Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part V

[blindpig]

The power of knowing that you are unpunished
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 12/29/2024



Earlier this week, a harsh message from Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Slovak president of wanting to help Russia evade sanctions and finance the war by collaborating in the gas trade. As a consumer of Russian gas, which will continue to transit through Ukraine until December 31 until the contract between Gazprom and Naftogaz expires, Slovakia has tried to mediate between the parties to achieve the extension of the agreement and thus preserve the supply of Russian raw material to its clients in eastern and central Europe. The Slovak leader is one of the exponents of the small European faction that advocates negotiation in search of peace, so gas was not the only topic of the meeting between the presidents of Russia and Slovakia held in Moscow. Visibly upset by Robert Fico's visit to the Kremlin, Zelensky strongly condemned the gesture of breaking the diplomatic blockade against Russia that Ukraine expects from its allies.

Days earlier, Fico had accused Zelensky of offering $500 million to buy the Slovak vote in favor of Ukraine joining NATO, an offer that the Ukrainian president partially confirmed by saying that Slovakia had refused Ukrainian compensation for the losses that would result from the loss of transit. “If anyone is going to prevent the transit of gas to the territory of the Slovak Republic, if anyone is going to cause an increase in gas prices on the territory of Europe, if anyone is going to cause enormous economic damage to the European Union, it is President Zelensky,” Fico said.

Although the Slovak president admits that the real possibility of Ukraine permanently cutting off the transit of Russian gas through its infrastructure will not be a serious problem in the short term, the need to guarantee energy supplies forces him to try until the end to obtain an agreement from kyiv that extends the existing contracts or that gives more time to find a solution. Zelensky's words, implying that there were hidden interests and without realizing that the main obligation of a president is towards his citizens and not towards Ukraine, provoked the response of Fico who was visibly upset. Fico, who in recent months has suffered an assassination attempt, has not dodged the dispute and has responded to Zelensky.

“By disrupting gas transit, President Zelensky will cause billions of dollars of damage to the EU, including Slovakia, and further reduce the EU’s competitiveness. It seems that the EU bigwigs do not object. The main thing is that, in the name of the unrealistic goal of weakening Russia, the Slavs will continue to kill each other,” Fico was quoted as saying by Ukrainian media yesterday. “‘From January 1, we will consider the situation and the possibility of reciprocal measures against Ukraine,’ Fico said in a video posted on Facebook on Friday. ‘If it is inevitable, we will stop the supply of electricity, which Ukraine urgently needs in case of grid failure,’ he said,” Politico wrote yesterday in connection with the new phase of escalation in the verbal and economic conflict between the two neighbors. The issue of electricity exports, for which Slovakia needs gas that it has so far purchased from the Russian Federation, was something that Fico himself discussed directly with Denis Shmyhal at their meeting on the Slovak-Ukrainian border. At that time, the Ukrainian prime minister thanked Slovakia for its efforts to compensate for the energy that Ukraine cannot produce due to Russian bombing of its critical infrastructure, but he did not show any willingness to compromise to help Bratislava guarantee its electricity production. Ukraine is now hiding behind the betrayal that it believes Fico's trip to Moscow represents, but the refusal to provide mutual support between kyiv and Bratislava precedes that visit by many months.

Since the meeting between the Ukrainian government and the Slovak president, the situation has not only not changed, but the conflict has worsened and Ukraine persists in its demands on neighbouring countries, from which it expects support and loyalty, without any help from them. kyiv expects its allies to continue supplying the energy it needs to maintain control of the state and continue fighting Russia, but it does not believe it has any responsibility to support them in producing the electricity that they then have to export to Ukraine. “Who cares about Slovakia, right, Mr. Zelensky?” Robert Fico asked in a video posted on Facebook on Friday. “But when you need something to keep from freezing in winter, you scream in frustration,” he added, referring to the double standards he perceives from kyiv.

Yesterday, after Fico’s words, Zelensky’s response was published on social media in three languages ​​(English, Slovak and Ukrainian, in that order). “The only reasons why Ukraine now needs to import electricity are the Russian occupation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and its use of “Shahed” missiles and drones to deliberately destroy a large part of Ukraine’s heat and hydroelectric power generation,” wrote the Ukrainian president to justify his new attack against his Slovak counterpart who, to alleviate this situation, not only offers Slovak electricity – provided he has the raw material to produce it – but also a platform to achieve peace. In any case, Zelensky should also be reminded that one of the reasons why Ukraine is now an importer of electricity and not an exporter, as it has been even in these years of war, is kyiv’s refusal to negotiate with Russia a partial ceasefire that would exclude electricity production infrastructure from acceptable targets. Between negotiation and escalation, Ukraine chose the Kursk adventure, knowing that it made diplomacy impossible.

In his long message, Zelensky wanted to send three messages to Fico. “First, supporting Russian aggression is completely immoral,” he begins. “Second, Fico’s short-sighted policy has already deprived the Slovak people of compensation for losing Russian gas transit. Now he risks depriving Slovaks of another $200 million a year, which Ukraine pays for imported electricity. Yes, this critical import is not free, and the cost is significant,” he adds, without wanting to recall the short-sighted Ukrainian policy, which has preferred to lose the multi-million-dollar revenues from Russian gas transit and which, as Bloomberg recalls , will now have to protect these infrastructures, whose security guarantee until now has been the continued use of them. With the supply interrupted, Russia’s incentives to maintain its integrity decrease inversely proportional to the risks for Ukraine, which needs these gas pipelines to receive gas from its allies.

“Thirdly,” Zelensky continued, “it will be much more profitable for everyone in Europe, including the Slovak people, in every respect to work with neighbours and the EU to increase the supply of energy resources from Europe, including gas from the United States and other partners. Only in this way can energy costs be reduced for most families.” The Ukrainian president did not want to miss the opportunity to promote the product of his main ally, a gas that is further away, more expensive and with a higher carbon footprint than Russian gas. The interest in protecting the environment is only relevant when it comes to vetoing Russian products.

“Slovakia is part of the European single energy market and Fico must respect common European rules. Arbitrary decisions by Bratislava or orders from Moscow to Fico on electricity cannot cut off Ukraine’s electricity supply, but they can cut off the current ties of the Slovak authorities with the European community,” Zelensky said, giving orders to the Slovak authorities and issuing threats as if he were already a representative of the European community .

But the most significant part of the message is its beginning, where, for the second time this week, he allows himself to present the Slovak head of state as a Kremlin puppet. “It seems that Putin gave Fico the order to open the second energy front against Ukraine at the expense of the interests of the Slovak people. Fico’s threats to cut off Ukraine’s emergency power supply this winter while Russia attacks our power plants and energy grid can only be explained by this,” writes the Ukrainian president, seeing an outside attack and conspiracy in the Slovak reaction and a favour in the case of Ukraine’s actions.

“Today I have reviewed the details of electricity imports from the EU through Slovakia,” Zelensky said yesterday evening, adding that “they amount to 19% of the total. Fico is not going to cut off our imports. We are working with other neighbours in the EU.” Zelensky knows he is getting away with it.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/12/29/el-po ... se-impune/

Google Translator

*****

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Regarding the situation in the Kursk direction (data from the Ministry of Defense):

Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost up to 400 servicemen, three tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, an armored personnel carrier, three armored combat vehicles, 14 vehicles, four artillery pieces, a mortar, 13 FPV drone crews, and an electronic warfare station have been destroyed. In total, during the military operations in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 45,220 servicemen, 262 tanks, 203 infantry fighting vehicles, 142 armored personnel carriers, 1,349 armored combat vehicles, 1,231 vehicles, 336 artillery pieces, 42 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 13 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 83 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 28 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , seven armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle.

***

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of December 29, 2024) Main points:

The Russian Armed Forces damaged the infrastructure of the military airfields of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the UAV launch site;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 420 fighters and four field ammunition depots due to the actions of the West group of forces;

- Russian air defence systems shot down 61 Ukrainian drones in one day;

- The South fighters took more advantageous positions, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 220 servicemen;

- The North and Dnepr groups hit up to 110 Ukrainian soldiers in one day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 170 infantry units due to the actions of the East group.

Units of the "East" group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defense, defeated the formations of the mechanized, motorized infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the territorial defense brigade in the areas of the settlements of Ravnopol and Zelenoye Pole of the Donetsk People's Republic. They repelled two counterattacks of the enemy assault groups. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 170 servicemen, a tank, three vehicles, a 155-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Paladin" made in the USA, a 152-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Acacia" and a 152-mm gun D-20 .



Units of the Dnepr group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of the mechanized , infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Kamenskoye in the Zaporizhia region, Antonovka, Sadovoe and Mykhailivka in the Kherson region. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 70 servicemen, two vehicles, an electronic warfare station and a Dutch-made Squire reconnaissance radar .



Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted damage on the infrastructure of military airfields, the launch site of unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 137 districts.

61 unmanned aerial vehicles of the aircraft type were shot down by air defense systems .

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 650 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 38,813 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,083 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,504 multiple launch rocket system combat vehicles, 20,073 field artillery pieces and mortars, and 29,621 units of special military vehicles.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*****

Brief report from the front on December 26, 2024
The Ukrainian Armed Forces will leave Ukrainka in the near future. Report by Marat Khairullin with illustrations by Mikhail Popov.

Zinderneuf
Dec 26, 2024


ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 1st, 2024. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Borovaya (Borova) section of the Kupyansk direction, the Russian Armed Forces have advanced into the settlement of Zagryzovo (Zahryzove). Russian groups in armored vehicles are already working on the southern outskirts of the settlement, pushing the enemy back to the Boguslavka (Bohuslavka) area.


ЛБС 12.9.2024=Line of Combat Contact September 12th, 2024. ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.12.2024=Line of Combat Contact December 1st, 2024. Зона продвижения после предыдущей сводки=The zone of advancement since the previous summary.
In the Pokrovsk section of the Donetsk direction, Russian units have taken control of almost the entire territory of the settlement of Dachenskoe, with the exception of a small, separately located part in the northeast, for which fighting is still ongoing. This part of Dachenskoe will provide access to the western part of Lysovka, that is, access to the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces units and pressure on them from three sides at once.

In the Peschanoe area, our troops penetrated the enemy's defenses between Peschanoe and Volkovo (Vovkove), advancing west along the forest belt, and created a threat of a flank attack on the enemy in both settlements at once.

Interesting reports are also coming from the north of the Pokrovsk sector, where our units have begun to cross to the other bank of the Kazenny Torets in the area of ​​Mirolyubovka (Myrolyubivka), preparing a bridgehead for an offensive, most likely in the direction of Novoekonomichesk (Novoekonomichne) to form the right flank of the envelopment of the Pokrovsk-Mirnograd agglomeration.

In Novovasilyevka, the situation is also rapidly deteriorating for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Our troops have advanced towards it both along the gully from the south and in the fields from Novotroitskoye. From the ravine area, our fighters entered the farm territory and consolidated their positions there. Most likely, after the accumulation of forces, an assault on this small settlement will follow.

Our units have expanded their control in the Novoolenovka and Novoelizavetovka areas. South of Novoolenovka, enemy strongholds were captured, which made it possible to consolidate near the northern outskirts of Ukrainka, for which fighting is already underway, and part of it is under the control of our fighters. The current situation allows us to say that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will leave this settlement in the very near future.



In Kurakhovo, fighting continues on the outskirts of the high-rise district. Russian forces have managed to advance, taking the area of ​​the city hospital located in the southwest of the city. Attacks are underway in the area of ​​Zaporozhye Avenue (the orange road in the north of Kurakhovo) and battles are underway for the garage development and industrial zone (the fish farm) north of it.

The advance has begun in the fields south of Kurakhovo. West of the settlement of Dalnee (Dalnje), Russian detachments are making their way to the area of ​​treatment water bodies. Our zone of control has also been expanded in their direction. The Russian Defense Ministry announced today the liberation of the settlement of Gigant (Hihant). Our units are increasing pressure from its area on Yantarnoe. The exit to it through the Sukhie Yaly River will allow us to move in the direction of the settlement of Ulakly along the tree lines located there. It is the situation in the area of ​​the settlement of Ulakly that will most likely determine how long the enemy will be able to hold out in the industrial zone of Kurakhovo and in the entire pocket south of the city.

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... cember-54d

*****

Lies will kill us all: last line before Dnipro

War telegram roundup, 12.19-27.19. 'Slavery with a one-way ticket'.

Events in Ukraine
Dec 27, 2024

Another week, another roundup of frontline news from Ukrainian military telegrams. On today’s menu:

Our frontline Cossack Muchnoy Jugend releases a rap track

The army’s problems

Corruption, meat assaults - ‘slavery with a one-way ticket’. Superior Russian training, even if it looks dumb

Ukrainian militarists envy Russia’s supposedly ‘Hitlerian’ talent

The current situation around the frontline:

Kursk, Vovchansk, Terny, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, Kurakhove, and Velyka Novosilka.

Ukrainian forces retreat to the last defense lines before Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, and the last remaining industrial giant along with frontline Zaporizhzhia (since Donetsk and Lugansk are long gone)

Russian tactics

Less armor, more cars and buggies.

Why it isn’t worth laughing off Russians shooting at drones with guns

Koreans?

I hate to even talk about this because there’s so little evidence and so much weird vibes, but I gathered some perspectives on it

To begin with, a welcome by ‘Muchnoy Jugend’, one of our ‘favorites’, who I wrote about last week:



Wishing you strong health, banditos! How's everything going, all in place? Time to get to work—every Russian scum will burn in hell!

Glory to the Nation!


He also released a rap song called ‘keep safe’:



Here’s my translation. And while chatgpt helped me, as usual it was limited - it always refuses to translate ‘faggots’, the favorite term for Russian soldiers among Ukrainian soldiers. It gives me rubbish like ‘bastards’:

Muchnoy…. The warmth is gone, rain drags on slowly,
The city is cloaked in darkness, while it still breathes,
Rainclouds, there’s nowhere for it to go, everything is in shadows,
No one knows, the dreamy stars begin to shimmer.
The starry fields, raindrops of harvest,
Not just one autumn night, cold and sharp, striking,
Suddenly, the sky hums with tension,
The blue sky explodes, the heavens break,
The drone shatters the crystal blue,
From life to death, just a bloody moment,
And suddenly there’s silence, a voice echoes,
"Get up, fight for Ukraine, it’s ours,
It’s ours and unique, the enemy will be destroyed,
In the fields of Donbas, our army will give no chance
To the Russian pigs, no place to run,
The fields are mined, here they are covered by Grad rockets,
My soul is alive, my heart beats,
I’ll always stay with those who never surrender,
The thunder rolled in the sky, remember,
Those who are in heaven now, I assure everyone,
That broken will be the fear, proudly over the country,
I raise the flag, keep my brothers safe,
Don’t let them die in battle, don’t whine,
Lead to victory, strength of spirit and body,
Don’t lose hope, for the weak are not respected,
Even by the gods.
Save my brothers, don’t let them die in battle,
Don’t whine, lead to victory, strength of spirit and body,
Don’t lose it, for the weak are not respected,
A radio request flies for artillery, brothers,
Work on those russack pigs, armor next,
It’ll be up to the infantry, the cursed scum,
Choking on their own filth, approach closer,
Bitches, I’m not afraid of you,
I’ll stay loyal to those with whom I fight,
I pray for you all,
Save my brothers, don’t let them die in battle,
Don’t whine, lead to victory,
Strength of spirit and body - don’t lose it,
For the weak are not respected,
Save my brothers, don’t let them die in battle,
Don’t whine, lead to victory, strength of spirit and body,
Don’t lose it, for the weak are not respected,
Even by the gods.

(Paywall with free option)

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... ine-before

*****

"The Cursed Forest"
colonelcassad
December 28, 17:05



Excerpts from the book "Aida" (commander of the Special Forces "Akhmat") - "The Cursed Forest".

One of the reconnaissance snipers from the battalion next to us opened his account.
It was his first shot, first kill and first body inspection.
By the way, for the next two days he withdrew into himself, practically did not eat and did not leave the room.
- Can you talk to him? - his commander asked me.
- No problem, - I answered.
I went up the stairs and knocked on the door. Silence.
After knocking a few more times, I opened it.
A young sniper, naked to the waist, was picking at his hand with a knife. There were already several dozen wounds.
He was taking out something that only he could see.
Confused, similar images that I had seen many years ago surfaced in my eyes.
The sniper, who had retired, realizing the burden of his responsibility, rubbed his hands to the flesh with pumice.
I closed the door and silently walked back.
Having met his commander in the common room, I said:
- I'm afraid that talking won't help him anymore... call the medics and take him to the evacuation.
Almost all the fighters ran up the stairs.

* * *



- Did you choose the call sign yourself? - Akim asked.
- No, I inherited it.
- What was it before?
- Sinner.
- Did the mentor pass it on?
- Yes. Before him, there was Hades.
- Are you going to pass it on to someone else too?
I thought for a moment:
- No. I think I'll be the last Hades.
- What's wrong?
- The call sign is cursed, I think. Everyone ended up the same way, plus or minus. I don't want to pass on a curse.

* * *



I woke up from a nightmare that had been haunting me for the past few days. The gray swamp of the cursed forest called me through my dreams.
Peering into the muddy waters of the swamp in my sleep, I clearly saw hundreds of eyes looking at me from there.
How many souls this swamp has taken since WWII, I don't know, but the place really was nasty.
I went down to the first floor of our farm to make some tea. The clock showed 4 am.
Half an hour later, alarm clocks started ringing en masse, and the soldiers started getting up for a combat mission.
- You're early. Didn't go to bed? - asked Kostyl.
- A difficult question, - I muttered under my breath.
- Are you with us? To the BZ?
- Yes, why not. Where are you going?
- To the swamp.
I felt the unpleasant aftertaste of sleep.

* * *



We passed the hotel, in the direction of the "horseshoe", to make our way through the minefields, to set up an observation post. The bank on the other side of the horseshoe was packed with the enemy.
Having removed a couple of inept infantry tripwires, which were already asking for a bullet, because of their idiotic habit of wrapping tripwires around themselves in circles and resting, we moved on.
The enemy also entered the horseshoe and it was necessary to move vigilantly so as not to fall into an ambush.
We had several combat encounters on the horseshoe.
As well as getting into enemy secrets.
It was also dangerous to get into the swamp. The armor will pull you to the bottom and you won’t be able to get out.
Seeing fresh tracks on our territory, we carefully followed them.
Two people. The tracks split. In one area there were fragments of an exploded tripwire. Apparently, the enemy was blown up and wounded.
Carefully following the route, we reached the swamp.
From under the water, a dead soldier of the Ukrainian Armed Forces looked at me with open eyes and an open mouth. Swollen, wounded in the leg, he fell into the swamp and drowned.
For a few seconds, I carefully looked at these eyes under the water and was silent.
- What is it? - the soldier distracted me.
- Well, just like that... I’m starting to believe in prophetic dreams. We get him. Four are looking for the second one.
- Why get him? - my scout was perplexed.
- Let’s check the pockets. Let's take the documents, the mobile phone, if you have one. And those eyes underwater irritate me.
- What?
- They call me. In my sleep.

* * *



Dreams have always been an unpleasant part of me. That's why I was grateful for my insomnia.
On those few days when I got enough sleep, dreams fell on me like an avalanche.
Sometimes, the dreams were so beautiful that I regretted waking up.
More often, I would like my day to be a dream that I forgot about.
Sometimes, through dreams, I communicated with those who should not be around.
On the eve of my next duel, I fell asleep.
I dreamed of a park, which I had definitely visited at some point in my past life on the other side of the war. I don't remember where it is. I don't even remember the circumstances under which I was there.
It was raining lightly, it was deserted. Dreams are generally deserted. Most often.
I sat down under a tree, clearly aware that I had fallen asleep.
- What are you worried about? - a familiar voice rang out.
- You shouldn't be here, old man. - I answered Hades without turning around.
- Why?
- I know I fell asleep. And I know that when I wake up, I'll be disappointed. Don't start.
- Aren't you happy to see me? - He sat down next to me.
- Not on the eve of a hard day.
- Worried that you'll lose?
- You lost. Right in front of me.
He laughed:
- And you won. After me. You still have a long way to go. A hard one. Don't worry. You're destined to go through it.
I opened my eyes from the alarm clock.
Remembering that a duel awaited me on some God-knows-how-many terms, with any outcome, I took a deep breath and slowly exhaled.
Smiling wryly at the words of my mentor, I stood up.
"This is the way, old man." - a thought that became the final thread with my dream.



https://t.me/iamsniper/9597 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9578536.html

Top 10 Events of the War in Ukraine
December 29, 11:00



Top 10 events of the war in Ukraine.

1. Strategic offensive of the Russian Armed Forces and liberation of Avdiivka, Selydove, Ugledar (Kurakhove and Velyka Novosyolka as well)
2. Kursk adventure of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which turned the tide on the front line, but not in the way the enemy expected. After it, things went much better for us.
3. Continuation of the drone revolution. Rapid development of cable drones, drones with machine vision, repeater drones, etc., etc. The future is coming.
4. Missile war. Massive strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on Ukraine + the beginning of the use of Western long-range missiles on Russian territory.
5. Busification in Ukraine. In 2024, many Ukrainians realized that "war to the last Ukrainian" is not a joke and not propaganda. But it's too late to run.
6. Drone strikes. The Russian Armed Forces have reached a schedule of up to 100+ Geranium strikes per day. The enemy has also increased the number of drones attacking regions of the Russian Federation.
7. "Oreshnik". Not nuclear yet. Everything is within the framework of the thesis "Everything that lies below the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons can and will be used in Ukraine". The parties have few moves left.
8. Failure of hopes for Western wonder weapons. Following the "Bayraktars", "Leopards", "Abrams" and "Strykers" with "Bradley", the F-16s also failed in Ukraine in a mundane way.
9. Escalation of the sabotage and terrorist war. The enemy is intensifying sabotage and terrorist attacks in the Russian Federation. We are still lagging behind in this matter. The white gloves must be taken off.
10. Reshuffles in the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense (Shoigu's departure to the Security Council, Belousov's arrival), numerous corruption cases in the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Defense and in the Patriot Park. New 1937 Lite.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9580029.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

The war in Ukraine and natural resources
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 12/30/2024



The most decisive factor in determining how the war in Ukraine will continue and what the coming year holds for the population is undoubtedly the coming to power of Donald Trump. As Volodymyr Zelensky has recently insisted, the security guarantees that European countries can provide are not enough without the United States, which is key in financing, supplying equipment, producing the weapons necessary to continue fighting and, above all, in the political and diplomatic support that makes the military path the only acceptable way to resolve it. Since the beginning of November, convincing Trump of the merits of war, the need to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian and the benefits of doing so has been the main obsession of NATO and a large part of its member countries, which are looking for a way to increase their contribution to the Alliance to please the new president of the United States and to encourage an increase in military spending that will compensate for a possible reduction in Washington's funds.

Eclectic in its composition and contradictory in many of its political positions, the MAGA coalition (Make America Great Again) includes in its ranks people like JD Vance, future vice president, who said on television that he is not interested in what the future of Ukraine will be, or Donald Trump Jr., who shows his disdain for Ukraine on social media without the slightest shame. But part of the new president's circle is also Mike Waltz, who spoke of "removing the handcuffs on the use of long-range missiles" as a tool to force Russia to negotiate, and Keith Kellogg, who condemned the latest Russian missile attack not only for the damage it caused but, above all, for taking place on Christmas Day. A third current, this one from the most literal definition of the America First policy (the United States, confused with the entire continent, first) tries to convince its leader of the need to defeat Russia in Ukraine for economic reasons, not political, military or security reasons. Until now, its main exponent in the United States has been Lindsey Graham, who, accustomed to saying out loud what others only dare to think, stated in a media appearance that “Ukraine sits on trillions of dollars in minerals that could help the American economy.” The American senator, who in these ten years of conflict in Ukraine has used all the arguments at his disposal to convince the White House to increase aid to Kiev, did not specify the location of those raw materials whose control he aspires to, nor did he recall that part of them is located in the territory under Russian control, so his proposal to protect or capture those riches for the benefit of the United States necessarily implies fighting, as he himself has stated, “to the last Ukrainian.” That is also the vision of Zelensky, who even introduced a point to specify the possibility of sharing Ukrainian mineral resources with Western allies in his Victory Plan , a way of offering economic benefits to investors in countries that supply Ukraine with the weapons with which to continue the war.

From this point of view, understanding Ukraine's mineral wealth as a practically existential element for the United States, is written the article by Marc Thiesen, a regular on Fox News and member of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most belligerent and anti-Russian think-tanks in the United States, published in The Washington Post . The premise of the article is consistent with the current way of thinking of the American establishment , both Republican and Democrat, in which economic policy is slightly removed from the great financial powers and is equated with national security. The consequence is that the control of resources is seen as a zero-sum game in which any gain by other actors is perceived as a loss for themselves and powers like the United States cannot allow themselves to be left out of the fight for any resource, even if it is seen as unnecessary, because the absence of Washington in control necessarily means the capture of those economic riches by an enemy or opponent. In this way, Ukraine, one of the poorest countries on the European continent, becomes the scene of an unrenounceable economic struggle between the United States on the one hand - the American argument does not include European allies, whose opinions and needs are irrelevant - and China and Russia on the other. Thiesen, like the entire current that defends this type of expansionism, is aware that this is the type of struggle that Trump and his current, falsely accused of isolationism, are willing to maintain. After all, in his first term in office, Donald Trump said that American troops were in Syria "only for the oil", a plunder that for the United States was minimal, but which deprived the State of income, the absence of which has been one of the factors in the economic crisis that has ended up bringing down the Syrian Arab Republic.

Oil is precisely Thiesen’s starting point, writing that “Donald Trump often says that liberating Iraq without getting its oil resources was one of America’s biggest foreign policy mistakes,” adding that the future president “has the opportunity to avoid a similar mistake in Ukraine.” From his position in a lobby that is heavily focused on economic interests, Thiesen seems not to have understood in the 20 years since the invasion of Iraq that the United States did not need oil for itself but to be available to its allies without dependence on its opponents, managed by a government imposed and approved by Washington, and traded in US dollars and not euros or yuan. The United States controls the oil of the Middle East thanks to those loyal governments and countries whose sovereignty it can infringe at any time. Ukraine, which has also renounced its sovereignty despite presenting the current conflict as a war of national liberation, offers a similar scenario, in which the United States has demonstrated its ability to impose economic measures and ensure that strategic resources do not fall into the hands of enemies such as Russia or opponents such as China.

“Ukraine is not just Europe’s breadbasket; it is also a mineral superpower with some of the largest reserves of 117 of the world’s 120 most widely used minerals. Of the 50 strategic minerals identified by the United States as critical to its economy and national security, many of which are quite rare but key to certain high-value applications, Ukraine supplies 22. Ukraine has Europe’s largest reserves of uranium; the second-largest reserves of iron ore, titanium and manganese; and the third-largest reserves of shale gas, titanium and manganese, as well as large deposits of rare earth metals, according to Canadian geopolitical risk analysis firm SecDev. These minerals are essential for the production of vital goods ranging from airplanes, cell phones and electric vehicles to steel and nuclear power,” Thiesen describes to highlight – and exaggerate – the importance of Ukraine. After that exposition, Thiesen throws a direct question to Donald Trump. “The question for the president-elect is: does he want Russia and China to get their hands on this treasure trove of natural resources? Or does he want to develop Ukraine with them and benefit the American people?” Despite the mention of Ukraine’s development, the overtones of exploiting another state’s natural resources, the main definition of imperialism, are clear, as is the fallacious attempt to present the Russian invasion as an attempt to profit from Ukraine’s natural resources.

“If Ukraine’s mineral wealth were to fall into Russian hands, it would be a strategic and economic boon for China, which has established a “no-holds-barred” partnership with Russia. Meanwhile, the United States needs reliable, friendly sources of these critical minerals. By helping Ukraine secure and develop its natural resources, we can also strike a strategic blow against Beijing and Moscow, while bringing enormous economic benefits to the American people,” Thiesen adds, making it clear that the war against Russia and the confrontation with China are part of the same conflict.

Ukraine's wealth is not limited to raw materials, but also to industry, as the Trump administration demonstrated in its first term in power. When Ukraine was preparing to finalize the sale of one of its strategic industries, Motor Sich, to China, John Bolton intervened using the same arguments that Thiesen is now using: the sale endangered Ukraine's national security. The sale did not take place and the United States showed evidence of being able to control the economy of a country in which it does not even maintain a military presence. However, that does not seem enough for a part of the coalition that brought him to power, which now uses the argument of economic imperialism and an imaginary risk of national security in the case of isolationism to justify a double war against two enemies: military in the case of Russia to bring NATO to its borders or to impose a demilitarized zone with a strong Western military and economic presence in the case of China.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/12/30/la-gu ... naturales/

Google Translator

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From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of the special military operation (as of December 30, 2024) Main points:

Russian air defense systems shot down 4 HIMARS multiple launch rockets and 65 Ukrainian Armed Forces drones in one day;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 530 servicemen, a tank, an infantry fighting vehicle, and 4 armored personnel carriers in one day in the zone of the West force grouping;

— The Russian Armed Forces hit energy facilities of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex, military airfields, storage depots, command posts, and launch sites for Ukrainian Armed Forces attack drones;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 420 servicemen, two tanks, 2 infantry fighting vehicles, an armored personnel carrier, and a Snatch armored vehicle in one day in the zone of the Center force grouping;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 140 fighters in one day as a result of the actions of the North and Dnipro force groups;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 175 servicemen in the area of ​​responsibility of the Eastern force grouping.

The decisive actions of the units of the "Center" group of forces liberated the settlement of Novoolenovka of the Donetsk People's Republic .

The manpower and equipment of three mechanized , motorized infantry , mountain assault brigades , two assault battalions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a marine brigade and an assault brigade of the national police of Ukraine in the areas of the settlements of Dzerzhinsk, Vozdvizhenka, Dachenskoye and Peschanoye of the Donetsk People's Republic were defeated. 11 counterattacks of armed formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were repelled. The enemy lost up to 420 servicemen, two tanks, including a German-made Leopard , two infantry fighting vehicles, an armored personnel carrier, a British-made Snatch armored fighting vehicle , five pickups, a 155-mm Bogdana self-propelled artillery unit , two 152-mm D-20 guns , a 122-mm Gvozdika self-propelled artillery unit , three 122-mm D-30 howitzers , and an electronic warfare station.



Units of the "East" group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defense, defeated formations of three mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and a territorial defense brigade in the areas of the settlements of Dneproenergiya, Bogatyr, Zelenoye Pole and Neskuchnoye of the Donetsk People's Republic. They repelled two counterattacks of the enemy assault groups. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 175 servicemen, three vehicles, a 152-mm D-20 gun, a 155-mm Paladin self-propelled artillery unit and a 105-mm M119 gun made in the USA. An electronic warfare station and a field ammunition depot were destroyed.



Units of the Dnepr group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of three territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Antonovka, Mykhailivka and Yantarnoye in the Kherson region. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 75 servicemen, a combat armored vehicle, four cars and two field ammunition depots.



Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted damage on energy facilities that ensure the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, the infrastructure of military airfields, storage depots, command posts and launch sites for strike unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 143 districts.

Air defense systems shot down four US-made HIMARS multiple launch rockets and 65 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 650 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 38,878 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,103 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,504 multiple launch rocket system combat vehicles, 20,093 field artillery pieces and mortars, and 29,644 units of special military vehicles.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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SITREP 12/28/24: Provocation Pressure Against Russia Heats Up in Both Air and Sea

Simplicius
Dec 28, 2024

<snip>



https://archive.ph/2Bxhs
Its big revelation?

That Biden gave Ukraine up to 500 ATACMS missiles—and they’re already almost completely out, with no more batches incoming:

In the spring, President Biden relented. The administration shipped Ukraine as many as 500 missiles from Pentagon stockpiles, the U.S. officials said.

…

At that point, Ukraine had only “tens of the missiles” left — maybe about 50, the two U.S. officials said. It had no likelihood of getting more, they said. The limited American supplies had already been assigned for deployment in the Middle East and Asia. Officials in Britain, which allowed Ukraine to use its long-range Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia after Mr. Biden’s decision, also said recently that it didn’t have many more to provide.

Think on that a moment: the total US stockpile of ATACMS was said to be maybe 1500-2000 max. That means the US shipped upwards of 25-33% of its entire strategic reserve and that gigantic amount has already been fired at Russian targets with virtually no noticeable result.

That certainly doesn’t bode well for Ukraine—nor even for the US in a hypothetical war against Russia.

And a new WaPo piece gives further grim accounting of Ukraine’s frontline situation:

But most Ukrainian military personnel acknowledge that soldier shortages are now just as critical as the weapons deficits. Some specialized jobs in the 33rd — such as a driver for armored personnel carriers — were down to just one person in a battalion, soldiers said, complicating logistics to transport troops safely back and forth from trench positions.



Now Russian gains continue.

A major breakthrough in Chasov Yar is reported, with Russian forces storming the entire Pivnichnyi district:



Meanwhile the main supply route of Velyka Novosilka was reportedly cut:



One report claims this dirt road is the only way out of the stronghold: (Video at link)

The largest gains by far included the expansion in every direction of control north of Kurakhove, toward the Pokrovsk axis:





And Kurakhove itself saw the final industrial section with the thermal plant being stormed, which means Russia is now within final striking distance of capturing the entire city:



There were many other smaller gains as well, but we’ll discuss them another time when they consolidate into more significant movements.

(Much more at link)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/sit ... n-pressure

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What Ukraine should look like after Russia’s victory
December 23, 2024
TASS

Dmitri Trenin
Academic Supervisor of the Institute of World Military Economy and Strategy at HSE University, RIAC member

There’s a timeless rule: in peace, prepare for war; in war, think about peace. As the conflict in Ukraine nears its inevitable conclusion – a Russia victory – our thoughts must turn toward the future and to the shape of the peace that follows.

