[WonderMomma]

I wasn't sure where to post this.

"Each friendship reaches the inevitable moment of the "fireworks".

Featuring Friedrich Liеchtenstein"

[WonderMomma]

And this.

"A US military plane "painted a penis" in the sky near a Russian airbase, La Repubblica.

A KC-135 Stratotanker refueling plane remained for almost two hours east of Cyprus on Tuesday, in front of the Syrian base of Tartus, a stronghold of Moscow."

[Rfneimad]

[WonderMomma]

"I believe that Russians have selected this orange area as their long-term defense line, evicting civilians from their homes and use them for Russian occupational troops. That accomplish several aims.

The defense line is more tenable then the current one. All positions West of the Dnipro River are under constant pressure and Russia cannot sustain the supply lines over the rivers in that sector. Having the defense line on the Eastern bank simplifies the situation.

Besides the obvious that the river poses a natural barrier, when blowing up the dam at Nova Kakhovka the already big obstacle becomes an even more daunting obstacle. Russian troops could focus the defense along a smaller front line, making use of their weak but many troops.

Using house of evicted/deported people could partially solve their bad situation in terms of outdoor gear. Instead of faulty tents, barns or even pigsties, Russian troops have a solid roof, while distributing them makes it harder for Ukrainian artillery.

As governor Vitaly Kim pointed out, putting troops from all over Russia in this area are supposed to be an incentive in terms of "fighting for your home". The plan is move those invaders there, permanently, which delivers them better living conditions.

Overall the strategy follows the same pattern of all colonial forces: Removing the inhabitants by force or kill them. Replace the void with invaders and make them hold the frontline. All of that aspects are criteria of genocide. In Luhansk and Donetsk already happening.

Last but not least, the whole Russian strategy is to exhaust Ukraine and Western backers. Putin hopes that if he can hold the line long enough that appeasers in the West might take hold of the situation, looking for "peace".

That been said, Putin just repeats the mistake which he has been doing since February 24. Ukrainian forces will continue the fight until every inch of Ukraine is liberated. Kherson is only a milestone and Zaporizhzhia Oblast is already in the crosshairs.

Russia as a state is already severely decimated and desperately needs foreign support and an end of the sanctions. A lot of machinery in Russia is already failing to work thanks to lacking supplies and support and neither China nor India nor anyone else are going to replace that void."

[kellyhound]

info:

[Rfneimad]

