Lol. Remember Nazi DuHbitch posting fake shit like he does in all his threads about Ukraine winning
RFK Jr speaking truth on the Ukrainian war. One Dem gets it.
“Russians are killing Ukrainians at a seven to one, eight to one ratio. What we’re being told about this war is just not true."
RFK Jr speaking truth on the Ukrainian war. One Dem gets it.
“Russians are killing Ukrainians at a seven to one, eight to one ratio. What we’re being told about this war is just not true."
Russian forces ‘lack will’: Top US general’s assessment of the war in Ukraine
239K views 11 hours ago #CNN #News
While the Ukrainian military “continues to perform very well” in its fight against Russia, the Russian military lacks will and morale, US Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. #CNN #News
What, no tax deductions for your brainless donations to Blubber Boy? Awwwwww, BAD LUCK, Road SCUM.
Ukraine Update: Russia forced to face its own incompetence, corruption, and isolation
Ukraine Update: Russia forced to face its own incompetence, corruption, and isolation
Mark Sumner for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Friday April 28, 2023 · 1:41 PM PDT
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A Ukrainian serviceman takes a rest near the town of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region
UPDATE: Friday, Apr 28, 2023 · 8:15:14 PM PDT · kos
Holy crap, the fireworks in Crimea tonight…
This will have an effect on Russian logistics. Fuels make armies move. Also, this will have an effect on the environment. The environmental damage created by this war is incalculable.
The count of Russians killed in Ukraine, as compiled by the Ukrainian military, is likely to top 200,000 within the next two weeks. Estimates from U.S. and U.K. intelligence have been much smaller, with totals at perhaps one-quarter of that level. However, back in March, a story in The Telegraph put a different value on the cost of Putin’s war: 1 million men. That total includes not just Russians who have died on the battlefield, but the hundreds of thousands of men who have fled Russia rather than be drafted into the war.
Even with so many gone, there are multiple reports that Russia is preparing to institute another round of mobilization, and that it is willing to lose 1 million, 2 million, even 3 million men if that’s what it takes to capture a large part of Ukraine. And it may get there.
The one thing Russia can reliably bring to the front lines is bodies. But their ability to translate lives expended on the battlefield into square kilometers controlled is hampered by three things: incompetence, corruption, and a growing inability to supplement those bodies with necessary equipment.
On Thursday, the man in charge of logistics for the Russian army, Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, was fired. Mizintsev, known as the “Butcher of Mariupol” for his role in commanding the forces that destroyed that city early in the invasion, replaced former minister Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov last year. Mizintsev has now been replaced by Col. Gen. Alexei Kuzmenkov.
Why was Mizintsev fired after being hailed for clearing Mariupol and finally bringing the siege of the Azovstal steel works to an ugly conclusion? Speculation is that Mizintsev was sent to the showers after Col. Gen. Mikhail Teplinsky completed an inspection of the front lines, reporting that weapons and ammunition were not getting to the right people. In particular, the colonel general determined that Wagner Group mercenaries weren’t getting their fair share of artillery and small arms ammunition—the same complaint that Wagner Group owner Yevgeny Prigozhin has been making for months.
This is not a coincidence. Col. Gen. Teplinsky, in spite of the title, isn’t actually a part of the regular Russian military. He’s Wagner, wielding literally undefined authority (an “unspecified role”) in seeing that things are operating correctly at the front.
So Wagner Group officer Teplinsky may have given the nudge that got Russian Army officer Mizintsev fired. But wait. It gets better. Because the new guy, Col. Gen. Kuzmenkov, is also not an army officer. Nor from Wagner.
Kuzmenkov is from Vladimir Putin’s personal army, the Rosgvardia (“national guard”). He might have ascended to the role because Mizintsev proved inadequate. But it might just as well be Putin making sure one of his own is in this crucial position.
This looks like a three-way squabble in which Putin shoved Kuzmenkov into the logistics position to show that neither Wagner nor the Army was going to tell him what to do. If someone is in control of where the bullets go, Putin wants that man to be his man. Now Prigozhin’s private army gets only as much as the guy from Putin’s private army says it gets.