To paraphrase Stalin: The Banderites [followers of the WW2 Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera] come and go, but the Ukrainian people remain.

The Future Map of Ukraine

Ukraine, as it existed on December 31, 1991, is gone. Crimea, Donbass, and two other regions have already returned to Russia through referendums. More will likely follow – perhaps Odessa, Nikolayev, Kharkov, or Dnepropetrovsk. But not all of them. We will take only what can be integrated and defended. Expansion must be strategic, not emotional.

Kiev’s remaining territories will stay outside Russia’s borders. What kind of Ukraine will emerge there? Answering this question is critical, not just for Ukraine’s future, but for Russia’s security.

A Russian Mission of Liberation

In civilizational, cultural, and historical terms, Ukraine – or most of it – belongs to the Russian world. Today, however, it’s held hostage by anti-Russian forces backed by the West. These forces use Russian people against Russia, fighting with persistence, cunning, and brutality – despite catastrophic losses.

Moscow’s historic mission does not end with the liberation of Donbass and Novorossiya. We must free all of Ukraine from the neo-Nazi Bandera regime and its foreign sponsors. This is not imperial conquest, but national security.

Ukraine belongs first and foremost to those living there – but Russia is inseparably linked to these people and their land. After the war, we must help our neighbors rebuild Ukraine: first pacified, then peaceful, eventually a partner, and ultimately an ally.

Russia has proven its ability to turn military adversaries into allies. Look at Chechnya, now a bastion of stability in the North Caucasus. Consider Russia’s post-war partnership with Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, or how East Germany became a Soviet ally after World War II.

Post-War Scenarios

Experts in Russia have outlined various visions for post-war Ukraine.

Full Integration: Russia could take all of Ukraine, including Lviv, up to NATO’s borders. This would mean a second reunification – the end of Ukrainian statehood. But keeping such a vast territory, fully integrating it and paying for its reconstruction, would be a colossal burden.

Pro-Western Ukraine: The worst-case scenario is a bitter, revanchist Ukraine with slightly reduced borders – a virulently anti-Russian state controlled by the West. Its sole purpose would be to provoke and attack Russia when the time is right. This possibility must be prevented at all costs.

Failed State: A fragmented Ukraine, abandoned by the West and dependent on Russia, might descend into chaos – a kind of anarchist “Gulyaypole” ruled by criminal gangs and militias. Russia could try manipulating these forces, but Western meddling would persist. This unstable scenario is undesirable.

Divided Ukraine: The most realistic and advantageous outcome would be a divided Ukraine. Anti-Russian forces could be pushed into the western regions under NATO protection, possibly splitting the country into a “Free Ukraine” controlled by Poland, Hungary, and Romania, and a new Ukraine. Let the West console itself with this Cold War-style buffer state.

Meanwhile, the new Ukraine – stripped of ultra-nationalist elements – could emerge, free from toxic ideologies. This Ukraine would be smaller but stable, economically integrated with Russia, and politically neutral. It makes sense to offer such a prospect to the Ukrainians and explain to them how advantageous it is for them.

A New Ukrainian Identity

The new Ukraine would be more genuinely Ukrainian than its Soviet predecessor. Joseph Stalin made a mistake by attaching the former Polish provinces of Galicia and Volyn and infecting the state with the virus of nationalism. Ukrainian culture could flourish without foreign interference, while its economy would be integrated into the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. Kiev would be cleansed of the corrupt elites that infested it after the Western-backed 2014 Maidan coup.

This Ukraine would inherit the best of its historical legacy: Kievan Rus’, the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and the cultural achievements of its Soviet past. It would be proud of its contributions to the Russian Empire, the USSR, and to shared East Slavic civilization.

In today’s world, true sovereignty for Ukraine, as for other post-Soviet states, is possible only through close cooperation with Russia. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church would remain the spiritual anchor of the new state.

Preparing for the Future

We don’t need to wait for the war’s end to begin this work. Many patriotic Ukrainians already live in Russia, ready to rebuild their homeland. We must identify war criminals and incorrigible Russophobes, but also recruit patriots, officers, entrepreneurs, and cultural leaders willing to help rebuild Ukraine with Russian support.

We must also expose the West’s cynical treatment of Ukraine: We must expose the West’s cynical use of Ukraine: a disposable pawn, its resources plundered by Western corporations, its culture crushed under the weight of foreign mass consumerism and radical ideology. Ukrainians must see that their future lies not in a hostile, exploitative West but in partnership with Russia.

A War for Russia’s Future

This is not just about Ukraine. Victory means defeating the West’s campaign to weaken Russia. It means ending the Banderite regime and securing our nation’s future.

For Ukrainians, Russia’s victory will mark their liberation from a corrupt, foreign-imposed regime. For Russians, it will ensure stability, security, and strength for generations to come.

Victory Day must be a day of liberation – for all of us.

https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics- ... s-victory/

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Even WITH the US ...

... no chance. But you cannot explain this to some dumbass from BI who repeats a drivel from Washington.


Without the US, NATO allies in Europe largely lack a key capability needed to fight Russia. If President-elect Donald Trump cuts US military cooperation with Europe, its NATO allies there would lose a key capability needed to resist Russian aggression.

The United States didn't have this capability either for at least a decade and now it is simply in a much lower league in terms of combined arms operations, and the only "war" the US can conduct is terrorism and nuclear. Moreover, why would rich and getting richer Russia which sits on at least the third of all world's natural resources and which increasingly begins to make Europe look like a technological backwater and a shithole which it increasingly becomes attack it? To get what? A bunch of freeloaders? What a load of malarkey. Europe is a used condom thrown into garbage can, the only thing Russia needs to worry about is (not if) when Europeans will be driven into real poverty and economic destitution (they already progressed far) that they are not brainwashed into yet another march on Russia. It will be the final one for Europe, and majority of Russians would prefer the Europe to cease to exist as it exists today completely. It could be done without nukes, and the trophy teams will make sure that real European treasures of the past are secured. Russians will allow what will be left of London to enjoy gay Swan Lake though--that is appropriate for London's elite, and it is their cultural level anyway.

Larry gets it.


... they blame Ukraine’s impending defeat on the tardy delivery of weapons and Ukraine’s dependence on the West. That is not why Ukraine is losing and destined for defeat. Not only did Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) shred three different iterations of Ukraine’s NATO-trained-and-supplied army, it also exposed the West’s hollowed-out defense industry, which proved unable to produce and supply war-time quantities of artillery shells, artillery, Patriot missiles, HIMARS and ATACMS. Once the first Ukrainian army was eviscerated, Ukraine entered a downward spiral of having to rush untrained reserves to that front. Without having adequate training for new recruits and newly-formed units before they were thrust into battle, Ukraine lost its ability to field a force capable of maneuver and one qualified to effectively use the NATO weapons that were flooding Ukrainian supply bases.
Moreover, Mr. Vershinin goes full Captain Obvious))



No shit, pardon my French. But to understand the nature of REAL war, of which yours truly writes non-stop for more than a decade, one must study REAL war, not Hollywood crap about such mediocrities as Patton or the tandem of sweet darlings such as Churchill and Monty who talked up a rather merely good Rommel to such heights that it became a meme already in Soviet military circles. One has to rephrase famous Clausewitzian truism that the main object of any war is to compel the enemy to do our will into Gerasimov's stratagem, especially as related to blood-soaked West: the main object of any war is to physically annihilate the enemy and then dictate our will. The main question remains--what are you going to do about this, when your bluff has been called, and operational and especially strategic amateurism has been exposed completely?
But that is the issue of the continental standing armies of scale and the culture they generate of which most in Pentagon have no clue and readily believe any kind of a-historic BS and propaganda to cover up own military and economic impotence spurred by the "hyena appetite" of ignorant, uncultured, uneducated and greedy class of West's rentiers, all of who are past their expiration date and their legions turned out to be fit only for policing backward fringes of the crumbling empire. And even that they cannot do properly. They never could. So, The Enemy at The Gates 2 is in order, make it a mandatory viewing in history classes in Ivy League and Oxford ... together with gay Swan Lake.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/12 ... th-us.html

Andrie is like the Russian version of the British 'John Bull'. Which I'm OK with and generally you can take his military analysis to the bank
, tho the cheap-ass queer-baiting gets tedious...

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Destroying Ukraine with Idealism

Why Ukraine should not have the "right" to join NATO

Glenn Diesen
Jul 02, 2024

Political realism is commonly and mistakenly portrayed as immoral because the principal focus is on the inescapable security competition and it thus rejects idealist efforts to transcend power politics. Because states cannot break with security competition, morality for the realist entails acting in accordance with the balance of power logic as the foundation for stability and peace. Idealist efforts to break with power politics can then be defined as immoral by undermining the management of security competition as the foundation of peace. As Raymond Aron expressed in 1966: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[1]

Ukraine’s Sovereign Right to join NATO

The most appealing and dangerous idealist argument that destroyed Ukraine is that it has the right to join any military alliance it desires. It is a very attractive statement that can easily win support from the public as it affirms the freedom and sovereignty of Ukraine, and the alternative is seemingly that Russia should be allowed to dictate Ukraine’s policies.

However, arguing that Ukraine should be allowed to join any military alliance is an idealist argument as it appeals to how we would like the world to be, not how the world actually works. The principle that peace derives from expanding military alliances without taking into account the security interests of other great powers has never existed. States such as Ukraine that border a great power have every reason to express legitimate security concerns, but inviting a rival great power such as the US into its territory intensifies the security competition.

Is it moral to insist on how the world ought to be when war is the consequence of ignoring how the world actually works?

The alternative to expanding NATO is not to accept a Russian sphere of influence, which denotes a zone of exclusive influence. Peace derives from recognising a Russian sphere of interests, which is an area where Russian security interests must be recognised and incorporated rather than excluded. It did not use to be controversial to argue that Russian security interests must be taken into account when operating on its borders. This is why Europe had a belt of neutral states as a buffer between East and West during the Cold War to mitigate the security competition.

Mexico has plenty of freedoms in the international system, but it does not have the freedom to join a Chinese-led military alliance or to host Chinese military bases. The idealist argument that Mexico can do as it pleases implies ignoring US security concerns, and the result would likely be the US destruction of Mexico. If Scotland secedes from the UK and then joins a Russian-led military alliance and hosts Russian missiles, would the English still champion the principle that it has no say?

When we live in a realist world and recognise that security competition must be mitigated for peace, then we accept a security system based on mutual constraints. When we live in the idealist world of good states versus evil states, then the force for good should not be constrained. Peace is then ensured when the good defeats evil, and compromise is mere appeasement. Idealists who seek to transcend power politics and create a more benign world thus find themselves intensifying the security competition and instigating wars.

The Morality of Opposing NATO Expansionism

To argue that NATO expansionism provoked Russia's invasion is regularly condemned by idealists as immoral because it allegedly legitimises both power politics and the invasion. Is objective reality immoral if it contradicts the ideal world we would like to exist?

The former British ambassador to Russia, Roderic Lyne, warned in 2020 that it was a “massive mistake” to push for NATO membership for Ukraine: “If you want to start a war with Russia, that's the best way of doing it”.[2] Angela Merkel acknowledged that Russia would interpret the possibility of Ukrainian NATO membership as a “declaration of war”.[3] CIA Director William Burns also warned against drawing Ukraine into NATO as Russia fears encirclement and will therefore be under enormous pressure to use military force: “Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face”.[4] The advisor to former French President Sarkozy argued that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership in November 2021 “convinced Russia that they must attack or be attacked”.[5] None of the aforementioned people sought to legitimise an invasion, rather they sought to avoid a war. Yet, heeding their warning is condemned as giving Russia a veto, while ignoring these warnings is depicted as principled and virtuous.

When great powers do not have a soft institutional veto, they use a hard military veto. The idealists insisting that Russia should not have a veto on NATO expansion pushed for the policies that predictably resulted in the the loss of territory, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and a nation destroyed. Why do the idealists get to present themselves as moral and “pro-Ukrainian”? Why are the realists who for more than a decade warned against NATO expansion immoral and “anti-Ukrainian”? Are these labels premised on the theoretical assumption of the idealists?

NATO as a Third Party?

Suggesting that Ukraine has the sovereign right to join NATO presents the military bloc as a passive third party that merely supports the democratic aspiration of Ukrainians. This narrative neglects that NATO did not have an obligation to offer future membership to Ukraine. Indeed, the Western countries signed several agreements with Moscow after the Cold War, such as the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, to collectively construct a Europe without dividing lines and based on indivisible security. NATO broke these agreements by pushing for expansion and refusing to offer Russia security guarantees to mitigate the security competition. By offering future membership to Ukraine, NATO shifted the pressure to Ukraine and the NATO-Russia conflict became a Russia-Ukraine conflict. Russia had to prevent Ukraine from joining the military bloc and hosting the US military on its territory.

NATO’s support for Ukraine’s right to choose its own foreign policy is also dishonest as Ukraine had to be pulled into the orbit of the military bloc against its will. The Western public is rarely informed that every opinion poll between 1991 and 2014 demonstrates that only a very small minority of Ukrainians ever wanted to join the alliance. NATO recognised the lack of interest by the Ukrainian government and people as a problem to be overcome in a report from 2011: “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support of it is less than 20%”.[6]

The solution was to push for a “democratic revolution” in 2014 that toppled the democratically elected government of Ukraine in violation of its constitution and without majority support from Ukrainians. The leaked Nuland-Pyatt phone call revealed that the US was planning a regime change, including who should be in the post-coup government, who had to stay out, and how to legitimise the coup.[7] After the coup, the US openly asserted its intrusive influence over the new government it had installed in Kiev. The general prosecutor of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, complained that since 2014, “the most shocking thing is that all the [government] appointments were made in agreement with the United States” and Washington “believed that Ukraine was their fiefdom”.[8] A conflict with Russia could be manufactured that would create a demand for NATO.

What were the first decisions of the new government hand-picked by Washington? The first decree by the new Parliament was a call for repealing Russian as a regional language. The New York Times reports that on the first day following the coup, Ukraine’s new spy chief called the CIA and MI6 to establish a partnership for covert operations against Russia that eventually resulted in 12 secret CIA bases along the Russian border.[9] The conflict intensified as Russia responded by seizing Crimea and supporting a rebellion in Donbas, and NATO sabotaged the Minsk peace agreement that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted to have implemented. Preserving and intensifying the conflict gave Washington a dependent Ukrainian proxy that could be used against Russia. The same New York Times article mentioned above, also revealed that the covert war against Russia after the coup was a leading reason for Russia’s invasion:

“Toward the end of 2021, according to a senior European official, Mr. Putin was weighing whether to launch his full-scale invasion when he met with the head of one of Russia’s main spy services, who told him that the C.I.A., together with Britain’s MI6, were controlling Ukraine and turning it into a beachhead for operations against Moscow”.[10]

The Immorality of Peace vs Morality of War?

After Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine, the idealists insist that Ukraine must become a member of NATO as soon as the war is over. It is intended as an appealing and moral statement to ensure that Ukraine will be protected and such a tragedy will not be repeated.

Yet, what does it communicate to Russia? Whatever territory Russia does not conquer will fall into the hands of NATO, which can then be used as a frontline against Russia. The threat of NATO expansion incentivises Russia to seize as much territory as possible and ensure what remains is a deeply dysfunctional rump state. The only thing that can bring peace to Ukraine and end the carnage is to restore its neutrality, yet the idealists denounce this as deeply immoral and thus unacceptable. To repeat Raymond Aron: “The idealist, believing he has broken with power politics exaggerates its crimes”.[11]

NATO allies divided on what happens after the Ukraine war : NPR
[1] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.

[2] R. Lyne, ‘The UC Interview Series: Sir Roderic Lyne by Nikita Gryazin’, Oxford University Consortium, 18 December 2020.

[3] A. Walsh, ‘Angela Merkel opens up on Ukraine, Putin and her legacy’, Deutsche Welle, 7 June 2022.

[4] W.J. Burns, ‘Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines’, Wikileaks, 1 February 2008.

[5] C. Caldwell, ‘The War in Ukraine May Be Impossible to Stop. And the U.S. Deserves Much of the Blame’, The New York Times, 31 May 2022.

[6] NATO, ‘‘Post-Orange Ukraine’: Internal dynamics and foreign policy priorities’, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, October 2011, p.11.

[7] BBC, ‘Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call’, BBC, 7 February 2014.

[8] M.M. Abrahms, ‘Does Ukraine Have Kompromat on Joe Biden?’, Newsweek, 8 August 2023.

[9] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.

[10] A. Entous and M. Schwirtz, 2024. ‘The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin’, The New York Times, 25 February 2024.

[11] Aron, R., 1966. Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations. Doubleday, Garden City, p.584.

https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/dest ... h-idealism

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Dictating Terms

William Schryver
Dec 12, 2024

A great many people in America and around the world are convinced that, come January 20, 2025, when Donald J. Trump is again inaugurated as President of the United States, he will (as he has already boldly asserted) call Vladimir Putin on the phone and say, in effect, “You must end this war immediately, or else we’re going to get real serious, and you will not like the consequences.”

Trump disciples genuinely believe he can impose his will on Putin to bring an end to the Ukraine War. At the very least, they are convinced Trump can "cut a deal" in the form of an offer Putin cannot refuse. They simply don't realize that the only "deal" to be made at this juncture is the US/NATO agreeing to the terms Russia dictates.

That is what happens in the real world when you win a big war.

Naturally, Putin KNOWS the US will never accede to the long-established and often-repeated Russian stipulations regarding both Ukraine specifically and Russian security concerns in general — especially in the context of the opening days of Trump’s triumphant return to the White House.

Trump, consistent with his longstanding mantra to “Make America Great Again”, is going to come to the conversation with his OWN terms, which he will present with his awkwardly charming "take it or leave it" affectation.

And, of course, Putin will then bid Trump a polite прощай, and hang up.

You see, unless the fevered folklore of American "alien-derived military super-tech" is true, then the simple fact at this point in time is that the US has precious little credible bargaining power.

The people in the imperial realm, especially Americans, need to come to grips with the fact that they have, for years now, been fed a steaming pile of fantastical disinformation about Russia, Putin, and this war.

Russia is not a gas station with nukes. It is not weak, technologically backward, cripplingly corrupt, economically feeble, operationally inept, and certainly not strategically defeated.

And, most pertinently, Russia is NOT militarily inferior to the United States — at least not in the context of a war in its own neighborhood.

Even among the relative handful of people that have closely followed its developments, most are incorrectly interpreting the inherent nature and evolution of this war. We are witnessing generational revolutions in warfare — even as most western observers and so-called “military experts” look down their noses at what they inexplicably imagine to be barbarian Slavs bludgeoning each other to death with clubs.

Here is the cold hard truth: the United States military — in all its branches — is simply not prepared to deal with the dynamics of 21st century warfare as it has now developed. The entire American force structure is anachronistic and, by all indications, impervious to expeditious reform.

The Russians now hold asymmetric military advantages in many decisive respects — most importantly integrated air defenses and effectively unstoppable offensive strike missiles. And, unlike the United States, Russia possesses an extremely potent and rapidly expanding industrial base — one which is able to produce many multiples of the anemic capacity of the entire NATO bloc.

Consider these two critical realities: the Russians are now able to routinely and consistently defeat 90%+ of the best western strike missiles, while simultaneously being able to routinely and consistently defeat the "few and far between" (and manifestly inferior) western missile defense systems.

Oh, sure, it is widely believed by both the general public and the flag officer punditry that American air defense systems are “best in class” and have had no trouble at all intercepting the best Russian missiles they have encountered in Ukraine. This myth is a primary tenet of what I have long called “The Imaginary War” — but it has no relationship to reality.

That said, the woefully misinformed and mostly imbecilic policy makers in the imperial halls of power are almost universally ignorant of this reality, and will resolutely refuse to accept it until it is indisputably proven on the battlefield. For this reason, Trump and his incoming administration, in the face of an explicit Russian rebuff of American demands, will almost certainly conclude that they must “teach the Russians a lesson they will not soon forget”.

Exactly what form this “lesson” will take remains uncertain, but given the pervasive perception that US air power is unquestionably preeminent, it can be confidently assumed that any American response to Russian impudence will consist of some species of conventional air campaign against high-value Russian targets.

And if that is the course the US pursues, I remain convinced it will result in a disastrous defeat that will shock not only the populace of the so-called “western democracies”, but most of the inhabitants of nations around the globe. (I treat upon this topic in what I believe to be one of my most cogent analyses of the current state of global military affairs: Staggering Towards the Abyss.)

Of course, historically speaking, all military advantages are notoriously fleeting. But at present, and at least until the end of this decade, the Russians will possess the most potent combination of comparative advantages they have had in a long, long time.

If Putin fails to exploit this opportunity to seize strategic depth — including AT LEAST everything east of the Dnieper, and all of Odessa — then I believe he could very well be deposed by the large and powerful component of the Russian leadership class that views such a course of action as a strategic imperative.

Ends of empire come around very seldom, and if you are not bold enough to strike while the iron is hot, someone else surely will.

Of course, many firmly believe that such a sequence of events will result in a massive nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia. I acknowledge that valid concern, but as I wrote in a January 24, 2024 essay on this question (To Nuke or Not to Nuke), I continue to believe:

Resorting to nuclear weapons is a "point-of-no-return" decision.

It's a murder-suicide move.

And I strongly doubt any of the great nuclear powers are suicidal.

At least not yet.

https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/dictating-terms

This last entry is the pick of the litter.

[blindpig]

The front of 2024
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 12/31/2024



The year 2024 began with the slow end of the ground counteroffensive, with which Ukraine's allies hoped to achieve objectives that were hardly realistic given the balance of forces and the learning that had been provided by the almost two years of the Russo-Ukrainian war. On political orders, Zaluzhny had prepared an offensive with large convoys of armoured vehicles that would be launched on the open field of Zaporozhye in the direction of Melitopol and then Crimea. The Russian defeats of 2022 and the uncertain outcome of the mobilisation that year, when even Dmitry Peskov had to admit to shortcomings and difficulties in equipping the conscripted soldiers, were the main arguments for doubting the ability of Moscow's troops to hold the front that they had fortified for so many months in view of an operation exactly like the one that took place. Ousted after the mutiny of Evgeny Prigozhin's private army in 2023, General Surovikin no longer commanded the troops of the special military operation , as Russia insists on continuing to call the war, but his planning was key to the final outcome.

The so-called Surovikin Line , the fortifications that Ukraine and its defenders had mocked for months, was enough to make ground progress impossible for Zaluzhny's troops, whose commanders went so far as to claim in the Western press that their foreign allies had prepared an operation to which they would never send their soldiers. The lack of air cover in the face of the destruction of the Ukrainian air force, the shortage of Soviet-made fleets in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact and the reluctance of the United States to send F-16 fighters into a terribly hostile environment made it unlikely that Ukraine could meet expectations that it had exaggerated beyond reason. Hence, the failure, although it should have been foreseen, marked a turning point for Zelensky, who at the end of the year was forced to admit that his troops had to move into a defensive and reconstruction phase.

At the end of December, after months of hard fighting and the absolute destruction of the town, Russian troops took the ruins of Marinka, a town southwest of Donetsk, thus beginning a sustained advance that has continued throughout 2024 and has been the most positive news from the front for Russia these twelve months. Yuzhnodonetsk , the south of the Donetsk region, was already one of the nerve centers of the front and the main objective for Moscow's troops, which, since the daily and indiscriminate bombings of the different neighborhoods of the capital of the DPR began in May 2022, had unsuccessfully proposed to move the front away from the most important city in Donbass and, in general, from all the territories of southern Ukraine under its control. To do this, it was necessary to demolish the front line inherited from the end of the battles of the 2014 war, fortified since the signing of the Minsk agreements in what can be considered the Ukrainian equivalent of the Surovikin line . Tremendously populated and with a population density far higher than that of other regions of Ukraine, Kiev had built its defence with garrisons protecting the flanks of the next city on the front line, a way of ensuring that any attempt to break through the front would entail an enormous cost for the People's Republics or Russia. Demolishing this wall installed in 2015 with the consolidation of the front after the signing of the Minsk agreements involved capturing the strong points of Marinka, Avdeevka, Niu York and Toretsk. With the Russian invasion and the advance towards Mariupol and in the direction of Zaporozhie, Ugledar and Velika Novosyolka were joined to this line as the main cities of the defence. In the past twelve months, starting with the capture of the ruins of what was once Marinka, Russia has managed to capture Avdeevka, New York and Ugledar.

Avdeevka was the first success of the year in a battle that ended in February 2024, after a rearguard attack using underground tunnels broke through the defences of the Ukrainian garrison, which, despite having one of the brigades ready for the 2023 counter-offensive, had no choice but to surrender the city. In his first days in office, General Syrsky, educated in Russia to become a Russian general, was forced to give the order that Zaluzhny had already suggested long before, to withdraw. Syrsky’s trusted troops, Andriy Biletsky’s Third Assault Brigade, were only able to cover the withdrawal to ensure that the city was not besieged and that images similar to those of Mariupol, with a mass surrender of soldiers, did not occur. From Avdeevka, although at different speeds depending on the resistance that Ukraine was able to offer at any given time, Russia advanced until it extended its area of ​​control, threatening the most important town, Pokrosvsk-Krasnoarmeisk, an essential logistical hub for kyiv and the place where much of the coking coal on which the country's metallurgy depends is produced. The turning point was the rapid and surprising capture of Ocheretino, a small town whose importance lies in its location, at a height and a priori easily defendable. Good intelligence work made it possible for Russia to take advantage of a rotation and the town came under its control and became a springboard for advance in several directions in the month of April. Slowly but surely, Russia has extended its control over the area in a semicircle to capture Niu York, to advance towards Toretsk-Dzerzhinsk, where a battle is now being fought that is heading for its end, Selidovo, Ukrainsk and the approach to Kurajovo, where the fighting is also heading towards a Russian victory, despite Ukrainian resistance. In the south, the capture of Ugledar once Russia was able to use its aviation effectively made possible the advance on the towns south of Kurajovo and towards the east, where Russia is currently complicating the defence of Velika Novosyolka, which is about to be encircled operationally, cutting off the supply of the entire southern part of the eastern front.

Unlike south and west of Donetsk, stability and difficulty in advancing has been the norm on the rest of the Donbass front, where Russia has not yet been able to push Ukrainian troops away from Gorlovka, capture Chasov Yar after a year of fighting (although with the latest advances, Russia would be 650 meters from the western outskirts, something it will have to consolidate in the face of constant Ukrainian counterattacks) or get close enough to Seversk or Krasny Liman, lost in the Ukrainian offensive of autumn 2022. Although Russia has maintained the initiative on the front throughout the year and has made significant progress, Ukraine has been able to avoid the collapse of its first line of defense by fighting until the battles were lost and with rapid withdrawals to avoid being besieged. In this way, Russia has been forced to use resources and incur personnel and material losses to capture towns that, in the vast majority of cases, are practically destroyed and will require millions of dollars for their reconstruction. This has been Ukraine's modus operandi since the Russian invasion .

Away from the main front, the summer saw two surprise attacks with which the sides tried to force their enemy to divert resources in order to try to take advantage of the situation to improve their position in more compromised areas of the contact line. Russia attacked first with an advance north of the Kharkov region. The surprise effect and the lack of fortifications on the border facilitated rapid progress in the first hours, which the Ukrainian government skilfully used to claim that Moscow was trying to capture Ukraine's second city and to demand from its allies more aircraft, weapons and speed in deliveries. The discourse quickly changed from the risk of defeat if foreign suppliers did not provide the necessary material to the triumphalist narrative in which Russia was weak and could be defeated, again only if the West increased its contribution. The Ukrainian attack on the Kursk region gave Ukraine confidence, exposed Russian weaknesses far from the main front and has given kyiv a good card to play in a possible negotiation, which is why it is fighting tooth and nail to keep at least part of what it gained in August. According to British intelligence, Russia, with North Korean support, has recovered more than half of the Kursk territory lost in August. Both attacks - the Ukrainian one being more successful in being able to conquer a relevant city, Suya, and capture more territory - have several aspects in common: the surprise effect and the show of strength that they represented, but also that they did not achieve their objective of significantly undermining the opponent's effort in the hottest areas of the front. Gerasimov did not succeed in making Ukraine have to divert to Kharkiv such a large number of soldiers as to make possible a collapse of the Ukrainian front in Donbass and Syrsky did not succeed in making Russia have to send so many units to Kursk as to paralyze the advance on Donetsk.

The end of the year has brought with it a final major prisoner exchange which, with the help of the United Arab Emirates, currently the most important mediator, has freed 150 soldiers from each side. 300 people will be able to welcome the new year with their families instead of in captivity. For the units on the front, the moment is one of maximum uncertainty after a year of consolidation of the Russian initiative, although without the possibility of a deep advance that has called into question the integrity of the contact line, stable except to the west of Lugansk and the two attempts to advance in Kursk and Kharkiv. All this while awaiting the consequences that the change of government in the United States may entail, with the arrival of a Donald Trump who made achieving peace in Ukraine one of his main foreign policy slogans during his campaign, but who seems to have already forgotten his promises. From his statement that he would resolve the war in 24 hours, the president-elect of the United States has already gone on to admit that it is a conflict that is difficult to solve. And despite Trump's commitment not to abandon Ukraine, the Biden administration has accelerated the pace of arms deliveries and in the final hours of the year announced new multimillion-dollar packages for what Russian sources are beginning to speculate could be some kind of offensive.

https://slavyangrad.es/2024/12/31/el-frente-de-2024/

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of December 31, 2024)

This morning, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a group strike with high-precision weapons and strike unmanned aerial vehicles on the infrastructure of a military airfield and an enterprise of the military-industrial complex producing gunpowder charges for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The goal of the strike was achieved. All objects were hit.

- Units of the North group of forces in the Kharkov direction defeated formations of two territorial defence brigades in the areas of the settlements of Volchansk and Liptsy in the Kharkov region.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine lost up to 35 servicemen, a vehicle and a 122-mm howitzer D-30.

— Units of the "West" group of forces improved the situation along the forward edge, defeated the manpower and equipment of the tank, mechanized brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, three territorial defense brigades and a national guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Dvurechnaya, Zapadnoye, Kovsharovka in the Kharkiv region, Ivanovka, Torskoye and Terny in the Donetsk People's Republic. The

enemy's losses amounted to over 440 servicemen, three US-made M113 armored personnel carriers, six pickups, a 155-mm towed howitzer FH-70 made in Great Britain, a 122-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Gvozdika", a 105-mm gun M119 made in the USA and two ammunition depots.

— Units of the "Southern" group of forces occupied more advantageous positions, defeated the formations of three mechanized, motorized infantry and airmobile brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the areas of the settlements of Chasov Yar, Dalnee, Kurakhovo and Yantarnoye of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine lost over 290 servicemen, two infantry fighting vehicles, including a Bradley IFV made in the USA, a Saxon armored personnel carrier made in the UK, a Kozak armored combat vehicle, two pickups and a 105-mm M119 gun made in the USA.

— Units of the "Center" group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defenses, defeated the manpower and equipment of two mechanized, motorized infantry, mountain assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, a marine brigade and an assault brigade of the National Police of Ukraine in the areas of the settlements of Dzerzhinsk, Shcherbinovka, Shevchenko, Dachenskoye and Peschanoye of the Donetsk People's Republic.

The enemy lost up to 505 servicemen, a German-made Leopard tank, an infantry fighting vehicle, two US-made M113 armored personnel carriers, five armored combat vehicles, including three Turkish-made Kirpis, a UK-made Snatch, and a Kozak, five cars, a 152mm Msta-B howitzer, and two 122mm D-30 howitzers.

— Units of the Vostok group of forces improved their tactical position, defeated the formations of the mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Bogatyr, Razliv and Ravnopol of the Donetsk People's Republic. They repelled two counterattacks by enemy assault groups.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 160 servicemen, a tank, three vehicles, a 155-mm self-propelled artillery mount "Bogdana", a 122-mm howitzer D-30 and a 122-mm self-propelled artillery mount "Gvozdika". An electronic warfare station was destroyed.

— Units of the Dnepr group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Antonovka and Ponyatovka of the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 65 servicemen, six vehicles and two field ammunition depots.

— Operational-tactical aviation, strike unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups have destroyed an ammunition manufacturing plant, warehouses for storing strike unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of manpower and military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 138 districts.

— The Black Sea Fleet has destroyed eight unmanned boats.

***

Colonelcassad
Night drone attack on Sevastopol



This night, Ukrainian forces attacked Sevastopol with both sea and airborne unmanned vehicles. According to the latest count, 16 UAVs and 8 unmanned boats were involved.

The course of the attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces:

The attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces was carried out in waves of two to three UAVs. The first targets were shot down in the area of ​​Kazachya Bay by rifle squads and Pantsir crews.

Then, in the same area, two UAVs were recorded that tried to break through the boom barriers, but to no avail. The first was hit and stopped, the second was blown up nearby.

It was at this point that Ukrainian Telegram channels and bots in Sevastopol chats became active. The former talked about a hit on an anti-aircraft missile system and passed off the destruction of the UAV as this, while the latter sowed panic among the residents.

Over the next two hours, more than a dozen drones were shot down and suppressed by electronic warfare crews along the coast of Sevastopol. And the BEKs were hunted by army aviation helicopters, ultimately destroying 6 more drones.

There have been no attacks on Crimea since early December, when several BEKs were first destroyed near Sevastopol and Tarkhankut , and then an attack on the Kerch Strait was repelled . And after that, the enemy went quiet.

This is due to the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces accumulate resources for each attack. Over the past two weeks, tests of the BEKs used in today's attack have been conducted on the Kiev Reservoir

. Once again, attention is drawn to the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces' BEKs are becoming increasingly dangerous for aircraft. In addition to machine guns, anti-aircraft missiles are being adapted to them, which previously were not very accurate, but now pose a serious danger.

