'Ukrainian missile strikes' blow up oil facilities in Russia supplying troops in Donbas as British intelligence says Putin's forces have 'yet to achieve a significant breakthrough' and many units are 'exhausted'

Flames lit up the sky over Russia in the early hours after suspected Ukrainian missile strikes blew up two oil storage facilities supplying Putin's troops fighting for control of Donbas.

The Transneft-Druzhba Oil Depot, located in the city of Bryansk around 70 miles from the Ukrainian border, caught fire at 2am local time before a second fire broke out at a nearby military facility around 15 minutes later, Russian state media said this morning.

Video of the moment one of the fires broke out appeared to capture the sound of an incoming missile before a large explosion and fireball. Bryansk is a logistical hub for Russian forces battling Ukraine in Donbas, while the Druzhba pipeline is one of the main routes for Russian oil to reach Europe.

The blasts came as British intelligence said Russia had 'yet to achieve a significant breakthrough' of defensive lines in Donbas despite Ukraine imposing a 'significant cost' on Putin's forces. Britain's Ministry of Defence said poor logistical and combat support were hampering Russia's advances, as they did in the failed effort to take Kyiv.

Ukrainian defenders holed up in the Azovstal steel works in the southern city of Mariupol - which is still under siege - were also pinning down 'many Russian units' and preventing them from redeploying to the Donbas front, while also exhausting Putin's troops and reducing their combat effectiveness, the MoD added.

Russia's war on Ukraine - which was intended to take just days and end with the toppling of its pro-Western government - is now into its third month, with Kyiv claiming to have killed almost 22,000 Russian soldiers while destroying military equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

In that time, Putin's army has suffered a number of embarrassing losses - most notably the Moskva

“My family there knows how the Russian thugs operate and lie.”

All of Russian society is based on lies and has been for a hundred years. It’s the bedrock of their joke of a country. Everyone lies to everyone else just like everyone steals from everyone else. That’s why their military can’t beat a country one tenth their size in spite of all the advantages they have on paper.

Their armor is failing because it wasn’t properly maintained. It wasn’t properly maintained because all the money for it was stolen. No one got caught for stealing all that money because literally everyone was in on it.

Their vaunted Black Sea flagship is at the bottom because the sailors weren’t properly trained. They weren’t properly trained because all the money for that was stolen. No one was caught, much less punished, for stealing all that money because literally everyone was in on that.

The readiness reports? All lies.
The inventory reports? All lies.
The training reports? All lies.
Every single word out of Russian mouths is a lie.

This does NOT make me a fan of the Ukrainian government. The only difference is in scale. I hope at the end of this Russia is spent as a military force and the long suffering Russian people rise up and hang every single one of those thieving bastards by their heels from lamp posts, Putin included.

I also hope that at the end of this the long suffering Ukrainian people rise up and hang every single one of their thieving bastards from lamp posts, Zelenski included.

You need ENOUGH ground troops to serve as a tripwire. And wide enough territory to be able to defend. There are scatterings of where this approach has worked, like in the Philippines, Guantanamo, Panama Canal when we kept it, Bagram AirBase until Biden came along...

I disagree that just having enough ground troops to be a tripwire is enough if you're in a non-friendly country. Look at your examples: Philippines/Clark was in a friendly country. So was the Canal Zone, and Gitmo is 90 miles off the cost so it might as well be. Bagram also was supported by thousands of U.S. troops in country. None of those was simply a big airbase, alone, in a hostile country thousands of miles away.

In 1979 when our Iranian embassy was breached, if we had more military presence and a real emBASEeee, we’d still be operating out of there.

No chance. Impossible to keep a single base without large numbers of ground troops inside an openly hostile country of 70 million people. It would have been suicide for them.

Unless the government itself is allied with us, your scenario enables a pretty much endless diet of mortars and artillery because you don't have the ground troops to shut them down. You'll be vulnerable to SAM's being fired from all that territory outside your walls that you don't control. It'd be a nightmare to defend...and what would be the point of having that base there at all? No ground controllers, no support for intelligence assets to locate and identify targets....

I don't get it.

Bagram also was supported by thousands of U.S. troops in country.
***There were about 2k troops at Bagram. It worked pretty good until Biden betrayed the US military.

None of those was simply a big airbase, alone, in a hostile country thousands of miles away.
***There were several airbases in Afghanistan that could serve as prototypes for emBASEees. Regular patrols along the perimeter, any military activity outside the wire heavily counteracted.

Kevmo: In 1979 when our Iranian embassy was breached, if we had more military presence and a real emBASEeee, we’d still be operating out of there.
BCC: No chance. Impossible to keep a single base without large numbers of ground troops
***I’m saying we need large numbers of ground troops. But not nearly as many as we set up in Afghanistan.

inside an openly hostile country of 70 million people. It would have been suicide for them.
***If we had 3 of them within range of each other, the openly hostile country of Iran would never have been able to hold Americans hostage.

Unless the government itself is allied with us, your scenario enables a pretty much endless diet of mortars
***Then our guys go after the mortar dudes. It is an anti-terrorism op covering just the 3 airbases, not the entire country.

and artillery because you don’t have the ground troops to shut them down.
***If the host country is allowing artillery then we have the means to go after such operations right there in the emBASEee. The host country soon learns to leave the Americans alone.

You’ll be vulnerable to SAM’s being fired from all that territory outside your walls that you don’t control.
***SAMs. Again, if such hostile actions are taking place then we would have the means to chase down those terrorists. There were bunkers in Nicaragua which were never breached by the sandanistas. EmBASEees become a way to enforce a localized neutrality around such regions.

It’d be a nightmare to defend...and what would be the point of having that base there at all?
***Antiterrorism ops. American Land with the capability to defend it right there where the bullshiite starts.

No ground controllers,
***Plenty of ground controllers.

no support for intelligence assets to locate and identify targets....
***Plenty of support for intelligence assets.

I don’t get it.
***That’s because you’re imposing your assumptions onto the plan rather than just looking at what has worked in the past. If it were such an easy task to move off Americans then Guantanamo woulda been gone long ago. The Philippines had a long-running communist guerilla problem that we were able to help with. Vietnam had airbases that the vietcong never did do much damage to because of the counter batteries of artillery and aggressive defense by air and ground patrols. Nowadays you can fly drones 24/7 above an airspace. It would be like how we ran Afghanistan but instead of trying to run the whole country you just pick your own 3 regions which become essentially civilized.

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