Sabotage groups working the night shift sounds very possible. From what I've read, the Russians defending this area has mostly been poorly equiped concripts so the availability of night time optics are probably very limited.
Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkm08rv5m0o
30 km into Russia according to BBC reports of Russian statements.
How far in do they need to go to be considered successful?
30 km into Russia according to BBC reports of Russian statements.
How far in do they need to go to be considered successful?
Far enough to get Putin.
I wonder how far they can go before having to worry about being able to retreat without getting cut off.
Some rough details on Ukrainian casualties but the soldiers seem happy with the Kursk operation so far.
I don't think they will be able to go much further then this, they haven't made any significant progress in the last couple of days. Russian reinforcements has been arriving this weekend and will continue to to do so in the coming days. Lines will probably freeze where they are now until Russia has a large enough force in place to start a counter offensive.
How desperate is Russia right now?
Well...
There's no danger here apparently. They are just burning some tyres in one of the cooling towers as some kind of visual threat, because... feck knows, they got nothing else?
Well...
There's no danger here apparently. They are just burning some tyres in one of the cooling towers as some kind of visual threat, because... feck knows, they got nothing else?
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Allegedly they set a pile of tires on fire. Intimidation tactic, perhaps?
Just to be clear, thats one of the cooling towers not one of the nuclear reactors. A quick check on google maps says that the closest reactor is 1.5km away from the cooling towers.
The beauty if it is they'll see and track reinforcements moving from the south all the way and be ready for them. At least one convey coming from Donetsk has already been targeted on route.
3.6 Roentgen...
Their success won't be assessed in kms. If we assume that they did it to ease the pressure on Kharkiv, they are yet to succeed. If they have another ideas... basically, who knows. But they're clearly not in it to simply go in as far as they can — frankly, if they're to get out without much losses it already would be a successful operation, I'd say.
That necessarily depends on what the aims of the operation are. Right now nobody seems clear on what military purpose this is meant to serve. As of Friday afternoon's briefings both the Pentagon (General Pat Ryder) and the State Department (Matt Miller) said they were still reaching out to Ukraine to learn more about the aims of the operation. Syrsky will presumably have a plan beyond the "morale-boosting humiliation of Putin" (CNN) P/R angle, but I can't believe for 1 minute it's the speculation so far offered (easing the pressure on Donbas or occupying Kursk NPP as a bargaining chip), because neither is realistic. I'm actually quite fascinated to see how this plays out, and to hopefully one day find out what the strategic aims were.
Transferring any portion of the war from Ukrainian to Russian territory is positive. What's the reaction like in wider Russia? Outside of Kursk Oblast, anyone give a shit their country is being invaded?
I haven't discussed it much outside of my own bubble. It feels to me that the general population is mostly ignoring it, at least in Moscow the recent terror attack at the Crocus City Hall had caused way more panic. Just like it ignores the semi-regular shelling of some near-border towns like Shebekino*. I know that the general perception by those living in the regions that border Ukraine is that the rest of the country completely forgot about them and doesn't care about their struggles.
* just to reiterate although my position on the matter should be quite obvious by now. I don't particularly like Ukraine shelling Russian towns and villages near the border that, sadly, happens, leading to civilian deaths (on an incomparable scale to civilian deaths by Russian attacks in Ukraine, but still). But it wouldn't have happened if not for Russia invading Ukraine so as a Russian I can't be a moral judge for that.
They are successful already imo.
Good thread on the domestic pandemonium the Kursk operation is generating.
Now that there's almost a week after Russia became the first country that is invaded while owning nukes, it's possible that the nukes fearmongering ends in the short term? Or is it still too soon to tell?
How far is the nearest nuclear plant. They should capture it.
Gerasimov being sacked has barely made the news yet and already rumours his replacement hasn’t lasted 2 days.
Where did you read Gerasimov was sacked?
It's been a week, way too soon to tell.
“Barely made the news” is an understatement for something that hasn’t happened.
Have any innocent people been killed since Ukraine seem to be attacking towns and not necessarily military targets?
In a conventional war, towns are military targets. Not in the sense that you try to kill people in them (hopefully), but in the sense that you occupy them.
Any way to read that past the first message if one doesn't have an account?
Almost impossible for that to not have happened. Weapons, and especially people operating them, don't have perfect accuracy. Mortar and artillery rounds go wide, bullets fly past the target they were aimed at. Russian defenders might hole up near civillians. Civillians get mistaken for combatants accidentially, soldiers might understandably have itchy trigger fingers when advancing into enemy positions. And as with any group of people large enough who have gone through what those soldiers have gone through, you might have some of them feeling vindictive. There will have almost certainly been civillian casualties on the Russian side.
The Ukrainian opsec in this entire operation was admirable to me. They managed to plan this, concentrated the forces, started briefing people and then got the operation started and nobody outside of it seemed any wiser to it before it was well underway. Regardless of the outcome of the operation, how they did this is outstanding.
12 people were killed according to the governor of Kursk oblast'. Generally I'd be wary of believing anything that the Russian officials are saying but 1. it's hard to imagine no civilian deaths during such operation 2. this should be easily disprovable if it's a lie (it's not military losses that are classified) and I haven't seen anyone disproving it yet.
It's not first civilian deaths on the Russian side, people who live near the border are sometimes getting killed by both Ukrainian and (misfired) Russian rockets and bombs, so it's not something new. And yeah, it's hard not to look at it from a cynical Vardy-esque (chat shit get banged) viewpoint, especially after displaced people recorded a video message for Putin, saying something along the lines: "we've supported the special military operation from its very beginning, why did the war came to our homes?". But I try.
Oh my bad then. I’ve heard it confidently mentioned by a few different people so didn’t stop to check the source. He was supposedly replaced by the head of the FSB?
Ukrainians seems to be having lots of fun in the information space right now, so perhaps it’s from them.
An untold number of innocent people, in the hundreds of thousands, have been killed in this war. Ukraine will possibly be responsible for a dozen or so of them.
Does Russia still call it Special Operation?
Don't forget the 13 people in Donetsk Oblast that have been killed by Ukraine shelling from 2014-2022, which was the DPR's justification for siding with Russia
Sadly, it looks like one needs an account to view the thread.
Seems mildly newsworthy