Despite the fact that the attack was repelled, new attacks should be expected in the coming days, because the Ukrainian Armed Forces received a new batch of both cruise and operational-tactical missiles. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have not used them for a long time either, so we should not relax under any circumstances.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*****

Ukraine 2025: The Downward Spiral Will Continue
Posted by Internationalist 360° on December 28, 2024
Dmitri Kovalevich



Throughout 2024, Ukraine and its armed forces have been shaken by corruption scandals, primarily related to orders of military supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) but also related to the embezzlement of funds which Western countries provided for the functioning of the Ukrainian state.

2024 was a year that shook the ultra-nationalist government and armed forces of Ukraine to their foundations. The year’s end is a timely moment to look back at what has taken place and look forward to what 2025 may bring.

Ukraine lost hundreds more square kilometers of territory in 2024, primarily in Donetsk in the Donbass region. The rate of advancement of Russian troops in 2024 has noticeably increased compared to 2023. On average, the Russian Federation Armed Forces is assuming control of some 22 square kilometers of territory across Donbass each day, gradually stretching into more territory in the Donbass.

Most tragically, 2024 has seen the loss of countless Ukrainian lives–many tens of thousands if not more, and even higher numbers of wounded. They died or have been wounded in a pointless military conflict with Russia that has nothing to do with protecting Ukraine or its people. This has been a war fought in the interests of Western capital and it has utterly ruined the Ukraine republic that emerged from Soviet Ukraine in 1990-91.

Donbass became a center of resistance to the far-right coup that took place in Kiev, Ukraine in February 2014. The region was invaded two months later in a failed attempt to crush anti-coup resistance. The invasion was spearheaded by far-right Ukraine paramilitaries, while the Ukraine army was simultaneously undergoing a complete overhaul and transformation to bring it into line with the far-right politics of the coup.

That invasion and the war it sparked was supposed to end according to the ‘Minsk-2’ peace agreement of February 2015. The agreement between the coup governing regime and the newly created, popular defense forces provided for political and cultural autonomy within Ukraine for what was becoming the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Minsk-2 was endorsed by Russia, Germany, and France, and then endorsed by no less than the UN Security Council on February 17, 2025. But Ukraine and its Western sponsors, notably the U.S., Britain, France and Germany betrayed Minsk 2. Instead, the coup regime embarked on building the heavy fortifications which Russia is today attacking and overrunning.

2024 is the third year of formal, military/civilian dictatorship in Ukraine. Martial law was declared in February 2022, while presidential and legislative elections that should have taken place in April 2024 according to the Ukraine constitution were simply cancelled.

Corruption scandals overwhelm the Ukraine armed forces

Throughout the year, Ukraine and its armed forces have been shaken by corruption scandals, primarily related to orders of military supplies for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) but also related to the embezzlement of funds which Western countries provided for the functioning of the Ukrainian state. These funds are consumed by the state and government apparatuses, often for personal enrichment. This has become standard in the Western countries’ funding and overseeing of the Ukrainian state and government.

Since the beginning of 2024, the average salary of Ukrainian officials has increased by 20,000 hryvnia (US$500) to an annual average of 58,000 (US$14,000). The salary of even a small official exceeds the average salary in the country by more than three times. For those not so fortunate as to hold a government job or post, salaries and pensions have not only been frozen but have been outright reduced in Ukraine in 2024 due to tax increases and military levies.

The contested numbers of Ukraine’s armed forces

As of January 1, 2024, 169,000 people were working at 108 civil state authorities in Ukraine. Police agencies and the salaried officers and soldiers in the armed forces bring the number of paid state employees to more than one million. Zelensky states that the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action is 41,000. Yet, in 2022, Ukrainian officials said the country’s armed forces stood at more than one million personnel, and a far-reaching military conscription has taken place ever since then, with all military leaves routinely refused. So there should be something like two million personnel in the Ukraine armed forces if we believe Zelensky’s data. This begs the question: where are the missing one million?

The tactics of the Ukrainian army have not changed despite its mounting military setbacks. This is still a war being waged by the Ukrainian command at the expense of its soldiers who continue to be forcibly conscripted to replace the dead and wounded. But even forced conscription, which sees hundreds of men, sometimes more, seized daily from the streets of their towns, villages, and cities, cannot adequately replace the grim, daily losses, say military commanders. This has led Ukraine’s Western sponsors to make highly provocative and controversial calls for the age of conscription to be lowered from 25 to 18. The issue is so red-hot that Volodymyr Zelensky has to date declined to endorse the call, saying that more supplies of weaponry from the West should come first.

Here in the third year of war, Ukraine is still fighting with a larger army numerically compared to the Russian armed forces, yet it is the latter which is steadily advancing.

Ukrainian authorities are claiming that the personnel of its armed forces today amount to more than one million people. The Ukrainian online daily Strana reported on December 12 that according to various sources, the number of Russian troops directly engaged in the war ranges from 550,000 soldiers and support personnel (according to Ukrainian intelligence) to 800,000 (the figure recently cited by Volodomyr Zelensky). Vladimir Putin says 700,000.

Pervasive corruption of the Ukraine armed forces

One of the reasons for the shortage of Ukrainian troops, in spite of conscription, is the pervasive corruption that everywhere affects its operations. For a certain amount of money, Ukrainian military personnel and even entire units can evade combat operations and instead be assigned to support duties in the rear.

Strana writes on December 14: “Corruption in the AFU is no longer just ‘corruption’, it is a disaster. If you have money and no desire to go to the front, you can buy your way out. Money can buy you the option at any level of serving in rear areas. It can cost up to US$5000 [equivalent] or sometimes less, depending on the deal you make. This is not systemic corruption, it is grassroots corruption. It is decided at the level of individual commanders and ‘the phenomenon is everywhere’, says a source in the Ministry of Defense.”

Legislator Anna Skorokhod spoke out on Telegram in early December against the practices of military commanders of demanding bribes in exchange for avoiding front-line duty. “I get two or three complaints each day about commanders of platoons, companies and brigades demanding money from their subordinates for favored treatment. Earlier, the sums were up to 5,000 hryvnias (US$125); now they are five times that amount. If you don’t pay, then it is off to the front for you, and in the most dangerous positions. Once there, you will stay there or never return.”

Skorokhod cited the several investigative commissions that have been struck to protect individual soldiers from physical abuse or extortion, but this work remains unreported.

Abuse and even torture of Ukraine soldiers

Ukrainian military personnel are also being used by commanders as modern slaves for personal gain. On December 17, Strana reported the case of four soldiers supposedly assigned to the combat zone in the Nikolaev region and receiving salaries and special combat payments, who had instead been assigned to build a new house for their commander.

In December, the Ukrainian army was rocked by a new scandal, this one involving torture by an officer against a subordinate. Commanders of the 211th Pontoon and Bridge Brigade of AFU support forces were extracting money from soldiers who had been caught drinking alcohol and committing other violations. Those who refused to pay were beaten and placed in cages, reports Ukrainska Pravda on December 16.

One of the soldiers says he was beaten and then tied to a wooden cross. His commander committed a public relations disaster by posing in a photo of himself kneeling in front of the soldier tied to a cross. The soldier’s head is slumped onto his chest.

Strana reports that this was not an isolated case. Military officers say that systems of extortion exist in all military units. “Unit commanders extort and steal money from their subordinates through the so-called ‘common funds’. Ukrainian military officers have told Ukrainian journalists that in all units, money is collected monthly from all soldiers for what is termed a ‘common fund’. Some officers have acknowledged that if a soldier does not wish to be assigned to the front lines on a combat assignment, he can pay to avoid it. Depending on the unit, this can cost from 10,000 to 20,000 hryvnias (US$250 to US$500).

‘NATO military standards’ in action, combined with mass desertions

Kiev authorities have been saying since 2014 that they are switching to ‘NATO military standards’. The results have become disturbingly evident. The photo of the Ukrainian soldier tied to a cross by his commander has gone viral. For many citizens of Ukraine, the country has become a symbol of visibly depraved NATO standards. The Ukrainian military has become like the American military whose soldiers were caught on camera in 2004 torturing prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those images dealt a lasting blow to the image and reputation of the US military.

Toward the end of December, the Ukrainian media reported that the ‘Anna of Kyiv’ brigade which had been trained and armed for a long time in France and then thrown into a difficult section of the front is almost completely dispersed. According to journalist Yuriy Butusov, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian publication Censor, the brigade was initially formed of several thousand, forcibly recruited men. They were poorly trained, dressed in uniforms, and then declared to be a full-fledged brigade. Once arrived at the front and facing combat conditions, more than 1,000 of them immediately deserted and headed home.

A Ukrainian commander told the Polish publication Wiadomosci in December that there are sometimes more deserters than killed and wounded in the AFU following action. He says the mass desertions are caused by poor training as well as inexperience in combat situations. New recruits will often run away the first time they experience shelling.

The Ukrainian Telegram channel ‘Rubicon‘ comments on the mass desertions and cases of abuse taking place in the Ukrainian army. It writes, “Something similar took place in the history of World War I when in 1917, after the February Revolution, soldiers of the former Russian Imperial Army began to quit the front ‘in all directions’ on a mass scale. One of the arguments at the time by deserters and the numerous political agitators for desertion among the soldier ranks were stories similar to today of systematic beatings of soldiers by officers.”

Violence and humiliation faced by the Ukrainians who are forced to fight for the interests of the West is also one of the reasons why many are actually defecting to the Russian army. Ukrainian security services almost daily initiate criminal cases on such grounds, such as the following, “A resident of the Kiev region killed two Ukrainian soldiers, burned a pickup truck, defected to the Russians, and now fights in Russia’s ‘Maksym Kryvonis’ unit. This unit is formed of Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered. It is named after the famous peasant insurgent several centuries ago who fought against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth domination of the lands to later become Ukraine.

Growing numbers of Ukrainians are moving to Russia and the new Russian territories

It is not only military recruits but also thousands of civilians who are switching sides. In late November, legislator Maxim Tkachenko of Zelensky’s ‘Servants of the People’ party-machine wrote on Telegram that about 150,000 internally displaced persons in Ukraine have decided to return and live in the ‘occupied territories’ (as the majority-ethnic Russia territories that have come under the control of the Russian Federation are called by Ukraine leaders). He estimates that 70,000 of those have returned to the city of Mariupol on the Black Sea coast, which was heavily damaged by the resistance of heavily entrenched Ukrainian far-right paramilitaries in the beginning months of the war. Mariupol has been undergoing major reconstruction and renewal for more than two years now.

According to Tkachenko, those who left Ukraine did so because they were not receiving proper assistance from the Ukrainian state –”not with housing, social supports, employment or compensation for lost property and belongings”.

The figure of 150,000 internally displaced is relatively small, considering the population of Ukraine which was 35 to 40 million at the outset of war; (there has been no census taken in Ukraine for some 25 years). But that can be explained by the fact that men between the ages of 18 and 60 and women with medical or military-related education are prohibited by law from leaving the country. Entering the Russian Federation is extremely difficult for Ukrainians because there is only one airport to serve them – Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport – and only passenger planes from Asia and Africa can fly into it due to Western sanctions against travel to Russia.

On the other, western side of Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of citizens have left for countries of the European Union. Those prohibited from leaving legally do so illegally by crossing the border using secondary roads and mountain trails or by risking border-river crossings.

Once landed in Europe, Ukrainians can fly to Sheremetyevo airport via Istanbul, Turkiye. But once there, they can wait days before receiving permission to enter the Russian Federation, perhaps even to return to their home, former Ukraine, territories. That is very risky because fighting there may still be ongoing and the territory itself may be strewn with mines.

At, Sheremetyevo, the backgrounds of Ukrainians are closely checked for past involvement with Ukrainian police services or armed forces. The process can last several days. Strana writes on Telegram on November 25 that not all of those who arrive at Sheremetyevo are accepted. Those who are rejected face years of exclusion from the Russian Federation before they can apply again. Strana says accurate reporting of rates of acceptance and rejection are difficult if not impossible to accurately state, but if not for screening at the airport and its accompanying risk of rejection, the figure of 150,000 Ukrainians entering Russia would be much greater.

Ukrainian legislator Oleksandr Dubinsky, formerly of Zelensky’s party-machine, predicted in late December that people will start fleeing Ukraine en masse once the country’s borders are reopened. “Hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, will leave Ukraine. The concentration camp into which Zelensky has turned Ukraine will have little or nothing to offer to its citizens to encourage them to stay. “He uses the analogy of a parasite growing on the tree called Ukraine to describe the Zelensky administration and adds that the rump state of Ukraine that will emerge from the war is doomed to underdevelopment and failure so long as it defines itself as an ‘anti-Russia’.

Meltdown of Zelensky’s public image

Neither presidential nor legislative elections took place in Ukraine in 2024, as required by the constitution. The pretext for this was the state of martial law declared in February 2022. The Zelensky administration intends to prolong the military conflict and accompanying martial law until such time as a mythical ‘defeat’ of the Russian armed forces takes place. But this is now impossible to achieve with a Ukrainian army consisting of forcibly conscripted soldiers, many reduced to something resembling modern slaves.

“Real peace talks will begin when the Russian Federation no longer has the resources to continue the war,” opined Andriy Yermak on December 17, emphasizing that Ukraine must preserve its military force until then. He is the director of the Office of the President of Ukraine since 2020 and makes it obvious that Zelensky and his administration intend to stay in power come hell or high water.

The end of 2024 will be viewed by historians as the beginning of the final decomposition of the image of heroism being projected by the Zelensky administration and its Western media cheerleaders. This decomposition is sharply intensifying in the public consciousness of Ukrainians, notwithstanding local and Western media efforts to portray the opposite. The former comic actor Zelensky is returning to his earlier television role and image as a clown, but this time around it is a clown clinging to power and ready to sacrifice so many more Ukrainian lives to that end.

Ukrainians are already joking that Donald Trump will be handed the remote control of Zelensky on January 20, after which the Ukrainian president may begin to sing a different tune, depending on the course the new US administration chooses.

A certain role in the decomposition of Zelensky’s image is his inability to stick to the same messaging for the Ukrainian and the Western public. In Ukraine, he poses as a heroic and victorious military leader. But in the West, he appears as a beggar, pleading for ever-more money while decrying crimes said to be perpetrated by Russia and its armed forces. Puffing up his cheeks, he assures Ukrainians that his administration and its military are ‘invincible’. But in the West, he begs for money and arms, and in return, he offers up to Western investors the mineral deposits in the Ukrainian subsoil and the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. Such dual behavior could work if the Ukrainian audience was completely cut off from the Internet and from Western media sources. But that harkens back to a different, earlier world, not the world of the 21st century.

Zelensky is already being openly mocked by his former party colleagues, other Ukrainian nationalists, and members of the military. This is due to nervousness over the coming change of administration in the United States and possible change of administration in Ukraine itself.

In 1917, between the two Russian revolutions of February and October that year, the image of Alexander Kerensky, the head of the provisional government of the day, underwent a similar transformation. At the beginning of 1917, Kerensky was a popular orator and socialist with a high level of political support among the population. However, once in power, he refused to conclude an armistice with Germany, choosing instead to continue the war begun in August 1914 by the ousted monarchy in alliance with England and France. Kerensky continued to conscript soldiers, mostly from the countryside of the overwhelmingly rural country (former empire) and then send them off to grisly trench warfare. In the popular consciousness, he quickly turned into a pathetic clown and was soon forced to flee the country, disguised in a woman’s dress no less.

Kerensky was driven from power and from the country by the rebellious workers, peasants, soldiers and sailors of Russia, yearning for better lives and a better world, free of exploitation of one man or woman by another. The days of the Empire were over. What was at stake in the Revolution of 1917 was nothing less than the destruction of the then-existing, ‘rules-based’ imperialist world order that had visited upon the entire world a catastrophic world war. Today’s iteration of that empire and its alliances, in the form of the NATO military alliance, is threatening new wars or making them happen. So history, it seems, has come full circle, albeit through entirely unforeseen and unpredictable twists and turns.

The inheritors of the Russian Revolution of 1917 in today’s Russian Federation, spearheaded by its armed forces, are joining with anti-imperialist forces around the world in fighting to end the 21st century, ‘rules-based’ imperialist world’. Then as now, their goal is to create a world in which all peoples and countries enjoy equal rights and equal respect of their sovereignty and social development.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/12/ ... -continue/

******

Russia and Ukraine Exchange War Prisoners


Image using the flags of Ukraine (L) and Russia (R). X/ @MenaToday1

December 30, 2024 Hour: 11:14 am

Since 2022, over 45 prisoner-of-war exchanges have been conducted between these countries.

On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that its country and Ukraine conducted a new exchange of 150 prisoners from each side.

“Following a negotiation process, 150 Russian military personnel were returned from territory controlled by the Kyiv regime. In exchange, 150 prisoners of war from Ukraine’s Armed Forces were handed over,” the Russian command stated.

“At present, the Russian military personnel are on Belarusian territory, where they are receiving the necessary psychological and medical care, and they have been given the opportunity to contact their families.”

“All the liberated military personnel will be transferred to Russia for treatment and rehabilitation at medical facilities of the Ministry of Defense,” it added, noting that the prisoner exchange was made possible through the humanitarian mediation of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).


This was the first prisoner exchange since October 18, when 95 prisoners were swapped on each side. Since then, Russia has accused Ukraine on several occasions of sabotaging prisoner exchanges by focusing its attention on the swap of fighters from “nationalist battalions.”

These Ukrainian battalions have been the most combative units of Ukraine’s Armed Forces since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in 2022. Initially, they were not part of Ukraine’s regular army but were later integrated into Kyiv’s Armed Forces.

Since 2022, more than 45 prisoner-of-war exchanges have been conducted between Russia and Ukraine, during which each side recovered approximately 3,000 military personnel. In 2024, Russia proposed handing over 935 prisoners of war to Ukraine, of which Kyiv accepted only 279.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/russia-a ... prisoners/

*****

Staggering Towards the Abyss

Many geopolitical observers are fretting needlessly over the massive US/NATO military exercises that have commenced in eastern Europe.

I, on the other hand, am thoroughly convinced it is all theatrical posturing. The US and all its impotent European vassals combined could not defeat Russia in a high-intensity industrial-scale war. They lack both the means and the requisite competencies to do so.

I am more convinced than ever that the US could NOT establish air superiority against Russia — not in a week; not in a year. Never. It simply could not be done. It would be a logistical power projection challenge well beyond the current capabilities of the United States military.

American air power would prove substantially inferior to the extremely potent and abundantly supplied air defenses fielded by the Russians.

Just as the majority of HIMARS-launched GMLRS rockets, HARMS missiles, ATACMS missiles, and British Storm Shadow missiles are now being defeated in Ukraine, the vast majority of US long-range precision-guided missiles would be shot down or disabled by electronic countermeasures, and the US would very rapidly deplete its limited inventory of these munitions in a futile attempt to overwhelm the Russian capacity to keep shooting back.

American suppression of enemy air defenses would prove inadequate to the task of defeating extremely sophisticated, deeply layered, and highly mobile air defense radars and missiles.

American “stealth” capabilities would prove to be illusory. A great many military experts around the world already know this to be true. You simply cannot fly tons of airframe, miles of wiring, and hot jet engines in the sky and not be tracked and targeted by Russia’s best-in-class systems.

And in the likely rare instances of beyond-visual-range “dog fights” between US and Russian aircraft, US air-to-air missiles would be consistently and considerably outranged by their Russian counterparts.

If they were to fly into air defense coverage areas, American and other western aircraft would be shot down in droves.

Worse yet, the war in Ukraine has made perfectly clear that all manner of western air defense systems are inferior to even the decades-old Soviet S-300 and Buk systems that Ukraine originally deployed. And even if western systems were formidable, they simply don’t exist in anything approaching the numbers necessary to provide credible defense in broad scope and depth.

To complicate matters even further, scant US munitions inventory and insuperable production limitations would allow the US to prosecute an air war against Russia or China for only a few weeks at most.

Moreover, in a high-intensity combat scenario in either eastern Europe, the China seas, or the Persian Gulf, the maintenance demands for US aircraft would overwhelm its proximate supply. Mission-capable rates would plummet even lower than their notoriously abysmal peacetime standards.

The US would, quite literally after only a few days, see sub-10% mission-capable rates for the F-22 and F-35, and sub-25% rates for almost every other platform in the inventory.

It would be a huge embarrassment for the Pentagon ... but hardly a huge surprise.

And this is hardly hyperbole. It is more or less common knowledge among those who think about these aspects of war — the only aspects that really matter in the final analysis.

US supply lines would be severely attrited on both a regional and a global scale.

Russian and Chinese submarines and long-range anti-ship missile systems would wreak havoc on US seaborne logistics.

Simply put, US air power as a theater-wide undertaking could not be sustained in the context of a non-permissive regional and global battlefield against one or more peer adversaries.

In eastern Europe, Russia would savage NATO bases and supply routes. The Baltic and Black seas would effectively become Russian lakes where NATO shipping could not venture.

In the China seas, US carrier strike groups and amphibious assault formations would be subject to massive and relentless attacks from the air and the sea.

Against Iran, the Persian Gulf would become an Iranian pond in which Iran controlled both ingress and egress via the Strait of Hormuz, even as Iranian missile strikes devastated US bases throughout the region.

Many are convinced these are unfounded hysterical assertions. In my view, the simple military, mathematical, and geographic realities of the situation dictate these conclusions, and those who resist them are typically blinded by the myth of American exceptionalism and its attendant ills to such a degree that they are unable to discern things as they really are.

There has also been relatively little recognition nor discussion of the crescendo pace with which Russia, China, and Iran have been conducting military coordination in general, and naval drills in particular, over the past few years.

Russia and China are now engaging in joint naval patrols of the western Pacific, and even along the coast of Alaska.

Russia, China, and Iran are engaging in regular joint exercises in the Arabian Sea.

This is not meaningless posturing. These are the actions of countries who intend to engage in mutual defense in the event of an attack on any one of them.

I am increasingly persuaded that, if the US chooses to make direct war against either Russia, China, or Iran, it will result in a war against all three simultaneously.

And that, amazingly enough, is just one of multiple hard truths that the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult, and those acquiescing to its delusional designs, ought to give more serious consideration as they continue staggering towards the abyss of a war they could never win.

(Originally published July 28, 2023; updated January 23, 2024)



https://imetatronink.substack.com/p/sta ... -the-abyss

[blindpig]

The fortress of Ukraine
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 01/01/2025



“Will there be a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia?” asks the Financial Times in one of the articles that regularly appear in the media trying to predict trends for the new year. The expert’s version is based on the pessimism of European countries and the interventionist sectors of the United States, who consider that the worst possible scenario is one in which Donald Trump forces Ukraine to negotiate with Russia an agreement in which the article predicts a ceasefire and pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky, who will have to “accept de facto but not de jure Russian control of the land it currently occupies, with some exchanges of territory, in exchange for European security guarantees with support from the United States, while Ukraine’s accession to NATO is frozen for the moment.” However, to do so, Donald Trump “will have to threaten tougher sanctions and increase American support for Kiev to persuade Moscow to seriously participate in the talks.”

In other words, the outlet is proposing what is known as “escalation to de-escalate,” a concept that has been used in recent months to describe the Israeli strategy against Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen or Syria and which in reality means making things as bad as possible in order to force the opponent to accept the terms. It is precisely this type of argument that gives confidence to Zelensky, who has always understood that this is the best strategy for Ukraine to achieve its objectives. It is not about recovering the maximum amount of territory lost by military means, fighting people by people until their 1991 borders, but rather getting its allies to, through political, economic and military pressure, manage to put Russia between a rock and a hard place. All this without accepting that this strategy has been in place for years and that, by prolonging the war in Donbass and also the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine has managed to accumulate death and destruction without yet obtaining the desired invitation to NATO, the main objective of the last decade and especially of the last two years, when it is already taken for granted that accession to the EU is only a matter of time.

The objective remains the same and is shared by its European allies, who, with the usual exceptions of countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, are eager to continue the war, the current Democratic administration and the part of the Republican neocon wing that has not approached Donald Trump. Their job now is to guarantee sufficient funding to allow Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength. This is the current tactic, as openly stated by Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz. However, it is necessary to remember one aspect that is going unnoticed in the scant analysis that is being carried out on this war: European allies and American Democrats do not only want Ukraine to be strong so that they can defend themselves with persuasive arguments in a negotiation with Russia, but also with Donald Trump's White House. Public negotiations and confrontations with its allies have been the key point in Ukraine's diplomatic strategy in recent months. Ukraine has used the media as a tool to pressure its allies, sometimes without sparing annoying accusations, in search of more concessions. Based on this same idea, European countries, NATO's leadership and representatives of the Biden administration, which still has twenty days left, seek to strengthen Ukraine with the largest possible injection of funds and weapons so that it is strong at the time when Donald Trump decides, if that is the plan, to force Ukraine to start negotiations. Ukraine has the experience and tools to simulate a negotiation and prolong the process over time, as it demonstrated during the seven years of the Minsk process, but on this occasion it will have even greater diplomatic, political and economic support from European countries and the NATO Secretary General.

Preparations began several months ago, but are accelerating as the end of the Biden era approaches. On December 30, the United States announced the most extensive military aid package in recent times. “At my command, the United States will continue to work tirelessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war for the remainder of my term,” the current president said in announcing the delivery of $2.5 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, $1.25 billion of which comes from the US stockpile and $1.22 billion from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, i.e. from the defense industry or its partners. The latter material may take weeks or months to arrive, but it is already committed, so the supply is guaranteed to continue for at least a few weeks regardless of Donald Trump’s intention regarding military shipments to kyiv.

In his statement, the still-president of the United States said that the new package, possibly the last of his mandate, will allow “an immediate influx of capabilities that he continues to use with great effect on the battlefield and longer-term supplies of air defence, artillery and other critical weapons systems.” The list of material to be sent to kyiv that has been published in official communications and in the media is full of artillery and ammunition for air defence, but there is no mention of Western missiles, for a time kyiv’s main obsession. Nixon’s tactic of using massive bombings to force the other side to negotiate on his terms, the main aspiration of Zelensky and his allies, implies the availability of huge quantities of missiles that Ukraine’s partners are not willing to supply, so the list of material indicates the continuation of the ground war of defence and, perhaps, of attack in order to strengthen the positions for negotiations with Russia. But, above all, it is about giving Ukraine time to be able to reject Trump’s first proposals if they are not entirely favourable to Ukraine.

On December 30, the United States also announced the release of another $14 billion, part of the package agreed by the G7, from the proceeds of Russian assets held in Western countries following the Russian invasion. “Ukraine’s success is in the national interest of the United States. Stopping Russia’s illegal invasion will help maintain a democratic, rules-based world order that serves America’s national security and economic interests,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that day. Ukraine is aware that this war is not in danger of running out of funds.

The war, which has been the raison d'être of the Ukrainian state since 2022, accounts for more than half of state spending, but military assistance is not the only one on which kyiv depends. “In 2024, the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine obtained $41.7 billion in external financing from foreign partners,” the Ukrainian government said on the same day, specifying that 30% of this amounted to non-repayable grants while the remaining 70% was part of credit lines that Ukraine hopes will be covered by the seizure of Russian assets. Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko described the amount of financing obtained from foreign allies as “significant financial assistance” and added that “in 2024, it has allowed us to cover all priority social and humanitarian expenses. This includes pensions, salaries of employees, specifically in the education and health sectors, social protection and humanitarian aid.” This is the real strength of Ukraine, a country that relies entirely on foreign subsidies to pay the salaries of its teachers and health workers and the pensions of its ageing and impoverished population.

https://slavyangrad.es/2025/01/01/la-fo ... e-ucrania/

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of repelling the attempted invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the territory of the Russian Federation in the Kursk Region (as of January 1, 2025)

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continue to defeat the formations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk Region.

- Units of the North group of forces during offensive actions inflicted defeat on the formations of the heavy mechanized, six mechanized, three airborne assault brigades, a marine brigade and two territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements of Darino, Zamostye, Kurilovka, Leonidovo, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Martynovka, Maryevka, Makhnovka, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Novaya Sorochina, Pogrebki, Staraya Sorochina, Sudzha and Cherkasskoye Porechnoye. Six counterattacks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces assault groups were repelled.

- Strikes by operational-tactical, army aviation and artillery fire hit enemy manpower and equipment in the areas of the settlements of Alexandria, Veselovka, Guevo, Kositsa, Lebedevka, Mirny, Mikhailovka, Nikolsky, Russkoye Porechnoye, Sverdlikovo, Yuzhny, as well as Basovka, Belovody, Vodolaghi, Zhuravka and Pavlovka in the Sumy region.

Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost more than 480 servicemen, nine armored combat vehicles and 21 cars have been destroyed. - In total, during the military operations in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 46,460 servicemen, 262 tanks, 204 infantry fighting vehicles, 143 armored personnel carriers, 1,381 armored combat vehicles, 1,280 cars, 337 artillery pieces, 42 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 13 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 83 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 28 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , seven armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle. The operation to destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces formations continues.

***

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of the special military operation (as of January 1, 2025 ) Main points:

- The Black Sea Fleet destroyed three unmanned boats;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 330 servicemen in the area of ​​responsibility of the West group of forces in one day;

- Units of the Southern group took up more advantageous positions, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 250 servicemen;

- Fighters of the East are advancing deep into the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The enemy lost over 150 servicemen;

- Due to the actions of the North and Dnipro groups, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 85 fighters in one day;

- Russian air defense systems shot down 7 HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems and 66 Ukrainian drones in one day.

- Over the past day, the Russian Armed Forces damaged an energy facility that ensured the operation of an enterprise of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, the infrastructure of military airfields, and an assembly site for unmanned boats.

Units of the "East" group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defense, defeated formations of a tank, two mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Razliv, Bogatyr, Neskuchnoye, Velyka Novosyolka and Zelenoye Pole of the Donetsk People's Republic.
They repelled three counterattacks of the enemy assault groups.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 150 servicemen, an infantry fighting vehicle , four cars, 155-mm self-propelled artillery units "Paladin" made in the USA and "Bogdan" , a 122-mm howitzer D-30 and a 105-mm gun L119 made in the UK.

Units of the Dnepr group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces infantry brigade and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Stepnogorsk in the Zaporizhia region, Prydniprovske, Berislav in the Kherson region and the city of Kherson.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 40 servicemen, six vehicles and a 152-mm D-20 gun .

Operational-tactical aviation, strike unmanned aerial vehicles, missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups inflicted damage on an energy facility that provided the operation of a Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprise, the infrastructure of military airfields, an assembly site for unmanned boats, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 142 districts .

Air defense systems shot down seven rockets from the US-made HIMARS and Uragan multiple launch rocket systems , as well as 66 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Black Sea Fleet destroyed three unmanned boats .

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed : 650 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 39,047 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,127 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,504 multiple launch rocket systems, 20,120 field artillery pieces and mortars, 29,685 units of special military vehicles.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*******

Brief report from the front on December 30, 2024
Final preparations for the liberation of Pokrovsk have begun! Report by Marat Khairullin with illustrations by Mikhail Popov.

Zinderneuf
Dec 30, 2024


ЛБС 12.9.2024=Line of Combat Contact September 12th, 2024. ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.12.2024=Line of Combat Contact December 1st, 2024. Зона продвижения после предыдущей сводки=The zone of advancement since the previous summary.
In the Pokrovsk section of the Donetsk direction, Russian units advanced further along the railway and increased pressure on the Chunishino (Chunyshyne) station and the settlement of Novoukrainka, posing a threat to the fortified area in Lysovka. There are reports that the Russian Armed Forces are making progress in the direction of the settlement of Zverevo (Zvirove). Artillery has already begun to operate against the Ukrainian Armed Forces positions in this settlement, and, of course, our drone operators are working.

In the settlement of Peschanoe (Pischane), the enemy still holds positions in the north of the settlement. Its main territory and, most importantly, the industrial zone adjacent to it, are under the control of our soldiers. From Peschanoe, Russian units are conducting attacks in the direction of the village of Zverevo along forest belts from the area of ​​advance achieved earlier.

In the area of ​​the settlement Volkovo (Vovkove), our army units strengthened their positions, and they have driven the enemy out of a number of their own. After that, the enemy was driven out of Volkovo itself. Movement has begun from its area in the direction of the settlement Kotlino (Kotlyne), that is, in the direction of the road approaching Pokrovsk from the southwest. This will hit the logistics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces for their units in Pokrovsk. In addition, from Kotlino to the road approaching Pokrovsk from the northwest, the distance is about six kilometers, which will already put it under the threat of fire control by our forces.

All this, coupled with incoming information about attempts to create a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Kazenny Torets River in the Mirolyubovka (Myrolyubivka) area and activity in the Vozdvizhenka (Vozdvyzhenka, it's behind Marat's logo on the map ) area, from which the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka highway is about five kilometers away, allows us to assume that our army is beginning final preparations before the liberation of Pokrovsk.

In the Novovasilevka (Novovasylivka) area, the Russian Armed Forces are consolidating their positions. The combat zone is expanding in the settlement itself. The enemy is resisting, trying to close the exit to the settlement of Udachnoe, control over which is critically important for the Ukrainian economy.

The Russian army continues to put pressure on the enemy between Uspenovka and Novoelizavetovka. North of the latter, we managed to advance, dislodging the enemy from strongholds. In Novoelizavetovka itself, our soldiers advanced despite the enemy's counterattacks, and they took control of more than half of the settlement. Combat operations are underway in the western part of Novoelizavetovka.

In Novoolenovka, which had previously been taken under control, clean-up operations have been completed, and the Russian Ministry of Defense has officially announced its liberation.

Part 2: The Russian Army's Advance to Neskuchnoe Threatens Vremevka!


ЛБС 31.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 31st, 2024. ЛБС 30.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 30th, 2024. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Kurakhovsky direction, military operations continue in the area of ​​Slavyanka and Petropavlovka.