This shuffle is only one of the ways in which the squabble over military power in Russia is being expressed. Remember, in addition to the Russian regular army, Wagner Group, and the Rosgvardia, Russia also has the Kadyrovite forces from Chechnya, commanded by Chechnyan warlord Ramzan Kadyrov. The possibility that these factions—and some of the other private armies now under construction—stop fighting Ukraine and go to war among themselves is extremely remote, but it’s not zero. "Today, there are already three and a half [Russian] armies [in Ukraine],” said Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of the Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. “And it's only a matter of time before they start to clash between themselves."
For decades, Putin has been systematically purging the Russian military of its most competent officers, fearing that the most likely source of a rival would be someone who could command the traditional respect and power of a Russian general. Putin believes, in the immortal words of Tina Turner, “We don’t need another hero.” After all, Putin is already there. No one else is getting a triumph through Moscow while he is still breathing.
What Putin needs are people who will carry out his orders in obscurity, then quietly depart the scene—at the front lines where possible, through the nearest available window when necessary—before gathering anything that looks like a personal following.
Remember Mizintsev? The “Butcher of Mariupol” Mizintsev? On paper, being placed in charge of logistics was a promotion. But notice that his reward for completing what was at that point seen as the greatest success of the Russian invasion was not being given a bigger field command; it was being put in charge of what may be the most thankless task in the Russian military—a task where no one wins praise or gets their picture in the state media. Mizintsev won a battle. His reward was being put behind a desk. Now he’s not even commanding that desk.
For Putin, the direct result of winnowing out the wheat and keeping the chaff is that he now finds the military populated by people who have gone through a Darwinian process to select for poor leadership. That leaves a bunch of uncharismatic losers whose one skill in life is being able to carry their box of belongings from one desk to the next while never doing anything that brings them attention.
Whether things are any better in Rosgvardia isn’t really clear. These are the guys who are reportedly watching Putin’s back. Does he want those people to be highly competent … or is that his greatest fear?
TANKS, YES. ENGINES, NO.
From well before the beginning of Putin’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, it’s been clear that the Russian military was not just incompetent by design, but corrupt from head to toe. Military budgets were inflated—not because Russian generals were pursuing new weapons systems, but because at every step along the chain of command, officers and enlisted were selling off every system for which they could find a willing buyer. Tanks are more expensive when their price includes an oceanside dacha.
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, a Russian colonel decided to enrich himself by selling the engines out of seven of Russia’s best T-90 tanks for $250,000 (in actual dollars, not rubles) and leaving Russia with seven lumps that can’t make it to the front lines.
This was reportedly done in conjunction with a “major criminal gang.” As we’ve written about several times, the connections between the Russian military and Russian criminal organizations run deep. In this case, the military culprit is listed as the head of Russia’s armored vehicle servicing department for a regional military command, Col. Alexander Denisov. Denisov supposedly rerouted engines that were meant for use in T-90 tanks (likely replacements for engines that had failed, though that’s unclear) to his criminal partners, pocketing the profit.
The paper mentions three other colonels who were prosecuted for corruption in 2019, but the big things to note here are: These are relatively low ranking officers, and these are very few prosecutions compared to the amount of corruption everyone knows is happening. So, it may be a signal that Russia is willing to go after some cases of corruption, but it’s unlikely to worry the senior-level guys selling off billions of dollars in gear at wholesale prices.
In Denisov’s case, the engines stolen were reported to be V-92C2 models. More likely, they were the more modern V-92S2F, which is used in both the T-90 and in upgraded T-72s. But even in this improved design, these are massive engines that weigh in at over a ton and a half. Their likely use for anyone who doesn’t happen to have an engine-free T-90 handy is in some kind of fixed facility—like running a pump—rather than going into a vehicle.
