Posted on 03/25/2023 5:50:31 PM PDT by UMCRevMom@aol.com
“I thought you ghosted me”
Unofficially :)
Poor Putin Z-devotee only trusts the liberal media she is assigned and can’t analyze Invasion info for fear of being jailed
Observe Comment #18 by kiryandil
VIDEOS
1. Farmer makes dangerous discovery while trying to plant crops
CNN
14.9M subscribers
Mar 25, 2023 9:30 a.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=CNN+UKRAINIAN+FARMERS+USE+HANDS+TO+DIG+OUT
CNN’s Ivan Watson reports on the farmers in Ukraine who are digging landmines left out of their fields by hand to start their spring sowing after Russia’s invasion.
2. Russian officials sell their properties in Crimea and evacuate their families from the peninsula
Kanal13
1.5M subscribers
Mar 25, 2023 9:00 p.m. DST 37 minutes ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1EpPWmJN5A
Defeating determined dug-in troops is hard. There were japs on iwo jima who didn’t surrender until 1949. They held out four years after the end of the war.
ARTICLE
Russia ‘largely stalled’ in Bakhmut, shifting focus, UK says
The Star Advertiser/ Associated Press
3-25-2023 10:00 a.m. DST
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2023/03/25/breaking-news/russia-largely-stalled-in-bakhmut-shifting-focus-u-k-says/
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The top commander of Ukraine’s military said Saturday that his forces were pushing back against Russian troops in the long and grinding battle for the town of Bakhmut, and British military intelligence says Russia appears to be moving to a defensive strategy in eastern Ukraine.
“The Bakhmut direction is the most difficult. Thanks to the titanic efforts of the defense forces, the situation is being stabilized,” Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi said in a post on Telegram giving a synopsis of a telephone call with Adm. Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s chief of defense staff.
The seven-month fight for Bakhmut, where Russian forces have closed in on three sides, is the longest battle of the war, with Russia deploying both regular soldiers and fighters of the mercenary Wagner Group.
Russian forces must go through Bakhmut to push deeper into parts of the eastern Donbas region, though Western officials say the capture of the city would have limited impact on the course of the war.
Britain’s Defense Ministry said in its latest intelligence update that “Russia’s assault on the Donbas town of Bakhmut has largely stalled. This is likely primarily a result of extreme attrition of the Russian force.”
Russia is likely shifting its focus toward two other sectors, which “suggests an overall return to a more defensive operational design after inconclusive results from its attempts to conduct a general offensive since January,” the U.K. ministry wrote on Twitter.
However, the Ukrainian military cautioned that a change in strategy was not yet clear and that Bakhmut remained Russia’s main point of attack for now. A spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces, Serhii Cherevaty, said the Russian forces were still hitting the town with artillery and airstrikes, although the number of daily clashes had dropped to fewer than 20, down from 30 to 50 not long ago.
“The coming week will tell,” Cherevaty said on Ukrainian television.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donetsk province, where Bakhmut is located, said one civilian was killed in the fighting on Friday and another civilian was killed elsewhere in the province. Russian rockets hit the town of Kramatorsk during the night, but caused no injuries, Kyrylenko said.
On Saturday, Russian artillery struck Chasiv Yar, a city west of Bakhmut, and Toretsk to the south, killing two civilians, the Ukrainian presidential office said.
Two people were killed and six injured in Russian firing on the southern Kherson region, the local administration said.
I’m relieved it wasn’t official! 🤗
You are welcome. Really, deserves its own thread…
ARTICLE
Russian soldiers are shocked by the ‘horrible reality’ in Ukraine and often regret going, says YouTuber who spoke to more than 200 after they were captured
Sophia Ankel
Mar 24, 2023, 1:03 PM
https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-regret-fighting-ukraine-says-youtuber-interviewing-pows-2023-3?op=1
-Volodymyr Zolkin interviews hundreds of Russian prisoners of war on his YouTube channel.
-He told Insider that there are common themes among captives: ignorance and regret.
-Zolkin said some captives want the publicity to assure their families they are alive.
Russia likes to portray its soldiers fighting in Ukraine as “strong and brave warriors,” Ukrainian Youtuber Volodymyr Zolkin told Insider.
“But we are disclosing the truth,” said Zolkin, describing his YouTube channel where he interviews prisoners of war captured by the Ukrainian army.
“We are showing soldiers who are lost, who don’t know what they are fighting for, or where they were going. We are sharing their stories,” he added. “No other project brings as much damage to Russian propaganda as ours.”
Zolkin, a former lawyer, became a YouTube hit last March when he started posting interviews with captured Russian soldiers.