https://www.facebook.com/stefan.korshakNovember 3 - Day 251 – Wagnerian scale, Fortress Kherson, Body counts
Hi FB!
The last 24 hours were relatively quiet overall, as evidenced by another prisoner exchange, 107 people either direction, video attached. Reportedly, four were Azov fighters from the Mariupol siege - a data point the RF state-run media is ignoring, my guess because according the the RF narrative Azov=Nazi, and it is hard to explain why Russia went to war to kill Nazis and then is sending them back home instead of killing them.
The fighting
- Kharkiv sector
Mostly static. The Russians launched limited pushes in this sector, as best as I can tell, with the goals of challenging the Ukrainians for initiative and filling in unoccupied villages in the gray zone. Multiple sources reported RF units advancing 2-3 km. In the vicinity of Novovodiane and Makiivka, and also Bilohorivka. in Kharkiv oblast. The attacks reportedly were infantry-heavy and, according to the Ukrainians, not so much as against the UAF front line as against the UAF’s forward cordon.The town Kupliansk - once an important RF logistics center, now the same thing for the Ukrainians - is still getting hit by RF artillery fire from time to time, volunteers report.
Donbass
As for the last couple of weeks the heaviest fighting was here, focused one way or another on Bakhmut, which remains under Ukrainian control.
The rah rah Russia sources reported the DPR unit Sparta “stormed a number of positions near Avdeevka, and other DPR units made limited progress near Opytne. Pavlivka changed hands at least twice over the past 48 hours but evidence seems pretty clear that the Ukrainians are holding it right now (See three images). Advances are being measured in the dozens of meters and in this sector, it is anything but quiet.
The Russians appear to be attacking here on a wider front in Donbass and, according to some sources, this sector is now under the overall comand of Evegeniy Progozhin and Wagner, which day-by-day seems to be taking more and more the leading role in Russian attacks, anywhere. Image attached of the commander, supposedly, of the Wagner groups helicopter squadron commander, Lieutenant Colonel Vyacheslav Zangiev, shot down and killed earlier this week. He was from Vladikavkaz, another center of Kremlin paramilitary recruiting among the local Ossetians, by the way.
There is some logic to support this from the RF organizational point of view, as Prigozhin has to be in Kremlin eyes at least as good a commander for associated local DPR and LPR militia fighting in this area, and, for the entire war fighting in the Donbass sector has been one of limited movement and far more bitter battles over entrenchment lines, and artillery duels. Arguably, this kind of static, bloody warfare is the kind of work the Russian army would much prefer performed by the very expendable troops Prigozhin seems to be commanding in this sector: mercenaries, felons, Chechen police, DPR and LPR “military”, and DPR and LPR conscripts. It’s a very good bet the Kremlin cares very little about casualties suffered in this sector. According to one account, Prigozhin’s sector runs Lysychansk to Pavlivka, more or less.
Unconfirmed reports are surfacing that within two contingents under Prigozhin’s definite command - mercenaries and released felons - draconian punishments are now being handed out for standard disciplinary cases like drinking on duty, operating an unsanctioned mobile phone, or refusal to attack. Frequently, the stories go, soldiers get a finger cut off and agree to it, because the alternative is execution. If these accounts are true, it would help explain how RF units in this sector have continued to try to attack entrenched UAF units and, it seems, to take serious casualties, run away, and then line up and try and do it again tomorrow.
The RF military blogger/journalist WarGonzo for instance said the attacks on Bakhmut are for all intents and purposes a daily shambles, because the ground is open for a good couple of km. Between RF and UAF positions, and the moment the RF troops step out from cover they get hammered by artillery, and manuever is next to imposible because of the soft ground. A post by Aleksandr Khodakovsky (commander of the Chechnya-based Vostok battalion) says attacks are mostly stopped due to weather and mud.
In Kherson Oblast
There were plenty of artillery exchanges but no ground movement reported. The Russians continued their overt and clumsily over-advertised “retreat” from the region, which really appears to be an attempt to make the entire right bank of the Dnipro a deadly hedgehog of hardened military defenses the Ukrainians will cut themselves to bits on, when they finally attack it. This strategy has been widely reported before, but the last 48 hours delivered even more indicators:
- On Oct. 28 the occupation authorities announced the evacuation of civilians was over, henceforth civlians are not allowed to travel back and forth from Kherson to and from the Dnipro left bank. This also applies to boats.
- Vladimir Saldo, Kherson occupation administration governor, said a 15-km belt of territory opposite Kherson, on the left bank, would likewise also be cleared of civlians “for their safety”
- Multiple reports from both sides confirmed the Russians were sinking all privately-owned boats in an around Kherson, and even went so far as to destroy half-built craft in the local marina. (Images)
- From the Ukrainian side, multiple reports of Russian forces destroying mobile phone towers on the right bank. This is clearly designed to deny the UAF intelligence from not just its own agents, but from RF troops stuck in the bridgehead.
- RF troops reportedly are dismantling solar energy fields on both sides of the river, according to some local social media, but opinions are split on whether this is a move to deny civilians access to warmth and electricity, or if it’s just looting. Other reports are saying the Russian occupation authorties are just robbing private operators of their property in order to create a military-controlled energy authority in occupied Kherson region. Image attached.
- According to widespread reports, RF troops both on the Kherson perimeter and in the bridgehead rear area have almost without exception taken over private homes, when necessary kicking out the owners, and when they’re not on duty they wear civilian clothes. The Arbatska Strelka
- The town Genichevsk, on the Black Sea, is now the formal location of the seat of the Kherson regional occupation administration and, further, beach hotels and residences on the adjacent Arbatska Spit, to the south, are filling up with RF soldiers and occupation officials. In other words, once again, the RF plan is not to administer Kherson city, but to make it a battleground.
- Kyryll Stremeusov, RF-designated head of Kherson city, came out with a video declaring that Moscow fully has Kherson’s best interests at heart, and no one was running away. As was widely pointed out by the Ukrainian blogosphere, the recording was from inside his own car, which was visibly stuff with personal effects. Video attached.
Naval War
We have closure on the Russia-Turkey stand off on the grain corridor out of Odessa. Turkey won, Vladimir Putin backed down. On Novermber 2 the Kremlin announced that, after review, it had decided not to quit the UN-brokered transit deal, which puts grain ships under a UN flag (sort of) and sends them through a demilitarized corridor, and both Russia and Ukraine at the time agreed to that. However, once Ukraine embarrassed the Russian navy by attacking it with a wave of remote-controlled seaborne suicide drones (which, apparently, used off-the-shelf-technology from JetSkis), the Kremlin said it was withdrawing from the deal and that the convoys should stop because “Russia can’t guarantee their security.”
Turkey on Nov 1 said, no problem, Russia can leave the agreement but the ships can still sail under Turkish flags and with security guaranteed by the Turkish navy.
The Kremlin narrative now is that Ukraine made new commitments “not to attack Russian warships” via the transit corridor, so Russian interests were protected. Ukraine the same day said that was a lie, that it had made no new commitments, and in fact the Russians were just trying to cover up the reality that the Turks had called their naval bluff.
In a late development, and I can only assume this is somehow under the terms of the grain to feed the world agreement, a tanker recently docked in Russia showed up off shore Odessa. Maybe to fill up fueling reservoirs? Image attached.
Mobilization and losses
It is worth noting that over the last week we have seen a serious spike in Russian personnel losses claimed by the UAF, running between 600-900 men killed daily, which is about double and maybe even triple the claimed casualty rates we saw the last time the front was relatively static for some time, back in early September. Some have questioned whether these numbers can be real. I can’t answer that, but, evidence is all over the place that the troops Russia is sending to the line are poorly-trained and poorly-motivated. Here are some data points:
- In Chuvash, according to social media, local commanders fearing a repeat of the scenario of mass murder at the Belgorod training ground (two Tajik conscripts at a firing range turned machine guns on fellow draftees) solved the blue-on-blue threat by sealing arms rooms, cancelling firing ranges, and deploying the Rosgvardia national riot police to the training base.
- In several videos (one attached) recruits are effectively out on the company square and mutinious because one-off payments promised them at the recruitment centers, are not being paid
- At a training base in Siberian Chita, recruits were run off the base and left to stand in the woods, because a government inspection team was visiting and the local bosses didn’t want recruits asking any difficult questions about training or equipment problems (attached)
- At a training base location unknown, and really not important, we can see a formed-up battalion being led in chants to be aggressive and to seek out the Ukrainians and kill them.
This is, if one is honest, a plausible mindset o try and instill in trained assault infantry, emphasis on trained. The problem is that if untrained infantry steps onto a battlefield with an attitude like that, against a competent and well-armed opponent, that kind of cheerleading is a recipe for massive losses. Look at that battalion, and then ask yourself, what’s going to happen the moment those guys get shoved into a field and get told to attack the UAF?
According to British Intelligence, meaning not the Ukrainians themselves, Russia is losing 40 armored vehicles a day in Ukraine. Under normal circumstances at least half and usually two-thirds of armored vehicles destroyed on either side are infantry carriers which, if loaded, carrying 6-12 soldiers and which, if hit by anything big and precision-guided, becomes a catastrophic loss. Add in the soldiers the Ukrainians are killing and wounding using drones and artillery, and multiply that by a 1,500-km. Front, and 500-1000 Russian soldiers killed a day becomes plausible, but far from proved. I just saw a report, unconfirmed, that the 155th Brigade of Naval Infantry (Pacific Fleet) lost more men in two days of fighting in Donbass, than it did during the entire Second Chechnya War. (Image)
But, if that’s what’s going on, then it would be on par with the overall Ukrainian strategy, which is to defeat the Russian army by gutting it through attrition. Maybe that’s what happening but, of course, it could be that the Ukrainian Army General Staff has started to make up kill numbers.
Finally, if you’ve read this far, it appears the American Air Force guys operating reconnaissance flights off shore of the Russian base Tartus, in Syria, demonstrated they have a sense of humor, albeit arguably somewhat immature, and flew a flight path tracing the cartoon outlines of a set of human male genitalia. Image attached.

