Russia Attacks Ukraine - 23 Feb 2022 **Media Thread** NO DISCUSSION #4

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'He's becoming more and more emotional': Putin's former speechwriter decodes behavior​

 
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Ukrainians brace for blackouts, hard winter after Russia pummels power grid

Liubov Palii was sitting at her computer when the lights went off in her one-bedroom apartment after Russian strikes pummelled Ukraine's energy network.

EU countries at odds over how to tackle energy crisis

Croatia and Lithuania want a wholesale gas cap, Germany prefers other solutions, while Finland credits and Slovakia disagree on direct subsidies, the countries said on Tuesday as the European Union grapples with an energy crunch.
It is necessary to allocate 20 million euros for the purchase of a reserve energy supply for Ukraine, as a way to help respond to Russia's terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure. Germany will help to do it.
 
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OCT 24, 2022
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Russia has used thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles so far, each of which costs millions of dollars. This is unsustainable. It eventually needed to ration its precise, high-tech missiles, unable to keep domestic production up with use rate. To continue to pressure Ukraine from long range, Russia needed another solution.

The answer was found in masses of cheap Iranian "kamikaze drones," scores of which have attacked the country's power plants and residences over the past few weeks.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia ordered over 2,400 of these drones. ...

[...]

While Ukraine has air defense systems and is getting more from the West, it's not nearly enough to protect all critical infrastructure and cities across the entire country. Ukraine is massive, the largest wholly-European country by area.

Ukraine will need many more systems from its allies if it hopes to get through the winter with a significant part of its critical infrastructure intact. Many of these will, unfortunately, be expensive. Ukraine will also need to adjust its approach to air defense to be able to defeat the maximum number of Iranian weapons at the lowest possible cost.

[...]

Russia also sought to hide the source of these weapons — likely shipping in parts and doing final assembly in Russia. In keeping with its pretense, Russia has renamed the Shahed-136 to "Geran-2," the Russian word for Geranium. Its smaller brother, the Shahed-131, is dubbed the “Geran-1.”

Over the summer, dozens of Iranian flights could be tracked to Russia, possibly carrying military equipment.

[...]

Once the Shahed is detected, it's very easy to bring down. Since Russia started using them against Ukraine, they have been destroyed by everything from advanced anti-air missiles to assault rifle fire from infantry on the ground.

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According to Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate, Ukraine has shot down more than two-thirds of Shaheds launched by Russia.

The problem is, it spent a lot of expensive resources to do so. Many air defense systems cost over $1 million per missile. Even a man-portable Stinger costs more than one Shahed-136.

For a country that depends on foreign aid to defend its airspace, Ukraine can't really afford to keep using million-dollar missiles to kill $20,000 drones. Yet when one drone can damage a critical power plant, Ukraine also can't afford not to take them down.

Instead of bankrupting itself and running out of its missile stockpile, Russia can send swarms of cheap loitering munitions to run Ukraine's ammunition dry, making it more dependent on weapons from other countries, which Russia hopes have limited stamina for constant military aid.

[...]

Ukraine still needs options to combat loitering munitions, including direct-fire anti-aircraft guns, which are cheaper per shot and can effectively defend a fixed point from slow-moving targets.

Germany's recently-delivered Flakpanzer Gepard guns have already distinguished themselves by taking down Iranian drones over Ukraine. However, these guns' range is even more limited than the missiles'.

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Ukraine's HIMARS and Bayraktar TB2 attacks are feared by Russia for their deadly accuracy.

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"We need to rethink our way of approaching the defense sector," said Borsari. "We don't have enough stocks of ammunition."

"That's why it's important for Europeans to create some joint production of ammo that can benefit all countries and supply Ukraine for the long haul," he added. "This is easier said than done."
 
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OCT 27, 2022
The carnage left by Russian soldiers on the road to Kyiv wasn’t random. It was strategic brutality, perpetrated in areas that were under tight Russian control where military officers — including one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top generals accused of war crimes in Syria — were present, an investigation by The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” found.

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The man in charge of this front of the war was Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko, who earned a global reputation for brutality as leader of Russia’s forces in Syria.

“Those orders were written at Chaiko’s level. So he would have seen them and signed up for them,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at RUSI who shared the battle plans with the AP.

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While there is nothing necessarily illegal about that order, it was often implemented with flagrant disregard for the laws of war as Russian troops seized territories across Ukraine.

Witnesses and survivors in Bucha, as well as Ozera, Babyntsi and Zdvyzhivka — all places under Chaiko’s command — told the AP and “Frontline” that Russian soldiers tortured and killed people on the slightest suspicion they might be helping the Ukrainian military. Sweeps intensified after Russian positions were hit with precision, interviews and video show, and soldiers, in intercepted phone calls obtained by the AP, told their loved ones that they’d been ordered to take a no-mercy approach to suspected informants.

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Here are four takeaways from the investigation:

MOM, I AM KILLING CIVILIANS

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“We have the order: It does not matter whether they’re civilians or not. Kill everyone.”

The slightest movement of a curtain in a window — a possible sign of a spotter or a gunman — justified slamming an apartment block with lethal artillery. Ukrainians who confessed to passing along Russian troop coordinates were summarily executed, including teenagers, soldiers said.

“We have the order not to take prisoners of war but to shoot them all dead directly,” a soldier nicknamed Lyonya said in a March 14 phone call.

“There was a boy, 18 years old, taken prisoner. First, they shot through his leg with a machine gun, then he got his ears cut off. He admitted to everything and was shot dead,” Lyonya told his mom. “We do not take prisoners. Meaning, we don’t leave anyone alive.”

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IN CHARGE OF THE CARNAGE IN BUCHA

Ukrainian prosecutors say that a unit under Chaiko’s command — the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division — participated in a lethal cleansing operation on March 4 along Yablunska street, the deadliest road in occupied Bucha and the site of an important Russian command center.

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NOT THE WORK OF ROGUE SOLDIERS

Russians transformed the village of Zdvyzhivka, an hour north of Kyiv, into a major forward operating base for their assault on the capital. From March 20 to March 31, Chaiko commanded the assault on Kyiv from this village. He was spotted about a kilometer (less than a mile) down a tightly controlled road around the same time as five men were tortured and killed in the garden of a house frequented by Russian officers. The transport of tied-up civilians to that house happened more than once, in broad daylight, within the security structures set up by the occupying forces, eyewitnesses said.

KEEPING THE BOSS HAPPY

There’s no sign Chaiko disapproved of what his troops were doing. Russia’s Ministry of Defense released a video of the general pinning medals on soldiers in Ukraine. “All units, all divisions are acting the way they were taught,” he said in the March 24 video. “They are doing everything right. I am proud of them.”

There is also no sign Moscow has sanctioned Chaiko for the very public atrocities committed on his watch. Instead, Putin praised Chaiko for his actions in Syria, awarding him the title “Hero of Russia” in 2020 and promoting him to colonel general in June 2021.

[...]
 
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www.dailymail.co.uk

Russian MP who called for end to Ukraine war is in a coma after 'fall'

Anatoly Karpov, 71, who is known as a Putin loyalist but had voiced opposition to the war in Ukraine is in a coma at a hospital in Moscow after suffering 'serious' head injuries at the weekend.
www.dailymail.co.uk
www.dailymail.co.uk
 
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