Millions of us might be **** if we ignore the Russian-Ukraine war

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Updates.
St Petersburg Police say at least 5 dead now in the bus ditching.

Vovchansk has been hit, reportedly by a glide bomb.
Video of aftermath

Looks like they've taken out a chemists, a cafe, and another shop. Looks like some damage to the also militarily-vital newsagent's kiosk, and the foyer of the sports stadium.

[probes]

May 5th

[1DC]

In the Russian bus crash, the drivers wife says he worked 20 hours the day before and was then forced to work the morning shift the next day! He survived and was arrested.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

If he fell asleep and had a throttle failure, then that would explain the final path.
In any event, I think it shows a significant manpower shortage in Russia.

[probes]

He must have had something with the driving wheel, too, then? He wasn't exactly on his lane when coming from the left, and made a U-turn, almost? And neither the street pavement borders nor the other cars nor the bridge railing slowed it down? Not even when it was on its belly and just slipped into water? Even though it wasn't winter and icy or slippery.

Ukraine says it has repelled a Russian armoured attack in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, after Moscow's forces launched an incursion across the border and sought to break through defensive lines.
Kharkiv regional head Oleh Syniehubov said Russian reconnaissance groups had tried to penetrate the border, adding that "not a single metre has been lost".

Also on Friday, a huge fire broke out at an oil storage depot in Ukraine's occupied Luhansk region after what Russian-installed officials said was a Ukrainian strike.

(BBC)

and then -

One division of a Russian motorized rifle battalion refused to participate in the assault against Kharkiv Oblast, the partisan group Atesh reported on May 10.
A member of Atesh, who serves in a motorized rifle battalion of the 44th Army Corps of the Russian Armed Forces, said that one division in his unit outright refused to participate in the offensive against Kharkiv Oblast.
The Atesh member said that soldiers in his unit were wary of the high-quality fortifications had been build along the Russian-Ukrainian border. He also said the soldiers had witnessed Russian sabotage and reconnaissance operations in the region that were unsuccessful.
"In view of this, when ... the order was given, part of the unit refused to carry out the criminal will of the command," Atesh reported.

(Kyiv Independent)

[probes]

map etc here: Key oil depot hit in occupied Luhansk’s Rovenky

Otherwise - ruz is trying, but no remarkable success, even Avdiivka direction no real progress.

P.S as for the poor busdriver - a friend said if you pass out (fall asleep due to exhaustion or have a health issue, e.g. TIA), you most probably slump to the right, your body weight presses heavily on the accelerator and the driving wheel is dragged to the right. Which seems to make sense? (not in Britain, of course! )

[probes]

Another SU-25 down:

Ukrainian Forces Shot Down russian Su-25 Attack Aircraft on Avdiivka Front

[probes]

Macron has specified - French troops could be sent to UKR, if ruz makes a breakthrough and UKR asks for help.
It's not popular with putin.
ruz is taking villages to Kharkiv direction and media is over the moon with new headlines, but analysts say that's 'just' tactical. ruz losses are (daily) more than a thousand troops, and activity in other directions has decreased.
But it's not good news anyway, local people have to evacuate. At least now they know what ruz boots mean.

UKR has hit more oil facilities and the workers are getting less and less happy about their work environment. Considering the lack of employees everywhere...
As for doctors, the shortage is claimed to be 30 thousand.

Last night there was huge protest (about 500 thousand in a country of 5 million) in Georgia, Thbilisi, against the ruz-style legislation, or rather ruz mentality in the government. Unfortunately, no powerful opposition leader has emerged.

And Xi ended his European tour. Conclusion: they very much dislike ruz losing and are not able or have no will to be a leader of some wider diplomatic process. Accordingly.

Poland: Fire destroys almost 1400 stores in Warsaw shopping mall - yesterday the news mentioned suspicions the fires in some facilities of the countries supporting UKR might not be accidental.

[probes]

Shoigu booted. Interesting. Close confidant as he was. Now to replace Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev.
putin has appointed Andrey Belousov as Minister of Defense, replacing current minister Sergei Shoigu

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

As some had predicted Shoigu has been given the boot as Russian Defence Minister.
In his place is a complete and utter banker, who like Shoigu knows sweet FA about the military.
Which probably means putin is moving his little toy soldiers around a tabletop in his bunker and issuing stupid orders himself.

[PHXPhlyer]

Putin replaces Russia’s defense minister with a civilian, citing rising military spending and need for innovation

Pro tip: Stop spending rubles on planes, drones, tanks, missiles, guns, ammo, and bodybags.
Bring all of the combatants home and have them make autos, appliances, TVs, and other consumer products.
Another side effect, reversal of crippling sanctions.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/12/europe/s ... index.html

Russian President Vladimir Putin has replaced his defense minister Sergei Shoigu with a civilian, Andrey Belousov, citing the country’s rising military spending and the need for “innovation.”

