Russian journalist Alexander Kots, a war reporter with over 20 years of experience in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Donbass & Karabakh, streamed a Q&A session about the war yesterday; here's a thread with a summary of what he said:
- The Ukrainians have excellent artillery training & equipment
- The AFU emphasize small unit tactics; this slowed down the Russian advance in the beginning of the war
- The Russian offensive routes largely matched with those the Ukrainians trained for in NATO exercises
- The border regions were full of photo traps & other surveillance equipment that gave the Ukrainians a good idea of what was happening militarily
- Even a full liberation of the DPR & LPR won't secure Donetsk from Ukrainian shelling bc of long-range weapon systems
- The seemingly senseless shelling of Donetsk is explained by Ukrainian attempts to cause discontent among civilians in the sense that the Russian Armed Forces cannot protect them
- The capture of Lisichansk will mark the full liberation of the LPR
- "Small cauldron" tactics & the slow advances are deliberate, but not the tactics of choice; Russians are advancing at best with a 1:1 ratio and often against a numerically superior enemy
- Prisoner exchanges are still taking place, but not mass exchanges, 15 for 15, 30 for 30
- The Ukrainian army generally refuses to pick up their dead despite being offered ceasefires to do so
- The average level of experience in the AFU has dropped significantly since the start of the war, it's now 20% professionals and 80% conscripts
- Ukrainian infantry is of very low quality in terms of training & morale; their artillery & special forces are decent
- The Ukrainians generally don't accept close quarter combat and retreat instead, but they usually do so in an organized manner
- The volunteers from all over Russia who are trained in Gudermes (Chechnya) are doing quite well in the war
- This scale of combat is seen for the first time since WW2; Kots has never worked in a conflict of this intensity
- Russia is not at war with Ukraine, but with the entire NATO infrastructure: intelligence, satellites, communications, military equipment, counter-battery systems, electronic warfare systems
- "Bayraktars" are absolute crap, they're fish in a barrel for any decent anti-air
- The Ukrainians are having problems with some munitions, e.g. their Smerch & Uragan MLRS systems rarely fire in volleys nowadays, mostly single shots
- Ukrainian artillery is often the only thing slowing down Russian advances
- Securing Donbass won't automatically win the war
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The "blood and barbaric" terrorist attack has killed dozens of innocent, peaceful people
He expresses gratitude to ambulance crews, firefighters and rescuers who did everything to save people's lives; condolences to all those who have lost relatives and friends
March 24th will be a national day of mourning, additional anti-terrorist measures have been introduced in Moscow and other regions
After the dissolution of the USSR, the US seized the opportunity to re-educate and indoctrinate young and bright students from formerly hostile countries.
A lot of programs were established to "Spread democracy", "Teach post-soviet kids American values" etc
One of the most successful programs of this kind was FLEX. They literally decided to flex on their enemy's grave. Future Leaders Exchange entailed bringing 15–19 year-old students from the former Eastern Block over to the US to live with a host family and attend US high school
There were a lot of Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, and Georgian students competing for a spot. Attending a random American public school free of charge for a year seemed like a dream come true for utterly demoralized people from those countries in the 1990s
Going through this new WaPo article on Ukrainian terror attacks inside Russia. Interesting combination of bragging about how great the CIA is but also trying to create distance from what the SBU is actually doing. washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/…
The CIA are nice guys, unlike the SBU. Training, providing advanced surveillance equipment & intel, supplying explosives, sure! But to press the button... God forbid. “Local excesses”, as they said under Stalin. The world hegemon hides behind the bicolor rag again. How American.
The author knows little about the history of post-Soviet intelligence agencies; the FSB was basically built from scratch in the 90s (by the former head of the Ukrainian KGB, by the way), while the SBU basically is the UkrSSR's KGB.
We started RWA three years ago. Originally, it had nothing to do with any kind of war reporting or snarky political commentary. The purpose of RWA was to make Russian culture & history more accessible to an interested audience; in a way that wouldn't feel like walking through a museum or reading a NYT article. Our audience back then was small but active, and we produced some of our best episodes back when we only had 1% of our current follower count on Twitter. So, as discussed on our last stream, we decided to post some of our older content we'd like to highlight that you may have missed:
RUSSIAN VOLUNTEERS, PART I: Russians participating in foreign conflicts in the age of romantic nationalism: the Greek War of Independence, Garibaldi’s invasion, the Balkans, the War between the States. The history of Russian-Boer relations, and the common fight against perfidious Albion.
RUSSIAN VOLUNTEERS, PART III: White and Red Russians fighting for a common cause in Xinjiang. The Soviet-Tsarist LARP army in the Chinese Warlord Era. White and Red Russians fighting each other in Spain; what White émigrés thought about fighting for Franco.
Armenia doesn't want to be friends with Russia because it wants to be friends with Russia's enemies instead. Russia's enemies are coincidentally also allied to Armenia's mortal enemy. People in Artsakh will suffer greatly because of this & Armenia might cease to exist as a state
Meanwhile, the Armenian media establishment pushes a shameless “Russia has betrayed Armenia and is supporting Azerbaijan” narrative, while Azerbaijan, a borderline Western satrapy, allied to Turkey & Israel, is gearing up for war again, & Armenia isn't preparing at all...