There is evidence that the #attack on the #market in #Donetsk on Jan. 21, 2024 was a Russian false flag.
Time between sounds of rounds being fired and their impact indicates max distance of weapon of 4km. Front line shown in red: Weapon was fired in Russian-held territory.
Crater evidence indicates weapon used was a mortar. If it had been fired by UA forces, the mortar team would have had to have snuck 10 km into Russian-held territory, during daylight, fired, and then escaped back through the front line, without being captured.
This is unlikely.
Big problem with this occurred to me: Given that artillery or mortar shells travel at multiple times the speed of sound, if a shell lands nearby you're going to hear the impact explosion BEFORE, you hear the sound of the round being fired, if it's kms away. Not what video shows.
Crater from incoming shell that hit near the market - it looks very much like a mortar round crater. A 155mm shell would have dug a much bigger hole.
This looks more like a mortar attack than an artillery attack to me, going by the images of craters. Given their range, the weapons would still have had to have been fired inside Russian-held territory - the front line is too far away for them to have been fired from UA positions
Correction: Mortar shells don’t travel at supersonic speeds.
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The Black Swan we've all (in Ukraine) been waiting for might be the collapse of the Russian communal utilities heating system - unmodernized and under-repaired since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There's the potential for widespread social unrest here.
The Kremlin attacked Ukraine's utilities system last year, and this year, for the exact same reason - it hoped to cause social unrest in Ukraine, and popular resistance to the government.
But it's not just random chance that's causing such widespread failures of Russia's communal utilities systems - many of the workers that maintained them were mobilized (or tempted to sign up for military service for money) and have subsequently been killed in Ukraine.
Russia probably preparing another big attack on Ukraine soon:
IL-76 military transport plane seen landing at Seshcha airfield, Bryansk Oblast, likely carrying Shahed attack drones.
Tu-22M3 bombers redeployed 5,000 km, from from Belaya airfield, Irkutsk, to Shaykovka airfield.
Air alert just declared in Kyiv city an all eastern and central oblasts - threat of ballistic missile attack. Launcher activity likely spotted.
It's already been four days since the last big Russian attack, so we're entering the next attack window - for mass attack No.4 of Russia's current campaign.
I rarely make predictions, as the future is uncertain and the end is always near, but declarations that #Ukraine's #offensive has #culminated may be premature.
Ukrainian gains continue to be incremental, but the level of fighting has not significantly changed for months. 🧵
While gains on the ground certainly haven't matched declared goals, the counter-offensive can't really be considered to have culminated until there is a sharp drop-off in the fighting.
That hasn't yet been observed.
Indeed, Ukraine may have actually opened another front on the left (eastern) bank of the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast (see photo in OP). It is not impossible that the long-awaited "breakthrough" might come there.
Much of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet seems to be retreating from Sevastopol in Ukraine’s Crimea to Novorossiysk in Russia (which is still in range of Ukrainian sea drones, however.)
After the reopening of the grain corridor, this is another big win in Ukraine’s counter-offensive.
New video of the remains of the #Kakhovka dam, and more evidence it was not struck by Ukraine from above, but blown up by Russia, from below. Notice the spillway supports subsiding progressively further into the crater blown in the riverbed by the #Russian #demolition blast.
There was a maintenance passage through the base of the dam. This is where Russia would have placed the demolition charges, blowing up the dam from within. If Ukraine had attacked from above, with missiles or artillery, much of the blast force would've been lost. (Graphic by NYT)
It seems likely the Russians packed demolition charges in the passage in the middle of the spillway. As soon as they were detonated it made a crater in the riverbed. The spillway supports in the opening post are indicating where the edge of this crater is/was.