In the area of ​​the latter, they are particularly active. After losing the defense line Zarya-Sontsovka-Starye Terny, the enemy began to build defenses along the line of Slavyanka-Petropavlovka-Shevchenko, covering the exit to the Andreevka area. As a result of assault actions, Russian units were able to overcome the Solena River, flowing in front of Shevchenko, and entered the settlement.

Later, having expanded the control zone in front of it and strengthened their positions, they advanced along the territory of the settlement Shevchenko, consolidating the recaptured positions. Now, the battles are already going on for the western outskirts of the settlement, and almost all of its territory is under the control of our fighters. Possession of this settlement will give the opportunity to put pressure both in the direction of the settlement Andreevka and to carry out attacks in the direction of the road to Kurakhovo on a wider area.



In Kurakhovo, the fighting is moving to the industrial zone in the west of the city. The industrial zone in its northern part on the shore of the reservoir has completely come under the control of our army. Attacks are underway in the direction of the Kurakhovskaya TPP (Кураховская ТЭС). Our advance groups are already working in its area. Our troops are also moving towards the TPP area from the south. Having advanced from the area of ​​multi-story buildings through the park south of the stadium, the Russian Armed Forces reached a garage cooperative near the Kurakhovo cemetery. Having consolidated their position there, Russian units created a platform for accumulating forces for further assault operations in the direction of the enemy's fortified area.

It is reported that our troops managed to advance south of Kurakhovo in a fortified area built along a forest belt that runs almost to Dachnoe, and also to advance west of the settlement of Dalnee to the treatment facilities.

Attacks are underway from the Uspenovka area in the direction of Yantarne. Our fighters are clearing out the fortified area built along the bank of the Sukhie Yaly River. Judging by the depth of the attacks, which almost reach Yantarne itself, our units have managed to succeed in their advances.

Attacks on Yantarne are also coming from the area of ​​the settlement of Gigant (Hihant), which, of course, stretches the enemy forces located in the area of this settlement.

Pressure continues from the Zelenovka area in the direction of Konstantinopol and Ulakly. Actions are being taken here to create a bridgehead on the other side of the river for a further offensive in the direction of the settlement of Ulakly specifically. The offensive actions in the direction of the settlement of Razliv (Rozlyv) also do not stop. Several more forest belts have been taken under control here.


ЛБС 31.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 31st, 2024. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Velikaya Novosyolka area, the Russian Armed Forces began encircling the settlement of Neskuchnoe, advancing along the road north of it. In addition, attacks in its direction are coming from both the south and east of the Mokrye Yaly River. This includes attacks in the direction of the forest located east of Neskuchnoe between the settlement and the river.

The advance to Neskuchnoe along the road from Gulyaipole (Hulyaipole) to Vremevka also threatens Vremevka itself, from which the their is only a dirt road leading north that remains under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Ukrainian names in parenthesis *

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... cember-704

The Greatness of the Russian Army: Real results of 2024
Happy New Year! From Marat Khairullin.

Zinderneuf
Dec 31, 2024



The greatness of Russia will grow through the strength and power of the Russian army. The Special Military Operation has once again proven this truth. The entire year of 2024 was marked by the restoration of the might of our army. Therefore, the main results of the year are dedicated to it.

Breakthrough of the year: Russian Artillery

The fifth column probably hasn't poured as much dirt on anyone as on our artillerymen. It's understandable that these internal enemies want to do so. As before, it is the "Gods of War" who continue to determine the outcome of battles - whoever fires more and more explosives at the enemy will win.

In 2024, more than a thousand Russian artillery crews received awards for accurate shooting. More than 150 artillery crews showed a performance rate close to 90 percent. Overall, the accuracy of Russian barrel artillery fire was over 72 percent, while 50 percent accuracy is considered a very high result.

On the main front from Chasov Yar to Velikaya Novosyolka, the density of our artillery was more than 15 thousand barrels (including mortars and MLRS). This is higher than, for example, the Red Army had during the Battle of Stalingrad - 14 thousand barrels.



At the same time, throughout the year, Russian artillery in the main direction maintained the highest rate of fire - more than 60 shots per barrel per day. Considering the duration of the active phase of the offensive of Russian troops in the main direction, this is a unique indicator that has no analogues in the world. In just over a year, our army managed not only to train more than ten thousand combat artillery crews, but also more than three thousand of them received incentives and awards from the command for excellent results: exceeding the standards for bringing the gun into combat position, reducing the time for servicing and repairing the gun in field conditions, and also for saving the resource of the main parts and components. Happy holiday, our dear artillerymen!

Take-off of the year:
Russian aviators

Aviation is considered one of the most complex types of human activity. And combat aviation is a benchmark indicator of the state of affairs not only in the army but also in the state. First of all, because so many different services and components are involved in organizing flights and conducting combat operations that it is truly a national affair. In this regard, our Air Force holds the flag of the Motherland high.

Over the past year, 1,000+ crews have been trained, and more than half of them have received clearance for combat operations (relevant flight time and excellent performance of all standards). The units operating in the North-Eastern Military District received and mastered more than three hundred new aircraft (both vertical and horizontal).

In total, the Air Force group in the North-Eastern Military District numbers over a thousand units (including long-range and transport aviation). It carried out almost 50 thousand combat sorties per year. With a minimal rate of major aviation accidents - less than one per thousand sorties.



Considering the intensity and scale of the fighting, this is an outstanding result. The average flight time for the main combat group was 1.7 sorties per day. In total, Russian aviators have implemented more than 120 R&D projects (mainly strike systems, guidance, and countermeasures). Happy New Year, our dear aviators!

Most victorious of the year:
Russian Infantry

The Russian army has implemented a system of continuous battle management in the past year, not just on paper. Now, behind each infantryman, when he moves forward, there is a whole system of round-the-clock monitoring of the battlefield. Infantrymen are constantly in touch with the commander, who sees the situation from drones and can issue operational orders. They connect small aircraft, artillery, or tanks as needed.

As a result, our infantry passes through huge fortified territories in the shortest possible time and with minimal losses, for which previously millions of soldiers would have fought. In just over a year, a revolution has taken place in the use of small aircraft and countermeasures. At the beginning of 2024, not all major units had their own "small aviation." But by the end of the year, special drone units were introduced at the level of regular units in companies and mortar batteries. For the first time in history, a unique mobile electronic warfare system began to be introduced at the battalion level.



In just over a year, Russia has formed more than 70 divisions and brigades - trained, fully staffed, and they are already fighting. Another 50 large units are expected to be commissioned in 2025. Long live the Russian infantry! You are the salt of the Russian land!

Dear friends, of course, in the past year, all branches of the armed forces showed excellent results - air defense, tankers, missilemen, the Aerospace Forces, the rear service, doctors. But, unfortunately, a lot of information is still classified, so we were able to tell only what can be analyzed from open sources. However, even this rather meager information shows how great the progress achieved is!!! We are proud of you! You are the greatness of our Motherland!

We congratulate the victorious army with all our hearts! All its glorious soldiers and officers! The first toast in the New Year is for you!

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... ssian-army

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Gas transit through Ukraine has been stopped
January 1, 13:23



Gas transit through Ukraine has been stopped

Today at 8 am, an entire era of gas transit through Ukraine ended.
Gas pumping stopped and from January 1, 2025, Ukraine ceased to be a transit country for Russian gas.
Supplies to Europe continue through the LNG terminals and the Turkish Stream.
It can be expected that the enemy will blow up the station in the Sudzha area, and the Russian Armed Forces will destroy elements of the GTS to be sure.
In Ukraine, the tariff for gas transportation has already increased 4 times since today.
It can be recalled that for a long time it was the EU that sought to maintain transit through Ukraine.
And it is the EU that will be the main victim. The main beneficiary is the United States, which consistently eliminates the opportunity for Europe to receive cheap gas from Russia, thereby increasing the EU's economic dependence on the United States and reducing the overall competitiveness of the European economy.
On the one hand, Russia is losing one of the gas sales routes and will incur certain material costs, but at the same time it is freed from the situation when Brussels and Berlin twisted Moscow's arms, tying the preservation of transit through Ukraine to other political issues. Well, and of course, excellent opportunities are opening up for the further destruction of the energy and industrial power system of Ukraine.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9585823.html

New Year's strikes on Kyiv. 01.01.2025
January 1, 17:04



As a result of the New Year's strikes by "Geraniums" on Kyiv, the "House of the Council of People's Commissars" in the center of Kyiv was seriously damaged (the rotunda was completely destroyed). There was also a hit on the roof of the central bank (employees are being transferred to remote work.



https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9586023.html

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[blindpig]

Minsk, the manipulation of a process in which no one believed
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 02/01/2025



Yesterday morning, after Gazprom announced that the Russian company had stopped the transit of gas, having been deprived of “the technical and legal capacity to supply gas through Ukraine”, the press was filled with headlines announcing that Russia was stopping the transit of gas to Europe . “Gazprom stops gas flows to Europe through Ukraine and strains the energy market,” wrote Europa Press in the morning , with a headline representative of the trend in the Western media during the early hours of yesterday. Despite the attempts of two of the most affected countries, mainly Slovakia and Hungary - Moldova has chosen to take advantage of the fact that the consequences will be especially harsh for Transnistria and has simply accepted that it will not have the cheapest gas to which it had access and which it did not always pay for - Ukraine decided a long time ago that it was preferable to deprive Russia of the income from the sale of gas than to preserve the income it received from the passage through its transit system. The agreement was unworkable and is representative of the change in the situation in Ukraine, Europe and the world in general over the past five years. In these changes there is one constant: the manipulation of facts for personal gain, an aspect that is not limited to giving a partial version of what has happened with the gas transit, but can also be applied to equally relevant political aspects.

The five-year extension of the agreement between the Ukrainian and Russian gas companies - Naftogaz and Gazprom - was signed following the agreement reached by Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin at the Normandy Format meeting mediated by Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel in Paris on December 9, 2019. This renewal of the contract between the two companies has guaranteed the transit of Russian gas to the European Union, and therefore income from sales for Russia and from the use of its facilities for Ukraine, even despite the war and was the main outcome of that summit theoretically organized to reaffirm the will of the parties to reach an agreement to end the war in Donbass. Zelensky had been elected president months earlier with a landslide victory over Petro Poroshenko, opening up, or so Moscow and Berlin hoped, a chance to move towards implementing the agreements signed in 2015. The Paris summit ended with a press conference of the four heads of state or government, the announcement of the gas deal, an agreement on a major prisoner exchange and the public reaffirmation of the four countries' commitment to the Minsk agreements.

As Volodymyr Zelensky later boasted, that Paris meeting was the moment when the Ukrainian president announced to his partners that the Minsk agreements were unworkable, making official what Ukraine had already made clear through its actions: kyiv had no intention of implementing the political points of the only peace agreement ever signed in this conflict. Interpreted, reinterpreted and misinterpreted practically from the moment of its signing, the Minsk agreement signed in the Belarusian capital in February 2015 is about to turn a decade old. And despite the fact that there was never any real possibility that its postulates would be fulfilled, which guaranteed the profound disinterest of the press in following the process, Minsk remains an argument both for those who want to prove that a negotiation with Russia is always counterproductive and for those who want to promote themselves in view of future elections.

In the public and media interventions of Petro Poroshenko during his last visit to the United States to promote the Ukrainian cause and his own in the event of a ceasefire and subsequent elections, the former Ukrainian president wanted to exploit the Minsk argument both to defend that there can be no negotiations with Russia and to highlight his role in obtaining a favorable agreement from Russia. The balance of Poroshenko's presidency is clear in the superiority with which Zelensky defeated him in the elections of April 2019, so it is not surprising that the former president is forced to manipulate the facts, sometimes invent them or fall into blatant contradictions to justify his actions or rewrite the results of his mandate. Poroshenko boasts, at the same time, of the results of his negotiation, with which he supposedly marked the red lines and of having reached an agreement that he never intended to fulfill.

“From the very beginning, the goal was to disrupt the Kremlin’s project of Novorossiya or Malorossiya, whatever you call it, which envisaged the destruction of the Ukrainian state and the dismemberment of Ukraine,” Poroshenko said, despite the fact that Russia twice forced the People’s Republics, supposedly its armies to achieve the goal of breaking up Ukraine, to stop their offensives and sign ceasefire agreements that envisaged their return under Kiev’s control. “Minsk was a great diplomatic achievement,” the former president said in an interview with the Financial Times in May 2022. “What did we get with Minsk? Time to build our new army, because in 2014 we didn’t have an army. We had one from 2017, 2018 and 2019. In 2017 my administration started buying Javelins (the anti-tank missiles that are causing so many casualties to Russian armored vehicles). In 2019, I signed with Erdogan (the president of Turkey) the purchase of Bayraktar (the effective Turkish drones). We received new ammunition, we developed the new Neptune missile (the same one that sank the Russian flagship, the cruiser Moskva),” he added in statements to El Mundo . Complying with what was stipulated in the political points of Minsk – local self-government, linguistic and cultural rights and the ability to trade with Russian border regions, hardly the Munich that denounced Ukrainian nationalism or the unviable agreement that Zelensky announced to his partners in 2019 – was never on the table.



Now, certain that his words will not be subjected to any fact-checking , when Minsk is a distant memory of a process in which no one believed and which the media did not bother to cover, Poroshenko allows himself to rewrite in an even more complete and personal way what the agreement meant that was to resolve one of the three components - the civil war - that make up the Ukrainian conflict. In his appearance at an event of the Atlantic Council, Poroshenko even referred to the preparation of the Minsk agreements by speaking about what he negotiated jointly with François Hollande, Angela Merkel and Kurt Volker. The attempt to involve the United States, and especially the Trump administration, in a process in which it had no part is blatant: there is nothing that Poroshenko could negotiate with Hollande and Volker, given that Emmanuel Macron became president of France on May 14, 2017, and Kurt Volker was not appointed to the post of special envoy for the Ukrainian question until July 7 of that year.

The focus of Poroshenko’s speech is to exalt his figure and, above all, a diplomatic achievement for which he is forced to exaggerate or invent the situation, completely distorting the meaning of the Minsk agreements and their negotiation. To do so, the former president proposes “five non-commitments”, that is, red lines that he supposedly set out for Angela Merkel for the negotiation of what would ultimately be the Minsk agreements. The reference to the German chancellor implies that Poroshenko is referring to the agreements signed in February 2015 and not to those of 2014, negotiated more directly between Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE. With his “non-commitments”, Poroshenko presents a process created from scratch, a way of manipulating the reality of the agreement negotiated and signed in 2015, which was in fact an extension, a roadmap to develop the agreement reached months earlier and which had stopped the DPR offensive in Mariupol and achieved the first ceasefire. Both texts seek only to resolve the Donbass issue, achieve a ceasefire and move towards the negotiated reintegration of the territories of the DPR and LPR into Ukraine.

However, Poroshenko’s “non-commitments” are intended to make it seem as if his intervention achieved results that have nothing to do with the process. “No compromise on Ukraine’s national sovereignty and national identity. Ukraine will never be part of Russia again,” the former president describes as the first point, even though none of that was part of what Moscow, kyiv, Berlin and Paris were negotiating. “No compromise on territorial integrity,” he adds, even though that was not the point at hand either. The Minsk agreements do not refer, for example, to the question of Crimea, so even if territorial integrity had been a demand of Poroshenko, it cannot be considered a great success. Nor does the third point, “no compromise on the Ukrainian Armed Forces and their ability to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity,” have any relation to the Minsk agreements, whose aspiration did not go beyond resolving the specific issue of the war in Donbass. The same can be said of the fourth point, “no commitment to sanctions”, or the fifth, “no commitment to Euro-Atlantic and European integration”.

The Minsk agreements were intended only to resolve the Donbass issue, the internal aspect of a much more complex conflict that is made up of an international aspect, the kyiv-Moscow dispute, of which the Crimean issue was a part, and a global one, the US-Russia confrontation, of which NATO expansion is an important part. Many of these “non-commitments” by Poroshenko refer to international and global factors, none of which were intended to be addressed in the Minsk agreements. However, all of them are useful for Poroshenko to try to present his negotiation with a much higher international profile than the modest Minsk negotiations reveal, in which a much more humble objective was aspired: to resolve the civil component of a much broader conflict.

The rewriting of the Minsk agreements has not been the sole concern of Ukrainian officials, who have repeatedly and consistently accused Moscow of non-compliance over the seven years that the process has lasted, although kyiv now admits that it never even considered implementing the agreements. In a recent article that aims to support the cause of negotiation and a future ceasefire, Samuel Charap, a member of the RAND Corporation and one of the leading experts in Western analysis of Russia and Ukraine, raises the issues necessary to achieve progress towards peace. Among them, he details that “a demilitarized zone should be designed with clear limits of deployment on both sides [of the front] designed to avoid the pitfalls of the Minsk agreements – the agreements signed in 2014 and 2015 aimed at ending the previous phase of Russia’s war – which did not contain a mutually accepted ceasefire line or clear commitments to withdraw.” Beyond Russia’s description of the anti-terrorist operation launched by Ukraine in April 2014 as a war, it is curious that Charap is not aware of the ceasefire line agreed in both Minsk agreements and the commitment to withdraw weapons at a distance also agreed in February 2015. Charap also ignores the pilot project for the withdrawal of weapons and personnel from several areas of the front, including the one in which Volodymyr Zelensky faced off face to face with Andriy Biletsky and his Azov soldiers, who refused to withdraw from a plot of land just a few square kilometres in size. This withdrawal, agreed in 2017, took two years to complete and was only possible because it was the Russian prerequisite for holding the Normandy summit and because of the certainty that the territory would be reoccupied after the meeting.

The manipulation – or ignorance – of the terms of the Minsk agreements is not limited to forgetting some of its points, but to adding some that were not in either of the two roadmaps agreed in 2014 and 2015. Responding precisely to Charap’s article, Timofiy Mylovanov, former economics minister of Ukraine, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and now an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote that “we have seen the devastating consequences of the disarmament of the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk agreements, where such clauses gave Russia a significant advantage when it attacked.” Minsk had the arms withdrawal clauses of a clear ceasefire line that Charap ignores, but it did not contain any disarmament aspects.

The Western discourse, capable of presenting headlines for several hours announcing that it was Russia and not Ukraine that made the transit of Russian gas to the European Union impossible, has for years presented a simplified version of the Ukrainian conflict. Everything was limited to Russian aggression, so the only solution was to get Russia to stop its actions. This point of view ignores the civil factor of the current war, which precedes the Russian invasion by eight years. To this end, the profound ignorance of everything that happened during the seven years of the Minsk process is useful, which makes it possible to manipulate the negotiation, its postulates or its failure to adapt it to the needs of each person or each moment. Minsk is an argument both for those who defend that there can be no negotiation with Russia, incapable of fulfilling its commitments, and for those who defend the possibility of a ceasefire forcing Moscow to accept draconian terms, or for the sectors closest to the Ukrainian government, who defend the need to continue the war until final victory, when it will not be necessary to negotiate any agreement and Ukraine can impose its terms. In the same way, kyiv has used the gas issue, for which it obtained support from its partners when it considered it necessary to extend the contracts, but does not consider it necessary to take into account the interests of its allies when the objective is to ensure that Russian gas no longer has access to the European Union market.

https://slavyangrad.es/2025/01/02/minsk ... eyo-nadie/

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******

Which Way Ukrainian Hooligan?

Nazis at a Crossroads: 'Nation Europa' or European Union
Moss Robeson
Dec 31, 2024

<snip>



This past summer’s “Nation Europa” conference in the heart of western Ukraine tried to obscure the role of the country’s most powerful neo-Nazi movement (more or less from eastern Ukraine) in launching a new European fascist network. Azov wasn’t invited, they said. This blog’s report on that meeting was largely based on the findings of “Dreznica Goat,” a fellow researcher of the far-right in Ukraine, who called it from the beginning: Azovites didn’t need to invite themselves to their own event.

Earlier in 2024, Azov’s openly neo-Nazi brigade in the Ground Forces of Ukraine announced that a handful of its fighters were launching a summer tour of Europe. Apparently they were expecting to be treated like rock stars. This unit, the 3rd Assault Brigade, is not to be confused with Azov’s other (more famous) brigade in the National Guard, which has made an effort to refine its image for Western liberals.

Much of the tour was cancelled, a month before the “Nation Europa” event, and not long after yours truly revealed that a decorated 3rd Assault fighter visited Auschwitz to mock the Holocaust. He went there wearing a shirt from the Russian-Ukrainian neo-Nazi band “M8L8TH” with a quote attributed to Hitler on the back. Thanks to Dreznica Goat, readers of this blog already learned that the bass guitar player in M8L8TH is a medic in the 3rd Assault Brigade who represented the Nation Europa network at a roundtable of neo-Nazis on Ukraine’s Independence Day.


On the left, from the “Nation Europa” conference, a slide says “Solidarity with Mr. Bond!” referring to an Austrian neo-Nazi sentenced to 10 years in prison. On the right, a picture from the Auschwitz stunt.

My article about the conference failed to identify several of the participants, most importantly Andriy Malkov, an organizer of the event, who made multiple speeches and moderated the roundtable discussion. He also appears to have served in the 3rd Assault Brigade, which is commanded by Azov leader Andriy Biletsky.

Malkov was once part of the “Rodychi” (Relatives) gang of white supremacist football hooligans in Kyiv, from which an important clique in the Azov movement — and a rival splinter group — emerged. For more than half a decade, his old friend Serhii Filimonov has led the militant organization “Gonor” (Honor), which essentially “sold out” as the Nazi pagan stormtroopers of the Western-funded NGO complex in Ukraine. Apparently they are no longer friends. It’s easy to imagine that the future organizer of “Nation Europa” found himself at a crossroads.


“Nation Europa” organizer Andriy Malkov, seen above-right with Ulana Suprun, former Healthcare Minister of Ukraine (2016–19)

A coalition of neo-Nazi hipster hooligans, radical NGO activists, far-right influencers and military fundraisers is apparently being groomed for the big stage by powerful interests, if only to ride the coattails of a potential successor to Volodymyr Zelensky.


Serhii Filimonov, in his younger days on the right. On the left, his tattoos include a Nazi Totenkopf above his knee, neo-pagan symbols on his shoulders, and between them it says, “Victory or Valhalla.”

Over ten years ago, Andriy Malkov commented on a picture of Serhii Filimonov, 19, wearing the same shirt from the “White Boys Club” that we’ve already seen on Malkov. The White Boys Club is an umbrella of hooligan firms that support FC Dynamo Kyiv and the Azov movement. In 2014, Filimonov joined the Azov Battalion with the call-sign “Son of Perun,” referring to the Slavic god of war that neo-Nazi pagans tend to worship. In a 2022 interview, Filimonov said, “those who are interested know that ‘Gonor’ are pagans. And many [far-right/neo-Nazi] symbols that can scare people are actually related to our religion.” In fact, “We look after the temple on Lysa Hora.”


Serhii Filimonov and friends from Gonor at the Perun shrine on Lysa Hora (Bald Hill) in Kyiv. “Son of Perun” apparently edited the picture on the right to remove Sashko Vovk’s openly neo-Nazi tattoos.

Malkov and Filimonov fought in the Azov Battalion a decade ago, when it had a reputation for being an openly neo-Nazi unit. Subsequently, they joined the nascent Azov movement’s Civic Corps, a forerunner to its political party, the National Corps. “Son of Perun” led the Kyiv branch of both organizations. The journalist Oleksiy Kuzmenko tells us, “Filimonov’s old social media posts from his days in the Azov include a 2014 post seemingly honoring Adolf Hitler’s birthday with thematic songs and a commentary ‘I regret that you won’t rise up like Jesus, grandpa’, etc. Filimonov’s VK also links to ‘SoberNazi’ Twitter handle.”


Left to right at a 2015 meeting of the Azov Civic Corps: Serhii Filimonov, Andriy Malkov, “Sashko Vovk”
After Dynamo Kyiv won the 2015 Ukrainian Cup final, fans swarmed the field and Malkov’s friend Rostislav Karpich ran onto the pitch with a swastika on his shirt. Malkov had the same one. Later that year, Rodychi hooligans from the Civic Corps — including Filimonov’s close friend Ihor Potashenkov, or “Malyar” (Painter) — viciously attacked black soccer fans at a European Champions League match in the Ukrainian capital.


Clockwise from top-right: Ihor Potashenkov attacking a black soccer fan (2015), Potashenkov and Malkov at a Dynamo Kyiv game (2017), Rostislav Karpich and Malkov in Vienna (2018), and Karpich with his swastika shirt (2015)

Filimonov’s gang of Nazi hooligans went unpunished for these high-profile hate crimes, despite an international media spotlight and consequences for Dynamo Kyiv. Oleksiy Kuzmenko noted in 2018, Potashenkov was an “active participant of some of Ukraine’s iconic and more controversial moments during the [2013–14] Euromaidan demonstrations.” Kuzmenko reported that in 2016, this notoriously violent neo-Nazi with “clearly visible swastika tattoos” on his head nevertheless received “sophisticated training” from the European Security Academy based in Poland.


Evolution of Ihor Potashenkov, aka “Malyar” — from attacking riot police in Kyiv (2013) to wearing a neo-Nazi shirt while undergoing his training at the European Security Academy in Poland (2016)

From 2015–18, Andriy Malkov appears to have grown as close as ever with Filimonov’s circle of Azov veterans, in particular Ihor Potashenkov and Nazarii Kravchenko, who was the deputy head of the National Corps. In 2018, the State Department’s annual report on human rights practices in Ukraine described the National Corps as a “nationalist hate group.” That year there was a series of neo-Nazi attacks on Romani people and settlements in Ukraine. Filimonov led a group of Azov militants that perpetrated at least one of these “pogroms.”

In the coming weeks, Kateryna Handziuk, an “anti-corruption activist” in Kherson, was attacked with sulfuric acid. Later that year, Handziuk died of complications from the severe injuries that she suffered, and Filimonov’s crew supported the protest campaign, “Who Killed Katya Handziuk?” This appears to have forged an alliance between the Rodychi hooligans and leaders of Ukrainian civil society™ which probably encouraged Filimonov to spearhead an Azov splinter group in 2019. As a project manager for the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union once said,

I had a very cautious optimism when some of the not-so-recent people from the National Corps moved away from Biletsky, created their own civilized NGO, and began to cooperate with healthy civil society forces. In fact, Nazarii Kravchenko, Serhii Filimonov, Igor Malyar [Potashenkov] and all of Gonor became the “security service” during peaceful actions, in which everyone participated: right-wing, left-wing, human rights defenders, veterans… And it was a process of unification that made me very happy.


Nazarii Kravchenko, neo-Nazi former leader of the National Corps (Azov political party), with former CIA director David Petraeus (left, 2019) and Andriy Malkov (right, 2017)

Perhaps the “best man” in this marriage, Serhiy Sternenko is a nationalist influencer in Ukraine, and former leader of the extremist Right Sector in Odessa who rebranded as a radical anti-corruption activist. Under Sternenko’s local leadership, Right Sector helped to perpetrate the May 2014 massacre of anti-Maidan activists in Odessa. His friend Kateryna Handziuk was among those who praised the far-right “patriots” that instituted “Ukrainian order” in this Russian-speaking city of southern Ukraine (and poured gasoline on the fire in eastern Ukraine).


Kateryna Handziuk at a nationalist march

Serhii Filimonov’s dramatic falling out with Azov leader Andriy Biletsky was related to his budding alliance with Serhii Sternenko. Biletsky and other Azovites reportedly beat up Filimonov and his right-hand man Nazarii Kravchenko in 2020, and “demanded to know who ordered the media support for Sternenko.”

Two months before Handziuk was viciously attacked with acid outside her home in Kherson, another man assaulted Sternenko in Odessa and wound up dead. To hear it from Christopher Miller, now the Financial Times correspondent in Ukraine, “Sternenko chased the attacker down and sliced his gut open, spilling out his intestines. He posted a video of it and has boasted about chasing the guy down after he was attacked.”

Sternenko subsequently acquired hero status among Rodychi hooligans and radicalized NGO liberals. According to the sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, “Sternenko is an especially notorious case of a criminal who found a way to avoid punishment for many years via switching from far-right to a pro-Western liberal. I don’t understand why he should be allowed to do this. The civil society that applauded this is very sick.” Katherine Quinn-Judge, a former senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, explained in 2021, “A critical mass of young Ukrainian liberals consider Sternenko A-OK, because a) he’s anti-Russian, b) he’s said that beating up gays isn’t compulsory, c) he has opposed genuine corruption in Odesa, and d) he’s started wearing glasses and whatnot.”



The campaign to “Free Sternenko” gave these nationalist bedfellows another cause to rally around (typically with flares, supplied by the Nazi protest experts), which culminated in a riot outside of the presidential office building on his 26th birthday. In the meantime, Sternenko’s friends from the NGO complex grew closer to Gonor. A perfect example is Melanie Podolyak, the daughter of a former deputy minister of culture.


Melanie Podolyak, with Sternenko on the right, wearing a Gonor shirt on the left

Sternenko and Podolyak were apparently both friends of Kateryna Handziuk, and by 2021 some people speculated that they were dating. From roughly 2016–19, Podolyak worked as a project manager for the Lviv Media Forum and later the Lviv Security Forum, in which capacity she repeatedly brushed shoulders with retired US general Ben Hodges, a major cheerleader of proxy warfare in Ukraine.

By 2019, Podolyak became an assistant to Oksana Syroyid, a leader of the “Samopomich” (Self Reliance) party and deputy chair of the Ukrainian parliament. Melanie Podolyak reportedly also advised the international department of this pro-Western political party, which was wiped out in the 2019 parliamentary elections. “Low polling doesn’t stop Self Reliance from being every allied embassy’s reform favorites,” observed Jonathan Brunson, a “political warfare analyst” with an eye on the far-right in Ukraine.

Later that year, Podolyak probably took part in Gonor’s new “Academy of Street Protest” featuring Sternenko, Filimonov, and Potashenkov. In any case, she started to wear a shirt from the Gonor “Academy,” the symbol of which is a Molotov cocktail. “Son of Perun” and “Malyar” then visited Hong Kong in December 2019 to engage in “protest tourism.” Filimonov shared a picture of himself at a demonstration wearing his “Who Killed Katya Handziuk” shirt. He captioned his Instagram post in English: “Fight for Freedom!! Stand with Hong Kong!!”


Filimonov in Hong Kong. “What the Hell Are Ukrainian Fascists Doing in the Hong Kong Protests?” asked Vice News. “Far-right hooligans from Ukraine at the Hong Kong protests,” reported the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Apparently these outlets did not yet receive the memo about Gonor’s “evolution.”

In 2019, the Ukrainian School of Political Studies (USPS) created an annual scholarship to honor the memory of its 2015 graduate Kateryna Handziuk. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, “Son of Perun” had to wait until 2021 to become the second recipient of the Handziuk scholarship. According to the USPS, “Filimonov’s activity matches Ukrainian School of Political Studies values. By his work, Serhiy, like Katya Handziuk, defends the interests of the democratic state of Ukraine.” The Council of Europe, “the continent’s leading human rights organization” — not to be confused with the EU’s European Council — funds the USPS, which is proud to be associated with several people in Filimonov’s orbit.


Filimonov at a session of the Ukrainian School of Political Studies

The USPS awarded Filimonov the scholarship in July 2021, evidently for a summer program. Earlier that year, Filimonov was detained for “hooliganism,” and placed under house arrest, after a mob of Sternenko supporters assaulted the presidential administration building, to protest a prison sentence of seven years for their hero’s kidnapping of a local politician in 2015. Later that year, a court commuted this sentence, and according to Sternenko, the president even offered to make him the head of the Odessa department of the Security Service of Ukraine.


Filimonov after Sternenko supporters attacked the presidential office building

“Happy birthday Serhii Sternenko,” Melanie Podolyak captioned a Facebook post with her pictures from the incident. The day before Sternenko supporters smashed the front doors, heavily graffitied the facade, and burned the entrance sign to the presidential administration building, she promoted the insurrection with a long Facebook post accompanied by an illustration of a flamethrower. Filimonov reportedly gave the signal for the mob to attack the building by lighting a flare. “Serhiy is ‘guilty’ only because in 2014 he decided that he was ready to spend his youth not just having fun and hanging out,” insisted Podolyak.


Podolyak’s photos from the riot, and the image she used to promote the event

Volodymyr Ishchenko commented on the situation a couple days later, “Western officials and embassies still have not condemned the far-right assault on Ukraine’s presidential office by Sternenko supporters. A reason for this is that the West has supported some of the coordinators of the rally and many of the participants, including financially.”

Filimonov and Sternenko were both represented in court by Masi Nayem, “the lawyer for Ukraine’s national patriotic revolutionary far right,” whose elder sibling Mustafa is a “top Sorosite” credited with launching the “Euromaidan” protest movement in 2013. These Afghan-Ukrainian brothers also have a sister, Mariam, who claims to be “decolonizing the discourse about Ukraine.” As someone on Twitter/X once said, “her whole shtick is diversitywashing Ukrainian nationalism and denying racism exists in Ukraine because she’s never personally experienced it.”


United24 Media

Yaroslav Yurchsyhyn, the former executive director of Transparency International Ukraine (2016–19), is another “anti-corruption activist” and radical liberal-nationalist who came to the rescue of the Sternenko rioters and Gonor hooligans. He participated in the rally and offered to bail out its arrested leaders. Yurchyshyn graduated from the USPS alongside Kateryna Handziuk, and championed the campaign to bring her killers to justice. In 2018, he posed for a picture with Angela Merkel, both of them holding up a shirt that said “Who is Behind the Assault on Kateryna Handziuk?” Since 2019, Yurchsyhyn has been a prominent member of the “Holos” (Voice) party in the Ukrainian parliament, in which it apparently replaced Self Reliance as the “embassy’s favorite.”



