🧵 Here's a video of a Russian soldier who was mobilized recently. He was sent to the "1st tank regiment" (probably 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division) and says they will be sent to Kherson in 2 days without any basic training. I found his VK and reached out to him.
Here's full translation of his address. 1/2: "Hi everyone, the first tank regiment is here. We were officially told that there would be no training before we will be sent to the war zone. The regiment’s commanders confirmed this. On September 29 we’re will be sent to Kherson".
Translation, 2/2: "Think for yourself, decide for yourself what to do with it in the future. There was no shooting training, no theoretical training, nothing".
I found Vkontakte account of this man. Yesterday he posted a photo of himself in the barracks.
Answering a comment which said "how unexpectedly!" he describes how he ended up there: "Yes, I didn't expect it too. Was sleeping after the night shift. They woke me up and gave me a subpoena [to show up in the Military reg. office]
The guy was living and working in Moscow. He doesn't seem to be anti-Western or "patriotic". He even reposted this meme which says "Patriotism is a good explainer why should we live worse than others".
I asked him if he can elaborate on his complaints. He answered "Can't talk now, things have changed drastically, hopefully for the better".
I'm pretty sure the video was indeed filmed in Kalininets, Moscow region, which hosts 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division (big boards design, buildings coloring) 55.547195, 36.967826 +/- 80 m
This division struggled a heavy defeat in Izum during UA counter offensive. It's soldiers asked their commanders to let them quit fighting even before Russia retreated from the area.
My geolocation matches the public info: it's a parade ground of the unit 23626, the 1st tank regiment. Back in may @agents_media reported conscripts were sent to Ukraine from there and upon return they didn't get their combat payments. agents.media/obmanuli/
Barracks photo from his VK matches the photo of barracks of this unit posted earlier on VK. (By yet another newly mobilized Muscovite, 39 years old)
"It's our turn now to recall our youth", the man who also posts from there says. He even publishes a photo of his subpoena whish asked him to shop up On Sep. 29th. This enthusiast did it even earlier.
("Which asked him to show up", sorry for the typos)
Ukrainian TG channels publish a video with Russian POW, who says he's from the same unit, 23626 (t.me/Tsaplienko/167…). There's one more video with him. He says he was mobilized on Sep. 21st. Unfortunately, I was not yet able to confirm his identity/authenticity of the video.
More photos of mobilized men, taken at the same location in Kalininets, where the 2nd Guards Taman Motor Rifle Division is hosted. "We sleep on the floor for the 3rd day in a row. No training, nothing. We were told that we depart to Donetsk in 3 days" (yaplakal.com/forum2/topic25…)
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
What is really weird about this strike is the absence of any traces of dormitories in the destroyed buildings, while there are hundreds of photos of students in classrooms. There are two dorms nearby, and I assume they may have been damaged, but they were not shown in any videos.
2/ Probably shot down by this one (@planet image from May 16th) 56.027930, 37.137290 Link to my Moscow AD map: google.com/maps/d/edit?mi…
@planet 3/ Another location where a drone, according to the Moscow Oblast governor (t.me/vorobiev_live/…), hit a private house is Pogorelki, in the Mytishchi district. There’s a Tor-2M on a tower less than 1.4 km from it (built and discovered back in 2023). x.com/kromark/status…
1/3 When we found out back in September '25 that 'Rubicon' is based in Patriot Park (rferl.org/a/russia-drone…), I thought location might be a stunt to impress Belousov or something. Now, with this new GRU sabotage unit – 'Centre 795' – also based there, everything falls into place x.com/michaeldweiss/…
2/3 'Centre 795' is a rival structure to GRU Andrey Averyanov’s team, whose headquarters, as we recently found, are likely based in Moscow on the premises of a secret military institute.
3/3 So, we have two rival GRU structures whose duties somehow overlap, with both headquarters discovered by us with the help of open sources (and a little bit of HUMINT)🫡
🕵️Call us the 'Headquarters Hunters': together with @pustota, we found the 'mail center' of the GRU 'Africa Corps.' You will – and will not – be surprised where we found it. Full thread below 🔽
It all started when Georgy Kochkin, a 21-year-old defector from the 'Africa Corps', approached us. This guy wanted to be an IT specialist in Africa and needed money badly, so he just clicked on an ad on one of the job websites.
In October 2025, he signed a contract with the Russian MoD. There was nothing about Africa in it, of course, but he was promised a proper job fitting his expertise – information security.
1/5 An important P.S. to my Valdai thread. This clearly demonstrates that any piece agreements with Putin’s Russia don’t cost the paper they're written on. One day he will simply fabricate a pretext to breach any agreement without hesitation, regardless how absurd it will look.
2/5 The '91 drones targeting Putin’s residence' stunt was a way to pressure Ukraine (I really hope – and want to believe – this was not coordinated between the U.S. and Russia). Not a big deal by itself, but a reminder that Russian false-flag ops or psyops like this are common.
3/5 With a peace agreement, you can buy a year or less of breathing space. In 1938–1939, it was barely several months for Czechoslovakia – time that Britain bought through Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
A @Planet satellite image of Novorossiysk taken today shows the aftermath of the Ukrainian underwater drone attack on a Russian Kilo-class submarine. Still hard to conduct a precise BDA, but at least we can see that the explosion occurred approximately 20 m from the vessel.
A still, high-resolution @Planet satellite image of the port of Novorossiysk showing damage from a Ukrainian submersible drone, taken today, Dec. 16, at 8:18 a.m. local time.
@planet Interestingly, back in 2021, Russia used this exact pier to place specially trained dolphins, which were later moved to Sevastopol. Good for them! (Although these dolphins are trained specifically to prevent attacks like the ones carried out by Ukraine.)