Back in November, I put up a post on Ukrainian forces crossing the Dnipro River for a probing raid. Since then I’ve noticed a persistent trickle of hits to the post, presumably off social media posts of further activity. Today came more concrete evidence that Ukrainian troops are landing and operating on the eastern/southern bank of the Dnipro.
Ukrainian soldiers have crossed the Dnipro River for the first time since the early days of the invasion and built positions that could be used to launch attacks deeper into Russian-occupied territory, analysts have said.
The crossing of the Dnipro River, which has marked the front line since Russian forces retreated from Kherson city in November, comes days after reports of a partial Russian retreat in the area.
It comes as Ukraine is widely expected to launch a counteroffensive, which analysts have said may be aimed at pushing 100 miles south of the Dnipro River at least as far as Crimea.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War said that video and photos have generated the first “reliable geolocated imagery of Ukrainian positions” south of the river.
“The extent and intent of these Ukrainian positions remain unclear, as does Ukraine’s ability and willingness to maintain sustained positions in this area,” it said.
Several Russian military bloggers used geolocation techniques to pinpoint Ukrainian military positions around the village of Oleshky, south of the Dnipro River.
Russian military blogger “Thirteenth”, who has more than 100,000 followers, posted a video that he said showed Ukrainian special forces using fast small boats to land on the river bank, where “they have been hanging out for a couple of weeks”.
Another, Rybar, which has links to the Russian security services and has more than 1 million subscribers, posted a lengthy blog on the “foothold” the Ukrainian forces have secured.
Suchomimus has the video and geolocation north of Oleshky, near both Dachy and Dachi (enjoy the confusion) near the Antonovsky bridge.
“Both have little Russian presence in them, with Ukrainian forces now there in some number, with a claim being that Ukrainian troops Advanced alongside the E97 [road] south towards Oleshky.”
These landings have evidently been going on since April 20.
“It’s looking like a decent amount of troops, though most likely without vehicle support, are operating along this area of Kherson along the Dnipro.”
Suchomimus suggests that it may be an attempt to secure both sides of the Antonovsky bridge and repair the dropped spans, but I’m not so sure. Without a sustained effort to push Russian troops out of artillery range, if would be very difficult to repair and maintain the bridge as a crossing point. I also question his assertion that it would be easier to repair those than throw up a pontoon bridge. True, Russia has proved inept at building them quickly (as it has in so many things), but in World War II the U.S. army could throw them up at 50ft an hour or so.
“This could be anything. It could be recon. Could be special forces. Could be a diversion. Could be harassment of Russian forces.” Or a probing raid to map and exploit Russian weaknesses.
It’s unclear how much special forces or infantry could accomplish on their own without vehicle support, but they would have enough artillery (at least initially), drone and possibly air support for a probing raid to cause panic and confusion among Russian forces, especially as part of a broader spring counter-offensive.
Ukraine has stepped up its drone attacks against a wide spectrum of Russian military infrastructure targets.
“Ukrainians are reportedly attacking objects from St. Petersburg to Krasnodar, which is a 2,000-kilometer front line in the air.”
“Ukrainians have also reportedly accompanied the drone attack with a cyberattack on the Russian regional missile detection system.”
They also hit an oil depot in Tuapse, for which Suchomimus has a video:
That’s way beyond the Kerch Strait Bridge. Back to the first video.
“The Russians have also closed the sky near St. Petersburg. After Russian detection systems were set off, Russians reportedly used interceptor jets to eliminate the threat.” That’s more than 1,000km from Kiev, which must have Russian air defense planners freaking out. (Or drinking even more heavily than usual.)
The hit a number of targets in Crimea, though many of the drones launched there were shot down, and some were hijacked by Russian electronic warfare countermeasures. (Cue a Cory Doctorow-esque rant about the need for strong encryption.)
“Some analysts are saying that Ukrainians are just testing Russian air and electronic defense systems, and are creating an elaborate map for building more sophisticated trajectories. After they finish, these analysts are predicting a much larger scale attack, which would cause a lot of destruction of the airfields, as well as oil refineries and factories producing military equipment.”
“The second camp of analysts is saying that the goal of these attacks is to disperse Russian air defense that has been greatly concentrated on the fronts.”
Reporting from Ukraine is usually pretty solid and seems to have sources inside Ukraine’s defense ministry.
Here’s a video from Samir Puri and the Imperial War Museum that echoes something Nicholas Moran said ten months ago, namely that the tank is not obsolete on the modern battlefield, it’s just that the Russians are using them wrong.
Takeaways:
Russia, despite a century of data, isn’t using tanks properly in combined arms operations in concert with infantry, artillery and close air support.