Less than a month after the assault on the presidential office, Serhii Filimonov said in an interview, “I am sure that someday social elevators will work normally and we will be able to see many people from the [football] fan movement in the Verkhovna Rada [parliament], in the Cabinet of Ministers.” Around this time, his old friend Andriy Malkov took a picture with a huge banner that was unfurled in Kyiv to honor the Ukrainian division of the Nazi Waffen-SS.


Andriy Malkov

Alina Mykhailova, another far-right influencer, soon joined “Son of Perun” at the Ukrainian School of Political Studies. She’s a famous military medic formerly affiliated with the military wing of the Right Sector movement, which formed the 67th Mechanized Brigade in 2022. Her boyfriend, Dmytro “Da Vinci” Kotsiubailo (1995–2023), was a rising military star from the Right Sector. Later that year, a few months before Putin launched his “special military operation,” Zelensky awarded Kotsuibailo the country’s highest honor and decreed him a “Hero of Ukraine.” Gonor soon formed a special company in Kotsuibailo’s “Da Vinci Wolves” battalion. Mykhailova might have brokered this merger.


Alina Mykhailova, wearing a Nazi Waffen-SS shirt and visiting the Council of Europe

In 2019, Alina Mykhailova visited Washington, DC as a participant of the Open World Program (for Ukrainian youth leaders) which is funded by Congress to facilitate “the only exchange program within the US legislative branch.” That year she became an assistant to Rustem Umyerov, a member of parliament from the Holos party, and now the Minister of Defense. Mykhailova also started to work at the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, said to be the country’s “most sizable youth leadership movement,” which was established by the “leading private equity fund in Ukraine” (Western NIS Enterprise) after the so-called “Revolution of Dignity.”

In 2020, Mykhailova was elected to the Kyiv City Council as a member of Holos. She became one of the most oppositional deputies and apparently a favorite politician of young liberals in the capital. Meanwhile she worked as an assistant to Oleksandra Ustinova — like Yurchyshyn, another USPS graduate, former “anti-corruption activist,” and Holos deputy in parliament since 2019. Mykhailova and “Son of Perun” appear to have become friends at the Ukrainian School of Political Studies.


Mykhailova, Filimonov, and USPS director Svitlana Matviyenko

The Council of Europe established the USPS with the Agency for Legislative Initiatives (ALI), “one of the leading think tanks in Ukraine,” which is funded by Global Affairs Canada, USAID, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and George Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation. According to the ALI website, “Under the auspices of the Council of Europe, this [Ukrainian School of Political Studies] is an education and networking project of the Agency for Legislative Initiatives, which aims at training and uniting leaders from various settings who share a desire to cultivate a strong state.” As for Filimonov, he said the USPS is “creating a community that can influence processes on a national scale. I’m very happy that I have the honor to be one of its members.”

In September 2021, a Ukrainian gangster movie, “Rhino,” premiered at the Venice Film Festival, starring Serhii Filimonov in his debut acting performance. Oleg Sentsov, a liberal nationalist icon formerly imprisoned in Russia (2014–19), directed the film and got Filimonov the role. Sentsov’s wife, Veronika Velch, is an “Advocacy Director” for Juleanna Glover, a right-wing “high-powered PR consultant” who reportedly “stands at the nexus of social and political Washington.” In 2023, Velch joined a meeting at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington between the Ukrainian ambassador and representatives of the Azov movement. Almost a year later, the ambassador suggested that Veronika Velch deserves credit for playing a role in the lobbying campaign that preceded the State Department’s approval of the Azov Brigade to receive US weapons and training.

Days after his appearance in Venice, “Son of Perun” celebrated his 27th birthday and started studying “public management and administration” — with Melanie Podolyak and Alina Mykhailova— at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. They received congratulations online from Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, and in person from Serhiy Prytula, a politician who left the Holos party a few months earlier.


Filimonov, Podolyak, Prytula, and Mykhailova

Prytula wasn’t ranked high enough on the party list to enter parliament in 2019, and the following year got less than 8% of votes as the Holos candidate in Kyiv’s mayoral election. A 2020 Ukrainska Pravda article on “Who is Preparing Prytula for the Elections” said that his headquarters was staffed “mainly from among the participants of the ‘Who killed Kateryna Gandzyuk’ movement.”


Prytula and Sternenko with drones they’ve fundraised

A year after the Russian invasion, by which time the Prytula Foundation was a major fundraiser for the Ukrainian military working with Sternenko, a poll commissioned by the US-funded National Endowment for Democracy suggested that a new party led by Prytula would defeat Zelensky’s ruling “Servant of the People” and win a snap parliamentary election.

A more recent poll indicated that Serhiy Prytula is still a very unpopular presidential candidate, but Leonid Ragozin, one of the only journalists that keeps tabs on the far-right in Ukraine, said over a year ago that Prytula “appears to be seen as a replacement for Zelensky in various quarters.” And here is another comment from Ragozin about Prytula: “Backed by DC hawks, he runs his own troll/bot factory, one of the most unhinged.”

(I got a taste of Prytula’s troll army after I made a popular Twitter thread about the far-right connections of his wartime staffer Melanie Podolyak. A blogger associated with Prytula, according to that 2020 UP article, posted a picture of me and declared, “This person hacked into primary school zoom class and demonstrated his penis to underage children. Be aware!”)

The Ukrainian premier of “Rhino” arrived in February 2022, just over a week before Russia invaded. At that time, Melanie Podolyak and Alina Mykhailova were visiting Berlin. A few days earlier, Filimonov and Sternenko were among the lead organizers of a march in Kyiv, one without party flags that declared “Ukrainians Will Resist!” This slogan threatened to turn against Zelensky’s government if it tried to “capitulate” at the negotiating table with Russia. Meanwhile in northeastern Ukraine, the Azov movement led a similar march in Russian-speaking Kharkov, which the Western media and Ukrainian “civil society” celebrated as a heartwarming display of patriotism and national unity. Around that time, the star of “Rhino” gave an interesting interview.

And yet, you must have had some kind of evolution in your views? You’ve had a swastika tattoo since you were what, 17?

Tattoos are the culture of football fans. At the sector, when I got there, it was fashionable to have one like this. And many of the guys from Gonor, whose tattoos scare the foreign press, got these tattoos 8–10 years ago. And in fact, their meaning is definitely not xenophobic or racist, it’s a protest. Something that is forbidden. In addition, those who are interested know that Gonor are pagans. And many symbols that can scare people are actually related to our religion.

…

Do you see a political career for yourself?

I definitely don’t have a goal of becoming an MP or a member of the Kyiv City Council. But if there is a strong team that needs my help, I will join it.

On the eve of the Russian invasion, Serhii Sternenko and Melanie Podolyak appeared on Fox News for live interviews. Podolyak made it back at least three more times by the end of March. When the war started, she went to work for Serhiy Prytula. Podolyak reportedly “helped organize and headed the humanitarian staff of the Prytula Foundation in Lviv.” Later she started to advise the charity on “international relations,” and served as the project manager of Prytula’s NEST Fund to help families whose homes have been destroyed. In the meantime, as the war raged in Ukraine, Sternenko rapidly grew his online audience, and “Son of Perun” grew close to “Da Vinci.”


“Da Vinci” and “Son of Perun”

The Da Vinci Wolves battalion and its Gonor company became elite forces in the Ukrainian military. In April 2022, the USPS proudly explained that Filimonov’s group “coordinates its activities” with the Ministry of Defense and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). In 2024, a Ukrainian state propaganda outfit referred to the “Da Vinci Wolves” as one of the “top 5” Ukrainian “super-units,” along with three others from the Azov movement.


Filimonov with SBU director Vasyl Malyuk (center)

In 2022, Serhii Filimonov was injured, and Alina Mykhailova addressed the Council of Europe’s World Forum for Democracy as part of the USPS delegation to this annual event. In 2023, Dmytro Kotsuibailo was killed, and received a high-profile state funeral. Not long after Alina Mykhailova met Volodymyr Zelensky and gave him a chevron worn by “Da Vinci,” a napping soldier from Kotsuibailo’s unit sparked a scandal after the Ministry of Defense shared a photo of him on Twitter and people noticed a neo-Nazi patch from the notorious far-right band “Death in June.” This image even instigated an unusual article in the New York Times about “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines.”


NYT: “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines.”

Later that year, Sternenko’s former defense attorney Andrii Pysarenko, a USPS graduate who became an officer in Gonor’s military unit, also made a speech at the World Forum for Democracy. In the meantime, Melanie Podolyak’s wartime boyfriend died — Andriy Pilshchykov, a fighter pilot with the call sign “Juice.” He got this nickname several years ago in the United States (due to his abstention from alcohol) while completing an internship with the California Air National Guard. Pilshchykov also started to give interviews to U.S. news network in early 2022. Although he died in an accident, he became a sort of martyr for those lobbying Washington to send F-16 fighter planes to Ukraine.

“Juice” was buried alongside “Da Vinci” in Askold’s Grave, a historic park in Kyiv. Melanie Podolyak and Alina Mykhailova regularly pay tribute to the young men whose famous deaths likely sowed the seeds of their future political careers. Last year, Mykhailova petitioned Zelensky to create a “National Pantheon of Heroes” at Askold’s Grave, which would also become the final resting place for pro-Nazi Ukrainian leaders such as Stepan Bandera, Yevhen Konovalets, and Pavlo Skoropadsky. The USAID-funded Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition, the “largest and most visible reform network” in Ukraine, already supported this idea for years.

Earlier this summer, my favorite blog, “Events in Ukraine” by Peter Korotaev, published an amazing three part series about Ukraine’s scam call centers, or “Offices,” that touched on Gonor’s stake in this massive criminal enterprise in which “a variety of famous neonazi nationalist war veterans occupy top positions.” (In his February 2022 interview, Filimonov claimed “I have no idea about gangster life, unlike the hero of the film [Rhino].”)


Events in Ukraine: “Top neo-nazi military celebrity Serhii Filimonov has been doing well for himself”

In June 2023, “Son of Perun” and “Malyar” were spotted at a private party with strippers held by a call center in Dnipro, the “scammer capital of Ukraine.” Since then, Filimonov has taken two pictures with the SBU chief Vasyl Malyuk. According to Korotaev, “Ukrainian Secret Services and nationalists (the two are inseparable themselves) are at the top of the Office pyramid.” Furthermore, “a truly powerful coalition has emerged between Ukraine’s military neonazis, scam call centres, and western-financed journalists and liberal ‘activists’.” Peter Korotaev warns that “a new oligarchy is rising,” but cautions against “any over-ideologization of splits among the right.”

Generally, it’s all a matter of turf wars over criminal incomes. Gonor originally split from Azov in 2018 over a disagreement about an anti-construction action — it is well-known that practically all such ‘protests’ are paid for by rival construction firms. My first article in this call center series explored how Azov originally began as the street muscle for the Kharkov oligarch Arsen Avakov, and how a great deal of Azovites were uncovered running violent racketeering ‘business’ in the very same city in 2021.

Sternenko’s conflict with Azov allegedly started as a turf war. Korotaev explains that Arsen Avakov was “the quintessential ‘deep-state’ figure who ruled the ministry of internal affairs from 2014–2021,” and in those days sat “at the top of the vast pyramid of rightwing paramilitaries, all of whom up to their neck in blood and criminal activities.” When Filimonov fell out with Biletsky, Gonor turned against Azov’s powerful patron, and supported the “Avakov is the Devil” protests led by Sternenko and his friends. Fear of Avakov’s “private armies” partially drove Kyiv’s liberal activists into the Nazi tattooed arms of Gonor. As we’ve already heard one of them say, “I had a very cautious optimism” when these former Azovites “created their own civilized NGO, and began to cooperate with healthy civil society forces.”

Another conflict on the right erupted in early 2024, when Serhii Filimonov led a breakaway group from Dmytro Kotsuibailo’s battalion and formed a new “Da Vinci Wolves,” with Alina Mykhailova at the head of its medical service. A few days before this Right Sector-Gonor conflict spilled into the open, Mykhailova received a “Light of Justice” award from the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. The other recipient was Kateryna Prokopenko, the wife of Azov Brigade commander Denys Prokopenko — a former White Boys Club hooligan, now a “Hero of Ukraine.” In her speech, Kyiv City Council deputy Alina Mykhailova quoted the Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera (1909–59) and hoped for victory in “the internal battle and our common effort.”

Gonor left Right Sector’s 67th Mechanized Brigade and transferred to the 59th Motorized Brigade, taking their entire battalion’s social media accounts with them. Since then, the Right Sector movement was allegedly purged from the 67th brigade. (Kateryna Gandziuk was reportedly attacked by veterans of Right Sector’s former military wing, the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps. As the analyst Jonathan Brunson summarized that case, “Corrupt local officials paid Right Sector thugs for hire to attack Right Sector sympathizer and Ukrainian patriot Handziuk. Right Sector guy [Sternenko] leads movement to solve her murder.”)


In February 2024, Valeriy Zaluzhny (left) shared this picture that he took with Right Sector military commander Andriy Stempitsky —  shortly before Zaluzhny was dismissed as commander-in-chief, and not long before Right Sector was allegedly purged from the 67th brigade. Note the Stepan Bandera portrait behind them.

At the start of 2024, Mykhailova and “Son of Perun” opened a recruitment center for the new Da Vinci Wolves in Lviv. Andriy Sadovyi, the longtime mayor of Lviv and former leader of the Self Reliance party, spoke at the grand opening. Back in 2021, he met with them as USPS students. The Ukrainian School of Political Studies was proud to announce that Filimonov became the new Da Vinci Wolves commander. But there wasn’t a full battalion yet, which explains the need for a recruitment center and major advertising campaign in the capital. Who paid for this?


Advertisements for the new Da Vinci Wolves in Kyiv (February-March 2024)

About a month before they left the 67th brigade, Mykhailova and Filimonov attended a conference for USPS alumni with Oleksandr Yabchanka, who subsequently succeeded “Son of Perun” as the commander of the Gonor company in the new Da Vinci Wolves. In 2018–19, Yabchanka was a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health, when it was led by the liberal nationalist icon, Ulana Suprun. From 2014–18, Yabchanka led the healthcare reform group in the aforementioned Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition. Since 2020, he’s taught at the Ukrainian Catholic University, “where he prepares masters in public administration” — for example: Filimonov, Podolyak, and Mykhailova.


Oleksandr Yabchanka (right) speaks at the December 2023 USPS meeting. Filimonov and Mykhailova are sitting in the front row next to the USPS director, and Mykhailova is wearing a brooch given to her by USPS.

Ulana Suprun, an important Sternenko ally from the United States, is a friend of the far-right in Ukraine, but not universally. Andriy Malkov was happy to take his picture with her years ago, but over a month before “Nation Europa,” his co-organizer Yuriy Pavlyshyn, the bass guitar player from M8L8TH, denounced the “Soros children, Suprunyata, LGBT, NATO, etc.” In a post he titled “Trenchocracy” (Trincerocrazia, which he got from Mussolini), Pavlyshyn predicted an inevitable political defeat for Ukraine, and advocated for a dictatorship of the “military elites,” because otherwise “there will be a dictatorship anyway, either a Kremlin one or a leftist ‘Western’ one, which they hypocritically call ‘democracy.’”

Soros children, Suprunyata, LGBT, NATO, etc. these are, in one way or another, all manifestations of tools of influence and the imposition of a left-wing dictatorship. […] I won’t delve into my view of the utopian nature of any form of “democracy,” but I’ll simply say that I dream of voting rights only for those with military service, of allowing travel abroad only for those with a military ID, and so on. Because the true elites of our eternal Ukraine are now in trenches and bunkers, in underground headquarters and stabilization points.


Yuriy Pavlyshyn. The official Instagram account of “Centuria,” an important organization in the 3rd Assault Brigade and Azov movement, “liked” his post about “Trincerocrazia.”

Whereas Yuriy Pavlyshyn is a medic in the 3rd Assault Brigade, the head of its medical service, Viktoria Kovach, is getting the Gonor treatment. In 2024, she joined the Ukrainian School of Political Studies, and visited the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Around the time that stops on the 3rd Assault Brigade’s summer tour of Europe were getting cancelled, Serhii Sternenko and Melanie Podolyak took a group photo with Vadym Voroshylov, another far-right influencer, and Kirill Lyukov, another Prytula volunteer. Voroshylov, better known as “Karaya,” is a fighter pilot who took his call-sign from the German Nazi fighter ace Erich Hartmann. A year before this photo, Lyukov celebrated his birthday with “Leo,” one of the fighters from the 3rd Assault Brigade who participated in the 2024 summer tour.


Sternenko, “Karaya,” Podolyak, and Lyukov. Sternenko is wearing a shirt depicting a mushroom cloud in Moscow that says “Everyone Has a Dream — Dreams Must Come True.” Podolyak has the same shirt. “Karaya” has promoted recruitment efforts of the neo-Nazi “Lyubart” unit, or 5th battalion in the Azov Brigade.

As the summer came to an end, Podolyak moderated a youth forum with Sternenko in Lviv, which brought out hundreds of people to listen to these nationalist “activists” talk about military technology. In early October, Sternenko attended a meeting with Rustem Umerov, the Minister of Defense, to discuss “the problems that still exist in the field of UAV [Unmanned Aerial Vehicle] contracting and development.” According to Sternenko, thanks to his efforts, the Ukrainian military has received more than 100,000 drones. He’s also collaborated with United24, the fundraising platform launched by the President of Ukraine.


Melanie Podolyak was later interviewed by “Grunt Media,” a platform established in 2022 that has accumulated over half a million followers across Youtube, Telegram, Twitter/X, and Instagram. “If you’re on Twitter, you’ve seen Melania, if you watch Ukrainian YouTube, you’ve seen Melania, if you’ve been to rallies for justice, you’ve seen Melania,” according to “Grunt,” which means “Soil.” The interview was conducted by Grunt Media co-founder Anton Hodza, who once said that I “demonstrated my penis to underage children.”

https://banderalobby.substack.com/p/whi ... n-hooligan

More at link, it simply wouldn't fit. You've got to appreciate the in-depth work.

"There are no Nazis in Ukraine"...

[blindpig]

(Continuation of this morning's entry.)

From Cassad's telegram account:

Summary of the Russian Ministry of Defense on the progress of repelling the attempted invasion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces into the territory of the Russian Federation in the Kursk region (as of January 2, 2025)

— Units of the North group of forces during offensive actions inflicted defeat on formations of a heavy mechanized, seven mechanized, three airborne assault brigades , a marine brigade and two territorial defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements of Goncharovka, Dar'ino, Zamostye, Kurilovka, Leonidovo, Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Maryevka, Makhnovka, Nizhny Klin, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Novaya Sorochina, Pogrebki, Staraya Sorochina and Sudzha. — Strikes by operational-tactical, army aviation and artillery fire hit enemy manpower and equipment in the areas of the settlements of Alexandria, Veselovka, Guevo, Zaoleshenka, Lebedevka, Mirny, Mikhailovka, Nikolsky, Russkoye Porechnoye, Sverdlikovo, as well as Belovody, Vodolaghi, Zhuravka and Pavlovka in the Sumy region. — Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have lost more than 580 servicemen, a tank , an armored personnel carrier, nine armored combat vehicles, two artillery pieces, an anti-aircraft mount and 36 vehicles have been destroyed . — In total, during the military operations in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost more than 47,040 servicemen, 263 tanks, 204 infantry fighting vehicles, 144 armored personnel carriers, 1,390 armored combat vehicles, 1,316 cars, 339 artillery pieces, 42 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 11 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 14 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, seven transport and loading vehicles, 83 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 28 units of engineering and other equipment, including 13 engineering obstacle clearance vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit , seven armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle.

***

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of January 2, 2025)

— Units of the North group of forces in the Kharkov direction defeated formations of a motorized infantry brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and two territorial defence brigades in the areas of the settlements of Liptsy, Sosnovka, Pokalyanoye and Vilcha in the Kharkov region.

The enemy lost up to 40 servicemen, a vehicle and three 122 mm D-30 howitzers.

— Units of the West group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of two mechanized brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, three territorial defence brigades and a National Guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Dvurechnaya, Zeleny Gai in the Kharkov region, Terny and Torskoye in the Donetsk People's Republic. Repulsed six counterattacks of assault groups of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The enemy lost over 460 servicemen, three infantry fighting vehicles, four pickups, a 122 mm D-30 howitzer, two 155 mm Krab self-propelled artillery mounts of Polish manufacture and a Bogdana. The Bukovel-AD electronic warfare station and an ammunition depot were destroyed.

— Units of the Southern Group of Forces continued to advance deep into the enemy’s defenses, defeated formations of two mechanized, motorized infantry and airmobile brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the areas of the settlements of Dalnee, Chasov Yar, Seversk and Kurakhovo of the Donetsk People’s Republic. They repelled four counterattacks by enemy assault groups.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 210 servicemen, a Kirpi armored combat vehicle of Turkish manufacture, a pickup, a 122 mm D-30 howitzer and a 105 mm M119 gun of US manufacture. The electronic warfare station was destroyed.

— Units of the Center group of forces improved their tactical position, defeated the manpower and equipment of two mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two brigades of the National Guard in the areas of the settlements of Shcherbinovka, Dzerzhinsk, Zverevo, Andreyevka, Sribnoye, Tarasovka, Shevchenko and Vozdvizhenka of the Donetsk People's Republic. 13 counterattacks of armed formations of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were repelled.

The enemy lost up to 240 servicemen, an infantry fighting vehicle, two armored personnel carriers, including a US-made M113, Turkish-made Kirpi and Kozak armored combat vehicles, a car, two 152 mm D-20 guns and a 122 mm D-30 howitzer.

— Units of the "East" group of forces occupied more advantageous positions, defeated the formations of two mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Konstantinopol, Velyka Novosyolka, Vremyevka and Volnoye Pole of the Donetsk People's Republic. A counterattack by an enemy assault group was repelled.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 160 servicemen, four vehicles, an HMMWV combat armored vehicle and a 155 mm self-propelled artillery unit "Paladin" made in the USA, a 152 mm D-20 gun and a 122 mm D-30 howitzer.

— Units of the Dnipro group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of a mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Novokamenka in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Stepnoye, Antonovka in the Kherson region and the city of Kherson.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 90 servicemen and three vehicles. Three electronic warfare stations and an ammunition depot were destroyed.

— Air defense systems shot down a Su-27 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force, six rockets of the US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system, as well as 97 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

******

Desertion and incineration

Lifecycle of the AFU soldier, pt. III. 2024 territorial losses, not enough men for fortifications, hazing, latrines, lasers and disappointing France trips, scandals in the 117th and the 155th brigades

Events in Ukraine
Dec 31, 2024

Today’s topics:

A bird’s eye view of Donbass territorial losses since July - in June of this year, we lost about 100 km² of territory there. By September, this had increased to 400 km², and by November, 610 km²

Not enough men to man the trenches

From one desertion to another: Hazing, abuse and desertion at training camps

‘Since February 2022, 114,280 criminal cases have been registered for unauthorized abandonment of military units.’ and why this represents, at best, only half the real number.

Desertion and death in the 117th brigade: ‘the battalion lost 11 positions, but only two in actual combat’

Laser incineration and French disappointment: the foreign-trained 155th brigade is ‘is being dismantled like donor organs for other brigades.’ Chaos and disorganization

One thousand desertions in the 155th as it is filled with unmotivated ‘busified’ mobilized men

But first of all, a happy new year to all my subscribers! I have written a great deal this year, and I have all of you to thank for keeping me motivated. This week I hope to write up a summary of all the interesting topics we have covered in 2024. But for now, let’s keep up with the flow of Events in Ukraine. As an entree, I offer to you a New Year’s haircut I found on a Ukrainian military meme telegram (watch it to the end, with sound on):
(Video at link, short and sweet.)

But most Ukrainian soldiers aren’t lucky enough to enjoy such simple pleasures. Either such delights are all they are able to enjoy, or, being like most mobilized soldiers Soviet-born rural proletarians, they have little interest in such hobbies. Here’s another meme I saw on Ukrainian military instagram that was less joyful:

"Summing up 2024:

Not trained to fight

Just civilians

Important at the rear

Professional stormtroopers”


The fat man, by the way, is Evhen Dyky, a repulsive television nationalist personality I have written about many times. Ukrainians love to hate him on social media, particularly for his suspicious role as head of Ukraine’s Antarctic research institute, which has enjoyed a remarkable funding boom in wartime. See my article ‘Nazi Penguins’

This past week, we’ve had a look at the mobilized soldier’s odyssey - busification by the TSK (mobilization organs), TSK dungeons with likely extortion and possible death, systemic torture and extortion once in a unit.

As we saw with the now-infamous story of the 211th pontoon brigade, this extortion reaches such intensity that even units stationed hundreds of kilometers from the front still suffer from desertion. An update to the 211th, by the way - the infamous Poberezhniuk was detained again on the 29th and arrested the next day.

And what happens if they survive all this and end up at the front? When they are faced with an enemy which, though it doesn’t numerically outnumber them, is said to possess superior firepower (though, I will add, Russian military journalists dispute this)?

An enemy army where most soldiers aren’t forcibly ‘busified’ through mobilization, but attracted through immense financial incentives? Ukrainian soldiers receive $550-$750 USD for signing their first contract, while Russian soldiers receive at minimum $10,000 (in the Belgorod region, a record $30,000 USD is the reward). Even according to Radio Free Europe, the number of military contracts signed in Russia has increased by a factor of six from September 2023-2024.

It’s time to bring our life cycle of the Ukrainian soldier to a close. Soon we will return back to the first, perpetual stage - mobilization. But today, to the final stage (for the lucky ones) - desertion.

(Paywall with free option)

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... cineration

<snip>

Poverty and Penguins
According to the latest figures from the World Bank, a third of Ukrainians live in poverty. This figure increased by 1.8 million people in 2023 as compared to 2020. One in five Ukrainians reported losing their job following the start of the war. If social payments composed one-fifth of household incomes in 2021, by 2023 it composed half. According to the report, the total population of Ukraine currently stands at 32 million people.

Strana notes that measuring poverty in Ukraine depends on the parameters - in 2021, Ukrainian demographers calculated that more than half of the population lived in poverty. At the time, the vice-speaker of the Rada agreed, stating that 19 million Ukrainians were poor.

These trends are set to be reinforced given news that the hryvnia continues slowly devaluing.

Many passions have erupted recently over government spending in a very distant place. Spending on Antarctic research has risen dramatically under Zelensky, reaching almost 600 million hryvnia a year in 2023 and 2024.



The hilariously odious Evhen Dykyy (his last name means ‘Savage’/’Wild’), gave an interview with Yury Romanenko where he defended spending on Ukraine’s station in the Southern Pole. Since 2018, he has been the head of Ukraine’s National Antarctic Centre, which is in charge of research.

Dykyy served in the rightwing Aidar Batallion in the Donbass back in 2014 and since has been a classic rightwing ‘veteran leader’. Way back in the 2000s, he was part of the Gene Sharp cutout ‘Pora’, a copy of Serbia’s Otpor (the words even have the same meaning in Serbian and Ukrainian).

(Video at link.)
Dykyy (left in the above photo) is also famous for statements such as his 2024 appeal to kill citizens who avoid mobilization:

When they [draft-dodgers] start gathering, it's like a bunch of frightened rats... If this happens, they will have to be cleaned out. We have enough hands, iron, and determination for this. And we will clean them up so that there will be no room left!

At this point, I cannot help citing from Roberto Bolano’s novella Distant Star:

In the crystal clear sky over the Arturo Prat base, Wieder wrote ANTARCTICA IS CHILE, and his exploit was recorded on film and in photographs. He wrote other verses too, about the color white and the color black, about ice, the occult and the smile of the Fatherland, a fine, frank, clear-cut smile, a smile like an eye that is in fact watching us.

(More...)

https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/ ... rty-escape

*****

2025 - Ukraine On The Verge Of Defeat

In 2023 the situation in Ukraine had developed into what looked like a stalemate. But 2024 proved that bigger things had been in the making. In 2024, after taking Avdivka, the Russian forces began to deliberate and steadily move forward.

The introduction of FAB bombs, precision ammunition delivered from airplanes flying outside Ukrainian air defenses, broke the Ukrainian defense fortifications. Russian infantry, covered by ample artillery and with the help drones, infiltrated and overwhelmed Ukrainian lines. An ever increasing shortage of Ukrainian troops helped to increase the tempo of progress.

Diversion action, by Russia in the Kharkiv region and by Ukraine itself due to its attack into the Kursk region, further weakened the Ukrainian lines. A high number of casualties, unmotivated troops and a lack of heavy equipment have since diminished the Ukrainian forces. The downward spiral the Ukrainian army is currently in is likely to continue.

During the last six month the main frontline in south-east Ukraine has changed significantly.

July 1 2024



Six cities on the above July 1 map that are or were of military-logistic importance are marked with blue numbers.

The current map below is showing that these have either been captured or are in danger of immediate falling.

January 1 2025



No. 1 in the south is Velyka Novosilka. It is currently in an operational encirclement as all major roads leading to it are under Russian control. The only supply route left is through muddy fields to the northwest. Velyka Novosilka, the Ukrainian anchor of the southern front, is likely to fall within the next two weeks.

No. 2 is Vuhledar (Ugledar) which was heavily fortified and well defended. It fell on October 1 after the Ukrainian leadership failed to support its battered defenders. As there were no further major settlements north of Vuhledar the frontline has since moved significantly further.

No. 3, Kurakhove, was the logistic center for the Ukrainian troops holding the fortified positions west of Donetsk city. It fell last night. The main danger for people living in Donetsk city has thus been removed. There is little westward of Kurakhove that can stop a rapid Russian movement beyond it.

No. 5, the city of Toretsk has dominated the Ukrainian positions along the north-west corner of the Donetsk People Republic (DPR). It has been reported that it also fell last night. No 6, Chasiv Yar, is about to follow. Yesterday Russian troops captured its main railroad station.

With the fall of Toretsk and Chasiv Yar the most fortified lines in the north east of the DPR will have been removed. The Russian forces will proceed from there to develop a westward pincer attack towards Konstantynivka.

At the center of the south to north bow spanning from No 1, Velyka Novosilka, to No 6, Chasiv Yar, lies No 4, Pokrovsk. It was and still is the central logistic point for the Ukrainian forces on the whole Donetsk frontline. As the city is heavily fortified the Russian forces will avoid to directly attack it. They instead are trying to envelope the city from the south and the west. When they manage to cut the railway and road connections between Dnipro to Pokrovsk the later will be ripe for their taking.

The only Ukrainian 'success' of the year, the incursion into the Kursk oblast of Russia, has turned into the catastrophe that even pro-Ukrainian observers had feared. It did little to divert Russian forces from the eastern frontline but consumed many Ukrainian units and a huge share of their heavy equipment. By now the size of the initial incursion has been halved. Sudzha, the only Russian city the Ukrainians hold, will fall soon. The militarily insignificant rest of the incursion will be difficult to keep.

The incoming U.S. president Donald Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine in a short time. However, the only way to achieve that is to concede to all the demands the Russian side has made. The western pro-war factions and the deep-state will do their best to prevent that. They still demand a maximum pressure campaign to bring Russia to its knees.

But every measure they plan to introduced has already been tried. A further increase of sanctions on Russia will only further weaken U.S. allies. There are no more 'wonder-weapons' in U.S. arsenals that Russia can not immediately counter. Russia is outproducing western weapon manufacturers in all categories.

The Ukrainian army is on the verge of falling apart. The economy of Ukraine is faltering. Its people have lost the will to fight.

As the U.S., and NATO, are likely unwilling to concede their defeat the war will have to be decided on the battle field. In 2025 the Russian forces will continue to destroy the Ukrainian army. They will proceed to take whatever is needed to guarantee Russia's strategic security.

A year from now the discussions in western countries may well be about sending their own troops to the Ukrainian frontline. But the prospect of massive losses of their own soldiers is likely to prevent their populations from agreeing to that.

The west will concede because, aside from nuclear war, it will be the only option that is left on the table.

Posted by b on January 1, 2025 at 13:51 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/u ... .html#more

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Vozdvizhenka has been liberated
January 1, 22:23



The New Year also begins with the liberation of populated areas. The Russian Armed Forces, during the assault operations, drove the enemy out of Vozdvizhenka, where a powerful fortified area was located, covering Krasnoarmeysk and Mirnograd.
The village itself was heavily damaged in several months of fighting.

(video at link)



More importantly, Vozdvizhenka is 4 kilometers from the Krasnoarmeysk-Konstantinovka interchange, which is the most important bypass road for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbas.
Losing control over this road will seriously impair the logistical capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbas as a whole.

The offensive continues.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9586918.html

Testing of the Russian BEK
January 1, 20:31



A prototype of a domestically produced BEC was manufactured and tested.

( Video at link)

As part of the prototype testing, the tasks of laying mines, operating in manual and automatic modes during the day and night, and remote connection to the device were worked out. The vessel's performance was also tested. Some of the tests were conducted in the range of the Ukrainian Armed Forces UAV and under intense enemy electronic warfare. The standard combat load is 150 kg, we will not publish the rest of the performance characteristics.

Taking into account all the enemy attacks and statements that they do not have a fleet, we can conclude: THE ENEMY HAS A FLEET. And we need to counter it with our solutions.

https://t.me/potapov_npp/623 - zinc

Good, of course, but such BEKs were needed yesterday. We are late in this matter.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9586576.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Pay a price
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 03/01/2025



Several articles this week are asking what Ukraine's expectations are for 2025, when some experts, such as Professor Katchanovski, who tend to analyse the facts in such a way that their predictions come true, hope that this could be the moment when the war will stop. Those who currently position themselves with this type of prediction can be divided into two groups: optimists who see in Trump's arrival the possibility of breaking with the status quo of a war that risks perpetuating itself, and pessimists who fear that Donald Trump will abandon Ukraine and that European countries will not be able to compensate for the decrease in the US military contribution. To these two groups we must add two others, which start from less realistic bases and among which stand out the excessively optimistic pro-Russian positions that see the -unreal- possibility of a Ukrainian collapse and those who, from pro-Ukrainian pessimism, fear that such a breakup is possible.

