Ukraine

[Beany]

Jesus fucking Christ.

Apparently the seperatists robbed a police station and nicked a load of uniforms.

Official word (allegedly etc) is that citizens have been told to shoot any police on site as there are no official police left in town.

Also rumours are Russia is currently shelling a russian town to try to put down the insurrection.

This is fucking wild.

[dinny_g]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... ar-kherson

Madre al Dios...

[Sundayjumper]

It's unfortunately been on the cards for a long time. Blowing it now does confirm that the Russians are about to run away though.

[ZedLeg]

Aye, that's a huge escalation.

[duncs500]

It's been feeling for the last few weeks that shit was about to go into overdrive over there.

[Beany]

Aye, that's a huge escalation.

Word is it's a war crime, potentially classified as a weapon of mass destruction (partly due to it's primary functional outcome being the indiscriminate harm to non-combatants).

So yeah, there's that.

[Sundayjumper]

[Beany]

A staggering victory for Russia today, winning a huge battle against the second best army in Ukraine!















You know, Ukranian farms. RF are a distant third.

[Sundayjumper]

[dinny_g]

Beth Rigby is the absolute worst at that. To the point I won’t watch Sky News anymore

[Sundayjumper]

Excellent Top Tip for demining operations:

[Beany]

So, first Wagner aren't anything to do with the RF armed forces, because Russia no use mercenarys, Russia Stronk.

Then Wagner are assisting in spearhead operations.

Then Wagner are primary operators in major battle zones.

Now Wagner appears to, er, literally be at war with Russia.

I'm not even joking



And



And



There's a lot of vague information going around, but Wagner and RF forces telegram channels that have historically been considered pretty reliable by OSINT types are reporting broadly similar things - conflict between Wagner units and RF forces, and conflict inside of RF units - those who agree with Wagner and those who don't.

Could all be smoke and mirrors, but given the quality of Russia/FSBs external propaganda (AKA not good - The Sim 3, as opposed to 3 SIM cards, etc) I'm not sure they're good enough to "pretend that our forces are infighting" and make it this convincing.

Could be an interesting weekend

[Swervin_Mervin]

Jesus H

[Beany]

TASS - Russian state media - confirmed there's an investigation into Wagner-lad

https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-new ... f17c980eb3

And Russia24, another state media company, are claiming he's talking bollocks. Which is all kind of ironic

https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-new ... 7a9ed3a2ce

And Ukraine are...well...



If Ukraine intelligence thought it was bollocks they'd probably just flat out say so.

So yes, er, I was gonna go with most optimistic opinions and give it till winter when Ukranian F16s were gaining air superiority and ideally routing RF forces, before expecting full blown internal armed conflict in Russia, but it seems they're getting ahead of expected schedules.

[Sundayjumper]

I went to bed early yesterday and have only just got up & looked at the news. Blimey.

Although I think I did say right at the start that a coup / civil war was going to be the outcome. They could have saved a lot of time by just skipping the last 12 months and getting straight down to it.

[Sundayjumper]

The Master Strategist.

[Sundayjumper]

Kiev in 3 days ? More like Moscow by tea time.

[DeskJockey]

This has the potential to become very bad, very quickly.

[duncs500]

Whilst so far there hasn't been much evidence of clever strategy by the Russians, surely this is some kind of ruse related to the counter offensive? Otherwise it just seems like suicide by Prigozhin, and not much logic in it. Unless he's got some backing that we don't know about in the Kremlin?

[ZedLeg]

Wagner Group are essentially mercenaries aren’t they?

Maybe a political rival is funding them.

Kind of scary new development either way, two armies with psychopathic leaders and world ending weaponry on hand.