The interviews, usually around an hour, show Zolkin and his friend Dmytro Karpenko talking to Russian soldiers about why they joined the war in Ukraine and how they were captured.
Interviewing captured soldiers is regarded as ethically questionable — they are being held against their will, and have strong reasons both to talk (from their captors) and not to (from their commanders back home).
Nonetheless, POW interviews quickly became a mainstay in the no-holds-barred propaganda war around the invasion of Ukraine, and offer a seemingly raw look at those on the sharp end of the conflict.
Speaking to Insider, Zolkin appeared to pre-empt some of the ethical concerns. He told Insider he is independent of the military, though he uses contacts in Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and intelligence services to facilitate the interviews.
He said he always asks the Russian soldiers, on camera, if they want to be interviewed beforehand. Hundreds have turned him down, he said.
Some captives want the publicity, Zolkin said, to assure their families they are alive, and help pressure Russian officials into including them in the regular prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine.
‘THEY START REGRETTING’
Zolkin told Insider that many of the Russian soldiers regret that they went to Ukraine, saying they had a completely false impression of what it would be like.
“Unfortunately, they are all in the vacuum of Russian propaganda, and nobody tells them what is actually going on,” Zolkin told Insider.
“And when they get here, when they see the horrible reality, when they see death, they do not perceive war as anything romantic as they used to see in the movies. Of course, at this moment, they start regretting.”
It’s an impression that has been widespread among Russian fighters, some volunteers and some of whom were conscripted.
Soldiers have previously said that, before the invasion, their commanders promised they would face little resistance and be welcomed by the locals, as the Associated Press reported last month.
Intercepted phone calls have also shown soldiers ruing their decision to fight, while video messages personally directed to Russian President Vladimir Putin show them pleading to go home.
FIGHTING RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA
Zolkin started the project in March 2022, in the early weeks of the war.
He said he was spurred to act after seeing social-media posts Russians in denial about what was happening.
(As Insider’s Mia Jankowicz reported at the time, many Ukrainians struggled to convince even their own families in Russia that they were being attacked.)
With help from his official contacts, Zolkin obtained the phone numbers of the relatives of Russian soldiers and then filmed himself speaking to them over the phone.
But, he said, many people still refused to believe — so he decided to film the conversations face-to-face.
His first such interview was on March 18 last year, in which a 20-year-old Russian soldier called Pavel Kravchenko admitted he went to war without understanding why.
The video went viral and sparked a surge in followers. At the time of writing, he has around 1.3 million subscribers on his main account YouTube and more than 100,000 on his English account.
Other interviewees include a soldier who said he joined the military to pay off debts he got from online gaming. Another said he was happy to surrender to avoid getting killed in battle.
Because of their content, some of these videos were taken down, or censored by YouTube, but company AIR Media Tech, helped Zolkin keep them afloat.
“We believe that Zolkin’s content plays a crucial role in fighting Russian propaganda not only in Ukraine and Russia but worldwide,” head of the impact, Vira Slyvinska, told Insider.
For Zolkin, the YouTube channel has become more than just an attempt to cut through Russian censorship.
“We want to create a tool for enhancing the exchange of the prisoners of war,” he told Insider.
He said many of the Russian soldiers he interviewed have also since been brought back home. It is not clear what happened to them next, or if they faced any repercussions for speaking to him.
“Russians, they don’t want to give Ukrainian POWs back, but when they see their soldiers exposed, they have no choice.”
Translations by Vira Slyvinska.
For me he’s a very friendly way to see some battle maps and hear about what might happen next.
VIDEOS
1. 25 Mar: Ukrainian Drones WREAK HAVOC ON A RUSSIAN BASE | War in Ukraine Explained
Reporting from Ukraine
209K subscribers
3-25-2023 9:30 p.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhGeP_sCp7s
⚠️ Watch RFU in 18+ languages: https://www.youtube.com/@RFU/channels
I am a Ukrainian. My country has been invaded by Russia. In this video I will tell you what happened on the three hundred and ninety fifth day of the war.
Day 395: March 25
Last time I told you that Russians faced huge difficulties establishing a foothold near Vuhledar because Ukrainians have successfully adopted special artillery shells that scatter anti-armor mines. I also told you that Russian forces started summoning recently wounded soldiers for unspecified offensive actions during the last week of March.
The freshest reports suggest that Russians are not ready to launch another offensive operation. The Russian side recently released a video showing how they tried to suppress Ukrainian firing points and observation posts in the high-rise buildings by targeting them with Anti-Tank Guided Missiles. Unfortunately for Russians, facing such a high number of windows in front of them, where each can be used by Ukrainians at any time, suppressing fire and moving closer to the town proved to be extremely difficult.