In reference to the war that Donald Trump's advisers are going to encounter, the BBC quotes Michael Koffman, a member of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a leading expert for the Western press on this conflict, who stated that "they are going to inherit a war with a very negative trajectory, without an enormous amount of time to stabilize the situation," adding that "they are going to inherit it without a clear theory of success." On September 10 of this year, Reuters reported that the Biden administration had delivered the classified report on the state of the war and the White House plans that Congress had demanded in April and whose delivery date was scheduled for June. The absence of leaks about the plans may indicate either extreme clarity that requires complete secrecy or the real absence of a clear strategy for the subsequent months of the conflict. The actions and words of the Biden administration in these months indicate the continuation, practically by inertia, of the strategy of progressive escalation with no other plan than to continue harming Russia as long as Ukraine can continue fighting and its government so decides.

Whatever the fate of Ukraine, Russia and the populations who have been suffering the hardships of war for years, the current situation on the ground has not changed: troops from kyiv and Moscow are facing each other at two points far from the main front (Kursk and Kharkiv), suffering casualties, causing material losses and destruction on the other side, and Russia continues to advance slowly in Donbass, the hottest point on the long line of contact, at a slow pace that avoids incurring major casualties but makes a deep break in the direction of Slavyansk or Kramatorsk unthinkable, much less towards Dnipropetrovsk or Zaporozhye. And while the US supply announced last week to ensure that Ukraine has weapons, ammunition and funding to continue fighting beyond the arrival of Trump, who has already announced that he will not abandon Ukraine, is significantly increased, the Russian initiative in the west and south of Donetsk continues to rule.

On the last day of the year, rumours began to circulate that Russia had captured the Kurakhov power plant, a key point in Ukraine's defence of the city, and although there was still some resistance in part of the industrial zone, the battle for the town is about to end, if it has not already ended. The loss of Kurakhov means consolidating the withdrawal of the front to the west, making it impossible for Ukraine to use 155-millimetre artillery against Donetsk, the ammunition with which Kiev troops have bombarded the city practically daily since May 2022. Even so, Donetsk has been the target of Ukraine's long-range artillery, which does not want to miss the opportunity to continue inflicting on the population of the most important capital of Donbass the collective punishment it has been applying for years. The same can be said of Gorlovka, still close enough to Ukrainian positions, so artillery attacks remain a constant. More than ten and a half years after the Grad rocket attack that killed twenty civilians who were walking with their families in a city park in broad daylight on a weekend day, Ukrainian artillery continues to be a recurring protagonist in the drama of families who have been living on the front line for a decade.

The destruction caused at the front is compounded by the destruction in the rear. Yesterday, Ukrainian HIMARS hit the town of Ivanovskoe, where part of the 810th Russian Brigade is supposedly located, causing damage to the town. Despite speculation about peace, which is premature given Trump's inconsistency and the failed precedents of negotiations in this conflict, the war is not only not diminishing in intensity, but is increasing precisely because of the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen after January 20.

“There is a lot of talk about negotiations, but it is an illusion,” Mikhail Podoliak was quoted as saying by the BBC . Making clear that Kiev’s goals and intentions have not changed, the most belligerent of the members of the President’s Office, Ukraine’s de facto government , added that “there can be no negotiation process because Russia has not been made to pay a high enough price for this war.”

This week, Ukraine’s official defense account published data on what it considers to have been Russia’s losses in 2024, the year which, without needing any proof other than its word, it claims has been “a year of record losses for the Russian military” – a claim that is more than questionable given that no major battle similar to that of Artyomovsk has taken place, which caused massive personnel and material losses for Russia. According to Ukraine, Russia lost in 2024: “430,790 soldiers, 3,689 tanks, 8,956 armored vehicles, 13,050 artillery systems, 407 air defense systems, and 313 multiple launch rocket systems.” Figures provided by the warring parties are, by definition, war propaganda, although it has become the norm to accept Ukrainian data as if it were obtained independently. In early December, Zelensky said that Ukraine had lost 43,000 soldiers killed in the war compared to Russia's 198,000, or 4.6 Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian killed.

To the astronomical figures of casualties and material losses must be added the commentary yesterday by Mikhail Podolyak, who, after rejoicing that Russia had lost direct access to the European energy market, also boasted that Moscow has already lost all its Soviet arsenal (in reality, Ukraine seems much closer to achieving this milestone). The Russian Federation has also lost access to financial assets held in Western countries, mainly in the European Union, the profits from which are being used to finance the war and are expected to be used to make Russia indirectly responsible for reconstruction.

In short, according to the Ukrainian narrative, Russia has not only lost its privileged position on the European energy market, but has also become politically isolated, has suffered astronomical losses of material and intolerable personnel losses, its economy is on the verge of collapse, and internal destabilization threatens even the existence of the country. However, there can be no negotiations, because Russia has not paid a high enough price for the war . The costs that Russia has suffered in the war, which do not reach the imaginary Ukrainian figures, are high in many respects, but differ from those suffered by Ukraine in one fundamental respect: the physical destruction of cities. Ukraine's ambition to bring the war to the Russian Federation and its demand for large numbers of missiles with which to cause destruction in Russia point in this direction. Zelensky has recently suggested that Kiev is aware that Donald Trump's arrival may imply the start of some kind of negotiation in search of a ceasefire, which would inevitably mean the cession - temporarily and de facto , not de jure - of territories for Ukraine. This possibility is becoming a certainty for a large part of the experts who analyse this war and the words of the Ukrainian president seem to begin to accept this possibility. Of course, after Ukraine has achieved some of its objectives, among which is to do as much damage as possible to Russia. Even at the cost of prolonging the war and increasing the destruction in Ukrainian cities.

https://slavyangrad.es/2025/01/03/pagar-un-precio/

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (from December 28, 2024 to January 3, 2025)

From December 28, 2024 to January 3, 2025, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a massive and 12 group strikes with high-precision weapons and attack unmanned aerial vehicles, which resulted in the destruction of energy facilities that ensured the operation of enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine, a plant for the production of gunpowder charges, the infrastructure of military airfields, ammunition depots, fuel bases, assembly shops, storage sites for attack unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned boats, as well as temporary deployment points of Ukrainian armed formations and foreign mercenaries.

- During the week, units of the North group of forces continued to destroy formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Kursk region. Air strikes, unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery fire damaged the manpower and equipment of seven mechanized, three airborne assault brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a marine brigade and four territorial defense brigades. In the Kharkiv direction, units of the mechanized, motorized infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades were defeated.

Over the week, in the area of ​​responsibility of the North group of forces, the enemy's losses amounted to over 3,130 servicemen, four tanks, five infantry fighting vehicles, seven armored personnel carriers and 51 combat armored vehicles. 121 vehicles, 28 field artillery guns and six electronic warfare stations were destroyed.

— Units of the West group of forces improved the position along the forward edge, defeated the manpower and equipment of the tank, four mechanized, two assault brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, five territorial defense brigades and two National Guard brigades.

The enemy lost more than 3,175 servicemen, two tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles, nine armored personnel carriers, including seven M113 made in the USA and four other armored combat vehicles. 36 vehicles, 26 field artillery guns, including 13 made in NATO countries, eight electronic warfare stations and 11 ammunition depots were destroyed.

— Units of the Southern group of forces occupied more advantageous positions, defeated the formations of five mechanized, two motorized infantry, infantry, two airmobile brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and two territorial defense brigades. Repulsed eight enemy counterattacks.

Over the course of a week, the Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 1,745 servicemen, two tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles, including a US-made Bradley, three armored personnel carriers, including a UK-made Saxon and two US-made M113s, four other armored combat vehicles, seven cars, and nine field artillery pieces. Five electronic warfare stations and three ammunition depots were destroyed.

— As a result of decisive actions by units of the Center group of forces, the settlements of Novotroitske and Novoolenovka of the Donetsk People's Republic have been liberated.

The losses of the Ukrainian armed formations amounted to over 2,750 servicemen, seven tanks, including three Leopards made in Germany, 10 infantry fighting vehicles, including a Bradley made in the USA, 13 armored personnel carriers, including four M113s made in the USA, and 16 other armored combat vehicles. 26 vehicles and 28 field artillery guns were destroyed.

— Units of the "East" force group continued to advance deep into the enemy's defense, defeated formations of a tank, three mechanized, motorized infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and two territorial defense brigades.

The enemy lost up to 1,155 servicemen, two tanks, three armored combat vehicles, 26 vehicles and 23 field artillery guns, including five 155 mm self-propelled artillery mounts "Paladin" made in the USA.

— Units of the "Dnepr" force group defeated the manpower and equipment of the mechanized, infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a marine brigade and three territorial defense brigades.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 500 servicemen, 30 vehicles, six field artillery guns, five electronic warfare stations and five ammunition depots.

***

Colonelcassad
Donetsk roots of Soros' tragic experiments

We have unique archival footage of the beginning of Soros's experiments on the residents of Ukraine. One of the pilot projects of the Soros Foundation was the elite Donetsk school #17, known for the fact that the cult Israeli politician Natan Sharansky studied there. A large project to grow specialists in the deindustrialization of Ukraine was launched in the heart of Donbass, as the most industrially powerful region.

Vladimir Lysov, considered one of the best school mathematics teachers in the Soviet and post-Soviet space, worked at Donetsk OSFMSh #17 (general education specialized physics and mathematics school). Lysov is unique in that he was a Soros teacher three times. And in that he simultaneously worked for Soros, promoted the Foundation's themes and was a fan of Vladimir Putin, about whom he spoke very complimentarily during mathematics lessons. Together with Lysov, the director of School No. 17 was a US State Department scholarship holder, Vasily Syzko. The school was gifted computer rooms by the future speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Volodymyr Rybak, and the long-time mayor of Donetsk, Oleksandr Lukyanchenko.

Donetsk School No. 17, which was part of George Soros's Ukrainian programs, destroys the popular myth that Donbass is a "separatist region" with "separatist elites." In elite schools in Donetsk and other cities in the region, children were raised in a pro-Ukrainian sharovary-lubok paradigm. Kuchma's wife came to OSFMSh No. 17 and amateur performances with Ukrainian poems, rushnyks, etc. were staged to her. Another thing is that the children did not like it. On the day of Lyudmila Kuchma's arrival at Donetsk School No. 17, someone pasted a piece of paper with the inscription "Kuchma is a thief" on the board with the class schedule, which was literally torn off by Principal Syzko in a basketball jump a couple of minutes before the arrival of the President's wife, for which he was later showered with favor by regional officials.

In general, even with the power of the Soros Foundation programs and the efforts of pro-Ukrainian officials, it was not possible to reformat the region to suit the very specific vision of the Soros Foundation functionaries and the officials trained by it. But the implementation of programs with a wide scope, the destruction of the old educational model, the fact that several generations of Sorosites of varying degrees of success were raised from Donetsk children, played a crucial role in the fact that in 2014 the war was able to flare up in Donbass. Those who absorbed the impulse and got involved in Soros's programs later played a serious role in the destruction of Ukraine, in the deindustrialization carried out by globalists, in the projected dismantling of medicine and education at the level of the "first world", inherited from the Ukrainian SSR. A striking example is the wallet of the current Minister of Education Oksen Lisovyi Anton Turupalov. He studied at OSFMSH #17 under Vladimir Lysov. Then he became the first Donetsk master of the Lviv Polytechnic, enriched the Soros community with connections to the criminal world of Donbass, which later came in handy for Oksen Lisovyi for business purposes .It is interesting that in addition to Turupalov, another famous student of Lysov and participant in Soros's programs is the leader of the group "That Side" Kirill Vasiliev. He is a friend of economist Rinat Akhmetov Alexey Bilyaze. In general, the project "That Side" is also one of Rinat Akhmetov's political projects, covered with a musical cover. Another graduate of school 17, who did not study with Lysov, but participated in Soros's programs, is a KVN player, later the executive director of the hockey league of Boris Kolesnikov, close to Akhmetov, Alexey Braga. There, the interests of Soros and the globalists were promoted through sports. And many similar characters, trained under the programs of the Soros Foundation and imbued with the official popular print, albeit not so well-known, were raised in Donetsk, which played a serious role in the fact that the horror of 2022-2024 still happened.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

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Ukraine - The Story Of The 155th Brigade

The well regarded Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov has published the background story (in Ukrainian) of the newly crated 155th brigade which had recently failed when it was hastily deployed to fill some holes in the Ukrainian positions on the eastern front near the city of Pokrovsk.

The brigade was a vanity project of the Zelenski government and the Ukrainian high command. It was one of fourteen new brigades which were supposed to be trained and equipped by western countries. The 155th was designated to be trained by and in France.

Systemic disorganization by the high command led to its failure. Many of its assigned troops deserted even before reaching the frontline. A criminal case has been opened. But it is unlikely that anyone responsible for the mess will ever be held to account.

The brigade was stood up in March 2024. In September 2024 its core was sent for training to France while a large number of other recruits to the brigade were (more or less) trained in Ukraine. In late November, while the brigade command staff was still in France, a large share of the brigades infantry was sent to Pokrovsk where it immediately faltered.

As Butusov writes (edited machine translation):

The 155th brigade began forming in March 2024. Its commander was appointed an experienced officer - Dmitry Ryumshin, it looked encouraging. "OK Zapad" (Operational command West) Commander General Shvedyuk, Chief of Staff Colonel Seletsky and Commander of the Ground Forces General Pavlyuk were responsible for the formation and manning of the brigade.
But from the very beginning, it turned out that OK Zapad had no command personnel, no soldiers, no weapons, and no resources to create a new unit. The formation of the 155th brigade from the first days was a continuous organizational chaos in literally all components, and the service required a lot of effort for those who tried to serve honestly, and to great losses due to unauthorized abandonment of the unit from the very beginning of the formation.

Here is the schedule of recruitment of the 155th brigade, the number of personnel for each month, and -in parentheses- the number of deserters in those months:

March 46 (3)
April 123 (6)
May 217 (31)
June 1978 (185)
July 3882 (310)
August 2748 (217)
September 3253 (187)
October 3211 (339)
November 5832 (448)

New recruited troops, without any experience, were randomly added to the brigade and, when needed pulled from it (untrained) to fill holes elsewhere. During the whole process more than 1,700 of its soldiers deserted:

In fact, the recruitment of the brigade began in June, but they did not have time to complete full training, because immediately in July and August, more than 2550 servicemen were taken from the 155th brigade to replenish other units! That is, they took away from the brigade almost all those who were quite suitable, whom the brigade commander and battalion commanders had just placed in positions, in fact, they nullified all the previous four months of work, in March-June, that is, this brigade composition was organized in August in a new way, and then ... we issued an order to prepare all those who stayed until the trip to France at the end of September.

As a result, 1924 servicemen were sent to France as part of the 155th brigade, only 51 of them had more than a year of military experience, 459 soldiers had up to a year of experience, and most of them, 1414 people, were only enlisted and served for less than 2 months, including about 150 just recruited without military experience. Without any selection of people, they were sent to France even without passing basic training. It was among them that France had the largest number of fugitives. In total, about 50 soldiers fled in France.

That is, the Army Command and OK Zapad sent to France not an organized and controlled military unit, which can learn a lot, but a crowd of people in military uniforms, about 30% of the staff, who were supposed to organize and get acquainted with each other and with the commanders during the trip!

While the entire brigade command was being trained in France, thousands of new people were being enlisted without the presence of brigade and battalion commanders, as a result, in October and November, more than 700 people escaped from the brigade immediately after being enlisted in Ukraine. Those who deserted had never seen their commanders.

While some 2,000 soldiers of the brigade were training in France some 4,000 fresh soldiers were additionally assigned to the brigade but trained more or less (and without their commanders) in Ukraine:

Since November 15, the rank and file of the brigade began to return to Ukraine, and the brigade headquarters remained according to the training plan to complete the staff classes, for which the French instructors gave the highest scores.
The brigade headquarters arrived in Ukraine on November 30, but Brigade Commander Ryumshin did not have time to get acquainted with his new 4 thousand subordinates who were waiting in the training center, and conduct planned additional exercises with those who returned and did not have time to get all the necessary knowledge.
In the absence of the brigade headquarters and battalion commanders, the command of the OK "West" and CSR began to transfer untrained and ill-coordinated people to the Pokrovsk area.

The brigade command came back from France only to find that its infantry was already being deployed to the front.

Nominally the brigade had been fully equipped by France. It had artillery and armored vehicles. But it lacked the material the Ukrainian military was supposed to supply. The brigade had no drones and no electronic warfare equipment. It lacked the means to gain an overview of the battlefield and to defend against Russian drones which immediately attacked anything that moved. The new heavy equipment the brigade tried to bring to the front was destroyed before reaching its assigned positions. Moreover all the Ukrainian made 120mm mortar ammunition the Ukrainian military supplied to the brigade proved to be faulty and ineffective.

Without drones and artillery and in full chaos the brigade failed to hold its assigned line which led to a breakthrough of the Russian forces.

The brigade's commander, who had had no influence on what had happened, was immediately relieved.

Back in September I pointed out that the Ukrainian method to create new brigades while letting experienced ones fail for a lack of replenishment was a serious and systemic error:

Experienced brigades are kept on the front until they have less than a third of their original strength. They are not replenished while still in the fight. Newly mobilized men are instead put into newly constituted brigades with zero frontline experience.
A better system would rotate out units that have lost a third of their men and fill them up with new recruits before pushing them back into the fight. The result would be the same number of soldiers but with experience mixed into all of the army's units.

Butusov's report points to exactly this issue (edited machine translation):

Next to the 155th are experienced units - the 1st OSB "Da Vinci", the 25th Airborne brigade, the 68th Jaeger brigade, which have an acute shortage of people in the infantry, they can not keep a wide band because of this, and there are experienced UAV units, headquarters, command cadres that can quickly train and make combat-ready mobilized people. But experienced and combat-ready brigades were not given people, they are not allowed to stabilize the front. Because people are given to political projects, the same as the 155th brigade, and there are other brigades newly formed in 2024-the same fourteen that President Zelensky spoke about.

Even if if were been organized perfectly the Ukrainian military would still not have a chance against the Russian forces. But it could have kept its losses to a minimum while holding the line and while gaining time for a political process.

It instead gets slaughtered for the vanity of its higher command:

The top political and military leadership of the country actually played around with the 155th Anna Kievskaya brigade, without even trying to systematically prepare and train the brigade, and without giving the brigade commanders time to create a combat-ready team themselves.
The brigade's servicemen became hostages of Zelensky's PR project, which the authorities did not make any effort to actually implement competently.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the military command, which is now trying to hide the truth and use the case of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) to remove responsibility from itself.

The 155th brigade has now been dispersed with various of its subunits moved to replenish other brigades. The journalist Butusov, like many of his compatriots, is furious about the case:

[T]hey spent people, money and time on forming a brigade, which is virtually impossible to use as a brigade due to its low combat capability. ... Why did you create it if you can't use it for its intended purpose? For your own PR and reports? For a meeting with Macron?
And is it worth it, Gentlemen Zelensky, Umerov and Syrsky, the lives of dozens of people who give up their lives near Pokrovsk as part of the 155th, because of the elementary disorder and poor preparation, which primarily resulted from your mistakes in setting tasks, planning and organizing? Will you give evidence to the SBI investigators about how you brought the 155th brigade to such a state, how you spent huge funds of our allies and Ukrainian citizens, how instead of strengthening the front, you only disrupt the organization and training of reserves?
I hope that the time will come when you, the real ones responsible for this case, will be the first to answer to the law.

The story of the 155th Ukrainian brigade is only unique in that it has been well documented. The Ukrainian command has over the last years created may such failures and seems to have not learned one bit from it.

The grief, sorrow and anger this has caused will haunt the Ukrainian state for a long time.

Posted by b on January 2, 2025 at 18:13 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2025/01/u ... .html#more

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NATO and Kiev regime’s message to Europe: Happy New Year, Suckers!

Finian Cunningham

December 31, 2024

The criminality of the Kiev regime knows no bounds. It is mind-boggling. But the putrid reality is covered up by the Western media which indulges the fantasy of “noble Ukraine defending Europe from Russian aggression.”

As Europeans ring in the New Year, they can look forward to the misery of crippling energy costs and their economies tanking further – all thanks to the NeoNazi regime in Ukraine that elitist Euro leaders deem to be a priority cause for ceaseless hand-outs.

So much for the traditional greeting of “peaceful and prosperous.”

NATO’s Ukrainian puppet leader Vladimir Zelensky – the sweaty T-shirt guy who gets a privileged seat at every EU summit – is cutting off the last supply route to Europe of Russian gas on New Year’s Eve.

This act of sabotage is being done openly and brazenly – with the support of Euro “leaders” who are so deranged by Russophobia and Western imperialist arrogance, that they expect European citizens to endure it for a “war effort” against Russia.

The insufferably money-grubbing Zelensky announced at the last EU leaders’ summit in Brussels on December 19 that his regime was not extending the contract to transit Russian gas to the rest of Europe at the end of this year on December 31.

Europe has already been cut off from Russian gas with the U.S. explosive sabotage in 2022 of the Baltic seabed Nord Stream pipelines to Germany. Now, the decades-old Ukrainian transit land pipes are also to be shut off. If ever the bigger picture of what is behind the war in Ukraine was needed, those two moves should explain.

That means yet more soaring energy costs as European countries scramble to find alternative and more expensive gas supplies. American exporters of gas are gleeful at the prospect of lucrative profits.

European Union leaders like the Russophobic Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas and the Third Reich collaborating Baltic states are also pleased to end all Russian energy trade with the continent.

The crass audacity of it. So, we have non-EU member Ukraine ordaining itself the prerogative to turn off the heating and lights for Europeans – all in the name of helping the NeoNazi regime fight a NATO proxy war against Russia.

However, some European leaders, to their credit, vehemently oppose what can only be labeled a scam.

At the last EU summit, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico denounced the reckless disregard for European citizens. He said: “If anyone is going to prevent the transit of gas to the territory of the Slovak Republic, if anyone is going to cause an increase in gas prices on the territory of Europe, if anyone is going to cause enormous economic damage to the European Union, it is President Zelensky.”

Zelensky is not even a legitimate president. He canceled elections earlier this year, and so he has no mandate to continue in office.

But such democratic illegality is of trifling concern to the backers of the Nazi-adulating regime in Kiev. The U.S. and EU have funneled up to $300 billion in taxpayer money to the regime to wage a proxy war against Russia. The scam has worked smoothly for nearly three years as Zelensky and his cronies skim off billions while the Western military corporations and other major corporations feast on profits from Ukraine.

President Joe Biden is desperately throwing the last few billions of dollars into the war racket. Maybe incoming Donald President Trump will close down the rip-off when he is inaugurated on January 20 only because he is worried that it is leading to World War Three.

Slovakia’s Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban are the only European leaders worth their salt as they correctly recognize the scam and are calling it out. Both of these countries are refusing to send military aid to Ukraine, they strongly oppose any crazy talk of Ukraine joining the NATO bloc, and their leaders are genuinely trying to explore a peace settlement, in part to prevent the destruction of European economies and societies.

Ukraine under Zelensky has become a cesspit of corruption. Up to one million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in a futile war that was fought for Western imperialist interests to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, which has been a spectacular failure. Zelensky and his cronies don’t care about the Ukrainian cannon fodder. They just want the war racket to continue as long as possible, regardless of how many lives are destroyed and how many Europeans are dragged into a catastrophe.

In cutting off Russian gas to Europe, Ukraine will lose transit fees of about $ 1 billion a year paid by the Russian state-owned Gazprom company. Ukraine, like the rest of Europe, will have to source more expensive gas from the U.S. But Zelensky’s regime doesn’t care. It’s getting nicely paid off for its part in running the transnational imperialist scam.

It’s a measure of Zelensky’s corruption that he tried to bribe Slovakia’s Fico to change policy and back Ukraine’s membership of NATO. Sweaty T-shirt guy offered Fico $500 million, according to Fico.

That’s how sleazy the Kiev regime is. Everyone is bought for a price, and so it comes naturally to the regime to expect others to be likewise bought off.

Zelensky and his NATO handlers have turned Ukraine into a failed state that Western capital can prey on.

The failed state is a global center for scam phone networks. Criminal gangs have been weaponized by the regime to swindle money from citizens all around the world. Russian citizens are particularly targeted by phone fraudsters operating from Ukraine.

The criminality of the Kiev regime knows no bounds. It is mind-boggling. But the putrid reality is covered up by the Western media which indulges the fantasy of “noble Ukraine defending Europe from Russian aggression.”

Western media are blaring about Russia shooting down an Azerbaijani airliner. But the same media do not tell about the Kiev regime’s involvement. The fatal air crash of the Azerbaijani passenger plane last week was brought about by Ukrainian drones attacking the Russian city of Grozny where Flight J2-8243 was trying to land. The timing was no coincidence. The passenger jet was put in danger deliberately by the NATO-backed regime.

There is a similarity to how the Malaysian airliner MH-17 was used by the Kiev regime in 2014 as a provocation to smear Russia.

Like that incident, the Azerbaijani flight was sent into a fire zone and exploited by the Ukrainian regime, knowing that innocent lives would be killed.

Significantly, anticipated damage to Azerbaijani-Russian relations over the crash may likely scupper a potential gas supply deal to Europe to circumvent the Ukrainian cut-off of Russian gas.

Ukraine is a cesspit of corruption and crime, a black hole for scamming, from multi-billion-dollar money laundering through NATO arms dealing to phone fraud, from holding Europe hostage without gas to shooting down passenger planes for double-dealing schemes. You name it, it’s all there in the NATO fiefdom of NeoNazi “Slava Ukrainsky”.

The head of the crime syndicate is Vladimir Zelensky, who is enabled by the elitist and corrupt Russophobic politicians in Washington and Brussels, who are themselves nothing but puppets of Western imperialism.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... r-suckers/

*******

On the lithium deposit that Russia took from the US
January 3, 14:59



On the lithium deposit that Russia took from the US

What Russia got ( https://greenstartpoint.ru/chernoviklit ... m-oblomis/ ) together with the village of Shevchenko.

So, according to their document, the lithium deposit is located in the Velikonovoselkovsky district, now our Donetsk People's Republic, on the eastern outskirts of the village of Shevchenko. The area of ​​the first marked site for lithium development is 39.84 hectares, with a mining period of 20 years.

"... Within the deposit, six pegmatite bodies were identified, belonging to a single vein system, constantly descending to the west at angles of 55-88 °.

- Lithium mineralization is confined to three zones:
located in the central parts of the veins: albite-spodumene; microcline-spodumene; petalite-spodumene.

The spodumene variety of ores is common in all ore-bearing pegmatite bodies; The total balance of lithium ores is 90%. The discovered pegmatite veins have a compact structure.
The main ore minerals are spodumene and petalite;

Associated minerals are lithium mica and lithium phosphates, minerals niobium, tantalum and beryllium, present in the form of accessory impurities.
Lithium is the main ore component of pegmatites and is associated with two of its own minerals - spodumene and, rarely, petalite. In addition to the main component - lithium, the deposit also accumulates other rare elements. These include rubidium, cesium, tantalum, niobium, beryllium, tin. Rock-forming minerals and feldspars are also used in ceramic and glass production.

Water inflows to the mining site will be formed due to Miocene and Cretaceous aquifers, as well as groundwater of the fractured zone of crystalline rocks. Groundwater does not meet the requirements of water quality standards for drinking water supply or irrigation and can only be used for industrial and technical water supply.
The mining and geological conditions of the deposit operation are a steep dip of ore bodies (65-85°), relatively deep occurrence (up to 500 m).

Opening (up to 120 m) determines the underground method of mineral extraction. The deposit is relatively small (the length of the ore field is 1100 m, the width is 220 m).
The total volume of earthworks is estimated at 358.3-375.7 thousand m3. The deposit is classified as having a very complex geological structure…”

That is, look, it’s not just lithium, which has become the “energy blood” of the age of electric vehicles, renewable energy and energy storage, but also a whole range of other important elements – rubidium, cesium, tantalum, niobium, beryllium…

The most interesting thing is that even this Ukrainian document says that
“…the deposit was discovered in 1982 during deep geological mapping.”

That is, this is still Soviet geological exploration!

And the same document emphasizes that"...According to the United Nations Framework Classification (UNSC-2009), lithium ore reserves are classified as potentially commercial reserves, the development of which requires further assessment. Information on the volume of lithium reserves is limited ...".

And all this was what American and European corporations wanted to grab for free. In fact, the Shevchenkovsky lithium deposit is only part of a huge layer of lithium-containing rocks, extending to the northwest, along both banks of the Dnieper, and towards Belarus

https://greenstartpoint.ru/chernoviklit ... m-oblomis/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9588736.html

Google Translator

******

Brief report from the front, January 2, 2025

Report by Marat Khairullin with illustrations by Mikhail Popov.

Zinderneuf
Jan 03, 2025
(No map for Chasov Yar today)

In Chasov Yar, the main battles are taking place for the refractory plant. The enemy, realizing that its loss would mean not only the loss of the city, but also the capture by our troops of the heights that dominate a fairly large area around Chasov Yar, is putting up fierce resistance, periodically conducting counterattacks. Nevertheless, our units are gradually expanding the control zone in the northern part of the city. Separate groups are already working in the area of ​​the railway station. The enemy is facing a threat of our pressure on the multi-story buildings in the city center not only from the Oktyabrsky microdistrict but also from the Severny microdistrict. Also, expanding control in the north of Chasov Yar will allow us to inflict greater damage on the supply of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in its central part, including on the territory of the refractory plant.


ЛБС 01.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 1st, 2024. ЛБС 31.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 31st, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Зона активных боев=Zone of active fighting.
Active military actions continue in Toretsk. Russian units have advanced from the central market area to the north and west. The Russian Armed Forces have consolidated their positions in the area of ​​school #5 and have approached the spoil heap of mine #10 (ШК #5 andТеррикон Шахты #10, respectively*). To the west of this spoil heap, our assault groups have advanced into the residential sector during attacks. The combat zone has almost reached the northwestern outskirts of the city here.

High levels of military activity continue in the direction of the Toretskaya mine (Шахта Торецкая). The Russian Armed Forces are increasing pressure on it, amassing forces in the Krymskoye area. There is fierce resistance from the enemy, including intensive use of drones.


ЛБС 12.9.2024=Line of Combat Contact September 12th, 2024. ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.12.2024=Line of Combat Contact December 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Зона продвижения после предыдущей сводки=The zone of advancement since the previous summary.
In the Pokrovsk sector, the Russian Armed Forces have driven the enemy out of the settlement of Vozdvizhenka (Vozdvyzhenka). The Ukrainian Armed Forces are still present in the area of ​​farms in the east of the settlement. They are being cleared.

West of Vozdvizhenka, they advanced into the pocket between it and Timofeevka (Tymofiivka), thus expanding the zone of control on the northern bank of the Kazenny Torets River.

From the area of ​​the settlement Dachenskoe, Russian units advanced to the western part of the settlement of Lysovka. Fighting is underway in the area of ​​a small forest located there and a stronghold next to it. Strengthening this area will allow the supply of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to be completely cut off here, leaving only the possibility of transport along field roads, which currently are difficult to traverse due to the weather.

From the settlement of Novy Trud/Vidrodzhennia, attacks continue along the railway in the direction of Chunishino (Chunyshyne) and Novoukrainka, creating a threat of reaching the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces units in the settlement of Zelenoe and the stronghold located near the turnoff to Lysovka from the M30 highway.

In the Volkovo (Vovkove) area, Russian units improved their positions and advanced west of the settlement by about a kilometer. The forward positions of our troops are now about two kilometers from the settlement of Kotlino (Kotlyne) and the road to Pokrovsk that runs there.

In Novovasilyevka (Novovasylivka), fighting is taking place in the western part of the settlement, where the enemy is relying on positions located in the area of ​​farms. At the same time, the nearby Solenoe has come under the control of our fighters, which makes it possible to bypass both Novovasilyevka and Uspenovka from the north. Pressure began on Uspenovka from the south, where our units advanced along the ravine in the direction of Novoalexandrovskoe (Novooleksandrivka). And from this ravine, along the forest belts, they move toward Uspenovka.

In the Novoelizavetovka area, the enemy was driven out of both the settlement itself and the strongholds north of it, approaching Nadezhdovka (Nadiivka) from the east and north. The assault on this settlement can be expected to begin in the near future.

*When Russian letters are written by hand, the lower case "т" looks like a western "m" and "и" looks like a western "u."

Part 2: The Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense in the pocket between Shevchenko and Zelenovka continues to sag


ЛБС 31.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 31st, 2024. ЛБС 30.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 30th, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Kurakhovo sector, assault groups entered Slavyanka and Petropavlovka. During the battles, our soldiers managed to gain a foothold in both settlements, thus breaking through the enemy's defenses built there. In Shevchenko, a cleanup operation is underway in the area of ​​its western outskirts, where the enemy relies on a fortified area located near the farms. Fighting is underway for the fortified area north of Shevchenko. Here, one of the large strongholds has partially come under the control of our fighters.



The operation to liberate Kurakhovo is coming to an end. Most of the industrial zone is already under the control of Russian forces. Russian flags have been installed on the territory of the Kurakhovskaya TPP and the Elektrostal plant.



The battles are taking place for the Kurakhovsky Pipe Plant (Kurakhovsky Mechanical Plant), where the enemy is holding out only in its western part. South of Kurakhovo, the Russian Armed Forces advanced in a fortified area located along the forest belt leading to Dachnoe, taking control of more than half of this barrier. They also advanced west of Dalnee to the settling ponds.

During the assault operations from the Uspenovka area, our fighters captured a strong point on the bank of the Sukhie Yaly River, and the Russian forces approached Yantarne.

The defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the pocket between Shevchenko and Zelenovka continues to sag, and the situation there is becoming catastrophic for them. Considering both the activity of our troops and the weather conditions, the possibility of them leaving this pocket is becoming increasingly difficult.