RUSSIA SHIFTING SOURCES OF SUPPLY
A new report from Silverado Policy Accelerator looks at how Russia is adjusted to life under sanctions, particularly when it comes to laying its hands on the parts it needs to keep building modern weaponry. The report notes that while sanctions from the U.S. and other Western nations have “isolated Russia from the global economy and degraded Russia’s military capabilities,” that doesn’t mean Russia is completely cut off from things like complex electronics and computer chips.Mostly, it is now seeking the parts it needs through looking at “dual use technologies” that don’t necessarily count as trade in weapons, and through partners such as China. Overall, while Russia is still certainly able to get almost anything it wants if it tries hard enough, there are several reasons why sanctions are working to prevent Russia from repairing and improving its military. Not only have sanctions “immobilized Russian Central Bank assets” and “choked off exports of technologies and other items that support Russia’s defense industrial base,” getting them through the limited countries available can mean seeking alternatives to familiar parts.
It can also mean paying much steeper prices for a simple reason: Anyone dealing with Russia knows that it has them over a barrel. Even parts from a second- or third-tier manufacturer become much pricier when that manufacturer knows you can’t go to the big name for what you need.
However, there’s some good news for Putin in the report as well. Russia seems to have anticipated that the West would respond to their attack with economic isolation. So they laid in supplies to ride out the expected sanctions.
This shows just how sure Russia was that they would invade at a time when they were still claiming they had no such plans, and when Republicans were feigning shock over warnings by Biden.
Right now, Russia import levels are almost as high as they were before the war, with most of that material coming through Armenia, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. If most of those names sound like unlikely places to source high-tech gear, there’s something else actually going on here: transshipment. According to the report, “Transshipment of Western goods, particularly from former Soviet states, is a huge issue.”
The report uses cell phones going through Armenia as an example, showing a sharp rise in Armenian cell phone imports from the U.S. after sanctions were levied on Russia, and a sharp rise in exports to Russia at the same time. However, you can bet one thing about those importers and exporters: They don’t work for free.
Just how big a profit these guys are makeing isn’t clear. We can only hope it's huge. Watching Kyrgyzstan or Belarus fatten up by skimming profits off exports to Russia to get around the sanctions may not be ideal. But the more they charge for this “service,” the less Russia is able to turn oil sales (which are still happening at a steep discount) into equipment in the field.
RUSSIA UPPING AIR STRIKES OVER MISSILES
On Wednesday night, a nationwide air raid alert and explosions from Kyiv to Odesa seemed to signal that Russia was launching its first large missile barrage since March. But at the end of the day, the Ukrainian military totalled eight ground-launched missiles (likely the S-300) and 23 air-launched cruise missiles including the Kh-101/102 and Kh-55 that were likely launched from bombers flying over Russia.Most of these were shot down. Hwever, the greatest damage appears to be in Uman, far in the southwest of Ukraine and well away from anything like a front line. As with so many Russian attacks, it appears to have targeted a civilian apartment building.
Russia may have hit Uman simply in search of areas not well-protected by air defense systems, as missiles lobbed at Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and other large cities are increasingly shot down and new air defense systems are rolling in.
The importance of Russia’s war of missiles seems to be declining. But that doesn’t make things any better for those on the receiving end of a strike, The death toll in Uman is now at 20, and three of those were children.
RUSSIA OPTING OUT OF ITS OWN ‘OLYMPICS’
The actual Olympics may be inexplicably allowing Russian athletes to compete, but the U.K. Ministry of Defense says that Russia is not competing in this year’s International Army Games, an event Russia created so that it could show its supposed prowess by beating out competitors like the Belarus juggling team.Why is Russia a no-show at its own event? Well …
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," yada, yada. Maybe their aim will be BETTER next time.
3.2k
Allison Quinn
Wed, May 3, 2023 at 4:46 AM PDT
Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters
The Russian presidential administration said Wednesday that the Kremlin was attacked by drones overnight in an attempt on President Vladimir Putin’s life.
Moscow residents had reported hearing two explosions behind Kremlin walls shortly after 2 a.m. local time, after which the lights went out. Footage shared by residents in a local Telegram channel captured the incident, as smoke was seen filling the sky above the Kremlin. Videos also appeared to show part of the Kremlin on fire.