Russians are also using artillery to shell the town. Russian sources reported that Russian forces primarily resort to devastating 240mm Tyulpans, which is the largest mortar system in use today. The footage from the Ukrainian side shows that even houses that were not hit directly have no windows and doors due to the shockwaves.
Russians also found that they could not destroy Ukrainian vehicles inside the town because they are usually parked close to the northern side of the building. Given that shells do not fall vertically, the houses proved to be a great shelter, even though they may be in plain view from Russian drones.
That is why Russians started to actively use different tactics. Recent footage reveals that Russians are using incendiary munitions to burn everything on the ground. Unlike shells, they fall vertically, which allows for targeting cars and armored vehicles that are not in the shelter.
Ukrainians are also attacking Russian positions. As most Russian attacks are currently being launched from Mykilske, it became an area with significant forces concentrations and plenty of targets.
Ukrainian 72nd Mechanized Brigade recently released a video showing how they identified and destroyed fuel storage in the southeastern part of the village, near the farm facilities, and also targeted a big building with Russian manpower. Ukrainian 79th AirAssault Brigade showed a video of how they destroyed a Russian tank in the vicinity of Vuhledar.
Finally, Ukrainian drone operators from the 72nd Mechanized Brigade showed how they hunted down armored vehicles on the Russian base in Mykilske: they managed to throw a grenade right in the open hatch of an armored vehicle and also chase down several moving armored vehicles that were driving in and near Mykilske.
Some Russian sources reported that judging by the concentration of Ukrainian forces in the area, it is possible that Ukrainians will exploit the fact that Russian manpower is exhausted from constant attacks and will conduct a counterattack on Mykilske, pushing Russians to the other side of the river.
Firstly, such actions would completely eliminate any possibility of a sudden resumption of offensive operations on Vuhledar, which will allow Ukrainians to reduce the number of troops in this direction and get more flexibility with their reserves.
Secondly, such actions would set better conditions for a counteroffensive operation in the direction of Volnovakha and Mariupol. Ukrainians had previously conducted a small counteroffensive here in summer, which involved fording the river, and they managed to establish a good bridgehead very rapidly, so the topography of the region should allow them to repeat the same success, especially as the quality of the country roads has noticeably improved, judging by the latest videos from Vuhledar.
Overall, the continuous use of ATGMs, artillery, and incendiary munitions by Russians and HIMARS and drones by Ukrainians suggests that both sides are trying to take advantage of the increased concentration of forces in the area and destroy as much enemy manpower and equipment as possible. If Ukrainians continue combining these efforts with localized counterattacks, and push Russians from Mykilske, then they can set suitable conditions for a counteroffensive operation and increase the number of options on the table by late spring or summer.”
ARTICLE
Russian Ex-Diplomat on How West Can Isolate, Topple Putin
By David Brennan
3/25/23 3:00 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/how-west-isolate-topple-putin-boris-bondarev-1790174?spot_im_redirect_source=pitc
Russian President Vladimir Putin faces a mammoth task to transform his quagmire in Ukraine into the ideology-affirming imperial conquest he and his Kremlin allies envisaged just over a year ago.
Putin has become a pariah in the Western world, while an unprecedented sanctions offensive seeks to isolate the Russian economy and strangle the lucrative fossil fuel profits that fund Moscow’s war. Though he retains a strong grip on power at home, rumors of discontent among political and business elites are rife.
Last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered the latest humiliation for the president, issuing an arrest warrant related to the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, which could constitute a war crime.
Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat at Moscow’s United Nations mission in Geneva, told Newsweek that Western nations should use the ICC decision as a springboard to undermine Putin’s authority, unsettle influential Kremlin figures, and buoy the pro-democratic opposition movement in exile.
“Putin is already under suspicion of war crimes; we have this arrest warrant,” Bondarev said, referring to the ICC measure that prompted threats of missile strikes and world war from Putin’s allies. “The next step would be that the Western countries would declare Putin illegitimate, deny that he is a legal, lawful, and just president.”
“Thus, that may be a declaration that Putin is the only obstacle to peace—the real peace—so he must be removed, one way or another,” said Bondarev, who resigned his position at Russia’s United Nations mission in Geneva in May 2022 in protest of the invasion.
Such a signal, Bondarev said, might help embolden Russian elites who are secretly against the war in Ukraine, or at least dissatisfied with its outcomes. This should be combined, he suggested, with an “open declaration” of opportunity for dissenters.
