A coup would be quite interesting
I haven’t been up to date with ukraine events for a good while, where can I find info on war so I can catch up to what orcs have been doing? How far are we from “ending” this war? Because it’s disgusting how they keep going with their terrorism.
The initial stages of a major counteroffensive by the Ukrainians are in progress, so news has been getting sparse over the past few weeks - nobody wants to let the Russians know the details of where the attacks are actually coming, to prevent them from being able to deploy their reserves effectively. I’ve been doing my best to follow things, and ironically enough the best place I’m aware of is still the worldnews live thread on Reddit.
The major events of the past few weeks:
- At the beginning of the counteroffensive a couple of groups of Russian “freedom fighters” with Ukrainian support crossed the Ukrainian border to attack towns in Russia, in the Bilhorod oblast. The apparent intent was not for them to hold territory, but to go in and wreck up Russian military assets and then withdraw again, forcing the Russians to divert their military strength to reinforce the border with Ukraine instead of just holding Ukrainian territory.
- The Kakhovka dam collapsed, almost certainly as a result of deliberate sabotage by the Russians. This caused tremendous flooding along the Dnipr river, placed the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in a dangerous situation (it draws cooling water from the Kakhovka reservoir), and cut Crimea off from something like 80% of its water supply, as well as farmland in Russian-held territory to the north of Crimea. A lot of the details are still unclear but it’s thought this was done to make it harder for Ukrainians to cross the Dnipr river and may indicate that the Russians don’t expect to hold this territory indefinitely any more.
- The Ukrainians have been doing “probing attacks” along most of the front line, pressuring them everywhere to see where the Russians are weak. This has resulted in a few minor advances but no major breaches of Russian defences. Yet.
- Partisans have blown up a couple of important rail lines and the Ukrainians hit a key bridge connecting Crimea to the rest of Ukraine with what appears to be a British Storm Shadow cruise missile, and some really major ammunition depots have been blown up. This makes resupplying Russian lines a lot harder, and they were already having trouble with that.
- The Russians have been using more air support, apparently due in part to lack of available artillery shells. Lots of Russian helicopters have been shot down recently as a result.
And now, the Wagner mercenary group seems to have turned on the regular Russian military. If this is true then that’s probably bigger than all of those developments combined and could be the start of an actual avalanche. Note that there still doesn’t seem to be much confirmation that something is happening yet, just a bunch of officials saying that stuff is happening. This part is hour-by-hour news.
Thank you.
Of course, as soon as I write up a summary saying “here’s all the major events”, Wagner Group goes and launches a freakin’ coup against Moscow. :)
In case you haven’t seen that news, last night Prigozhin (leader of the Wagner Group mercenary company) seized the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, which is where the headquarters and main logistical hub for the war on Ukraine is based. His forces are currently driving hard up the road toward Moscow. Putin has apparently fled the city and national guard units are digging in to defend it. The Russian military seems to be either refusing to engage with the Wagner Group or are actively supporting them, it’s hard to say what’s going on. Breaking news and all that.
This is probably the biggest single development since the previous Ukrainian counteroffensive. Possibly of the whole war.
Holy shit! That’s huge.
Thanks very much for writing that all up, since leaving Reddit I’m not nearly as up to date.
No way of knowing how far we are from ending the war.
The latest update is that Russians and their private mercenaries “Wagner group” are fighting each other.
It’s one of those “the enemy of my enemy” situations but we have no clue where this is going. Russian civil war? Weakening of Russian forces? Potential for Ukraine advance? It’s hard to know.
The concern is that the longer the conflict draws the less support Ukraine will receive. Russia knows this. Ukraine knows this. Western politicians know this.
Wars are always muddy and difficult to predict. Shit, everyone was certain Ukraine would fall in a week. And here we are well over a year into the war.
Good luck Ukraine!
It’s obviously a 4D Chess Mastermind move by Putin for his 3 days very special military operation.
If I was them, I would team up with Ukraine right now. Suddenly you have the bigger army and the Russian forces are trapped behind their own fortifications in enemy territory.
Yeah I don’t think Ukraine is going to go for that, hasn’t Wagner been torturing Ukrainians?
Graphically torturing and posting. Fuck Wagner. I hope he makes it to Moscow and Putin nukes his own capital out of fear, accidentally tripping and falling out of a 20th story window onto a bed of spikes in the process. The whole lot can fuck right off.
If Prigozshin “wins” and takes over Russia I hope they invite him to a state dinner in the Netherlands so that we don’t have to spend much money to arrest him and take him to the Hague.
I think the limit of Ukrainian “cooperation” would be refraining from attacking Wagner forces as they either fight Russian military within Ukraine or withdraw from Ukrainian territory. With the condition that if Wagner isn’t doing one of those two things then they’re back on the menu.
It’d be nice to capture everyone, investigate them all to find the ones who’ve done warcrimes, and prosecute them in an orderly manner. But if plan B is “they retreat from Ukrainian territory in chaos and go fight Russians on Russian territory” I think it’d be great to let them do that. Fewer Ukrainian deaths going forward from that.
Did someone seriously thini they’re all acting 100% spontaneously? Lol. That’s why everybody should spend 1 year in the army.
What’s this about a coup?
Wagner vs Russian MOD