Now, authorities say it was a brazen attack by Ukraine using two drones, both of which they say have been destroyed.
No injuries were reported, according to the TASS news agency. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was not at the presidential residence at the time.
The Kremlin, describing the incident as a “planned terrorist attack” and “assassination attempt on the president of Russia,” is now threatening to take “retaliatory measures.”
A spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied that the country was behind any attack on the Kremlin and accused Moscow of deliberately “escalating the situation ahead of May 9,” when Russia routinely flaunts its military prowess to mark Victory Day.
“Separately, the phrasing by the terrorist state is surprising. A terrorist attack is houses destroyed in Dnipro and Uman, or a rocket attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk, and many other tragedies,” Zelensky’s spokesman Serhii Nykyforov said.
The Kremlin’s official version of events left many unanswered questions. Witnesses said the two separate explosions occurred more than 10 minutes apart—meaning federal protection units guarding the Kremlin either did not react to the first blast or are exceptionally bad at their jobs.
A Moscow resident interviewed by the independent outlet Verstka said he heard the first blast at about 2:30 a.m. The second one, he said, happened several minutes later at 2:42 a.m. Footage shared on local Telegram channels of the first and second explosions also surfaced several minutes apart.
Verstka noted that one of the more striking videos of the “attack” was also apparently filmed from a building located on Red Square that belongs to the presidential administration.
An unnamed worker inside the Kremlin told Verstka there was no sense of panic or heightened security as the work day began Wednesday.
“Nothing strange has happened. The Alexander Garden was not blocked off, cars were parked in the lot as usual,” the worker said.
It was also unclear how two Ukrainian drones could have made it through Russia’s air defenses and into the heart of the capital.
The alleged assassination attempt comes after Russia’s pro-war hawks have spent months demanding the military unleash more brutal attacks against Ukraine, claiming military commanders have been held back from doing so.
Many Russian lawmakers on Wednesday seized on news of the incident at the Kremlin to re-up that demand.
“Terrorists have settled in Kyiv, and, as you know, negotiations with them are meaningless. They need only to be destroyed, quickly and mercilessly. It’s time to launch a missile attack on Zelensky’s residence in Kyiv,” United Russia lawmaker Mikhail Sheremet said in comments to Russian state media. “I’m ready to give the coordinates: 11 Bankova Street, where the so-called administration of the president of Ukraine is located.”
Kremlin propagandists also burst into hysterics, with Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, suggesting on Telegram that the alleged attack is just the pretext Moscow needs to go scorched earth on Ukraine: “Maybe now it will start for real?”
The incident comes just days before Russia’s main Victory Day parade on Red Square, an event that authorities reportedly fear could be disrupted by drone attacks. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Wednesday banned drone flights in the city without a special government permit.
Independent Russian media reported last week that utility workers have been ordered to patrol the streets of Moscow in search of any bombs or drones ahead of the event.
Kremlin Says Putin Survived Overnight Assassination Attempt
3.2k
Allison Quinn
Wed, May 3, 2023 at 4:46 AM PDT
Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters
The Russian presidential administration said Wednesday that the Kremlin was attacked by drones overnight in an attempt on President Vladimir Putin’s life.
Moscow residents had reported hearing two explosions behind Kremlin walls shortly after 2 a.m. local time, after which the lights went out. Footage shared by residents in a local Telegram channel captured the incident, as smoke was seen filling the sky above the Kremlin. Videos also appeared to show part of the Kremlin on fire.
Now, authorities say it was a brazen attack by Ukraine using two drones, both of which they say have been destroyed.
No injuries were reported, according to the TASS news agency. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin was not at the presidential residence at the time.
The Kremlin, describing the incident as a “planned terrorist attack” and “assassination attempt on the president of Russia,” is now threatening to take “retaliatory measures.”
A spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied that the country was behind any attack on the Kremlin and accused Moscow of deliberately “escalating the situation ahead of May 9,” when Russia routinely flaunts its military prowess to mark Victory Day.
