Rusija vs. Ukrajina aka. "Putin - še sladkih 16 let na oblasti?"

Natural Resources Defense Council lists Soltsy-2 as a nuclear weapons facility.

...

While some media sources are claiming that either Tu-22m3 or a fuel depot were hit. The smoke rising from is the wrong color for that.

Burning jet fuel is black.

The smoke rising from the VKS Soltsi military airfield isn't black. What's burning?

The answer is a bunch of these. These are Kh-22 (or X-22) anti-ship cruise missiles used on Cold War Backfire bomber to hunt USN Carriers.

Their warheads use the plastic explosive known as RDX.

The smoke over Soltsi military airfield is consistent with burning RDX.

While my "Google-fu" is weak. It is good enough to get a map of Soltsi military airfield.

There are dozens of Kh-22 & Kh-22 sized cylinders racked in the open to the left of the close up image below - a sitting duck target.

The Kh-22 are usually stored unfuelled, because it has the same hypergolic propellent as the S-200's 5V28 SAM.

Propellant:

Storable Hypergolic Fuel: Tonka (TG-02) aka R-Stoff ( 50% triethylamine and 50% xylidine )

Oxidizer: AK-20K aka red fuming nitric acid (RFNA)

The TG-02/AK-20K propellent mixture burns black as coal, just like jet fuel.

And since there were no reported evacuation orders at Soltsi.

Which is a absolute requirement for a TG-02/AK-20K fire, because no one is going to survive breathing unfiltered RFNA particulates.

Unfuelled Kh-22 missiles were destroyed in this drone strike at Soltsi military airfield.

Given a range of more than 650 km from the border with Ukraine for this strike.

We are seeing a new generation of precise AFU drone munitions arriving.

Pac-Man je 19. avg 2023 ob 21:09 izjavil:

Špekulacija:

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status...

bodo Rusi verjetno še naprej raketirali Ukrajinsko ozemlje

Interesting and telling that Putin’s (rather fascist) mandatory college course on Russia as a “civilization state” lists seven poles in the emerging multipolar order and none of them include Africa, and at best lump Latin America in with the West.

So much for the global south.

Russia's Luna-25 Spacecraft Destroyed as It Crashes Into Moon

MadMen je 20. avg 2023 ob 12:02 izjavil:

Russia's Luna-25 Spacecraft Destroyed as It Crashes Into Moon

MadMen je 20. avg 2023 ob 20:03 izjavil:

Zanimivo dogajanje v (Ruski) millbloger sceni. Znani millblogar Two Majors objavlja stare posnetke iz bojišča in jih predstavlja kot nove(pred tem je bil relativno kredibilen vir informacij), od millblogerja Romanova ni glasu zadnje nekaj dni... to niso neznani ljudje, to so ljudje, katere spremlja kar nekaj miljonov rusov in proruskih privržencev. Očitno situacija ni tako idealna za RU.

I keep getting asked what's going to happen with PMC Wagner. My answer usually is "no one knows, not even Prigozhin or Putin", but there are a few things that can be put on the record for the time being, based both on leaks by in-fighting clans, ex-mercs, & phone data (short 🧵)

First, a reminder of the context: at the start of the war, Wagner was not invited to the table. On the assumption of a quick victory for 🇷🇺, generals at MoD and GRU set up their own PMC, both to seize control away from Prigozhin, but also to dip into the (corrupt) funding flows.

The top general who in late 2021 was put in charge of creating the new PMC (variously called Reduta or Zvezda) was Gen. Vladimir Alexeev (yes, the same one who famously sat down to negotiate with Prigozhin on the day of the abortive coup attempt)

Alexeev had recruited Wagner's former "Intelligence chief" and used him as the recruiter for the new, competing PMC. This was Anatoly Karаziy, a former Spetznaz lt. colonel who was big in the Russia's bikers' circles.

Naturally, Prigozhin found out about the competing operation and (as reported by two former mercenaries) went to the GRU HQ to confront Alexeev, and threatened his ex-employee Karаziy with physical violence .

Karaziy and Alexeev won that battle, but lost the war (literally), as their PMC was decimated in the first days of the war and Prigozhin had to be begged to bring the original Wagner into the war as of end of March 2022.

Back to modern day.. After the final fall-out with Wagner this past June, MoD and GRU tried to recruit as many of Wagner's top commanders and mercenaries into Redut/Zvezda/MoD. However, not a whole lot responded.

The only commander that Alexeev/Karaziy were able to steal away from Wagner after the failed coup was a colonel with callsign Seriy (the grey-ing one). @bellingcat wrote about his role in Wagner, especially in Syria, in 2020:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-...

To the (mirror) left of Putin.

Troshev is now "the Utkin", or the mil. commander, of Redut. And he is now the target of a character assassination campaign by his former Wagner buddies, bringing back a 2017 incident when he was found passed out in the street with secret Syria maps)
https://www.fontanka.ru/2017/06/06/021/

However, rather than recruiting mercenaries for fighting in Ukraine, the GRU-controlled Redut is reported to be hiring now primarily for overseals/Africa postings. Wagner-aligned channels are accusing MoD of trying to divert resources to replace Prigozhin in lucrative markets.

So the main conflict between Prigozhin and the MoD appears to mostly on the future of "kuratorstvo" of African/middle-east client states (and resource markets), rather than "how to win the war in Ukraine".

Prigozhin (who offered full-service assistance to his "client states", including spin-doctors, psyops and electoral interference as needed) has created some strong local allegiances in Africa, and won't give them up without a fight.

One thing appears certain: insofar as MoD/GRU need to allocate resources - both focus and 000's of mercenaries - to win over Africa from Prigozhin, this is focus and resources unavailable to them on the ground in Ukraine.
(а correction to Troshev's call sign - Sedoy, not Seriy - the gray-ing one, not the "gray" one).

Bauc je 21. avg 2023 ob 09:10 izjavil:

chittax je 21. avg 2023 ob 08:52 izjavil:

Zdaj pa res ne vem več a je tudi Nulandova ruska plačanka ali je samo zmešana in ne ve kaj govori?
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5005520/...

Izdal ti bom šokantno skrivnost. Vse države imajo biolabe. Tudi mi. Neverjetno mar ne? Vem,da nekateri ne verjamete v viruse in bakterije ampak ti vseeno obstajajo.

Bauc je 21. avg 2023 ob 09:10 izjavil:

chittax je 21. avg 2023 ob 08:52 izjavil:

Zdaj pa res ne vem več a je tudi Nulandova ruska plačanka ali je samo zmešana in ne ve kaj govori?
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5005520/...

Izdal ti bom šokantno skrivnost. Vse države imajo biolabe. Tudi mi. Neverjetno mar ne? Vem,da nekateri ne verjamete v viruse in bakterije ampak ti vseeno obstajajo.

chittax je 21. avg 2023 ob 14:08 izjavil:

Leif je 21. avg 2023 ob 13:58 izjavil:

Verjetno Pentagon tako zelo skrbi za zdravje Ukrajincev

Zato pa je Nulandova rekla, da se boji rusov da se dokopljejo do materialov iz teh laboratorijev, ker bi potem še Rusi bili preveč zdravi, tega pa pentagon res ne more dovoliti.