Shoigu had been “relieved” of his post of Minister of Defense by presidential decree and been appointed Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday night local time.

Shoigu would also become Putin’s deputy in Russia’s Military-Industrial Commission, Peskov said, while Nikolai Patrushev, the previous Secretary of the Security Council, would “transfer to another job.”

Belousov, who previously served as first deputy prime minister, is a civilian.

He was selected by Putin because of a need for “innovation,” Peskov said in a press call, during which he highlighted the ministry’s rising budget, saying it was approaching levels last seen during the Cold War.

The Russian Defense Ministry is pictured March 1, 2023, in Moscow, Russia.
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“Today on the battlefield, the winner is the one who is more open to innovation,” Peskov said. “Therefore, it is natural that at the current stage, the president decided that the Russian Ministry of Defense should be headed by a civilian.”

In a reference to the war in Ukraine, Peskov said that due to “well-known geopolitical circumstances, we are gradually approaching the situation of the mid-80s when the share of expenses for the security bloc in the economy was 7.4%. It’s not critical, but it’s extremely important,” Peskov said.

The budget currently amounts to 6.7% of GDP, he said.

Peskov highlighted Belousov’s previous leadership experience and economic background.

“This is not just a civilian, but a person who very successfully headed the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, for a long time he was aide to the president on economic issues, and was also the first deputy chairman of the government in the previous cabinet of ministers,” Peskov said.

Peskov added that the new appointment did not signal a shift in Russia’s current military system.

“As for the military component, this appointment will in no way change the current coordinate systems. The military component has always been the prerogative of the Chief of the General Staff [Valery Gerasimov], and he will continue his activities. No changes are currently envisaged in this regard,” he said.

In his new role, Shoigu will oversee Russia’s military industrial complex, Peskov said.

Russian Deputy Defense Minister Timur Ivanov was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of accepting a bribe.

“He is deeply immersed in this work, he knows very well the pace of production of military-industrial products at specific enterprises and often visits these enterprises,” he said.

The news follows the arrest last month of one of Shoigu’s close allies, deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov, who was charged with taking a bribe in what was the country’s highest-profile corruption scandal since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.

Ivanov has been accused of accepting a bribe of 1 million rubles (at least $10,800), according to Russian state media TASS.

Shoigu has also been criticized for his handling of the invasion of Ukraine – most forcefully by the Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin in the months before his death last year.

PP

[Hydromet]

As some had predicted Shoigu has been given the boot as Russian Defence Minister.
In his place is a complete and utter banker, who like Shoigu knows sweet FA about the military.
Which probably means putin is moving his little toy soldiers around a tabletop in his bunker and issuing stupid orders himself.

Is this deja vu all over again, 80 years later and slightly to the east? One can only hope.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Gerasimov was featured in a Russian media piece in February claiming he wasn't dead, but that was videoed in a building and not independently date-verifiable.
Prior to that he hadn't been seen since September 2023, and he hasn't been seen since the February piece. He and Shiogu used to be a double act on Russian media,
so I think we have to question who actually is the GCS, and whether Gerasimov is pushing up the daisies.

[probes]

Sounds reasonable.
Even though gerassimov was said to continue in his previous duties.
As for shoigu, it's claimed to be even more significant he got the post that patrushev had, and there's nothing about him moving somewhere. The reason for promoting a non-mil person might be putin's wish to keep the generals at arm's length, or just less influential. And that theft in the army was too much for putin even. But shoigu is not ousted totally. And patrushev's sons remains in his office, so the family has putin's trust.

An apartment block collapsed in Belgorod and ruz is furious and will complain about UKR terrorist act to the assembly in the UN.
So, ...? what could one say.
The videos do not indicate any explosion, though, prior to the collapse.

Kharkiv direction - glide bombs and all kinds of bombing, no clear understanding how far ruz has got. Generally UKR is expected to keep the defence lines they have had since 2014.

And UKR fighters are reported to have deployed the tactics where they 'activate' air defence and disappear very fast (which is dangerous, of course) and the ruz air defence is targeted immediately. Fox and BOAC? (would you translate it into mil fighter language, please ).

