Thread: 5 August 2022: Day 163 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
Latest @DefenceHQ update focuses on with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant #Russia occupies. Moscow seem to be using the plant to rest troops, since it has protected status and #Ukraine won't attack it. Are using adjacent regions to shell the western bank of the Dnipro River.
Seems #Ukraine's HIMARS have been in action in Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson Oblast, destroying an ammunition depot.
The #Biden administration showing the same instinct for appeasement with #China as it has with #Russia, more fearful of "escalation" than letting these states proceed with aggression.
#Russia set up a colonial office to run #Ukraine as an "outpost state", creating cadres of administrators, doctors, teachers, policemen, etc. for occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Confirms annexation is planned, and local collaborators are relatively few. ridl.io/outpost-state/
#pt: Russia has mostly run annexed Crimea through locals, but in Donbas its agents are mostly what @RiddleRussia bluntly notes are "freaks with no managerial experience" - extremists and criminals whose lawless regime is not trusted to administer the reconstruction money.
#pt: @RiddleRussia argues the administrative class #Russia is sending to occupied #Ukraine differs from the #Soviet period, will cycle regularly, not allowed to "go local": useful for minor instability—they will obey the Centre—but no legitimacy to face down more serious unrest.
#China has a window to take #Taiwan in the later 2020s—at peak power, as the #US military dips, before Chinese demography/other weaknesses kick-in. It will involve an immediate, direct clash of nuclear powers. Biden can't treat this as a "pacing challenge" wsj.com/articles/the-c…
#pt: "The Pentagon can turn the Taiwan Strait into a deathtrap for [#China's] attacking forces ... positioning hordes of missile launchers, armed drones, electronic jammers and sensors at sea and on allied territory near the strait ... in essence, a high-tech minefield".
#pt: China last fought a major war in 1979, "it hasn't tested its modern command-and-control processes under fire." Developing cyber capabilities etc. can "inject confusion into military communications networks", make Peking "wonder how glitchy their forces will be in combat."
#pt: "Credibly promis[ing] to turn a fight over #Taiwan into a showdown between #China and the world's most advanced democracies" is the best way to deter it: increased #US presence, bring #Japan in, #Australia's Navy to blockade imports, #Britain and #France deploy submarines.
The head of operations for the #Ukraine desk at @amnesty International has resigned in protest at the report issued by the organisation, over her objections, that condemns the Ukrainians for defending themselves against #Russia's urban assaults.
The terrible video on 28 July of a #Ukrainian POW being castrated by a #Russian soldier has been geolocated by @bellingcat to Pryvillya in the Luhansk Oblast. The perpetrators were from "Akhmat", a Chechen paramilitary unit. bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/0…
Not that it is any consolation to #Ukraine, given the assistance Amnesty International has provided #Russia in its effort to eradicate their country, but just as the Russians' real target with the invasion is the #US-led West, so it is with Amnesty.
#Russia's state media underlining once again that (a) the attempt is to eradicate #Ukraine; and (b) the reasoning is targeted at the #US/#NATO, who are supposedly behind turning Ukraine into an "anti-Russia".
A helpful brief thread on where Amnesty International went wrong in its criticisms of #Ukraine, even from within the perspective of expansive "international law".
#Biden will announce, perhaps on Aug. 8, another $1 billion aid package for #Ukraine. If signed in its current form, will "include munitions for HIMARS, NASAMS surface-to-air missile system ammunition, and as many as 50 M113 armored medical transports." reuters.com/world/europe/e…
#pt: A factual mistake in the @Reuters piece, referring to "pro-Moscow separatists [who] seized territory" in the Donbas in 2014. It was a #Russian invasion and the entire leadership structure of the "rebels" consisted of Russian intelligence agents, indeed many actual officers.
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There has been some surprise about Amnesty International's report attacking #Ukraine for defending itself against #Russia, but, under the banner of "human rights", the group has been a hard-Left, anti-American/Western activist organisation for quite some time. A short 🧵
#Israel and her supporters have been, entirely fairly, most prominent in saying "we told you so" about Amnesty International. When AI jumped on the "apartheid" slander earlier this year, they were quite clear it was because it was popular with the far-Left
In calling #Israel an "apartheid" and racist state, making tendentious if inexplicit comparisons with the Nazis, Amnesty International was channelling the #Soviet active measures campaign from the 1970s, one of its most successful such operations.
Thread: 4 August 2022: Day 162 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
Latest @DefenceHQ update: #Ukraine's missiles/artillery continues to target #Russia's military personnel clusters, supply bases, and ammunition depots, straining RU combat logistics. First Ukrainian ship at the Bosphorus. RU using pyramidal radar reflectors to try to avoid HIMARS
Putin speech on 3 August declared "liberal-globalist American egocentrism" over and a "truly multipolar world" dawning, one not based on "self-serving rules" but on "international law, ... sovereignty of nations and civilisations, ... democracy, justice, and equality" (lol).
Thread: 3 August 2022: Day 161 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
Latest @DefenceHQ update: #Ukraine likely disabled the rail link between #Russian-occupied Kherson and Crimea; the Russians can repair it, but will remain vulnerable. Russia has begun using civilian ferries to cross the Dnipro after the destruction of the Antonovsky Bridge.
Instructive: #Germany’s former chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, goes to Moscow and meets #Russia's ruler Vladimir Putin, comes back insisting on the need for "peace", i.e. a ceasefire that freezes Russian gains in place and gives the Russian Army a break.
Thread: 31 July 2022: Day 158 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
Latest @DefenceHQ update focuses on the de facto annexation of #Belarus by #Russia: notes the missiles fired from Belarus at #Ukraine, the escalating repression, concludes: "likely indicate that [Lukashenko] has become almost wholly dependent on Russia."
#Russia's "Wagner" unit is encouraging illegal migration across from #Libya to #Italy. This causes immediate chaos for border authorities and then, when it leads to broader social tensions, the Russians will exploit those, too.
Thread: 30 July 2022: Day 157 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
Latest @DefenceHQ update: likely that #Ukraine has "repelled small scale Russian assaults" around Donetsk city. "Highly likely" that #Russia has "established two pontoon bridges in Kherson. Russia is tightening control in the occupied zones to prepare for annexation announcement.
Oleksiy Arestovych argues #Russia putting out the video of castrating #Ukrainian soldiers, something known about for a long time, is designed to provoke a reaction, allowing Moscow to argue its a two-sided barbarian war the West must stop with a ceasefire.
Thread: 29 July 2022: Day 156 of #Russia's invasion of #Ukraine
Latest @DefenceHQ update is on the "Wagner" unit, says its "new level of integration [with the #Russian Army in eastern #Ukraine] further undermines the Russian authorities' long-standing policy of denying links between PMCs and the Russian state". Which is British understatement
The #Biden administration continues denying #Ukraine weapons, in this case ATACMS surface-to-surface missiles, because of its deranged fear of #Russia "escalating", as if that is an actual Thing at this point.