Mamoulian War

Compared to UA numbers, they are more plausible. Also they numbers are more plausible than UA numbers for Russian casualties as well

US estimates on April 19 were 5500-11000 casualties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine

To be fair, I have used it probably few times, but I have always posted a disclaimer next to my post in this thread... The funny thing is, that for a few times, I have found out that few articles in these tabloids, had much better sources, research and were more "fool-proof", than some articles in medias, which I consider as very trustworthy... Fog of War takes it's toll... Still anything posted by British Tabloids is 1000x more trustworthy, than anything played out in Russian media

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OK, few more interesting things in the last few days and today happened, and it looks like something is starting to boil in the Russia: quotes from ISW May 14: "The Ukrainian destruction of significant elements of a Russian motorized rifle brigade that tried to cross a pontoon bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River on May 11 has shocked prominent Russian milbloggers. Those bloggers have begun commenting on the incompetence of the Russian military to their hundreds of thousands of followers. The attempted river crossing showed a stunning lack of tactical sense as satellite images show (destroyed) Russian vehicles tightly bunched up at both ends of the (destroyed) bridge, clearly allowing Ukrainian artillerymen to kill hundreds and destroy scores of vehicles with concentrated strikes. The milbloggers who have hitherto been cheering on the Russian military criticized Russian armed forces leadership for failing to learn from experience in the war. They also expressed the concern that the constant pushing of Russia’s propaganda lines was making it hard for them to understand what was actually going on." another quote from ISW May 16: "Russian military bloggers continued to post analysis that is skeptical of Russian efforts and increasingly in-line with Western assessments of Russian military failures in Ukraine. One such blogger, Igor Strelkov, claimed that the Russian offensive to take Donbas has ultimately failed and that “not a single large settlement “has been liberated.[1] Strelkov even noted that the capture of Rubizhne is relatively insignificant because it happened before the new offensive in Donbas had begun. Strelkov stated that Russian forces are unlikely to liberate Donbas by the summer and that Ukrainian troops will hold their positions around Donetsk City. Strelkov notably claimed that Russian failures thus far have not surprised him because the intent of Russian command has been so evident throughout the operation that Ukrainian troops are aware of exactly how to best respond and warns that Russian troops are fighting to the point of exhaustion under “rules proposed by the enemy.” The continued disenchantment of pro-Russian milbloggers with the Russian war effort may fuel dissatisfaction in Russia itself, especially if Moscow continues to press recruitment and conscription efforts that send poorly-trained cannon-fodder to the front lines." "Frictions between Russian occupation administrations and pro-Russian collaborators is growing in occupied areas of Ukraine. The Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration reported that Russian forces are having serious conflicts with collaborators due to interpersonal power conflicts.[4] A well-known collaborator in Zaporizhia accused the Russian-installed governor of the area of stealing his 10,000 ruble compensation. Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryshchenko additionally claimed that relatives of those mobilized into the forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) are holding a mass protest against mobilization in Donetsk City. While ISW cannot independently verify these claims, such discontent amongst occupation elements suggests a general lack of planning by Russian authorities in occupied areas, now compounded by increasingly evident Russian losses." Also there are some intercepted calls, where collaborators are complaining, how their life turned for worse now... Recruiting officers are starting to catch on fire around Russia (11 so far). Something like that never happened in last 100 years...

Erdogan will change his mind in the end IMHO. He always says no, just to negotiate blackmail, their counterparts. I bet he will want something from EU to help him out with crazy inflation rolling at Turkey, for an exchange of his YES.

Russia trying to limit the damage was always a bull**** propaganda... This is what remained of liberated Oleksandrivka in Kherson Olast...

Ukrainian soldiers reached Russian border northeast of Kharkiv, and according to British intelligence, Russia has lost one third of all the servicemen, assigned for invasion (probably counting all servicemen unable to fight, not only the dead ones).

I had not read it all yet, but before 1917 revolution, there was the idea of Pan-Slavism, because Russia were the most powerful Slav nation, and they were an example for other Slav Nations which had no states of their own, but the creation of Soviet Union pretty much throw it out of the window, and only neo-nazis are now dreaming of them being the most superior country of Slavs, and that we should follow. In short, just look at the history of creation of Soviet Union after the revolution, and how Soviets treated other Slavic Nations up until 1993, and you will see, why almost no one except Serbia likes them anymore (talking about their politics, not the common people). Myself, I have Russian colleague or two, and they are nice people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Slavism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union (there you can click on articles about specific eras, and how they treated Ukrainian and Eastern European people and countries etc.)

Collaborate with Russia and your worth is as much as worth of trash

little bit more about the failed crossing of the river, from hopefully credible source.

During weekend Russian destroyed another school with 60 civilians dieing inside in Bilohorivka. One or two days ago, they tried to cross the river close to the city for the first time. One of the Ukrainian engineers responsible for preparing the ambush on them have released some information, on how this operation was performed. The whole operation was performed with almost zero visual possibilities, as there was bad weather, fog and Russian soldiers setting ablaze the surrounding forest... Which is pretty crazy achievement for UA army... Here is how the preparations and following opperation has been almoast flawlessly executed... Rumors says one whole BTG or 1500 Russian soldiers might have died during their failed attempt. and here is video of pictures how if ended up for them. And this is the result of another attempt today

AFAIK The current law in Ukraine is 15 years up to lifetime sentence for crimes, which lead to Ukrainians civil casualties during war. So we'll see how this one case ends up.