In the Velikaya Novosyolka (Velyka Novosilka) area, Russian units continue their offensive actions and advance along the forest belts north of the settlement of Neskuchnoe in the direction of Vremevka. Fighting is also underway in the area of ​​the road from the Gulyaipole (Hulyaipole) side. The Russian Armed Forces are making their coverage of Velikaya Novosyolka even stronger, taking tighter control of the remaining supply routes for the Ukrainian Armed Forces garrison there.

Ukrainian names and sometimes Russian Cyrillic in parenthesis *

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... nt-january

[blindpig]

War, gas and oil
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 04/01/2025



As Donald Trump's inauguration approaches, and with it the change of guard and those in charge of managing international politics, Ukrainian nervousness, European anxiety and the gap between reality and discourse are increasing. Ukraine needs to show off its victories, boast of its successes, whether real or imagined, and make itself useful to those who will take over the reins of the country, without which Kiev knows it will not be able to achieve its main objective of quickly and privileged accession to NATO or of obtaining a bilateral agreement that obliges Washington to send soldiers, boots on the ground , to defend it in the event of a Russian attack. Convincing Trump that Ukraine is a profitable and lucrative conflict to invest in is the main task of the coming weeks and it must be done through narrative, since the reality on the ground makes it impossible to seriously claim that kyiv's troops are on the verge of victory and only need a little more help to achieve the common goal of militarily defeating the old Cold War enemy, a goal that is dear to much of the Republican Party.

This week, kyiv has scored the final goal of the gas transit, which has destabilised the European energy market, isolating Slovakia and Hungary, which will have to buy more expensive gas but from which Ukraine continues to demand that they continue to support it and export energy, and leaving Moldova, one of the poorest countries in Europe without access to the only gas it could afford not to pay for. In the latter case, Chisinau can rejoice that it will be Transnistria, now without heating or hot water and totally isolated from the only country that in three decades has cared for its population, that will suffer the most severe consequences.

Before his name was even put forward for the post of National Security Adviser to the president-elect, Mike Waltz said in an interview with NPR that sanctions on the Russian energy sector needed to be tightened as a tool to deprive Moscow of the revenues with which to finance the war. Waltz was referring specifically to the “need” to ban Russian liquefied gas from the European Union, coincidentally the market that the United States is trying to seize, in the same way that the sale of pipeline gas has been banned. Riding the wave of the recent victory over the transit of gas to four of his friends and allies, Mikhail Podolyak is already offering the next step, a new ban on Russian energy based on secondary sanctions to prevent those countries that have not adhered to the unilateral sanctions of the West from being forced to give up that trade.

“Having taken the gas tool out of Putin’s hands, it is absurd to leave the oil tool at his disposal,” he wrote yesterday, implying that the end of Russian gas transit to the European Union or Moldova meant political control of those countries. “Previously imposed restrictions, including the ‘price ceiling’, have ceased to work. Although it was possible for some time to keep the selling price below $60 per barrel, the Russian Federation was able to adapt. Now, its oil is exported in a way that circumvents sanctions: via a shadowy fleet of tankers with fictitious insurance,” he continued, adding clearly the target of the future sanctions he is demanding. Attacks on Russian refineries are not enough and Ukraine needs help from its allies as well to undermine the Russian oil industry.

“The biggest drawback of the current restrictions is the impunity of buyers who exceed the price limit. Producers in several Asian countries are making money by refining Russian raw materials into petroleum products that they sell legally to the United States and the European Union. Tighter control over oil transportation, ship insurance and financing of trade operations can turn the tide. The most urgent and difficult task is for diplomats to persuade China and India to abandon their grey schemes,” Podolyak adds. Ukraine has been trying for years to bring these two countries closer to its positions, although it does not refrain from threatening them with sanctions.

This week, Russia’s Gazprom accused Ukraine of acting to benefit the United States – claims from a party directly involved and affected by the current economic war, but not far from the truth. Ukraine is aware that its survival depends on Western countries, so despite constant attempts to appeal to the Global South, it must work in a way that benefits its allies. A clear example is Zelensky’s imaginative statement in his last interview, in which the Ukrainian president added that the countries of the Global South are positively impressed by the Ukrainian operation in Kursk. Ukraine’s calls for support for its cause clash with the attempt to remove Russian oil from the market, which these countries are obtaining at a discount and whose absence would destabilise the global market to such an extent that they would be the main losers. As with the disappearance of the Nord Stream, destroyed by an attack, and with the end of the transit of Russian gas to the European Union, the main beneficiary would be the United States. Oil is an important issue for a significant part of Donald Trump's donors and supporters, who has already stated that energy and its export will be one of the bases of the country's economic policy in his second term in office. Ukraine, which included in its Victory Plan a point that foresees putting the country's natural resources at the service of its allies and which aims to attract Western investments, shows the future president that it is also capable of proposing ways to obtain more benefits and favour the increase of the United States' weight in the lucrative European energy market and does its part to make Washington achieve what it has been seeking for years: to eliminate its main competitor from the European market.

But it is not all about gas and oil or helping the United States to achieve a privileged position in Europe. Ukraine aspires to win the favour of its allies by presenting itself as a strong and independent country. The current situation is conducive to refuting any attempt in this direction, although reality is not a sufficient argument for Kiev to stop trying to present itself as the indispensable country. It is possible that Ukraine depends entirely on the countries of the European Union to maintain the State and pay pensions and public salaries and on the United States to continue fighting, but that is no obstacle to Kiev's narrative being limited to being just another proxy. In the same way that Ukraine considers that its cause must be one of the main centres of the international relations agenda, the country must also be considered indispensable in the future. This is how Zelensky put it in his Victory Plan , in which he included a point in which he offered Ukrainian troops to replace the American troops deployed in Europe so that Washington could focus on Asia-Pacific, that is, on the confrontation with China. The Ukrainian president wanted to free up US troops who are in a cold war context , that is, not in combat.

The plan was presented at a time when there was still the possibility of a Democratic victory in the US elections, a political option of continuity that would have guaranteed the status quo of the war regime. The situation has become complicated for Ukraine both on the military and political fronts, with the coming to power of a person who has made achieving peace one of his objectives - possibly for reasons more personal than pacifist or isolationist - which has forced Kiev to accept the option of negotiation or to raise the stakes. The insistence of European countries and NATO on the possibility of a war with Russia or the much feared Russian invasion of countries of the Alliance, a suicidal option for Moscow and therefore unthinkable, helps Kiev to strut its stuff. As the only European country - Europe ends for Kiev at the border between Kharkiv and Kursk - currently in the trenches, Ukraine feels legitimised to set itself up as the leader in a global conflict.

“What surprises me most here is the complete psychological unpreparedness of NATO countries for war as such. That is, they have enough weapons, they are much more effective, but they are not ready to use them. And, consequently, if in 5 years Russia maintains the pace of militarization and authoritarianism that it is currently at, NATO will have no chance,” Mikhail Podolyak said yesterday. The idea of ​​a military conflict with Russia is not new. During his years as Zelensky’s right-hand man, Oleksiy Arestovich already stated that the price Ukraine would have to pay for joining NATO would be a war against Russia. Now, in line with the exaggeration of threats, the stakes are even higher. Taking for granted the possibility of a continental war that apparently does not need to be prevented, but rather prepared to fight, the adviser to the Office of the President gives, as he usually does, a simple answer to a tremendously complex problem. Western countries have no chance of defeating Russia except through Ukraine, the country that depends on its allies to continue fighting, but on which the West apparently depends to avoid collective defeat at the hands of Moscow. “The only way to defeat Russia is through Ukraine,” he insisted. Russia, the country he often claims is on the verge of collapse, is also on the verge of destroying NATO countries.

The desperate pleas for help and the country's offers as an anchor for the West feed off each other and can be used interchangeably, or even at the same time, depending on the needs.

https://slavyangrad.es/2025/01/04/guerr ... -petroleo/

Google Translator

*****

From Cassad's telegram account:

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of January 4, 2025 ) Main points:

- The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the zone of the "Center" group of forces in one day amounted to more than 440 soldiers, a tank, an infantry fighting vehicle and 3 armored personnel carriers;

- In one day, Russian troops hit the infrastructure of military airfields, an assembly shop and a storage site for attack drones;

- Russian air defense systems shot down 8 ATACMS operational-tactical missiles and 72 drones of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in one day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost more than 250 soldiers and a Kozak armored vehicle in the zone of the "South" group;

- The losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces due to the actions of the "East" group in one day amounted to 170 soldiers.

Units of the "Center" group of forces continued to advance deep into the enemy's defense, inflicted losses on the manpower and equipment of seven mechanized , motorized infantry , ranger , airmobile brigades, two assault battalions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a marine brigade , a territorial defense brigade , a national guard brigade and an assault brigade of the national police of Ukraine in the areas of the settlements of Dzerzhinsk, Druzhba, Rozovka, Mirolyubovka, Slavyanka, Sribnoye, Udachnoye, Novosergeevka, Katerinovka and Krasnoarmeysk of the Donetsk People's Republic. They repelled 12 counterattacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The enemy lost more than 440 troops, a tank , an infantry fighting vehicle, three armored personnel carriers, including US-made M113 and M1117 , a Kozak armored fighting vehicle , eight cars, a French-made 155mm Caesar self-propelled artillery unit, a 152mm D-20 gun , and five 122mm D-30 howitzers .



Units of the "East" group of forces advanced deep into the enemy's defense, defeated formations of two mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a marine brigade and three territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Zelenoye Pole, Neskuchnoye, Novopol and Velyka Novosyolka of the Donetsk People's Republic. The enemy counterattack was repelled . The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 170 servicemen, five vehicles and a 155-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Paladin" made in the USA. An electronic warfare station was destroyed .



Units of the Dnepr group of forces occupied more advantageous positions, defeated the manpower and equipment of two infantry brigades, a coastal defense brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, two territorial defense brigades and a national guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Malye Shcherbaky, Pyatikhatki, Novoandriyevka in the Zaporizhia region, Zelenovka and Yantarnoye in the Kherson region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 70 servicemen, three vehicles, a 152-mm D-20 gun , two 122-mm D-30 howitzers and an electronic warfare station .

Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups damaged the infrastructure of military airfields, the assembly shop and storage site of strike unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 132 areas.

Air defense systems shot down eight US-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles and 72 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 651 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 39,279 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,221 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,506 multiple launch rocket systems, 20,186 field artillery pieces and mortars, 29,857 units of special military vehicles.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*******

Slovakia to Retaliate Against Ukraine for Cutting Off Russian Gas


PM Robert Fico, Jan. 2, 2025. X/ @ActualidadRT

January 3, 2025 Hour: 9:52 am

As a result of the Ukrainian decision, Slovakia will lose €500 million in revenue from transit gas fees through its territory.

On Thursday, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico described Ukraine’s decision to block the transit of Russian natural gas through its territory as “sabotage.” As a result of this measure, which took effect on January 1, Slovakia will lose €500 million in revenue from transit gas fees through its territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has started harming Slovakia’s state finances and the entire European Union,” Fico said, noting that the disruption of Russian gas supplies will cost the EU up to an additional €70 billion, according to a study conducted by Slovak Gas Industry (SPP).

“Only the United States will benefit from this decision, with increased gas imports to Europe,” Fico asserted.

On Tuesday, delegations from Slovakia and Ukraine are set to meet in Brussels to address this gas dispute, and if an agreement is not reached, Bratislava will take action.

“We are ready to propose cutting off electricity supplies,” Fico reiterated, although such a move would require declaring force majeure.

Putin holds talks with Slovakia’s PM Robert Fico in Moscow pic.twitter.com/hIBOAfDa8Z

— RT (@RT_com) December 22, 2024

The reason for this is that energy suppliers are private companies, and the decision to supply or not supply electricity to the neighboring country does not fall under state jurisdiction.

Fico is also prepared to “substantially reduce support for Ukrainian citizens in Slovak territory.” Currently, about 127,000 Ukrainian refugees with special visas reside in Slovakia.

He has been a consistent critic of Western support policies for Ukraine and halted military aid to Kyiv upon assuming office in the fall of 2023. His late December visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow sparked outrage in Kyiv.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/slovakia ... ssian-gas/

******

January 3, 2025 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR
Kiev plays games with Russian gas transit


A section of Bratstvo (“Brotherhood”) transit gas pipeline, in a forest near Mukachevo, western Ukraine (File photo)

The dataset by the Brussels-based think tank Brugel aggregating the data on European natural gas import flows and storage levels puts in perspective Ukraine’s decision to halt the transit of Russian gas to Europe. The statistics reveal that as of end-2024, Russia had become the second largest gas supplier to the EU after Norway, overtaking the United States — now, that’s 3 years into the Ukraine war and the Western ‘sanctions from hell’ notwithstanding.

In particular, in December 2024, Russian LNG was delivered to Europe in an amount of 2.16 billion cubic meters — an all-time record since 2019. The European Union’s import of Russian LNG in 2024 amounted to almost 21.5 bcm against 17.8 bcm a year earlier and 19 bcm in 2022.

What does this mean? First, EU countries find its irresistible to source LNG from Russia, which is reliable, abundant and cheap. Second, Ukraine’s decision, coming in the middle of the winter heating season, will trigger a price spiral for natural gas on the whole in Europe, but in immediate terms only. To borrow the words of Ralph Nader, if the use of solar energy has not been opened up, that’s because the (Russian) oil industry does not own the sun!

Third, ensuing from the above, the demand of Russian LNG will only increase. Fourth, there is widespread discontent in European industry that the US suppliers have taken advantage of gas shortage in Europe due to the sabotage by the Americans, with help from Ukrainian henchmen, of the Nord Stream pipelines (which directly connected Russian source to German ports bypassing Ukraine). Big Oil subsequently sold LNG to Europeans twice or thrice the price in the US domestic market and made windfall profit. (here)

Fifth, the skyrocketing gas prices will further shoot up the cost of production in European economies, especially Germany’s, which is also heading for parliamentary election on February 23. Sixth, there is bound to be resentment in the European mind that Ukraine is ‘biting the hand that feeds it.’ In Germany, there is already an undercurrent of opinion that energy ties with Russia ought to be revived for economic recovery, a stream of opinion that may swing the political fortunes of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) which is not only a far-right and right-wing populist political party but also Eurosceptic and calls for improving ties with Russia.

On the other hand, if the set-up in Kiev hopes to please Big Oil, things are only likely getting more complicated in the transatlantic relationship under Donald Trump. Elon Musk, tech billionaire and close advisor to Trump penned an opinion piece last week supporting the AfD. Musk since doubled down and Vice President-elect JD Vance took to X to call Musk’s op-ed “interesting.”

Vance wrote: “I’m not endorsing a party in the German elections, as it’s not my country and we hope to have good relations with all Germans. But this is an interesting piece.

“Also interesting; American media slanders AfD as Nazi-lite, but AfD is most popular in the same areas of Germany that were most resistant to the Nazis.”

According to Pew Research Centre, nineteen percent of German adults have a positive view of the AfD and the party is running second in opinion polls. Besides, AfD has a strong anti-immigration stance like Trump’s in relation to the US.

Plainly put, the famous line of late American philosopher and social critic Eric Hoffer comes to mind — “People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.” In this respect, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s statement on January 2 is to the point:

“The responsibility for the shutdown of Russian gas supplies lies entirely with the United States, the puppet Kiev regime and the authorities of European countries that sacrificed the wellbeing of their people in order to provide financial support to the US economy.

“The cessation of the supplies of reasonably priced and environmentally friendly energy from Russia not only weakens Europe’s economic potential but is also negatively affecting the living standards of Europeans. The geopolitical background of the Kiev regime’s decision is perfectly clear. It is the US – the key sponsor of the Ukraine crisis – that is the main beneficiary from the redistribution of the European energy market.”

But that is a pipe dream. What cannot be overlooked is that Russia also used to sell oil to Germany at discounted price anchored on long-term agreements. President Vladimir Putin once disclosed a state secret that Germans even used to sell surplus Russian gas after its own use to third countries, especially Poland, to make a tidy profit to subsidise its domestic price. Apparently, given the centrality of Russian-German energy alliance in Russia’s strategic calculus, Moscow looked away.

Such considerations probably weighed on Gorbachev’s mind too when he green-lighted German unification, ignoring Margaret Thatcher’s angst and France’s preference that the two German States (FRG and GDR) merely developed good relations, at most in the form of a confederation. (France was acutely afraid that Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost would persuade Germans to accept neutrality as the price of reunification.)

These are indeed moments when one fails to understand such “sentimental” Russian attitudes — be it on German unification or selling gas to Europe at discounted price, or the unilateral disbandment of Warsaw Pact (which, again, Thatcher thought was a rushed, premature decision.) This is rather intriguing since the Russians know better than any country, being the victim of waves of Western aggression in its tortuous history, that politics is hard ball.

In the final analysis, Ukraine must be held responsible for this vengeful decision. But Kiev has expressed readiness to discuss preserving transit with Europeans. What emerged from the recent visit of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to Moscow and his one-on-one with Putin is that Europe is ready to move the turnover point for Russian gas in Ukraine. He claimed Putin nodded consent, too.

Putin told the media after the talks, “Regardless of the war, our supplies were regular and we paid, and still pay… money for transit.” Actually, Ukraine gets $1 billion annually as transit fee! Putin added that Moscow is also ready to supply gas to Europe through Poland, using the existing Yamal-Europe route. “All it needs is just pushing a button”.

The Russian government daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta quoted expert opinion that business circles are likely to initiate talks on resuming transit and, in fact, gas companies from Central Europe have already taken the first steps by signing a declaration supporting gas transit via Ukraine for 2025.

Valery Andrianov, an associate professor at the Financial University under Russian Government told the daily that overall, halting supplies via Ukraine is not likely to cause a substantial gas deficit in Europe, as this has already been factored into gas prices, so it won’t be a surprise for the gas market. However, any interruption in supplies will increase the instability of the European gas market, making it more dependent on various external and largely uncontrollable factors, such as gas prices in Asia, delivery destinations of American LNG, or production dynamics on the Norwegian shelf.

https://www.indianpunchline.com/kiev-pl ... s-transit/

******

Anatol Lieven: Keep Ukraine Out of Talks to End Its War
January 3, 2025
By Anatol Lieven, Foreign Policy, 12/16/24

The incoming Trump administration seems genuinely committed to finding peace in Ukraine. Whether it’s capable of the extremely complicated diplomacy required is a very different question. One issue that will have to be decided at the very start of the process is at what stage, and on what issues, Ukraine should be involved in the process. The issue is more fraught than has generally been acknowledged.

The first and most fundamental goal of the talks (as in all such negotiations) will be for each side to clearly establish, on the one hand, its vital interests and absolute and nonnegotiable conditions and, on the other hand, what points it is prepared, in principle, to compromise on. It may be, of course, that the nonnegotiable positions of the three sides are fundamentally opposed and incompatible. If so, peace negotiations will inevitably fail, but we will not know this until these issues have been explored.

The three parties involved are Ukraine, Russia and the United States. The initial stages of the negotiations, however, should be between the United States and Russia. It goes without saying that certain aspects of an eventual agreement will require Ukraine’s full assent, and that without this assent a settlement isn’t possible. These aspects include the terms of a ceasefire, the nature and extent of any demilitarized zones, and any constitutional amendments guaranteeing the linguistic and cultural rights of Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine. U.S. negotiators will have to be fully cognizant and respectful of Kyiv’s views on Ukraine’s vital interests.

Given certain categorical—and entirely legitimate—Ukrainian positions, a number of key issues seem to be a priori off the table, and if Russia insists on them, no agreement will be possible. The most important initial task of Gen. Kellogg and his team will therefore be to discover whether the Russian government regards these conditions as nonnegotiable, or whether Moscow is prepared to compromise on them if the Trump administration is prepared to compromise on wider issues.

The first nonnegotiable issue from Ukraine’s and the U.S.’ point of view is Ukrainian and Western legal recognition of Russia’s claimed annexations, as opposed to an acceptance of the fact (already accepted in public by President Zelenskyy) that Ukraine cannot recover these territories on the battlefield and therefore has to accept the reality of Russian possession, pending future negotiations.

Russian experts have suggested to me that Moscow will not, in fact, insist on this in talks, because in addition to Ukraine and the West, China, India, and other key Russian partners would also refuse the very suggestion. They said that Moscow hopes for a situation like that on the island of Cyprus, where no country but Turkey has recognized the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but talks have lasted 50 years with no result.

The second nonnegotiable issue is Putin’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the territory it still holds in the four provinces of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed. This is absolutely unacceptable to Kyiv, and should be to Washington, too. Ukraine should not be encouraged and helped by Washington to batter itself to pieces in a hopeless effort to drive Russia from the territory it controls, but it cannot be asked by Washington to give up more territory without a fight. The Ukrainian government will doubtless make this clear to the Trump administration, and its view must be accepted as definitive by the United States as well.

However, certain other basic questions are not up to Ukraine to decide. They are chiefly up to the United States, and it is the U.S. administration that will have to negotiate them. Central Russian proposals in the ultimatum issued before the war were for new agreements with the United States and NATO not relating to Ukraine.

Today, key aspects of the Russian demand for limits on the Ukrainian armed forces depend on the United States, since it is only the United States that can provide Ukraine with long-range missiles and the intelligence to guide them. The question of which Western sanctions to lift or suspend as part of a deal with Moscow is also up to the United States and EU.

Ukraine can, of course, ask to join NATO, but the decision of whether to accept a new member lies not with that country but with the existing members—and each of them has a veto on the issue. A U.S. administration could take the lead, but it will be up to Washington to decide how much influence to use with, and pressure to put on, other members, and it cannot simply override the likely vetoes of Hungary and Turkey—or perhaps of France, if Marine Le Pen is the next president.

The question of what Western security guarantees can and should be given to Ukraine as part of a settlement is also not up to Ukraine to answer. President Zelenskyy has suggested the deployment of troops from European NATO members, which has been echoed by certain Western officials and commentators and is reportedly being discussed between President Macron of France and the Polish government.

However, everything that I have heard from Russians tells me that this is just as unacceptable to Moscow as NATO membership itself and would therefore make agreement impossible. Moreover, European countries would agree to send their troops only if they had an ironclad guarantee from Washington that the United States would intervene if they were attacked. This, in effect, punts the decision back to Washington—not Kyiv, and not Brussels, Warsaw or Paris.

Above all, Russia’s motives for launching this war extend beyond Ukraine to the whole security relationship between Russia and the West, led by the United States. They include the demand for military force restrictions (which would have to be reciprocated on the Russian side) and some form of European security architecture in which vital Russian interests would be taken into account and future clashes avoided.

It may be that either the Putin administration or the Trump administration—or both—will refuse to compromise and that talks will accordingly collapse. Testing this, however, will be an extremely complex and difficult process, requiring patience and diplomatic sophistication on both sides. It would be extremely foolish to expect either Russia or the United States to put all their cards on the table at once.

Because this process will be so difficult, the sad but unavoidable truth may be that if Ukraine takes part in the talks from the start, progress toward a settlement will become completely impossible. Every prospective compromise will immediately be leaked and will cause a firestorm of protest in Europe, in Ukraine, in the U.S. Congress, in the U.S. media, and perhaps even from Russian hardliners.

The United States has been the essential and irreplaceable supporter of Ukraine in this war, not only because of the aid that it has given but because European countries would not have given their aid without U.S. encouragement and backing. American citizens have, in consequence, been faced with great costs and considerable risks, and wider U.S. interests have been endangered. This gives U.S. citizens the right to expect their government to take the lead in trying to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war—especially since it is the only government that can.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2025/01/ana ... d-its-war/

In other words, 'no deal'.

*****

SVR on lowering the mobilization age in Ukraine
January 3, 19:09



SVR on lowering the mobilization age in Ukraine

The Press Bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation reports that, according to information received by the SVR, Western political elites are alarmed by the decline in the ability of the Ukrainian army to withstand the onslaught of the Russian Armed Forces. A quick collapse of the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not ruled out. The outgoing administration of G. Biden is trying to prevent such a scenario. The main emphasis is placed on the supply of increasingly sophisticated weapons, including long-range missile systems.

However, the White House admits that the logistical support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine alone is not enough to stabilize the front line. The other day, Washington demanded that "President" V. Zelensky urgently lower the age of conscription to 18 years. The corresponding decision has already been prepared in Kiev and will be made in the near future.

The Eastern European countries bordering Ukraine are already secretly preparing to receive new waves of Ukrainian refugees, who this time will be fleeing not from an imaginary threat from Russia, but from the real danger of getting a one-way ticket to the front. It is believed that the residents of the territories controlled by Kiev will be ready to do anything to escape from the clutches of the Ukrainian ruling regime, which sold their lives for a pittance to the overseas masters.

The West realizes that for Russia the conflict is existential in nature and it will not back down. It was clear from the very beginning that Kiev's refusal to negotiate is driving the Ukrainians into a meat grinder. And Zelensky is consistently following the path of destroying the people of Ukraine.

Press Bureau of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia

http://www.svr.gov.ru/smi/2025/01/mobil ... hatsya.htm - zinc

Run, fools. The hunt for people in Ukraine will intensify.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9589387.html

In the Kurakhovsky basement
January 3, 21:08



During an inspection of the basements in Kurakhovo, a large cache of dead Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers was discovered, abandoned by the enemy while fleeing the city. (Video at link.)

Of course, no one took them out when the Ukrainian Armed Forces fled the city. Then they will receive them wholesale in one of the exchanges of the killed.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9589522.html

Google Translator

[blindpig]

Infantry warfare
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 05/01/2025



Ever since the secret services of the Republic of Korea and Ukraine, almost jointly but presented as two independent sources, revealed the future deployment of troops from the People's Republic of Korea in Russia with a view to their participation in the war, there has been no shortage of orientalist stereotypes with a racist tone about the North Korean population in the Western press. It has been said that these troops were completely devoid of humanity, that they had lost their minds because of having access to the Internet for the first time and more specifically to pornographic content, that they were sent on horde attacks in which they ended up massacred by Ukrainian troops, or that language difficulties caused them to kill their Russian comrades instead of Ukrainian opponents. Even before their arrival in Russia was confirmed, the Ukrainian press was already boasting about the numerous desertions of North Koreans who had surrendered to Ukraine and since then has not stopped reporting large numbers of deaths of these soldiers, cannon fodder for senseless mass attacks in which they are being used by their allies in Moscow. Special mention should be made of the words of Volodymyr Zelensky, from whom, as head of state, one would expect a somewhat more serious speech. Russia had tried to hide the North Korean troops, Zelensky claimed, and now it is doing so with their deaths as well. The faces of the North Korean soldiers are burned, the Ukrainian president continued with his macabre story, so that they could not be recognized. This week, Ukraine has reactivated the device capable of measuring morale from a distance and has proclaimed the extremely low morale of the North Korean troops.

The reality is that, although it seems clear that there is a North Korean presence in Russia and possibly in the Kursk region, a sovereign Russian territory, so that Moscow does not need to give any explanation to kyiv or its allies, there has not been any evidence of a large participation in the battles being fought in that area of ​​the front. “For the Ukrainians and part of the Western press, there is a campaign to demoralize the North Korean forces, and the Ukrainians have already killed all the North Koreans to the point of almost saying that South Korea is already safe,” wrote Patricia Marins yesterday with a certain irony, one of the regular commentators on the military aspect of the Russian-Ukrainian war, adding that Russia insists on maintaining the equally false idea that these troops are only a rumour by NATO countries to justify greater involvement. Everything indicates that neither Ukraine nor the NATO countries have invented these North Korean troops, but their presence has been openly used as an argument to increase the military flow to kyiv and specifically to justify the lifting of the veto on the use of Western missiles against the territory of the Russian Federation according to its internationally recognized borders. Marins takes the Korean presence in Kursk for granted, although he insists on the absence of evidence of a large participation - sufficient for the units to be detected - in combat and questions the logic of sending elite assault troops, whose function would be to infiltrate and quickly advance on enemy strong points, in that theater, where such skills are not very useful.

“When I ask why these troops are not engaged in mass combat, the only plausible answer is that they are there to absorb knowledge in an organised way from various sectors of the front. But what knowledge would be essential in this war?” added Marins, who responded to this question by highlighting the role of drones in combat. “Perhaps the North Koreans are not on the front line for a direct mass confrontation, but rather to absorb new techniques that are currently only possessed by the Russians and Ukrainians. Similarly, there are several NATO observers on the battlefield,” he had written hours earlier. “No other army has this experience, apart from the Russians and the Ukrainians. They are fighting a war that is ahead of all others, with resources and tactics capable of making any other infantry obsolete. Some countries that are now building their army cannot miss this opportunity,” he added.

During his time at the head of the Ministry of Defense, Oleksiy Reznikov offered Ukraine as a “test laboratory” to check the effect of Western weapons against Russian material in a combat situation, an experiment of great value for the military-industrial complexes of Western countries. As an active military conflict with a greater presence of major weapons powers, the Ukrainian scenario also offers lessons on how modern warfare is changing thanks to the new application of previous technologies and the massive inclusion of weapons such as drones to perform more and more tasks as an essential element of the doctrine of armies that fight from the trenches. While those who see war from afar have been fundamentally interested in the effect of long-distance weapons and ways of killing efficiently without needing to see the opponent's face, the learning of North Korean troops is closer to the change that these technological factors and changes in doctrine in the infantry represent, a much less suggestive story for the media, eager to narrate the successes of big weapons, but perhaps even more decisive.

The war is being fought in two very different but complementary ways. The front, especially in the Donbass sector, is being fought in the form of trench warfare, which leaves images that are not very different from those of the First World War. Away from that front line, battles are fought in the skies and the destruction of the enemy's ability to continue the war is sought through air attacks with missiles and the increasing use of all kinds of drones, from the most technologically sophisticated to cheaper elements, whose main task is to saturate air defenses and allow missiles to act. The results are measured in destruction in the case of the rearguard and territorial advances in the places where both armies try to move the front in their favor. Technology - more or less modern, but technology nonetheless - rules in remote attacks, and artillery, reconnaissance and attack drones, and infantry are the key in places like Donbass, where the fiercest fighting continues to take place and which is increasingly marked by the work of adapting to a completely new environment in the current military scenario.

“Drones have become one of the most important tools in the fight against the occupiers, both on the front and behind enemy lines. Drones have already changed the course of the war. They save the lives of our people and compensate for the shortage of other weapons, including artillery, allowing us to defend ourselves and destroy the occupiers,” Volodymyr Zelensky wrote yesterday, insisting on the centrality of drones in the war, although forgetting that the same arguments he uses can also be applied to his opponent. Incredibly, Zelensky continues to blame the lack of weapons, including artillery, for problems that are more easily attributed to the lack of infantry.

An article published this week by The New York Times and based on statements by the Azov Brigade, which is fully standardized as a unit without any political nuance as part of the National Guard, shows the changes that have occurred on the front in part due to the proliferation of drones in combat. In 2023, Ukraine suffered firsthand the consequences of minefields and the Russian ability to monitor the entire front, detect any Ukrainian convoy using drones and adjust artillery with them. That was not the only lesson for Russia, which began the war with Ukraine very late in the design, production and use of drones. The way in which drones have become omnipresent even in small units makes a maneuver war as it has been known until now unviable.

From Toretsk, where Russian troops appear to have consolidated their control over the heights and are accelerating their advance, The New York Times described a few days ago a struggle in which Ukrainian troops are engaged in “dozens of pitched battles over plots of land no larger than a few city blocks.” As expected, the starting point is always the same. “Despite staggering Russian losses – with more than 1,500 dead and wounded a day in recent weeks, according to Western estimates – the scope of the attacks continues to grow, according to soldiers on the front and military analysts,” the article claims, accepting figures from one of the parties involved in the conflict and which should be understood as elements of the propaganda war. In any case, the data are contradicted by reality, where, according to the colonel of the Azov Brigade, “Russia is sending a greater number of soldiers to the assaults than in the first phases of the fighting.”

“Russian troops are also increasingly using electric scooters, motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles, which allow them to quickly disperse across the front,” The New York Times adds, citing the same source. Russia has understood that large accumulations result in high casualty figures and do not always work. In times of high technology, urban battle requires rapid mobility and less detectable vehicles. “To hit a piece of equipment that carries 15 people – well, that is possible, it can be done quite easily,” adds the Azov colonel, who specifies that “when those 15 people are on electric scooters, then it is a very serious problem.” “It is quite normal for them to use 150 or 200 soldiers at a time for offensive actions,” explains the Azov member, who describes the way the Russian troops have acted since the fall of Avdeevka and, above all, since the semicircular advance in several directions from Ocheretino. Since then, small, poorly armoured and highly mobile units have managed to “overcome the lines in parts of eastern Ukraine” and, according to Michel Kofman, one of the leading experts on this war, create “the most difficult period for Ukraine since the beginning of 2022”, with Russian troops gaining “momentum, seizing more territory every month since August”. This is proof that technology is necessary and sets the tone for waging war, which necessarily has to change to adapt to the reality of each moment, but infantry remains the key to territorial advance and control. Hence, Ukraine’s allies, who insist on infinitely exaggerating Russian casualties without explaining how it is possible that Russia is still capable of sending hundreds of soldiers in battles such as Toretsk, are constantly demanding that kyiv increase mobilisation.

https://slavyangrad.es/2025/01/05/guerra-de-infanteria/

Google Translator

******

From Cassad's Telegram account:


Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of January 5, 2025)

Main points:

Over the past 24 hours, Russian troops have destroyed the infrastructure of military airfields, concentrations of manpower and military equipment of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 137 areas;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost over 410 people and two Leopard tanks in the area of ​​responsibility of the Center group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 450 people in the past 24 hours due to the actions of the Zapad group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 230 people in the past 24 hours in the area of ​​responsibility of the South group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 150 servicemen in the past 24 hours in the area of ​​responsibility of the East group;

— The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 120 fighters in the past 24 hours due to the actions of the Sever and Dnepr groups;

— Russian air defence forces shot down 174 aircraft-type UAVs in the past 24 hours.