“Separately, the phrasing by the terrorist state is surprising. A terrorist attack is houses destroyed in Dnipro and Uman, or a rocket attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk, and many other tragedies,” Zelensky’s spokesman Serhii Nykyforov said.
The Kremlin’s official version of events left many unanswered questions. Witnesses said the two separate explosions occurred more than 10 minutes apart—meaning federal protection units guarding the Kremlin either did not react to the first blast or are exceptionally bad at their jobs.
A Moscow resident interviewed by the independent outlet Verstka said he heard the first blast at about 2:30 a.m. The second one, he said, happened several minutes later at 2:42 a.m. Footage shared on local Telegram channels of the first and second explosions also surfaced several minutes apart.
Verstka noted that one of the more striking videos of the “attack” was also apparently filmed from a building located on Red Square that belongs to the presidential administration.
An unnamed worker inside the Kremlin told Verstka there was no sense of panic or heightened security as the work day began Wednesday.
“Nothing strange has happened. The Alexander Garden was not blocked off, cars were parked in the lot as usual,” the worker said.
It was also unclear how two Ukrainian drones could have made it through Russia’s air defenses and into the heart of the capital.
The alleged assassination attempt comes after Russia’s pro-war hawks have spent months demanding the military unleash more brutal attacks against Ukraine, claiming military commanders have been held back from doing so.
Many Russian lawmakers on Wednesday seized on news of the incident at the Kremlin to re-up that demand.
“Terrorists have settled in Kyiv, and, as you know, negotiations with them are meaningless. They need only to be destroyed, quickly and mercilessly. It’s time to launch a missile attack on Zelensky’s residence in Kyiv,” United Russia lawmaker Mikhail Sheremet said in comments to Russian state media. “I’m ready to give the coordinates: 11 Bankova Street, where the so-called administration of the president of Ukraine is located.”
Kremlin propagandists also burst into hysterics, with Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, suggesting on Telegram that the alleged attack is just the pretext Moscow needs to go scorched earth on Ukraine: “Maybe now it will start for real?”
The incident comes just days before Russia’s main Victory Day parade on Red Square, an event that authorities reportedly fear could be disrupted by drone attacks. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Wednesday banned drone flights in the city without a special government permit.
Independent Russian media reported last week that utility workers have been ordered to patrol the streets of Moscow in search of any bombs or drones ahead of the event.
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Does the following story sound like Ukraine is "out of the hunt" STILL, MAGA-KUNT? HE'S gonna run away to lick WOUNDS, YOU should go away and lick something else, maybe the salty balls of your Felonious, soon-to-be-BUTT-fucked Fuhrer, lol:
Russian mercenary chief says fighters to leave Ukraine's Bakhmut to 'lick wounds'
(Reuters) -Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would pull out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying to capture since last summer. Prigozhin said they would withdraw on May 10 - ending...
Russian mercenary chief says fighters to leave Ukraine's Bakhmut to 'lick wounds'
FILE PHOTO: Funeral held in Moscow for Russian military blogger killed in cafe blast
Felix Light, Caleb Davis and Andrew Osborn
Fri, May 5, 2023 at 1:35 AM PDT
By Felix Light, Caleb Davis and Andrew Osborn
(Reuters) -Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia's Wagner Group mercenary force, said in a dramatic announcement on Friday that his forces would pull out of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut that they have been trying to capture since last summer.
Prigozhin said they would withdraw on May 10 - ending their involvement in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war - because of heavy losses and inadequate ammunition supplies. He asked defence chiefs to insert regular army troops in their place.
"I declare on behalf of the Wagner fighters, on behalf of the Wagner command, that on May 10, 2023, we are obliged to transfer positions in the settlement of Bakhmut to units of the defence ministry and withdraw the remains of Wagner to logistics camps to lick our wounds," Prigozhin said in a statement.
"I'm pulling Wagner units out of Bakhmut because in the absence of ammunition they're doomed to perish senselessly."