First Russian soldier will be on trial for war crimes in Ukraine. Looks like Ukrainian soldier have taken prisoner one of the Russian soldiers who killed old man riding on bicycle from a stolen car. https://www-teraz-sk.translate.goog/zahranicie/na-ukrajine-maju-sudit-prveho-ruske/632880-clanok.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp Google translate.

yup reading that every day, in conjunction with the Ukrainian guy doing the daily videos.

I have found some news aggregator from Ukraine, which is writing about one missing sailor from Moskva and a response from a prosecutor's office https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-05-07-russia-claims--"moskva"-did-not-fight-against-ukraine-at-all---soldier-s-father-is-outraged.HJGDZOmIq.html And I have found a link to the scan of the document translated by google translate camera, i've seen this Prosecutor's letter in some YT video, but it was few days ago, and I have no clue how to find it again. although it is on 4chan... sooo I just put it in the spoiler tag, just in case, that someone would like to check it out, because we all know, what kind of place is that

Speaking of compensations, some parents of sailors which died on Moskva, have allegedly complained, that they are not getting anything, because officially Moskva was not part of Special Military Operations, it was just swimming around Black Sea. I'll try to dig out the source from week ago. And a friend linked me a few interesting propaganda gem pieces from May the 9th

Ok, so grand mobilization did not happen today. But from what is happening last few days, it looks like, that Russia starting to focus on Odessa. They are moving away from Kharkiv, because they found out, they are not able to get anywhere close to it, and they started big shelling in Mykolaiv, Odessa, and destroyed the only bridge between Romania and Odessa in middle of the Odessa Oblast. Ukraine did a lot of preemptive strikes to weaken the Russian Navy around Serpent Island and Russia have started to amass their soldiers and military equipment at north Crimea. So IMHO Russians moved to third phase, after they were not able to make any significant gains in Donbas, and they will try now to go against Odessa, to seize the last Ukrainian port, and they attempt to landlock it. The flase flag attacks in Transnistria are probably also a sign of Odessa offensive in preparation. And I have found a small but very good channel by an Ukrainian guy, who is also posting their non-successes. I think it is the best channel regarding the fights, I've found so far, without noticeable propaganda from both sides. Also a little bit about grand mobilization, if it would theoretically happened.

Yes mobilization takes months, but nothing will prevent Putin to announce it, as a part of the "glorious fight against the nazis in Europe". It would be probably just for propaganda reasons. Especially if it is true, that during the last week of April, Ukraine destroyed 50% of Russian military vehicles theoretically needed to render Russian invasion incapable of further attacks. That is a statement of one of our security experts, not mine. But unfortunately, I am not able to find the link to the article atm.

From what I have heard/read from some security experts here, denying it to the latest time possible was their tactics, and they were slowly preparing for the attack around Kyiv and Donbas. But as I said above, they underestimated the possibility of the invasion through Crimea.

My education in warfare politics is as good as monty's but I allow my guess to be written here, so you can then point and laugh at me how wrong I was So I think on may 9th, Putin's Victory condition would be Annexation of Kherson Oblast, and probably Donbas as well, and as soon as these areas will be the Russian land now, he will be scarmongering even more with their nuclear doctrine, trying to bully countries into stopping the military help to Ukraine. And grand mobilization might be the part of this strategy as well. The biggest strategic mistake of Ukraine, was not having any military presence at the "border" with Crimea, which is natural bottleneck. Few missiles and artillery shells that way would probably save a lot of southern Ukraine from occupation

Support in the Eastern Europe for EU is really strong, because we see EU as a collective of countries who helped us with raising our living standards and have taken us away from the old USSR sphere. If Slovakia would not be part of EU, we would be now politically and wealthiness probably on par with Ukraine, Moldova or Belarus... And all people who have more than basic education, knows that. So pre-war even a lot of people who were looking up to Russia very favourably, still wanted to be part of the EU. Support for Putin here was above 60% pre-war, now his support is down to 22%. And the support for EU and NATO have dramatically risen.

Not yet, i am waiting on the ISW report tonight. They mentioned it yesterday, but were unable to confirm it by independent sources.

Sorry, you are wrong, if they would have no issue with EU, they would not pay their hybrid armies and Trojan horses to weaken the democracy in European countries. And no it is not only exclusive to Eastern Europe and to NATO countries. There was a big scandal about Austrian Neonazis getting funded by Russia few years ago. I bet, same could be said with LePen and Salvini, if someone would bother to completely track the funding of their countries. And Brexit is another thing, where Russian trolls were to active, and after the referendum ended the way it ended, there was a big "party" in Kremlin. As I said. The issue is not the EU itself, but the democracy in EU, and the fear of the Arab Spring/Orange and Maidan Revolutions/Belarus and Kazakh uprising to destroy his unlimited power. A quote from one of the kanisatha's articles sums it pretty much. And not only for Ukraine in 2004 and 2014, but for Belarus in 2020 and Kazakhstan in 2021... "It is more likely that the primary cause of the 2011-12 "turnaround" was, in fact, fear of a democratic upsurge in Russia itself, at a time when a similar push was taking place in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. It was Putin's fear of "color revolutions" – a fear that had begun with Ukraine's "Orange Revolution" of 2004—that pushed him towards reinforcing both his authoritarianism and his opposition to the West. Secondly, and decisively, he saw that the "repolarization" he was seeking internationally earnt his country additional prestige—without provoking a reaction from America." And that is the main reason, why he is funding populists and neonazis around Europe. He hopes to help the raise of authoritarian/nationalist political parties to power, so they would start getting at each throats, and slowly undermining the existence of EU, and retake back the influence which Moscow had in Soviet Era. And this way, he would be enjoying his time until 2036, where his current Russian constitution ends his career as a "Czar" of Russia...

They might be probably still learning how to use it properly.