12:20
Jumping on a few others, today it was sad to scroll through the comments and this is still the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive under the fog of war. Haven’t gotten any hits anywhere, on another site that usually has good information the recommendation was to go read LW’s blog because he has the best info before everyone else 🙂
I’m not so dumb that I don’t understand that as soon as offensive operations are over we go back to this, everything is subjective and people sit and argue about what might happen years from now and all the overpaid experts’ explanatory models cannot be disproved as now and they can continue with their nonsense and then you quickly lose interest.
12:24
I’m probably last on this so sorry but Liveuamap has confirmed,
“Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate of the Russian Navy Black Sea Fleet is reportedly on fire near Zmiiny island in Black Sea. Rescue operation ongoing, multiple aircraft, rescue vessels in the area.”
12:31
Now the thread damn well has to stop with petty fights about which party is least pro-Putin because the comments about Makarov being an artificial reef in the Black Sea are drowning in this and just before May 9 the humiliation is almost total for Putin.
—
It is not sunk but there are a large number of ships around it trying to prevent a Moskva so those who have a license on the Marine Traffic site or somewhere else should be able to confirm this quite quickly.
12:51
I don’t know how often the FIRMS fire map is updated but guessing 24-hour cycles? In lack of better information I look at it and know that there is similar fire in many areas so you can’t take one red dot as a burning Russian vehicle in any way.
—
Up near Izyum in the entire forest belt the Russians control there is one big bonfire. It follows the Russian line very well and you can probably assume that there are one or two things there that have been put out of combat. According to Militaryland’s unit map it is on Russian territory and it is in an area of Ukraine declared offensive.
—
NE of Kharkov is the next offensive area and there it is burning vigorously as well, pretty much where we believe Ukraine is cleaning up. According to Militaryland’s unit map it is on Russian territory.
—
At Kherson there is a fire that has become much bigger since yesterday near Heroiske roughly, that is E of the Dnipro but on Russian territory. The only thing I can imagine they have there is Russian artillery that can provide indirect fire against Ukrainian advances towards Kherson SW. It has probably been a fairly effective position and safe with water in between that now lights up FIRMS quite a bit. Otherwise it is quiet with fires around Kherson and two days ago we had reports of a new command post knocked out and 40 targets engaged so I can’t quite put it together but FIRMS doesn’t lie.
There is no reason to place maintenance so far out and some platoon of tanks in firing position does not give such readings on FIRMS.
13:16
Yes I saw that group of ships and it seems to match where Makarov would have been hit.
Can’t confirm this but can one guess that the navy’s ships don’t have transponders on or whatever they have?
For one thing, Makarov is then not moving under her own power towards port and if other ships are moving towards her/him it must be a rescue operation I guess so it seems quite confirmed that Ukraine’s successes in the war never end.
15:11
Saw a message yesterday that I can’t find but we guessed completely right in the thread as usual because according to some official 50 sabotage acts were carried out against trains in Belarus so eventually it became completely unsustainable for the Russians to get supplies and reserves forward and that contributed to the Russians leaving Kiev. We actually had that thought for those who have the energy to archive search but it had to be parked in the folder we-guess-then, now we know that was the case. The people in Belarus have probably done more than we think here and they didn’t get the army a foot over the border anyway despite Lukas playing field commander at prime time where he revealed the entire Russian battle plan prematurely.
15:52
I’m slowly starting to get a license on FIRMS,
—
Here you have Izyum May 1, 2022
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2022-05-01;@38.1,49.1,9z
—
And Izyum May 6, 2022 after Ukraine opened up,
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2022-05-06;@38.1,49.1,9z
—
That can’t be anything other than Russian armor standing and burning 🙂
15:57
It has been written in pro-Russian media that they came into contact with a righteous and honorable man who wanted to do the right thing, so I interpreted it as him betraying Ukraine.
You are thinking here that they found him in a filtration camp and after a couple of pulled-out nails, he talked.
If you weigh the two against each other, you are probably completely right, so maybe not so nice to mock him, you are right about that, now you can’t remove old comments but the blogger will have to do that.
16:12
The newspapers seem to have thought it’s time to float the news about Makarov, Ukrainian MPs and official Twitter accounts as well, that it is damaged is well established, whether it has become a dive attraction remains to be seen.
Orders for the Neptun will probably start to rise soon.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-russias-admiral-makarov-warship-26889015
16:52
Yes, it almost leans that way, Shoigu resurrected from the dead but there was a rumor that he had a heart attack and hadn’t been seen for three weeks which prompted that.
Gerasimov was the time and place for a confirmed knocked-out staff position and if Russia had wanted to debunk Ukraine’s triumphant comments, only Gerasimov could have appeared live and confirmed that he had just led the offensive at Izyum to victory.