The Kremlin declined to comment and there was no immediate reaction from the defence ministry, which said the offensive on Bakhmut continued with paratroopers supporting assault units as a Ukrainian official said Russia was bringing Wagner fighters from elsewhere to fight in Bakhmut.
Bakhmut, a city of 70,000 people before the start of the war, has taken on huge symbolic importance for both sides because of the sheer intensity and duration of the fighting there.
Wagner has been spearheading Russia's attempt to capture it and Prigozhin said his men had taken all but 2.5 square kilometres of the city which he said was 45 square kilometres in total.
It was not clear if his latest statement could be taken at face value, as he has frequently posted impulsive comments in the past. Only last week he withdrew one statement he said he had made as a "joke".
Earlier on Friday he appeared in a video surrounded by dozens of corpses he said were Wagner fighters, and was shown yelling and swearing at Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov with whom he has a long-running feud.
Story continues
Ukraine Update: The bizarre case of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s descent into madness
kos for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Friday May 05, 2023 · 7:33 AM PDT
Wagner Group PMC (private military contractor) CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin
UPDATE: Friday, May 5, 2023 · 7:58:46 AM PDT · kos
Translation of the Prigozhin video where he’s threatening to leave Bakhmut on May 9, and makes a mockery of the Russian law against disrespecting the armed forces. He’s announcing to all of Russia that the Special Military Operation failed, and it failed because of the incompetence of the Russian military.
And remember, we had Dmitri as our guest in this week’s Daily Kos The Brief podcast, the player is at the bottom of this story, or you can catch the podcast at your favorite podcasting platform.
By now, anyone following the war in Ukraine knows about Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder and CEO of the brutal Wagner Group mercenaries currently bashing their heads against Ukrainian defenses in Bakhmut.
But no matter how long you’ve read about him, how closely you’ve followed this war, and how many Wagner atrocities you might have witnessed, nothing can prepare you for the madness he displayed yesterday.
Prigozhin began his career trajectory into the ranks of Russia’s billionaire oligarchs as “Putin’s chef,” providing catering and restaurant services to the Kremlin. Somewhere along the way, he raised his own private army, Wagner Group Private Military Contractor, which to this day rapes and loots its way across Africa, ingratiating themseves with and protecting repressive, murderous regimes in exchange for rights to diamond and gold mines. In Syria, it’s oil and gas fields. It’s been good business.
But in Ukraine, it hasn’t been as fun because Prigozhin’s army has spent almost nine months getting ground down around Bakhmut. U.S. intelligence believes Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties over the past four months, 20,000 of them killed in action, half of those around Bakhmut. If those figures are accurate, that would mean that Wagner—a fraction of the size of the Russian army—has suffered at least half of all of Russia’s dead and wounded. It is an outsized impact, but it highlights just how ineffective the rest of the Russian military has been in advancing anywhere.
That’s not to say Wagner has been more effective. What Wagner has that the rest of Russian forces in Ukraine do not is a willingness to throw away the lives of its mercenaries. The bulk of those in Ukraine were recruited out of prisons, promised freedom if they survived six months, then thrown head-first into Ukrainian defenses without training or serious weapons. In April, Wagner reportedly increased those contract lengths to 18 months, greatly reducing the chances that any of these guys will ever walk out of Ukraine. There is a strategy, but it is a gruesome one. This is what it looked like back in February:
Now, Wagner has maintained this approach: Send wave after wave, each advancing a few meters and picking up the ammunition left behind by the dead men who came before them. Problem is, somewhere along the way, they lost much of that artillery support.
Whether the lack of artillery is indicative of broader Russian shortages or whether Russia’s Ministry of Defense is purposefully starving them to destroy a rival army, the lack of ammunition support has driven Prigozhin absolutely mad as his casualties mount. The human waves are still happening in Bakhmut, just without any ammunition to support them.
He now rails daily against Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, blaming them—repeatedly, by name—for his inability to fully capture Bakhmut. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has let the feud play out. He remains safe as long as the most powerful men in Russia are fighting each other.
These daily tirades have taken a particularly bizarre turn this week.