Ukraine is, though much of their close air support has taken the form of drones. “These unmanned aerial vehicles have proved very effective especially against slow-moving Russian armored convoys.”
“We don’t really see this kind of tight combined arms operations being mounted by the Russians. They really struggled to do this. Instead, what we saw were quite disconnected Russian elements, and that meant that often the Russians were moving into positions it was still very well defended that hadn’t been softened. Which is why as the war has moved on sixth, seventh, eighth month [this video came out two months ago], the Russians have changed tack very much to I guess quite brutal indiscriminate bombardment of the cities they want to take.”
“There are no massed tank battles for which the Cold War T-72 was designed. In fact, engagements in Ukraine are on a much smaller scale with platoons and companies clashing together rather than divisions and corps.”
“There has also been an absence of close air support, a crucial tool for supporting tanks as part of combined arms operations. There was a lot of aerial activity, there was a lot of dog fighting as well, early on in the in the invasion. But the aerial defense systems that both sides have gotten and can deploy to cover their their more fixed positions are effective enough that the attrition rate amongst combat aircraft has risen. And the Russians interestingly appear to be husbanding the resources of their air force.”
“In the early months of the war, Russia had little infantry with which to protect its tanks, particularly in urban settings. That that allowed small groups of Ukrainians to mount what almost seemed like guerrilla operations. Getting in close to Russian armor and taking them out with anti-tank guided missiles before they knew what was happening.”
“Russia has now launched a much larger mobilization of manpower to try and fix this problem, but with many of its best troops and equipment already expended, there are questions about the quality, supply, and morale of these new soldiers.”
“The fact that the Ukrainians are actually able to capture intact or largely intact T-72s is a testament to the Russian logistics. Meaning that you find in captured Russian equipment low supplies, some Russian PWOs complaining of a lack of lack of proper support from their headquarters and have simply given up or run away.”
Drone warfare has also made it much harder for Russia to use tanks in a traditional defensive role in static positions on systems of defensive trenches.
Though Russia’s forces have shown some small signs of increasing technical competence in various areas, the fact that they lost so much armor attacking Vuhledar shows that they still have a long way to go when it comes to staging competent combined arms operations.
Given that the original video generated doubts as to its veracity, I thought I would post this followup that goes into more detail about Ukraine’s low-cost suicide drone/loitering munition.
These look considerably less jury-rigged than the previous drones.
“These are publicly funded…Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense made a public appeal for donations to buy 1,000 of these.”
There seem to be different types with different warhead sizes. “The technical details are a bit vague. I’ve seen mentioned ranges of just two kilometers to over 10 kilometers.”
We see the successful attacks, but not the failures.
“These cost around 200 to manufacture, so they’re also extremely cost effective.” Indeed, even more cost-effective than my original estimates.
I’ve previously covered suicide drones and drones dropping RPGs. Now Ukraine is evidently cutting out the middleman and passing the savings on to Ivan by just strapping RPGs to light drones and guiding them in.
Here’s a screen-grab of this masterpiece of redneck engineering:
The is a great application of one of Murphy’s Military Laws: “If it’s stupid but it works, it ain’t stupid.” For the Russians, it must be quite embarrassing to get yeeted into the afterlife by Doogie Howser’s science fair project.
I’m somewhat surprised that drones that small can carry the RPG rounds effectively, but presumably they’re replacing camera gear or something close to the same weight.
An RPG-7 costs about $2,500 each, while a BMP-3 costs about $800,000 each. Even if you double the price for the quadcopter ($2,500 is a bit pricey, but not out-of-line for some pro rigs), you still get a hugely useful loitering munition for less than 1/100th the cost of the target you’re taking out…
Democrats enabling sexual predators (yet again), more tanks for Ukraine information, and the unexpected return of Storm Drain Woman. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Published in November of 2022, the story indicated “thousands of child molesters are being let out after just a few months, despite sentencing guidelines.”
The story reported that more than 7,000 inmates convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” were released from prison the same year they were incarcerated.
The Daily Mail’s analysis was conducted using a database—created in 1994 after the federal Megan’s Law was passed—requiring law enforcement to make public information regarding registered sex offenders. The news organization examined data in California through July of 2019.
“Everyone should be really upset and frightened by this,” Dordulian said.
According to Dordulian, child molesters are the least likely of criminals to be rehabilitated and are four times more likely to commit the same crime again.
“Once they’re out,” he said, “they are going to re-offend and there’s going to be another child that is victimized by these people.”