Units of the "East" group of forces advanced deep into the enemy's defense, defeated formations of two mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a marine brigade and three territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Neskuchnoye, Novy Komar, Zelenoye Pole and Velyka Novosyolka of the Donetsk People's Republic. Two enemy counterattacks were repelled . The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 150 servicemen, a US-made MaxxPro armored combat vehicle , four vehicles, a Polish-made 155-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Krab" , a 152-mm D-20 gun and a 122-mm D-30 howitzer .



Units of the Dnepr group of forces occupied more advantageous positions, defeated the manpower and equipment of two infantry brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces , two territorial defense brigades and a national guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Ponyatovka, Nikolskoye and Antonovka in the Kherson region. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 80 servicemen, a US-made M113 armored personnel carrier , eight vehicles, a 152-mm Msta-B howitzer and a 152-mm D-20 gun .



Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the Russian Armed Forces groups have damaged the infrastructure of military airfields, as well as concentrations of enemy manpower and military equipment in 137 areas.

Fighter aircraft of the Russian Aerospace Forces have shot down a MiG-29 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force.

Air defense systems shot down three French-made Hammer guided aerial bombs , a US-made HIMARS multiple launch rocket system and 174 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 652 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 39,453 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,234 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,506 multiple launch rocket systems, 20,207 field artillery pieces and mortars, 29,883 units of special military vehicles.

***

Colonelcassad
Regarding the information component.

1. As usual, the enemy closely links active offensive actions with IPSO operations, which conduct active measures (AM) designed to sow panic and uncertainty in a short period of time.

2. A massive injection of various rumors and speculations is carried out through social networks, targeting both the military and the civilian population.

3. The most profitable for IPSO employees are the first 24-72 hours of offensive actions, when the main wave of injections is carried out. After this, information flows are taken under stricter control and the effectiveness of injections drops many times over.

4. In the next couple of days, be especially attentive to the information received and perceived, especially from unverified sources. The enemy's information and psychological warfare structures were also preparing for offensive actions, just like the assault brigades. Therefore, "prepared information" will be introduced into action, depending on the course and outcome of offensive actions.

***

Colonelcassad
During the past night, 61 Ukrainian enemy UAVs were destroyed by air defense alert systems:

- 37 UAVs were destroyed over the territory of the Rostov region,
- 20 over the territory of the Bryansk region,
- 2 over the territory of the Voronezh region,
- 1 over the territory of the Belgorod region,
- 1 over the territory of the Oryol region.

***

Colonelcassad
In my opinion, it is a bit early to rush to assess the progress and outcome of the enemy's offensive on the first day, especially since the enemy has not yet committed the main forces of the group that it has been accumulating since October.

Yes, the offensive is being carried out in a difficult operational and strategic situation for the enemy and is an attempt to reverse the negative trends at the military and diplomatic levels. To some extent, it is forced, since passive defense did not promise positive results for the enemy either.

But it is not worth underestimating it (until it has been repelled). The fewer real operational problems the enemy can create for us, the easier it will be for us during the spring-summer campaign.

https://t.me/readovkanews/91585

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*******

The enemy has launched a winter offensive
January 5, 12:09



On the enemy's offensive in the Kursk region.

1. As expected, it began before January 20. There are battles in the direction of Bolshoy Soldatskoye to the northeast of Sudzha.
2. The direction of the main attack is not yet completely clear, so far it looks like the enemy has chosen the option of trying to expand the salient in the Kursk region, instead of attacking the Bryansk region. In the next couple of days, this will become clear.
3. It should also become clear how well our General Staff has uncovered the enemy's preparations and prepared appropriate countermeasures.

The online broadcast of the fighting, as usual, is on Telegram - https://t.me/boris_rozhin (if you are interested, subscribe)

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9592756.html

Google Translator

******

Tech Surge of the SMO: AI, Drones, EW, Countermeasures, and More of the Latest Advancements

Simplicius
Jan 04, 2025

<snip>

We haven’t had an update on the state of the war’s technological progression in a while and the new year brings the perfect time to do so. One of the reasons for that is because there have been a lot of predictions on the sweeping changes said to take root on the frontline by 2025, and so it’s appropriate to discuss how close these projections have been.

One of the notoriously contrarian predictions from many months ago was that 2025 would actually see not the supremacy of drones and FPVs, but rather their negation and decline. A French army chief made this curious claim in June of last year:


https://www.defensenews.com/global/euro ... hief-says/
From the article:

The advantage now enjoyed by small aerial drones on battlefields including in Ukraine is but “a moment in history,” French Army Chief of Staff Gen. Pierre Schill said at the Eurosatory defense show in Paris.

While anti-drone systems are lagging and “leave the sky open to things that are cobbled together but which are extremely fragile,” countermeasures are being developed, Schill told reporters during a tour of the French Army stand at the show June 19. Already today, 75% of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine are lost to electronic warfare, the general said.

One must wonder if the French army chief knows what he’s talking about; the article further points to upcoming French vehicles which may include anti-drone ‘missiles’ and ‘40mm airburst grenades’. But these will prove useless against FPVs which are much too quick, ubiquitous, and undetectable in the frenzy of combat to really be reliably destroyed by such expensive countermeasures.

To prove his point, the French army chief compares FPVs to the Bayraktar drone, saying they will disappear just as unceremoniously from the field:

First-person view drones currently carry out about 80% of the destruction on the front line in Ukraine, when eight months ago those systems weren’t present, according to Schill. The general said that situation won’t exist 10 years from now, and the question could be asked whether that might already end in one or two years. Schill cited the example of the Bayraktar drone, “the king of the war” at the start of the conflict in Ukraine but no longer being used because it’s too easy to scramble.

But the article does make one powerful point: that Western armies are essentially paralyzed from committing too directionally in one weapons program because the possibility is too high that the albatross program can be obsoleted by a new development very quickly:

The pace of military drone development means that Army can’t commit to large buying programs, because an acquired capability can become obsolete in five months, according to the general. Schill said today’s drones fly better than those two or three years ago, with more computing power onboard that is capable of terrain-based navigation or switching frequencies to escape jamming.

Everyone is now focusing on one magic silver-bullet system to take on drones. But the real answer lies in a total, holistic approach with the understanding that losses from drones will simply become an inescapable reality of modern war. This is how Russia has now chosen to approach the situation, simply mitigating drone advancements as much as possible not with any one particular system aimed directly at combating them, but rather through the total synergistic strategic realignment of the armed forces as a whole. This includes everything from surveillance, EW systems, the tightening of the entire operational decision tree and OODA loop, direct personnel training, anti-drone prophylactic systems for vehicles, but also the actual combat tactics and strategies employed, like Russia’s now-famous ‘dispersion’ approach, better known as the ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

In an interview last month, a Ukrainian soldier had remarked how it has become very difficult to hit Russian troops with drones on his front due to the ‘slow trickle’ method they’ve begun to utilize in accumulating at a forward position. When there are only tiny groups of two or three men at a time weaving into the position from a variety of random directions, the AFU drone teams become dispersed and paralyzed from lack of concentrated targets.

Ukraine’s famed drone king “Magyar” had quite the opposite prediction in September of last year, stating that by March 2025 drone pilots would already be old news:


https://www.unian.ua/weapons/bezpilotni ... 60995.html

"Currently, hundreds of artificial intelligence systems are being developed simultaneously, and they are being tested in experimental modes. After six months, the pilots will no longer be required. You will need people who will simply lift the drone a meter above the ground. And then the drone itself, depending on its development, will decide what to attack, how to distinguish a Zhiguli from a tank, and will definitely not confuse the Ukrainian with the enemy, "Magyar said.

This seems a bit premature, after all we’re already nearing his six-month limit and the battlefield is not overrun with artificial intelligence systems. But there has been more and more noise in this direction.

For instance, top Ukrainian electronic warfare expert Serhiy Flash found an uptick in Russian forces using AI targeting drones in the Kursk region, even showcasing pictures of the recovered electronic boards:

Russian drone with target acquisition and auto-following from the Kursk bridgehead.

Recently, there have been more and more such drones. Holding a moving target is far from ideal, but it works.

I remind you that a drone with auto-target acquisition completely neutralizes trench electronic warfare.

In the case of mass production, the auto-capture module increases the price of the drone by 100-200 dollars



Meanwhile, Russian forces on the other hand recovered some of the Ukrainians’ own parallel efforts, likewise showcasing a special Google AI CPU.

Report:

Ukraine and Google artificial intelligence!

Recently, the wreckage of a Ukrainian quadcopter (FPV) found on the battlefield uses an artificial intelligence (AI) control system. After opening the quadcopter, it was found that the Ukrainian uses the Edge TPU development board developed by Google.

The Edge TPU board is the computing core unit of Google's Coral platform, which can be purchased publicly at a price of about $130, and Coral is a platform that provides complete hardware and software solutions for artificial intelligence. Unlike GPU boards, TPU boards are much more optimized for large-scale parallel computing required by networks.

Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, previously said that because of the war in Ukraine, he is now a licensed arms dealer! which aims to help Ukraine achieve artificial intelligence technology. He also believes that the US military should eliminate useless tanks and replace them with drones equipped with artificial intelligence.

Ukraine hopes to use artificial intelligence-equipped drones on the front lines to help the country overcome Russian jamming systems that have become effective and enable drones to operate in larger groups. Since both sides of the Ukrainian war are using electronic warfare systems that can disrupt communication between the operator and the drone, the hit rate of FPVs has decreased.

At present, most FPVs have a hit rate of 30-50%, and the hit rate of novice operators may even reach 10%, but it is said that the hit rate of AI-controlled FPVs in the future could be as high as 80%.



(Paywall with free option at link.)

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/tec ... -drones-ew

******

Yes, And They Will Show Those ...

... damn Russkies.


Six months after French President Macron announced that an unspecified number of Dassault Mirage 2000-5 fighters is set to be transferred to Ukraine, it now appears that the first Ukrainian pilots and ground personnel might have completed their training in France. The info was first disclosed by RTL France, which mentioned that "the training of pilots and mechanics at the Nancy base seems to be complete."

And this is the problem ... for the combined West. Or as they would say a conundrum--the United States gave 404 its best weapon systems--Patriot PAC3, NASAMS, ATACMS, Abrams M1s et al--they performed dismally, to put it mildly. I will talk about some of them in my new video, Javelin alone is a wowser. Now, you have France, which is a conventional second tier power at best who follows statements from its bank teller boy president trying to "train" Ukie pilots for something not a single French Air Force pilot has any idea about; namely--operating of the obsolete combat aircraft in the battlespace dominated by the AD, EW, Netcentricity and state-of-the-art 4++ and 5th generation aviation of Russian Air Force. We know the outcome.

Mirage 2000-5F is an old aircraft:



And the first of the fleet of M-2000s iterations with the "glass cockpit".



That's not going to change much for those Ukie pilots who will encounter any Russian fighter, as it wouldn't for any French pilot flying the latest iteration of Rafale--they all will be shot down. The only purpose of these aircraft is to serve as platforms for French Scalp missiles to launch at Russian (primarily civilian) targets. If they get lucky--they may fly couple-three missions before either being shot down or hunted down by Mr. Kinzhal or Mr. Iskander, or a jolly company of 3M14 Kalibrs. French made their choice, and the vector of Russo-French relations is set. Mr. Lavrov disclosed pathetic French behind the scene attempts to "negotiate" with Russia (without Zelensky no less as French insisted) on purpose--to demonstrate to France her insignificance and the fact that France is Russia's enemy and should be treated accordingly.

http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2025/01 ... those.html

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Brief report from the front, January 4th, 2025
The Russian Armed Forces continue to form the right flank to cover the Pokrovsk agglomeration. Report by Marat Khairullin with illustrations by Mikhail Popov.

Zinderneuf
Jan 04, 2025


ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat here November 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Lugansk People's Republic, units of the "West" group of forces have liberated the settlement of Nadiya as a result of successful offensive actions, the Russian Defense Ministry announced.


ЛБС 12.9.2024=Line of Combat Contact September 12th, 2024. ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.12.2024=Line of Combat Contact December 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Зона продвижения после предыдущей сводки=The zone of advancement since the previous summary.
In the Pokrovsk section of the Donetsk direction, the Russian Armed Forces continued to move in the Vozdvizhenka (Vozdvyzhenka) area. According to operational data, Russian units managed to advance in the direction of the settlement of Baranovka (Baranivka). Our troops are also attacking north of Novooleksandrovsk and North of the Timofeevka (Tymofiivka) area. The Russian Army continues to form the right flank to envelop the Pokrovsk agglomeration. The Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka highway, due to its proximity to our control zone, is practically no longer used for the movement of Ukrainian Armed Forces vehicles in this area.


Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka Highway

South of Mirnograd, the enemy attempted to carry out a counterattack, which our soldiers successfully repelled. We also managed to push back the enemy in the area of ​​Sukhoi Yar and Lysovka. In the latter, our units advanced in its eastern part, shifting the battle zone to the center of the settlement. Fierce fighting is also taking place to the west of Lysovka.

Russian forces are pressing on the Ukrainian Armed Forces units in the settlement of Zelenoe from the west, south, and east, and they are also trying to get behind them, breaking through to Chunishino (Chunyshyne), in the direction of which attacks are constantly taking place along the railway. Our units have advanced to Zelenoe north of the settlement of Novy Trud/Vidrodzhennia, and from the settlement of Dachenskoe, they were able to enter the settlement itself, gaining a foothold in its western part.

Active clashes are taking place in the Peschanoe area, where our forces have reached the forest belt along the railway leading to Zverevo (Zvirove), and have also occupied tree lines to the west of Peschanoe (Pischane). It is noted that our reconnaissance and sabotage groups are already working on the territory of Zverevo. The forward detachments are trying to gain a foothold on its outskirts.

In the Volkovo (Vovkove) area, Russian units have strengthened their positions and advanced in the direction of Kotlino (Kotlyne). The distance from our forward positions in this area to the road to Pokrovsk is about a kilometer. Our units are attacking not only in the direction of the road but also parallel to it. From the area of ​​the settlement of Solenoe, there is movement north of Novovasilyevka (Novovasylivka). In this settlement itself, it is being cleared, and attacks have already begun in the direction of Uspenovka. Russian forces are gradually expanding the zone of control in front of the enemy's defense line in the Kotlino-Udachnoe area.


ЛБС 31.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 31st, 2024. ЛБС 30.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 30th, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Kurakhovo direction, clashes continue in the area of ​​Slavyanka and Petropavlovka, in the buildings of which our soldiers managed to get a foothold. There are reports of our troops advancing in this area north of Slavyanka and south of Petropavlovka. South of Sontsovka (Sontsivka), our troops completely cleared the "pocket" of the enemy, and battles began for the fortified area north of Shevchenko.

In Kurakhovo itself, Russian forces continue to attack the Pipe Plant, on whose territory the enemy is still holding out. Our troops are pressing on it from the east and are also advancing towards it from the south along forest belts from the fortified area from which they had previously driven the enemy out.

Offensive actions are also continuing in the settlement of Yantarnoe. The stronghold located on the northern bank of the Sukhie Yaly River from Uspenovka has been completely cleared of the enemy. Attacks on Yantarnoe are being carried out both from the area of ​​this stronghold and from the south, where Russian units have consolidated their positions near the river. Additionally, our activity is increasing in the area of ​​Zelenovka and in the direction of the settlement of Razliv (Rozlyv).


ЛБС 31.10.2024=Line of Combat Contact October 31st, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Продвижение после предыдущей сводки=Progress since the previous summary.
In the Velikaya Novosyolka (Velyka Novosilka) sector, our armed forces have advanced from the area of ​​Rivnepil ("Ravnopol" on the map, Rivnopil on google maps) in the direction of the settlement of Novosyolka (Novosilka), expanding control along the road from the side of Gulyai-Polye (Hulyaipole).

Ukrainian names in parenthesis *

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... anuary-3ec

******

[blindpig]

Counteroffensive at Kursk
Posted by @nsanzo ⋅ 06/01/2025



“Now all the rules have changed,” is the title of Shaun Walker’s latest article for The Guardian , in which he aims to show the qualitative change that Donald Trump’s imminent arrival at the White House represents for Ukraine. “The new year began in Ukraine in the same way that the last one ended: with deadly Russian drone strikes across the country,” he writes in his opening, before pointing out that one person had been killed and six injured in these attacks, a toll that, taking into account the dozens of drones used in various parts of the country, can hardly be described as deadly, especially in comparison with the systematically more deadly Israeli attacks against the Palestinian population. In any case, the British journalist’s aim is to show that, despite the changes that are anticipated in the way the war is politically managed from the most important country, the United States, the situation on the ground remains the same.

For Walker, “it is clear that Ukraine desperately needs a change of dynamic. Russia is continuing its offensive and Kiev is struggling to mobilise enough men to hold the front. Last month, two sources in Ukrainian air defence units told the Guardian that the situation was so bad that trained air defence operators were being ordered to join infantry brigades on the front.” In an article in which the journalist presents every element of the Ukrainian discourse as fact, without the critical spirit required to comment on the war, in which propaganda is an integral part of the parties’ communication, Walker extrapolates the situation in Donbass to the entire front. The Russian advances and the lack of infantry soldiers are clear in Donbass, where Russia threatens Pokrosvsk-Krasnoarmeysk from the south, advances on Toretsk, overtakes Ukraine in Kurajovo and struggles to achieve the operational encirclement of the important town of Velika Novosoylka. For months, Ukrainian commanders on the ground have been using the media to accuse their command of neglect and to complain about the Russian Federation's numerical, artillery and air superiority. The exaggeration of enemy superiority and the gravity of their own situation makes it easy for any defensive success to be described as heroism, a sign of Ukraine's unity, the strength of its population or the worth of its soldiers. At the same time, any effective Russian offensive or defensive movement is simply attributed to the Ukrainian soldiers' lack of weapons (the government's version) or a shortage of troops due to insufficient mobilization (the version of foreign allies, primarily the United States).

For several months now, as the situation in Donbass, theoretically the main front of this war, has worsened for Ukraine, the United States has significantly increased the flow of military equipment, announced new packages for future shipments, and Ukraine has accelerated the recruitment, training and equipping of brigades. These movements have been perceived by Russian sources as a sign of the proximity of a future offensive, which would be impossible if the situation that journalists such as Shaun Walker present and which is limited only to Donbass were, in fact, general. The attack against the Kursk region last August, when Ukraine had already lost its first line of defense and the second and third were falling relatively quickly, showed that Donbass was no longer the priority objective for Ukraine. The change of strategy sought to force Russia to divert troops from Donbass and thus improve the situation of the Ukrainian contingent, but also to cause instability in the Russian Federation and, above all, to demonstrate to foreign allies and suppliers Ukraine's ability to defeat the enemy on its own territory. The Kursk adventure also made it impossible to hold the planned negotiations for a partial ceasefire to protect the electricity infrastructure, which is why Russian attacks resumed and increased, seriously aggravating the situation of the population. Kursk was used as an argument to appeal to foreign powers to send more weapons and to justify increased support for Ukraine to strengthen its position, something that is being repeated today.

Fifteen days after the change of government in the United States and the coming to power of a leader who wants to achieve peace, but who is convinced that Russians and Ukrainians are tired of war and even “Zelensky wants to reach an agreement and end this madness”, Ukraine needs to make a statement. In his ability to see reality in his own way, Trump even sees “small progress” towards peace. The current desire of the Ukrainian government is not peace, but to take advantage of the time it has before Trump comes to power, to demonstrate strength to allies and enemies, to try to cause the maximum possible losses to Russia and to obtain better political cards in case Trump fulfills his threat and forces Moscow and kyiv to negotiate. The ideal place for a counteroffensive in which to obtain palpable results is not Zaporozhye, where Ukraine would find itself in the same situation as in 2023; nor Kherson, where the Dnieper acts as a natural barrier; nor Donbass, which has been a secondary stage for kyiv for six months. The build-up of personnel and material around the Bryansk region had raised speculation about an attack in that direction, but for the moment it is in Kursk that the Ukrainian counterattack is taking place. “Good news from Kursk,” wrote Andriy Ermak on Telegram, adding that “Russia is getting what it deserves.” Without any intention of caution – the important thing is to create a narrative of victory, whether or not it corresponds to the situation on the ground – the head of the President’s Office seemed to announce successes just a few hours after the start of the attack.

At night, using electronic warfare tools to prevent the work of Russian drones, Ukraine began demining operations that in the morning made it possible for armored convoys and troop transports to advance. Russian sources warned of a carousel -like operation , with a constant movement of troops for the infiltration of infantry in different wooded areas. The initial direction of the attack was in the Suya area, towards the towns of Berdino and Bolshoe Soldatskoe, although throughout the day other directions of attack were noted, both Ukrainian and Russian. In the opposite area of ​​the part of Kursk controlled by Ukraine, Russian forces are pressing in the direction of Malaya Loknya, a key place for the Ukrainian defense in the northern protrusion of the territories under its control.

“At the moment, the enemy continues to maintain active pressure on Berdin and Bolshoi Soldatskoye. Indeed, within the framework of the current US-NATO activity, large volumes of military cargo were transferred to Ukraine during November and December. And since October, reserves have been concentrated in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions for these tasks. The offensive has only just begun, so it is too early to talk about its results. In the coming days, everything will be determined by the direction of the main attack, the reserves that will be brought into combat, and the countermeasures of our General Staff,” wrote Boris Rozhin, Colonel Cassad , in a call for caution. By that time, both rumours of the capture of Berdin and of heavy Ukrainian casualties had already spread. In the opposite vein, the Center for Combating Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, in fact a war propaganda body, stated that “the Russians are very worried in Kursk because they have been attacked from several directions and it was a surprise for them. The armed forces are working.”

As in August, the Kursk operation shows which territory is a priority for Ukraine, capable of attacking hundreds of kilometres from the main front, which it is unable to stabilise. The objective is also the same: to demonstrate creativity and strength and to consolidate the best card at its disposal in view of a negotiation that it has never wanted and which it is trying to avoid now that it is in a position of weakness. In his article, referring to security guarantees from Western countries, Shaun Walker quotes a former senior defence official in a Western country, who states that there is “little indication that Ukraine would be willing to make concessions without such promises: “Western security guarantees will be crucial in peace talks. Without these guarantees, what would stop Putin from invading again in a few years?” Unlike its enemy, Russia, Ukraine’s allies were not willing to offer security guarantees in 2022, one of the reasons for the failure of the Istanbul agreement. Ukraine is aware that its most important negotiation is not with Moscow but with its own partners. Ukraine must achieve a strong position, not only in terms of dialogue with Russia, but also in order to achieve what it wants from the West. To do this, kyiv needs good cards. It has long considered Kursk to be the best option available.

https://slavyangrad.es/2025/01/06/contr ... -en-kursk/

Google Translator

*******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
On the situation in the Kursk direction (data from the Ministry of Defense):

Over the past 24 hours , the Ukrainian Armed Forces' losses in the Kursk direction amounted to 485 servicemen, 10 tanks, seven infantry fighting vehicles, five armored personnel carriers, 39 armored combat vehicles, an engineering obstacle clearing vehicle, 11 vehicles, an artillery piece, seven mortars and an electronic warfare station were destroyed. Four Ukrainian Armed Forces servicemen surrendered. In total, during the fighting in the Kursk direction, the enemy lost up to 49,500 servicemen, 283 tanks, 216 infantry fighting vehicles, 158 armored personnel carriers, 1,500 armored combat vehicles, 1,418 vehicles, 341 artillery pieces, 44 multiple launch rocket system launchers, including 13 HIMARS and six MLRS made in the USA, 16 anti-aircraft missile system launchers, eight transport and loading vehicles, 89 electronic warfare stations, 13 counter-battery radars, four air defense radars, 29 units of engineering and other equipment, including 15 engineering obstacle clearing vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing unit, as well as seven armored repair and recovery vehicles and a command and staff vehicle.

***

Colonelcassad
Summary of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation on the progress of the special military operation (as of January 6, 2025) Main points:

Losses in the area of ​​responsibility of the "South" group, where the city of Kurakhovo was liberated, amounted to 265 soldiers and a Leopard tank per day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 550 soldiers in the area of ​​responsibility of the "West" group of forces per day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 150 soldiers in the area of ​​responsibility of the "North" and "Dnepr" groups per day;

- The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost up to 170 soldiers in the area of ​​responsibility of the "East" group;

- The Russian Air Defense shot down a Hammer bomb, 12 HIMARS shells and 115 Ukrainian UAVs per day;

- The Russian Armed Forces hit the infrastructure of military airfields and weapons depots of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Units of the "East" group of forces advanced deep into the enemy's defense, defeated the formations of the mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and two territorial defense brigades in the areas of the settlements of Bogatyr, Novy Komar, Neskuchnoye of the Donetsk People's Republic and Temirovka of the Zaporizhia region.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine lost up to 170 servicemen, four vehicles, a 155-mm self-propelled artillery unit "Bogdana" , a 155-mm howitzer M198 made in the USA, a 152-mm cannon "Giatsint-S" , a 152-mm cannon D-20 and a 122-mm howitzer D-30 . An ammunition depot was destroyed.

Units of the Dnipro group of forces defeated the manpower and equipment of a mechanized brigade, two coastal defense brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and a National Guard brigade in the areas of the settlements of Orekhov, Novoandriivka in the Zaporizhia region, Ponyatovka and Sadovoe in the Kherson region.

The enemy lost up to 80 servicemen, six vehicles, a 155-mm howitzer M777 made in the USA and a 122-mm howitzer D-30 . Three ammunition depots were destroyed .

Operational-tactical aviation , strike unmanned aerial vehicles , missile forces and artillery of the groups of troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation inflicted damage on the infrastructure of military airfields, weapons depots, storage, preparation and launch sites for unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as concentrations of manpower and equipment of the armed formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and foreign mercenaries in 153 districts.

Air defense systems shot down a French-made Hammer guided bomb , 12 US-made HIMARS rockets , and 115 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles.

In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, the following have been destroyed: 652 aircraft, 283 helicopters, 39,568 unmanned aerial vehicles, 590 anti-aircraft missile systems, 20,258 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 1,507 multiple launch rocket systems, 20,239 field artillery pieces and mortars, 29,919 units of special military vehicles.

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

********

Brief report from the front, January 5, 2025
The Ukrainian Armed Forces no longer carry out organized defense in the territory of Kurakhovo! By Marat Khairullin with illustrations by Mikhail Popov.

Zinderneuf
Jan 05, 2025


ЛБС 12.9.2024=Line of Combat Contact September 12th, 2024. ЛБС 01.11.2024=Line of Combat Contact November 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.12.2024=Line of Combat Contact December 1st, 2024. ЛБС 01.01.2025=Line of Combat Contact January 1st, 2025. Зона продвижения после предыдущей сводки=The zone of advancement since the previous summary.

On the right flank of the Pokrovsk section, the Russian Armed Forces expanded the control zone in the Vozdvizhenka (Vozdvyzhenka) area, pushing back the enemy in the northwest of it, and also clearing the territory of the farm and the strong point on the eastern outskirts near the road. Having taken these positions, our soldiers began moving in the direction of the settlement of Baranovka (Baranivka) along the road. To the east, Russian forces advanced along forest belts in the direction of the settlement of Zelenoe Pole.

West of Vozdvizhenka, our units began assault operations using armored vehicles on the left (northern) bank of the Kazenny Torets River. An attack was launched on Yelizavetovka, during which an enemy tank was destroyed. Our soldiers have not secured a foothold in Yelizavetovka itself, but have occupied the heights to the south of it. A bridgehead is being formed, and forces are being accumulated for further actions north of the river for the subsequent exit to the Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka road on a wide section.

High-intensity fighting continues in Lysovka, where our forces managed to take control of the central part of the settlement. Fighting is also underway in the settlement of Zelenoe, control over which is extremely important for the enemy to hold on to the area up to Novopavlovka near Pokrovsk.

There are reports that the 114th Brigade of the Russian Army has liberated the settlement of Petropavlovka and installed a flag in its central part.



In the area of ​​the village of Shevchenko, our soldiers have cleared the territory of a farm in the northwest and are fighting for a large enemy stronghold located next to it, having already partially occupied it.



In Kurakhovo, the Russian armed forces have completely occupied the industrial zone, including the Pipe Plant, which was the last line of defense here. There are still isolated pockets of resistance, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces no longer carry out an organized defense on the territory of Kurakhovo. On the western outskirts of the industrial zone, fighters from the special forces unit of the 346th Special Forces Brigade of the Southern Military District and the 5th Separate Brigade unfurled our tricolor.


Kurakhovo Industrial Zone

South of the Kurakhovsky Mechanical Plant, Russian fighters have completed clearing out the dachas located there. Thus, considering that they also managed to consolidate their position in the forest belt leading to the treatment ponds, south of Kurakhovo, Russian units have aligned the line of combat clashes along these same ponds, reaching the rear of the settlement of Dachnoe.



Ukrainian names in parenthesis *

https://maratkhairullin.substack.com/p/ ... anuary-57f

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Kursk region. 05.01.2025
January 6, 1:00



A Ukrainian Armed Forces tank destroyed near the Berdin village. 01/05/2025 2.jpg
Kursk region. 01/05/2025

On the situation in Kursk region as of the evening of 01/05/2025

1. Even if the enemy had set serious goals to increase territorial control in the Kursk region, today it obviously failed to fulfill its goal. At the cost of heavy losses, it was able to get through the minefields to the outskirts of the villages of Berdin and Novosotnitsky, where its offensive stalled.

2. Despite a number of problems (not everything went smoothly), the Russian Armed Forces met the enemy with dignity and inflicted heavy losses on it. The enemy did not have an easy walk like the first day of the Kursk adventure. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lost a large amount of equipment and personnel.

3. At the same time, the Russian Armed Forces, repelling the enemy's attacks, did not stop their attacks in the direction of Malaya Loknya and Sudzha, achieving advancement in a number of areas.
The enemy's resources were either silent or scolding the command in the evening.

4. Drones decide - the enemy suffered most of its losses from drones of various types. The attempt to smear ourselves with electronic warfare and prevent the Russian Armed Forces from actively using drones, if it gave any profit, then it was not for long. The objective control footage speaks for itself. Fiber-optic drones show themselves well.

5. Nevertheless, everything that happened is more likely to be a diversionary strike or enhanced reconnaissance in force, which turned out to be extremely costly, recalling the memorable attacks on Pyatikhatki in June 2023.

6. Our troops expect the enemy to continue attempting attacks, which are determined by the political conditioning of the enemy's activity before Trump's inauguration. There are certainly military considerations behind these attacks, but they are subordinated to political goals, which, among other things, explains the irrational expenditure of valuable human and material resources in a direction that is not the most strategically important in the context of serious problems in the Donbas.

7. In general, the day is left for us, but it is too early to relax. The enemy has not yet put its main forces into action, which it will definitely do before January 20.
Thanks to the fighters and commanders for the excellent work on January 5. Peace be to the ashes of those who died today holding back the enemy's onslaught.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/150328 - zinc (there is also a link to the ongoing online broadcast of military operations in Ukraine, if you are interested, subscribe)

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9594201.html

Kurakhovo is liberated
January 6, 13:42



Kurakhovo is officially liberated.

The cleanup is complete. The enemy has been completely driven out of the western outskirts.
The first liberated city of 2025.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the losses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during the battles for Kurakhovo amounted to 12,000 people (80%) and 3,000 units of equipment and various weapons, including 40 tanks. In total, the Ukrainian Armed Forces command concentrated 26 battalions with a total of over 15 thousand infantry units to hold Kurakhovo.

The pocket between Shevchenko and Zelenovka will also soon come under the control of Russian troops. These territories have already become subsidized and strategically unimportant.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9594679.html

Google Translator

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Kursk direction: what is known about the attempted offensive by the Armed Forces of Ukraine by the end of the day
January 5, 2025
Rybar



By evening, the situation in the Kursk region had not changed significantly: despite all the attacks, the Ukrainian Armed Forces were unable to make any significant advances. At the same time, the enemy's losses in equipment are well documented.

Nevertheless, fighting in the Berdino area continues. As for other areas, there have been successes on the part of the Russian Armed Forces: for example, to the southeast of Sudzha, Russian attack aircraft have significantly expanded their control zone.

More about the situation in the Kursk direction
In the vicinity of Berdyn, Ukrainian formations are trying to break through the defense of the Russian Armed Forces in order to take control of a section of the road leading to Bolshoe Soldatskoe and further into the region. Ukrainian Armed Forces units tried to enter the Shirokoe tract , but were stopped by oncoming fire.

To the west, Russian Armed Forces fighters are attacking Ukrainian formations in the direction of occupied Malaya Loknya , preventing them from advancing in the Pogrebki - Novaya Sorochina and Nikolaevka - Nikolsky areas . At the same time, on the opposite flank of the Sudzhansky district, the enemy has retreated from the left bank of the Sudzha River in Makhnovka - this complicates the situation of Ukrainian units in the Kolmakov farm , given the battles that broke out not long ago for Agronom .

Over the course of the day, numerous images of the destruction of Ukrainian Armed Forces armored vehicles by drones appeared on the Internet, which confirms the use of at least several dozen tanks and armored vehicles along the entire front, including the area near the border town of Tetkino . Among the targets hit is another British-made Challenger 2 , of which there are very few left in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

However, it is too early to say that the threat has passed. Recently, the Ukrainian command has been transferring forces to the Sumy region to form a strike group - and so far it has not been used in the offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

It is also impossible to rule out the enemy's increased activity in other areas. Two weeks before Donald Trump's inauguration, the Kiev regime is trying to attract as much attention as possible in order to achieve continued support. Especially since the Ukrainian Armed Forces are not doing well in Donbas .

https://rybar.ru/kurskoe-napravlenie-ch ... hodu-dnya/

Google Translator