[WhiskeyOutpost]

Well done rfneimad for finding that!

Yes, it appears the Russians are preparing to leave Kherson. All the writing is on the wall but we have yet to see their front line troops leave en masse. It's possible it's all a distraction, but given the amount of signs, I think it's likely but they may be preparing to to try and actually hold Kherson city itself. How they're going to do that with extremely questionable means to supply and reinforce those troops, I have no idea.

- Destroyed cell phone towers in Kherson oblast (deny ZSU/Partisan communication during attacks)

- Concrete pillboxes installed in Kherson city (for infantry) or possibly used as obstacles for Ukr vehicles

[Rfneimad]

[WonderMomma]

Great update Damien, thank you for that. ^

The following indicates the vessel has a "scheduled port visit" but won't Russia see this as potential provocation? Forgive me, I'm completely ignorant on this kind of stuff. lol

1. "US Navy carrier U.S.S. George H.M. Bush (CVN 77) has anchored in Split, Croatia.

Together with 101st US Airborne Division in Romania a decent amount of US fire power has positioned in Southeast Europe, ready to engage anything in Ukraine or the Black Sea."

2-5. FROM the ships own Twitter page:
"What a stunning view!# TeamJackpot has arrived in Split, # Croatia for a scheduled port visit. # TeamAvenger is ready to explore the beautiful country & further strengthen the partnership our countries share."

[WonderMomma]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyOutpost ↗

Concrete pillboxes installed in Kherson city (for infantry) or possibly used as obstacles for Ukr vehicles

Found one more photo related to your original.