“In this declaration, there can be an invitation: ‘Do the right thing, and we will treat you in the most favorable way,’” Bondarev said. “Of course, I understand that Western countries may be very much reluctant to do this because it will be a very huge escalatory step. I argue that it should be done—this declaration, this approach—should be voiced by the Russian opposition organizations in exile.”
The pro-democratic opposition that has been silenced within Russia and abroad is divided into multiple—often feuding—camps. Though all agree on the need to unseat Putin, the various factions and organizations are divided on key issues.
A unified opposition, Bondarev said, could function akin to the World War II-era Free France, which worked with allied governments while in exile. “This political structure should produce a unified political platform on how Russian people would see Russia’s future,” Bondarev said.
“The platform should be presented to Western governments, and this political structure can act like an alternative Russia,” he added, noting the success of Belarusian opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. “So then Western capitals have someone to negotiate with who is not Putin,” Bondarev said.
But the decades-long absence of fair elections in Russia, and the unreliability of polling, means it is difficult to say who should fill those shoes. Even the most well-known opposition figures abroad—among them jailed politician Alexei Navalny; oligarch-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky; and former chess master Garry Kasparov—have little claim to represent the people.
“Today, no opposition leader, or opposition speaker, or anyone has this legitimacy,” Bondarev said. “They can say, ‘I have the support of millions of people,’ but they cannot produce any proof.”
A system of online voting might go some way to addressing this issue, the former diplomat said, if the leaders in question can be convinced to risk their own prominent positions. Several opposition groups have proposed similar systems, though as yet there is no unified way forward.
A new generation of voices, Bondarev said, would inject life into the pro-democracy movement. “We need new political activists, new political leaders,” he said. “There is a public demand for this, but there is no supply.”
“That’s why I think we need some influencers with their huge audiences to promote this idea,” Bondarev proposed, adding that he has no grand ambitions of his own.
“Politically, I am a no-name,” he said.
Newsweek reached out to the Kremlin by email to request comment.
Both the Intel Drop and Veteran's Today have stories saying 9/11 and the Beirut 2020 fertilizer explosion were Israeli nuclear bombs.
Does antisemitism vitiate using a site as a source?
Wagners failed their main goal in BakhmutFanatical Putin Stooges Worst Affected
I read the article in its entirety and didn’t see anything antisemitic:
Would you please point out the antisemitic part of the article?
Thanks.
VIDEOS
1. How do Russians avoid the war and how is life in hiding or abroad?
DW News - DW is a German public broadcast service
4.52M subscribers
Mar 25, 2023 11:45 a.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB4_pwzetaI
“Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left their homeland since President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine last year.
Many were fleeing economic hardship. Others wanted to avoid being called up to fight in Ukraine. Some who are unwilling to join the army are still in Russia but living in hiding.”
2. German attitude towards the war in Ukraine | World Today
TVP World
307K subscribers
Mar 25, 2023 6:30 p.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy_bBYIEJwY
German military aid to Ukraine has got off its starting blocks. What has motivated the change and what other factors are affecting German strategic thinking, as Olaf Scholz navigates the new geopolitical reality of Europe and the globe. We are joined by Andreas Umland of the Stockholm Institute of Foreign Affairs and Mykola University in Kyiv.
3. NO TANKS - THE 3 BIGGEST RUSSIAN TANK FACTORIES ARE IDLING DUE TO ELECTRONICS SHORTAGE || 2023
Warthog Defense
482K subscribers
Mar 25, 2023 7:00 p.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qF9RokbReI
Intel Drop is poor source: bias
Says the one who posts Uke prop narrative nightly.
“No Uke prop narrative”
I honor your right to freedom of thought and expression. Each of us are responsible to form our own opinion.
Actually, intellectual honesty does demand for each of us to think independently. Exposure to differing viewpoints is important to rightly determine your own personal perspective. It does take effort not to follow ‘group-think.’
Suum cuique [to each his own]
So, each person is the freedom and is entitled to form their personal view. I do understand. Sometimes it become difficult to follow & view the continuation of Putin’s evil invasion of Ukraine.
VIDEOS
1. ‘NATO IS TREMBLING’ - RUSSIANS ARE PREPARING ANCIENT T-34 FOR A FIGHT || 2023
Warthog Defense
482K subscribers
3-25-2023 2:30 p.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNE3fbCYEQ
2. Russians besieged in Donetsk ask Putin for help - “We have a large number of dead and wounded...”
Kanal13
1.5M subscribers
3-25-2023 10:00 a.m. DST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI36axdy6bU
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