Senate Bill 357. Signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in July, the measure decriminalized loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. The bill did not officially take effect until January 1 of this year; but, from the moment it became law back in July, these women say, the on-the-ground reality changed. “The minute the governor signed it, you started seeing an uptick on the streets,” Powell said. “And on social media, the pimps were saying: ‘You better get out there and work because the streets are ours.’”
The pimps were right: police stopped making arrests for crimes that would no longer be charged. The anti-loitering statute had provided the grounds for officers to question women and children whom they suspected might be trapped in a prostitution ring. “As a police officer, you need probable cause to stop and investigate,” Powell explained. “So if I have a law that says you can’t loiter in this area, with pasties and a G-string, flagging down cars, I could stop you for that because you’re loitering. But if I just say I’m stopping you because you look kind of young, that’s a little weak. So, it takes away a tool.” Without the statute, police hands were suddenly tied. Henceforth, questioning the girls—and potentially provoking a violent confrontation with pimps—came to seem a Pyrrhic gamble, one that California’s police officers would now avoid.
The films, which include “Miss Representation,” “The Mask You Live In,” “The Great American Lie” and “Fair Play,” are licensed to taxpayer-funded schools across every state and sometimes contain sexually explicit imagery and push students to feel “shame and sorrow” about American society split by privilege and oppression. They are paired with curricula that include discussion on Gov. Newsom’s comments within the films, urging them to gather their friends and vote for aligned politicians that support a “care economy” that “embraces universal human values.”
“Former Arlington teachers union president charged with embezzlement. A former president of the Arlington teachers union, who was ousted last spring, has been charged with embezzling more than $400,000 from the organization. Ingrid Gant, 54, of Woodbridge, was arrested yesterday (Monday) in Prince William County on four counts of embezzlement.” (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
“Thirty years ago, Guan County, Shandong Province launched the ‘Hundred Childless Days‘ campaign under the aegis of national family planning, known in the West as the ‘one-child policy.’ The birthplace of the “Boxers” was deemed to have too high a birth rate by the provincial government. County officials sought to correct this by ensuring that not a single baby was born between May 1 and August 10, 1991.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
North says they do not feel safe anymore, and she believes it all ties back to the large homeless encampment located only feet away from the salon.
“Our safety started to become a big issue. We suffered from multiple break-ins. We’ve had our cars broken into. We clean up feces and needles on a weekly basis. It increased from that to, you know, people approaching us and threatening us with weapons, threatening rape, murder, all of those things,” said North.
The salon has been up and running just off Ben White Blvd. for four years now. North says she has seen an uptick in crime for a while now, but the dangerous behavior from people living in this encampment picked up recently.
“In the past year, it’s gotten increasingly worse and, in the past couple of weeks, it’s gotten to the point where I actually finally felt like this might shut my business down,” said North.
Erin Mutschler, another co-owner of the salon, says they have called the police every time they have dealt with a situation like the one caught on video, but she says police often take 45 minutes to an hour for anyone to show up.
The mayorship of Steve Adler is the gift that just keeps giving, even with him out of office… (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Follow-up: Democratic State Rep. Harold Dutton: “Don’t Blame Abbott, Houston ISD Takeover Plan Was My Idea.” (Previously.)
A Florida woman was pulled from a storm drain for the third time in two years. Maybe she was looking for David Icke’s lizard people. Also, she sounds like a real winner: “Police said her license had been suspended 17 times from 2007 to 2020.” (Previously.) (Hat tip: Dwight.)
Jay Leno broke his collarbone, several ribs and both kneecaps in a motorcycle accident. But it sounds like a freak accident: “So I turned down a side street and cut through a parking lot, and unbeknownst to me, some guy had a wire strung across the parking lot but with no flag hanging from it…I didn’t see it until it was too late. It just clothesline me and, boom, knocked me off the bike.” (There’s no evidence the line was strung there by Conan O’Brien.) “But I’m OK!…I’m working this weekend.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
Since August, Russian forces (including a large contingent of Wagner Group mercenaries) has been assaulting the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the Dunba with almost monomaniacal focus, despite very little to show for their efforts. Despite small successes for Russia (a few streets here, an industrial area there, even capturing a garbage dump on the edge of town was listed as a major Russian achievement a few weeks ago) almost all of Bakhmut has remained stubbornly in Ukrainian hands.
However, over the last day or two, tentative reports having come in that not only have Russian attacks slacked off, but that Ukrainian forces have recaptured not only just about all the hard-won territory Russia had gained in the city itself, but that some outlying areas were liberated after months of control. At the same time, there are numerous, persistent reports that Russia is running low on artillery shells in the region. (To be fair, repeated predictions that Russia must be running low on dumb ammunition of various types have failed to pan out heretofore.)
