This little video is truly incredible. I recommend everybody watch it several times, to let it sink in. It says so much about why Russia is losing this war. A short thread.
It shows a Ukrainian drone dropping a small grenade on a group of 11 Russian soldiers huddled sleeping in a (weakly) defensive dug-out pit, on the front line east of Bakhmut. What's amazing to watch is how sluggishly - if at all - the men react.
One man starts to get on his legs, but he merely shoves his way through other groggy men a few feet further from where the grenade hit and settles back to sleep. No one tries to change their overall situation before the next grenade hits. Three of the men don't move at all.
These men are suffering from moderate to severe hypothermia, when the body stops shivering and the mind goes into a stupor or even shuts down. They were probably laying huddled all night without proper clothing or bags. Night temperatures have been in the mid-high 30s F / 0-4 C
They're surely also sleep deprived. But above all, they're hopeless men in a hopeless situation. Whether convicts roped into a paramilitary force or recent conscripts to the regular army, these men have given complete control of their fates to people who treat them like garbage.
They have presumably been ordered to hold their position, and threatened with punishment or even execution if they fail. Yet they haven't been given the goods or training to stay warm.
Their situation can't be compared to the Soviet "cannon fodder" who charged at the Nazis, hopelessly for themselves but realistically making some small contribution to victory.
Today's Russian soldiers die like blind worms in a pit out of their commanders' sheer incompetence and their own failure to take responsibility for their own fates, achieving absolutely nothing.
And it's going to get a lot colder.
PS To the many people who are adding or substituting alcohol and/or lack of food to the causes: sure those are possible, even likely, but this much sluggishness or inaction among so many men has got to be hypothermia. Above all I'd rank despair.
Here's a thesis to make Russian hypernationalist veins burst.
In the coming offensive, Ukraine will both outgun and outman Russia.
One reason Ukraine has already turned the war’s tide is that after months of defensive fighting for attrition, Russia's manpower advantage is gone.
Among all the arguing over Russian casualty numbers, a couple figures in the news went little noticed.
On May 2, Gen. Milley estimated Russia's current troop strength in Ukraine at "around 200,000". foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/how-t…
That's about the same size of force Russia started with. In other words, all the manpower added by mobilization, and by all other kinds of recruiting - volunteers, prisoners, forced conscription in occupied regions - has been countered by casualties, desertion and surrender.
THE TWITTER FILES NOTHING BURGER :
How a dumbass far-right billionaire and a crappy former Moscow Exile reporter stumbled over themselves trying to invent a story that Twitter suppressed a big 2020 election scandal. 🧵
Tonight Elon Musk, the tech mogul who bought Twitter to welcome back neo-Nazis, and Matt Taibbi, the gonzo denouncer of "blood-sucking" bankers, published their joint project THE TWITTER FILES, which purports to expose a Democrat conspiracy to suppress a 2020 election scandal. /2
The story tries to make it look like Democrats inside and outside Twitter conspired to heavy-handedly suppress an important scandal just before the 2020 election, when the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop were leaked to the media. Only, they ended up proving the opposite. /3
It was a good verdict today. But one point should be clarified. Aside from his superiors in Moscow, the person most responsible for shooting down MH17 was this guy: GRU officer Sergei Dubinsky, who also went by the call sign "Khmury" and the pseudonym Sergei Petrovsky. 1/x
The media has focused more on FSB officer Igor Girkin, who according to the verdict was Dubinsky's "superior" and so the highest-ranking person involved. But this conclusion stems entirely from Girkin's formal title as "defense minister" of the "Donetsk People's Republic." 2/x
The (Google-translated) verdict says: "At the operational level, Girkin was the highest military leader of the DPR and was therefore (finally) responsible for the deployment of military resources in and for the DPR." 2/x courtmh17.com/nieuws/2022/ui…
Putin's declaration of martial law in parts of Ukraine was meaningless, but he did something else today more important and telling. He introduced a kind of martial law across Russia, in what looks like an effort to preempt the possibility of revolt. Here's the details:🧵
1/13
Most of Russia, except the pink and yellow regions of this map, was ordered under a state of "basic readiness". In these areas regional governors are authorized to: 1) Strenghen the protection of public order and ensure public safety.
2/13
2) Strengthen protection of military, important state and special facilities, and facilities that ensure vital activities. 3) Strengthen operation of transport, communications and energy facilities and facilities that pose risks to life, health and environment.
3/13
Why is Russia starting to admit it can't hold Kherson and the rest of the area it still occupies northwest of the Dnipro? The change might owe as much to the recent destruction of the bridge in Crimea as it does to the threat of another Ukrainian offensive in the area.🧵
With the bridge over the Kerch Strait indefinitely unusable for trucks and trains, Russia's supply lines to southern Ukraine have been severely constricted. For supply by rail Russia now controls only one crucial line into south Ukraine.
This rail line runs for more than 200km from just SE of Donetsk to Novobohdanivka, north of Melitopol. Ukraine has already used precision weapons to strike the rail line at Tokmak, where it is about 25km behind the front. In the area SE of Donetsk the line comes much closer.
With Russians now thought to be belatedly attempting to retreat from the Lyman area, let's review how rapidly their position has deteriorated since I first posted on Ukraine's latest major offensive and look at what if any avenues for escape might still be open. 🧵
This Sep. 29 Russian map (t.me/rybar/39542) is about right, if one reads the striped area meant to be contested land as mostly Ukraine-controlled. In a nutshell, two Ukrainian forces broke through Russian lines north and east of Lyman, and by today they had nearly met.
The offensive went straight for the area's supply arteries: two roads from the north and one from the east (rail supply was cut earlier). By 9-27 the road from the north via Nove (map: Новое) was taken. Today the other road from the north via Nevske (map: Невское) was cut.