Seems there’s a run of just darn bad luck for those fellers, especially the rich, powerful and politically connected. It’s like gravity keeps reaching up and grabbin’ ’em.
The Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) university announced the death of Anatoly Gerashchenko, 72, saying he died “as a result of an accident.”
An unnamed source told Russian newspaper Izvestia that he died on the university’s grounds, by falling “from a great height” down several flights of stairs.
I don’t blame military-age Russians wanting to get the hell out of Dodge before they get snatched up and sent into the meatgrinder. Of course, the better solution long-term would be for all these fleeing Russians to be turned around and aimed at the Kremlin.
Putin announces a draft of 300,000 or so Russians with prior military service:
So this is what a tyrant looks like when he’s losing. He’s apparently trying to scare the Russian people by telling them that *they* are being threatened with nukes. That ranks up there with “the wage gap,” “hands up don’t shoot” and “Russia collusion” in the grand scheme of blatant political lies.
It *seems* that Russia has pulled a fair amount of the air defense missile systems from St. Petersburg to transfer them to Ukraine. But wait! Wasn’t the whole point of the war that Ukraine joining NATO was a major threat to Russia? If so… St. Petersburg is not only real close to NATO member Estonia, it’s real close to *Finland,* which, thanks to the war, is now joining NATO. So… shouldn’t the Russians be kinda worried about an immanent attack on their second most important city from eeeeeeviiiiil forces of NATO?
👀 an analysis of satellite images shows that Russia has been emptying air defence batteries around Saint Petersburg to source missiles to Ukraine
Satellite images reveal that both mobile firing platforms and missiles disappeared during the summer from a base in the Zelenogorsk (Terijoki) area on the Karelian Isthmus, northwest of St Petersburg, among others.
The transfer of equipment has not previously been publicly reported in Russia or western countries.
St Petersburg—Russia’s second-most important city—has long been surrounded by a protective ring of 14 anti-aircraft missile bases. Now several of them stand empty.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a brief bit of manufactured outrage over Ukraine releasing some prisoners, giving them weapons and pointing them at the Russians. Granted, people in prison are generally there for a good reason; these are generally the kind of people you not only don’t want out wandering around, you *certainly* don’t want to stick a gun into their hands. But at the time, Ukraine was under threat of being erased from existence. Many talking heads in Russia had made it abundantly clear – as if the invasion hadn’t – that a cultural genocide of Ukraine was in the offing. In such circumstances, you do what ya gotta do. If that means recruiting prisoners… well, that’s not exactly a brand new and unique innovation in the history of warfare.
But the “48 hours, two weeks tops” invasion has turned into a spectacular ᛋᚻᛁᛏshow for the Russians… and now *they* are recruiting prisoners. Not to defend Russia, of course, but to drop them into Ukraine to carry out some war crimes. A video was rather bizarrely released showing a spokesweasel for the Wagner Group private army recruiting criminals at one of Russias many, many prisons. The video didn’t say *which* prison. but this… this is 2022. Took a feller less than a day to figure out just what prison it was. I don’t know if there is really any tactical, strategic, legal or diplomatic value in knowing that… but the ability to figure this sort of thing out this fast is part of the reason why Russia has done so poorly. The Ukrainians – and allied intelligence services – have been merrily intercepting phone calls and tweets and whatnot from Russian saps at the front, and the data has been used to send said sap a care package by way of missile or drone.
Here’s the original recruitment video:
Gotta wonder how this video would play back in the Motherland. Would it help get across the idea that the Special Military Blyatskrieg ain’t doin’ so great?
IZIUM/1330 UTC 13 SEP/ UK Intel discloses that the prestigious Russian 1st Guards’ Tank Army has been destroyed. This top-teir force is the largest single unit lost by Russia since World War II. Information is evolving, but captured RU troops may number in 10s of thousands. pic.twitter.com/QhXUgCHtzr
Let’s say that the war somehow comes to a non-apocalyptic end, with Russia driven from Ukraine and tens of thousands of POWs left behind in Ukrainian custody. Ukraine needs a *lot* of work to rebuild; presumably those POWs would come in handy for that. I wonder about the legality of using them effectively as slave labor in construction camps. Or about “ransoming” them… put them to work, catalog and document who they are, and send bills to not just the Russian government but the *families* of the POWs. “You can have Ivan back for ten million American dollars. He gets to turn big rocks into little ones, until either his ransom is paid or the rebuilding of Ukraine is complete, whichever comes first.” With higher dollar amounts based on, say, rank. I wonder if GoFundMe would work with that…
Entertaining as always, but with a healthy dose of WTFery when he discusses the condition of the Moskva prior to being attacked. It’s… kinda astonishing. A ship that on paper was damned impressive, capable of dishing out heaps of violence, and able to defend itself from heaps of violence, turned out to be almost wholly inoperable. With an unforeseen diversion into the One True Cross, because apparently a chunk of it was on the Moskva. Whoopsie.
“IF” being an important word there. This could be true; it could be false. If it’s false, it could be:
1) Western intelligence disinformation (not clear what the point of that would be)
2) Western intelligence misunderstanding/mistake (believable if it’s the same nitwits who plunged the world into the Biden Recession thanks to RussiaGate)
3) It’s actually Chinese weaponry, but filtered through North Korea because… reasons.
Buying North Korean weapons is a violation of UN Security Council Resolutions on North Korea. I suspect Putin doesn’t care. I guess I’d more or less trust Nork artillery shells to generally work, but I’d be leery of any missiles. Of coourse, it would be the height of jocular hijinks to sneak into the Nork shipments and tinker with the artillery shells so that every now and then they detonate immediately. A reasonable chuckle will be had by all!