Monday will be exciting.
21:10
Johan No.1 is silent because the only place along the entire front that he hasn’t fully covered with hours-long analyses is just up northeast of Kharkiv and he hopes the memory is short in the thread 🙂
—
Things are moving really fast up there now and it’s probably the border that matters. On FIRMS there is a fire well north of Stariy Saltiv. Here the Russian BTGs that had gone on the defensive to hold captured terrain have been blown away, which says quite a lot about how it will look everywhere soon. Yes, as some have said, artillery is the new black, those 155mm give an unpleasantly big bang.
21:29
4 Guards Tank and 106 VDV are four BTGs according to the unit maps and then you can guess that the rear has been wiped out, their staffs are smashed after Ukrainian artillery opened fire. I have been nagging a bit about FIRMS today but that’s mostly because I’ve learned how the site works lately in the thread, it barely burned a few days ago and now the whole Izyum offensive is in flames. Don’t forget the mantra according to ammunition manufacturers – every shot is a hit.
—
As the blogger writes, these are no reserve units directly but Russian elite that fled, humiliation of the highest order. I wonder when exactly they fled the field because according to my highly advanced game theory after a couple of beers, it’s that they let them crash into mines and ambushes but pre-set artillery targets along the retreat route northwards but someone in the thread wrote that the big experts said you should always offer an out, I’m still pondering that.
—
If I may guess, Izyum will collapse quite soon, let FIRMS guide us, maybe you can see how it starts to snake northwards with fires along the roads eventually.
—
The funniest thing here is probably that Putin and Gerasimov, while getting really positive reports from division commanders down at Izyum about their wild attacks that strike Ukraine to its core, are sitting and clicking F5 on FIRMS and watching the fires spread in real time (yes, I understand they have satellites and reconnaissance drones…).
—
Well, what a Friday, it was worth the kids’ trampoline.
00:53
The USA probably jammed radar on Moskva and the other one.
The stories about them being distracted by Bayraktar, having defective radar, partying crew, etc. are all good but it’s more likely that the USA ran some new system that has now been beta-tested and unexpectedly worked.
I can’t make sense of it otherwise and the other sinking was probably built in 2018?
Both sinkings had active reconnaissance flights in the area, it was written in the thread.
The Russians tried something in the Mediterranean on an American destroyer that turned off quite a lot a few years ago, right?
09:48
I would like to discuss a comment that CARMAG posted yesterday at 23:42 when he was actually supposed to be sleeping 🙂 It was under a post I made with quite sweeping speculations that got many exciting responses. His text is within quotation marks at the bottom (if it was okay to repost it carmag?)
Now it naturally becomes the topic of wild speculation but there has been quite a bit around the FSB, that their analyses have totally failed, they forgot to send bribes to influential people with the keys in Ukraine, the FSB letters and a hell of a purge in the FSB a month ago. While the analyses failed and believed in a Russian knockout victory, the FSB letters (authenticity no one knows) that came right at the start of the war were seething in their criticism of the whole operation. Then there was a rumor that the FSB leaked the assassination attempt by Wagner and the Chechens on Zelensky to Ukraine’s counterpart.
—
I’ve only heard in passing that Putin has 40,000 bodyguards but now that is apparently a completely separate security service that trumps the FSB, obviously since half of their leadership has been fired. Shoigu is said to have 20,000 so just there you are at the level of what the Russian army still has alive in Ukraine (exaggerated for effect).
—
A revolution requires a bigger event to have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Someone wrote yesterday that there are probably groups in Russia hoping for a big victory for Ukraine to break Putin’s power.
The question I asked myself after CARMAG’s post was whether the FSB has paved the way for a coup in Russia by creating this catastrophic event that the Ukraine war is/has become. Exactly everything that can go wrong has really gone wrong and the military does what they are told so this is really not their fault. If they are ordered to open the longest front line in history with 200,000 men, they do it. If they are ordered to storm with 100,000 men against bunkers fortified by 300,000 men, they do that too, the spring offensive is mathematically madness, they are outnumbered and they are heading towards zero.
Anyway, CARMAG’s post below,
“I wonder if this schism between the FSB and the military plays a somewhat bigger role than the FSB just stealing the bribes. From what I understood from Anders Åslund in the interesting interview yesterday, the FSB has been against the whole operation from the start and maybe is somewhat interested in the military with Gerasimov and his cadre failing badly. They are certainly not entirely happy that Putin’s private security service (FOS?) has gained increasing influence. The internal tensions could probably cost the whole operation dearly from a Russian perspective.”