Here Suchomimus reports that Russia has been pushed out of the industrial areas of Bakhmut in the east, and that Ukraine has recaptured most of the town of Opytne to the immediate southeast.
Russian forces’ rate of advance in the Bakhmut area has likely slowed in recent days, although it is too early to assess whether the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut has culminated. Russian milbloggers acknowledged that Ukrainian forces in the Bakhmut area have managed to slightly slow down the pace of the Russian advance around Bakhmut and its surrounding settlements, with one claiming that Ukrainian forces pushed back elements of the Wagner Group to positions they held days ago. Ukrainian social media sources previously claimed that Ukrainian forces completely pushed Russian forces out of the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut around December 21. ISW has also assessed that Russian forces made slightly fewer overall advances in the Bakhmut area in November and December combined as compared to the month of October.
Russian forces will likely struggle to maintain the pace of their offensive operations in the Bakhmut area and may seek to initiate a tactical or operational pause. The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported on December 24 that Russian forces currently lack the necessary stockpile of artillery munitions to support large-scale offensive operations and that sustaining defensive operations along the lengthy frontline in Ukraine requires the Russian military to expend a significant number of shells and rockets daily. The Ukrainian Joint Forces Task Force released an interview on December 24 with a Ukrainian servicemember in the Bakhmut area detailing that Russian forces have been conducting an extremely high pace of assaults on Ukrainian positions in the area with little corresponding progress. The Wagner Group’s reported heavy losses in the Bakhmut area in recent weeks have also likely strained Russian forces’ current operational capabilities in the area.
The Russian military’s personnel and munitions constraints will likely prevent it from maintaining the current high pace of offensive operations in the Bakhmut area in the near-term. Russian forces previously allocated significant resources in a meat-grinder effort to seize Severodonesk and Lysychansk in spring–summer 2022. Russian forces culminated after capturing Lysychansk in early July and failed to capture neighboring Siversk to the east or Slovyansk to the northeast. The Russian military’s fixation with conducting a highly attritional campaign to achieve the tactical objectives of capturing Severdonetsk and Lysychansk ultimately undermined the Russian military’s ability to achieve its larger operational objective to envelop Ukrainian forces in a cauldron along the E40 highway and eventually drive to Donetsk Oblast’s western administrative borders. Russia’s relentless and costly push on Bakhmut may also degrade Russia’s ability to pursue long-term objectives in the Donbas theater.
Another sign Russia may be running out of shells in Bakhmut: A tweet from Wagner Group saying just that, while also calling the Chief of Russian General Staff a “faggot.”
Russian mercenaries from Wagner insult the Chief of Russian General Staff with obscene words and complain that they have no ammunition pic.twitter.com/7LYvN2MzHr
As usual with Ukraine news, all this is very tentative, and could be reversed to tomorrow. But right now it looks like Ukraine has the upper hand in Bakhmut.
It can be hard to determine the truth in any war zone, especially one like Ukraine where honest, English-speaking reporters seem to be thin on the ground. Sometimes people are trying to be accurate and get things wrong, and others fall for propaganda, like Snake Island and the “Ghost of Kiev.” (I use pro-Ukrainian examples here because most Russian propaganda has been unbelievable, clumsy, and poorly executed (and the last two apply to so many aspects of Russia’s illegal war of aggression)).
Example the first: A commenter mentioned that Stingers sent to Ukraine had shown up on “black markets all over the world.” Possible, but I hadn’t heard anything about it. I went searching, where I found this piece:
On September 17, 2022, a worrying claim circulated on social media: FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) were reportedly available for sale online in Germany.
According to the post, which was picked up by prominent figures in Russia, authorities were alerted by a student in Bremen and “local journalists” found that the systems originated in Ukraine and were “meant for the Kharkov counteroffensive”.
A short video was posted alongside the tweet, showing what appears to be a partially disassembled Stinger system with its Identification friend or foe (IFF) antenna missing. The feet of several people in paramilitary clothes can be seen in the footage, and a German voice can be heard in the background.
he posts received thousands of likes and shares, including from the Deputy Representative of Russia to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy, who suggested that delivering weapons to Ukraine was backfiring.
English language coverage has not been widespread, but Russian media published numerous articles with differing variations of the claim. Some add that this is not the first time that Stingers have appeared on the European black market.
However, many others state that weapons provided to Ukraine by NATO countries have been discovered on black markets across the world. All the articles claim that the case resulted in “a scandal” in Germany, attracting the interest of authorities, the media, and spurring discontent among its citizens.
