the economy is strong,” Reshetnikov said. Putin personally was extremely unhappy with these words; the president is confident that it is impossible to speak so dismissively about our economy. Many in the Kremlin consider Kravtsov inadequate. “He either suggests studying Zhirinovsky's legacy in schools, or canonizing Zhirinovsky, or disgracing the Russian language by writing with mistakes. It's hard to find such a bad minister,” an influential source in the Presidential Administration explained.

Another claims that the process of dismissing both ministers has already been effectively launched, although it is too early to talk about specific dates. “We will now look for reasons for firing them - so that it is demonstrative. Everyone has sins. Plus, we need to make sure that they do not do what Starovoit did and shoot each other. We do not need such upheavals,” the source said, half jokingly, half seriously.

https://t.me/kremlin_secrets/5915

Anton Gerashchenko@Gerashchenko_en, July 11, 2025
https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1943773699406278861

Terrorist and former “people’s governor of Donbas” Pavel Gubarev stated that it would have been better not to launch the “special military operation” at all.

“Damn, three and a half years! The number of casualties exceeds a million. Nothing changes for us - we’re still being thrown into meat-grinder assaults. The guys [Russian soldiers] are worn out, they openly call it a serf army. You arrive, and there’s no way to leave.

At this pace, how many years will it take us [to fight]? Probably 20 years to ‘liberate’ everything. If you look at how many cities we’ve taken - it’s a shame. Neither they [Ukrainians] nor we [Russians] can call this a victory anymore - it’s a defeat,” Gubarev said.

He also raised questions about the “goals of the SMO.”

“It’s completely unclear what they [the Russian authorities] even want ... Do we need territory - for what? Do we need ‘living space’ - for what? Who’s going to populate it? Tajiks and Uzbeks? Or do we need to defeat Ukraine, meaning force it to capitulate - in that case, other questions arise. Why aren’t we hitting supply routes, decision-making centers? Why aren’t we turning everything into dust?” he said.

Gubarev considers the start of the “special military operation” to be betrayal, and the plan to take Kyiv be insane.

“The start of the special military operation is also a betrayal. Because it felt like we were being sent to the slaughter. The objectives were framed as a police operation. For my specific battalion, the task was to seize the center of Kyiv, where the Right Sector was located, and hold it. We never even made it to Kyiv. The enemy put up fierce resistance, and we suffered enormous losses. The elite units that were attacking there - paratroopers, GRU special forces, and so on - they lost up to half their personnel, killed and wounded,” he said.

Кремлевская табакерка

In Russia, they want to put people in jail for 10 years for using foreign words. Philosopher Alexandr Dugin came up with this initiative.

“I am very grateful to our President Putin for approving the principles of state language policy. The Russian language is a powerful weapon, and it needs to be constantly honed. I am also happy that Putin has ordered a reduction in the use of foreign words in Russia that have commonly used Russian equivalents. But this measure seems insufficient to me. We need to fight more seriously for the purity of the language,” Alexandr Gelyevich said in a comment to our channel.

He proposed introducing criminal liability for the use of foreign words in Russia. And punishing violators with prison. “The punishment for everyone should be different. Young people who, out of stupidity, often use foreign words can be punished lightly - 15 days or a maximum of six months of correctional labor. But for politicians, journalists, writers, businessmen, traders who draw foreign words on signs and labels, the punishment should be much more severe. They should be imprisoned for a long time, at least 10 years, for polluting public space, for waging war on Russian culture,” Dugin is sure.

He proposed introducing a particularly harsh punishment for the frequent use of English and French words, and a slightly lesser one for German words, “without which a real philosopher can hardly do.” Alexandr Gelyevich promised that the president would consider his proposal soon.

https://t.me/kremlin_secrets/5912

карандаш meaning ‘pencil’ is a borrowing from a Turkic language.

Крестьянин meaning peasant comes from Old Slavonic and means a Christian !

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