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I think you are talking about Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD), which is also known (from the Vietnam era) as Wild Weasel tactics.
The UKR fighters make themselves radar visible to the Russian search radars, usually by increasing altitude.
The aim is to get the Russian missile guidance radars to switch on. These radars are then targetted with anti-radar missiles (ARM) carried by the Ukrainians.
Sometimes the radar-visible fighters launch the ARM missiles, sometimes it's other aircraft working with them which do.
The radar-visible fighters then disappear, usually back to low altitude, before the Russian Surface to Air Missiles (SAMs) reach them.
The western allies have supplied Ukraine with HARM, but in most cases this is a strap-on approach which merely allows the missile to lock on to a clearly visible Russian radar ahead of the aircraft.
The missile has more sophisticated targetting electronics which are not usable until the Ukrainians get the F16 into service.
The SEAD role is among the most difficult in fighter ops, nevermind the risk factor, and nobody gets good at it quickly. Only the US has really mastered it.

SEAD is quite dangerous at the best of times, and more so now that Russian missile systems have other ways of engaging targets, including using the search radar to launch and do initial guidance for SAMs, and Infra-Red tracking . These mean the tracking radars may switch on very late or not at all.

A further complication is integrated fighter and SAM zones, which the Russians are quite good at. This means the Ukrainian SEAD fighters have to worry about Russian fighter aircraft as well as SAMs.
The Russians have much longer range and autonomous Air-Air Missiles (AAM), and again the Ukrainians must wait for the F16 to be able to carry autonomous, longer range AAMs to combat Russian fighters as well,
although the Russians will still have a significant range advantage. In this situation, the strategy is normally to have a Ukrainian fighter sweep attack the Russian fighters, with the main aim being to distract rather than kill them, whilst the Ukrainian SEAD fighters hit the SAM radars. And the point of all that is so that Ukrainian fighter bombers can then penetrate deeper into Russian occupied territory to do their stuff. And there may need to be further fighter support, and/or SEAD, depending on how deep the fighter bombers need to penetrate. And it may be possible to use the first groups of SEAD and fighter sweep for that, or not, depending on the situation. It's F-Off complicated!

..And! - there's always more with fighter ops - there's any amount of devious trickery by both sides, since this kind of thing has been going on since about 1940.
A couple of examples would be:
put the search radars deep - then have the guidance radars much closer, so the SEAD aircraft get targetted at much closer range.
send up what looks like a fighter bomber/SEAD formation which is in fact all fighters. This can cause havoc when the enemy fighters try to intercept and get a faceful of AAMs when they were expecting none (cf Operation Bolo).
I've flown on a couple of these myself as fighter sweep - it's very effective if the enemy aren't expecting it, and can be a risky failure if they are.

[probes]

yep, that's it, thank you!

As for the ruz activity towards Kharkiv - for now it's reported in the 'grey zone' where neither has any meaningful defence structures (as these would be destroyed anyway). But, UKR forces there are not as well equipped as elsewhere, and the defences are in the landscape to get max from geography.
Thus, ruz is expected to use the attack as a diversion for advantage in Donbas, and it has worked in that sense - UKR had to get reserves 'up there'. ruz also wants to reduce UKR activity at the borders, and force UKR bring heavy machines there (from somewhere else, as there's not enough anyway). ruz will be stopped (drones and forested areas are only in the border regions), but it comes at a cost in Donbas. Let's hope it won't be too high.
One of the largest refineries, Volgogradneftepererabotka, had to stop production. Good work.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The Ukrainians will want to take the initiative and start diverting Russian resources themselves, but they don't have sufficient ammo and trained personnel for a sustained offensive yet.
I would expect they hope to have by the end of June. Until then, they are just going to have to take the losses.

The Ukes have just replaced the Kharkiv area commander.
https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/112433075546839811
I don't know if this is a case of firing the last one for errors, or putting their best man at the point of crisis. Could be both.

[probes]

Well, it's said now:

Russian offensive efforts to seize Vovchansk (northeast of Kharkiv City) are in large part a consequence of the tacit Western policy that Ukrainian forces cannot use Western-provided systems to strike legitimate military targets within Russia.

ISW

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

It's selective. The Brits have allowed it, some others may have but haven't donated systems that can be without a ground invasion of Russia, others definitely haven't.
The basic problem is that most western leaders are stupid, corrupt cowards. Fortunately Boris was generally stupid and corrupt, but not a coward and with some understanding of geopolitics and history.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

A new definition of Having A Bad Day...

A Russian soldier is caught in the open in broad daylight by an FPV drone, carrying nothing but two plastic 4l containers of gasoline.
He lobs the first one at the attacking drone and actually hits it, knocking it back somewhat....

Unfortunately for him the drone is not disabled, and he's a bit too slow preparing to throw the second one.
Obviously, the results are not for the sensitive.
https://mstdn.social/@noelreports/112433454444519361

One does have to question the sanity of both whoever sent him for the gasoline, and indeed himself for choosing to walk in the open when there were trees available on a longer route.