But further down, we find this:
The articles and social media posts refer to German authorities having supposedly intercepted a deal and apprehending the culprits. However, no statement about such an operation has been posted by any of Germany’s law enforcement agencies.
The posts also mention that local German journalists investigated and determined that the weapons were meant for the Ukrainian offensive. However, there is no proof that this took place, and the story was not covered by any prominent German media outlet.
Responding to a Twitter post sharing the video, Lars Winkelsdorf, one of the leading German arms trafficking experts, dismissed the claim.
“At the moment, nothing like that has been found by the authorities, nor have I found anything like this through my own research,” Winkelsdorf said.
The original source of the report seems to be the Journalisten friekorps Telegram channel, which is billed as a “channel for honest journalism”.
“Our task is to help the German state and the German people. The people must be united, Germany must be free,” the channel’s description reads.
One of the Telegram posts state that the channel is created by the team behind Socialharmony.de, an initiative which lists discontinuing arms shipments to Ukraine and stopping support to Ukrainian refugees among its main goals.
Conclusion:
It can be stated, with a high degree of certainty, that the claim regarding FIM-92 Stinger MANPADS being shipped to Ukraine and found on the German black market, is false.
The claim states that the weapon dealers were apprehended by German authorities, yet the German police denies being involved.
The video, provided as evidence, contains a sound recording that was filmed in January 2022. The letters from Ukrainian authorities, provided as a confirmation of connection with Ukraine, also appear to be counterfeit.
Finally, claims that the case was highly prominent and even resulted in a scandal in Germany, do not appear to hold water. This was only covered by social media channels of dubious origin and several sensationalist websites.
So that one we can chalk up to propaganda followed by the social media game of telephone.
The next example is from two sources on the Russo-Ukrainian War that are usually pretty solid.
First up, Suchomimus (whose videos I’ve feature a lot here) has a report on an attack on a Russian headquarters barracks in Melitopol that may have killed some 200 officers:
I thought I’ll take a look at last night’s strike on a Russian barracks in Melitopol. I guess most of you have seen the news by now, as this was a pretty major incident reports are saying around 200 soldiers were killed in this strike.
Snip.
Let’s take a look at the site itself this graphic was put together by a Twitter user TheIntelCrab. Now, a few sources online have said that the strike was of a Melitopol Christian Church. That is not exactly accurate. It was near there, but instead, it hit the area circle to the left, which was being used by the barracks.
Here’s a screen cap:
So it didn’t hit the church itself. Now, this is quite interesting. These photos here of some of the rooms at this place. This was a luxury resort. A few people say it was a spa.
Suchomimus goes on to explain why such luxurious accommodations were probably used by officers. “If this was indeed officer’s accommodation, then this is a even more important strike than realized, especially for numbers of 200 gone are accurate.”
But here’s Ukraine News TV (“Josey here”) with his daily update, including reporting various strikes in Russian occupied territory:
At 1:38 in, he notes “explosions as well at the airport at Simferopol, so a little bit into the the middle of the peninsula.” Part of this screen cap should look familiar:
That fire behind that distinctive gate looks awfully familiar, doesn’t it?
CNN is also reporting the blast in Simferopol, so presumably that actually happened as well. Later in the video (starting about 7 minutes in), Josey reports on the Melitopol strikes, noting a wide range of estimates for casualties, stating “possibly 200-300.” So that’s mostly in accord.
The most likely explanation is that Josey simply grabbed the wrong image for the Simferopol image. These things happen.
But it’s a reminder that war news reporting (including my blogging) is an aggregation of already aggregated sources one or more steps removed from the actual front lines. Everything you see or hear about it deserves at least a basic level of judicious skepticism.
Ukraine has been so successful at hitting Russian infrastructure with HIMARS that it’s no longer news when they hit something 100 kilometers behind Russia’s lines.
But when they hit something 600 kilometers away, that’s news.
Several people have been killed in explosions at two Russian military airfields, according to reports.
A fuel tanker exploded killing three and injuring six in an airfield near the city Ryazan, south-east of Moscow, Russian state media is reporting.
Another two people are reported to have been hurt in an explosion at an airfield in the Saratov region.
It is not known what caused the blasts. Both areas are hundreds of kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
Long-range Russian strategic bombers are believed to be based at the Engels airbase in the Saratov region.
Here’s a Suchomimus video on the Engels Airbase attack:
Ukraine’s ever-increasing range puts a whole lot of Russian infrastructure (military and otherwise) under potential threat. Perhaps Putin should take that into consideration before ordering the next round of attacks on Ukrainian power plants…
