The Times is mostly for the 10-15 minutes clips from UK former brass, varying quality. A lot of British and American former military just have a nosey on Twitter for news and rephrase it for media interviews.
The Telegraph is more for catching up on what happend daily with a bit of analysis, handy if you just want a digest, the seek bar is your friend though.
You would think the FSB and their likes would be able to stay behind and blend in as the withdrawal happens in Kherson for example.
Feed intelligence about the Ukrainians?
Or maybe not…
FSB tend to only work well inside russia. outside not so much there no KGB. Smearing door handles with nerve agents is not exactly 007 stuff.
The first people in liberated villages after the army are Ukrainian intelligence. They ask the locals who has been collaborated, or who might be suspicious. A strange Russian man simply cannot remain behind without attracting attention.
Ukrainian intelligence was an absolute cluster-fcuk pre-war. What happened in the south that allowed the Russians in was a disaster and aided by collaborators. They are not stupid though, the same mistake won't happen again.
I wager the Ukrainians are bussing the Quislings off to some remote town where they can all collude together under a watchful eye.
I believe it was US policy since the 70s/80s that they were opposed to Europe getting its gas from russia
As a professional, I will defer to your judgement.
From all the reports I am reading from both sides, I think this withdrawal is botched. While I think the Russians have been making preparations for weeks before this, I think the speed of the collapse has been faster than they've expected. I don't think 20k Russians, or anywhere remotely near that number are in danger of being trapped. But I do think they will need have some forces fight some sort of delaying action and become the sacrificial lambs. I don't see how every Russian can escape this debacle.
Before tonight, the most number of Russians I've seen captured at any given time has been 2 dozen, or so. If Ukraine is going to push the Russians hard like they seem to be doing, I think we could see some sort of new record tomorrow. If even 200 Russians were captured, that would be a tremendous embarrassment to Russia.
We will find out tomorrow just how bad it is.
For the person who quoted me and suggested the the Russians were going to blow the dam.
That is not true, at least not right now.
This is Ukrainian shelling of retreating Russian forces.
A lot of talk late tonight that the Russian retreat from Kherson is going very badly and they are taking a lot of casualties.
I think people in Russia might have assumed that once the retreat was announced, it would be relatively straightforward and the forces would be pulled back without much difficulty (forgetting that this is the calamitous Russian military we are discussing).
Hard to know what to do when command and control commanders and all that legged it.
Lol. Hopefully all with pre drilled holes.
Evacuating 20-30k troops out of an area across one very long bridge whilst being attacked was always a bit of a mental idea. As your troops leave, the defences weaken and the pressure increases. Then if the attackers bomb your escape route which is very defined you not only have concentrated troops but they've also abandoned their established defensive positions and are vulnerable whereever they turn to. Panic and chaos ensues and the spiral continues.
If the Ukrainians play this right the Russians could lose thousands today.
I'm kind of imagining a replay of the Fall of Saigon, or more recently Kabul. But....nowhere near as well managed as either (and both were mostly organised chaos as it was). However, I can't imagine the Russian Command giving enough of a damn to run an air-lift.
You can’t really do an airlift when you don’t control the skies.
I'm sure thr Ukrainians could help them land. Lol.
I genuinely don’t understand your point. What’s wrong with Ukr having nuclear weapons and Russians living in - and especially those ‘planted’ there being repatriated back to Russia.?
Oh, certainly true. I guess I just can't imagine them going to the same level of effort, air-lift or not. Not sure what would actually help them in this situation. Having less crap logistics might have been a good start :)
I think there are really 2 issues. Firstly they are incapable, and secondly they don’t value their people. Modern warfare is different as in throwing in sufficiently trained numbers in the field will only get short term superiority. Properly trained soldiers are much more important than numbers. Russian army tactics are not modern.
Atononovsky bridge has been blown by the Russians. Looks like their evacuation is complete.
Better picture of the destruction of the bridge.
Railway bridge further up the Dnipro blown as well.
Indeed. It could be a modern Berezina.
Jesus:
Would it not be hard for them to blend in where you have - I assume- genuine Ukr. Residents amongst them . I’m sure that the genuine Ukr resident would be on high alert in relation to outing these people
Presumably alot of those are on dead bodies?
I'd say a few artillery commanders were very interested in that.
I pulled that from a random Twitter comment. Don't know the context or accuracy. But when I initially jumped to the conclusion that it was orcs being left behind by the army that didn't give a toss about them, I shivered
I'd say the survivors who make it back maybe rethinking their loyalty to the regime.
From a few hours ago presumably. I don't hear sounds of combat, the soldiers are walking, not running. Seems like a missed opportunity that the barge bridge wasn't hit.
The humiliation of russia gets greater and greater
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