On Sunday, Prigozhin declared that “Russia is on the brink of catastrophe,” and threatened to pull his forces out of Bakhmut altogether if he didn’t receive ammunition that very day. It was an empty threat; he’s continued to complain about lack of ammunition in the days since, yet his forces are still pushing forward. But Sunday also marked the beginning of the strangest daily updates by anyone this war:
- On Sunday, he announced that Wagner had advanced 100-150 meters in Bakhmut, and suffered 94 dead.
- On Monday, he claimed his forces had gained 120 meters at the cost of 86 dead.
- On Wednesday, it was 160 meters advanced with 103 dead.
- On Thursday, he claimed 230 meters advanced and 116 of his “best fighters” killed.
Not only was this (admitted) loss of life horrific on its own, but it shattered a tenet of faith among Russian war bloggers that it was Ukraine being bled dry by Russia’s Bakhmut assault.
The whole notion was idiotic. It is a basic military reality that absent massive advantages in military technology and doctrine (which Russia does not have), attackers suffer greater casualties than entrenched defenders. It’s common sense: Defenders can keep their heads down while attackers have to rush across open terrain, exposed to mines, grenades, gunfire, rockets, mortars, and artillery fire.
Ukraine has a clear rationale for Bakhmut’s bloody defense: bleeding Russia dry and trapping them in the area to take the pressure off other parts of the front while buying time for Ukraine’s new “storm” brigades to train combined arms warfare with their shiny new Western armor. The only way Russia’s even bloodier attack of the strategically unimportant city made sense (only Ukraine’s 58th largest) was to claim the opposite: It was Ukraine who was trapped there, bleeding itself dry.
Prigozhin’s weird daily flex laid waste to those ridiculous claims. It is Russians who are doing the bulk of the dying in Bakhmut. But nothing, nothing, nothing could prepare anyone for the biggest Thursday night surprise—one that had everyone watching from both sides of the war, wondering if Prigozhin had absolutely lost it.
I don’t particularly recommend you watch his video, but it’s here with the absolute strongest trigger warning possible. Prigozhin stands in the dark in front of a field of several dozen dead Wagner soldiers. He shines a flashlight at several, in case anyone has any doubts about what they’re looking at. I won’t sit there and count, but there are maybe 40-50 dead Wagnerites, lined up in several rows.
And he yells like a mad man. He yells Shoigu’s name, Gerasimov’s name, a stream of expletives in front of his macabre backdrop. He looks like this:
The translation:
Did Prigozhin train his forces on effective small-unit infantry assault tactics? Of course not. He is just as complicit in their deaths as every other Russian commander in this war. But he’s not looking in the mirror. He’s taking direct aim at his rivals at the Ministry of Defense.
Russia does not censor Telegram, and this video is being watched by millions of Russians not used to seeing images of their own dead. It is impossible to tell how the video will be received, or how Putin himself will take it. Wagner fans are responding with calls to storm Moscow:
Prigozhin did promise to leave Bakhmut if the ammunition situation didn’t improve. It clearly didn’t, and he’s still in Bakhmut. Then this tirade. What does it all mean? Stay tuned, because this story isn’t over.
There is one more weird Prigozhin story, and maybe someone can help make it make sense.
Last Friday, Mark Sumner wrote about the sacking of the general in charge of Russia’s logistics.
To recap, Mizintsev was fired based on a report written by a Wagner officer, accusing him of refusing to supply Wagner forces in Bakhmut. Got it?
So what the hell is this?
Again, Wagner hired the guy they got fired for not getting them desperately needed ammunition, on the same day that Prigozhin goes on his crazy rant in front of a sea of dead Wagnerites he says died from a lack of ammunition … and then they appoint him as their number two commander.
Seriously, what the hell?
The whole idea that this BRICS “alliance” (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) will somehow take over Western hegemony and come up with its own currency to supplant the dollar is patently absurd.
On Friday morning, Telegram sources indicate that on top of all the other things going wrong for Prigozhin, Ukrainian artillery has destroyed Wagner Group’s ammunition depots in Bakhmut.
