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Oh well. I did okay, all things considered.
Mobilization-that-is-not-mobilization, he pretty much literally announced it: reservists are getting «partially» mobilized, will get retraining and same compensation as contractees. I suppose what they won't get is a ticket outside. F for my «smart» Physics Ph.D friend who went through the military department instead of bribing the commissariat (and/or finding a disqualifying health issue) like all normal self-respecting people. That said, for now the partial-mobilization only applies to people with real experience in the army. Shoygu has given a ludicrous interview where he states precise numbers of Ukrainian dead and wounded as well as how many «mercenaries» are left. He announces reaping 300 thousand reservists for starters.
Kherson, LDNR and Zaporizhzhia referendums, okay. «Our main goal has always been to liberate Donbass from neonazis». More nuclear wunderwaffe bluffing... so that's the default scenario, he'll try to claim Kherson etc. join Russia and further UA attempts at regaining control will merit nuclear retaliation. (Reminder that Ukrainians have been bombing Belgorod oblast and Crimea for a while, pretty much burning entire random villages in the former by now, to no proactive response from RF).
The guy's alive, for now. Very mildly surprised to see it.
His hand is twitching.
Meanwhile Armenia and Kazakhstan are shutting down the Russian "MIR" payment system.
He's all out of ideas, has no balls for big moves and is completely unable to admit mistakes. This looks like agony. Unfortunately it can go on until many more people are dead.
Lives-destroying madness, but ballsy. Putin started out thinking he could buy the whole of Ukraine for a few thousand russian lives (and a few more ukrainians), now he’s gambling for 3 provinces at 100k. Unless this is some sort of ploy to force Ukraine to the table before the grinder really gets going, the risk and rewards matrix based on available information makes it morally worse than the original invasion.
At least your paranoia has served you well. They could, and they will.
Now they're elevating the pitch of nuclear rhetoric; some directly admit this is an order from the top. I agree with the idea that they'll probably aim to nuke bridges over Dnipro and some other infrastructure, then try to flood the seized provinces with fresh meat.
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Are you sure? From what I know Ukrainians were not using limited capability for shelling random villages but rather targeting military infrastructure and things like major power substations in places with military bases.
Well, there are images of destroyed villages around Belgorod. Either the Russian army is doubly incompetent and can't even exploit the results of its own false flag operations, or the villages were hit by Ukrainian fire.
In case that they were hit by Ukrainians I would assume that they were at least trying to hit military targets (stationing army, convoy, ammo depo or something).
In small part because I do not expect them to target civilians for moral reasons - but mostly because I expect them to not target civilians for strategy reasons and because they are unlikely to be running out of military targets.
Well, I doubt either army deliberately targets pure civilians, but both are very cavalier about collateral damage.
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Ukrainians have shot serious amounts of artillery deployed anti-personnel mines on Donetsk.
Military usefulness; nil. Maybe delays logistics for a couple of hours. Not sure if anyone lost a foot either. The only prominent victim so far might be Russian 'influencer' who was there for unclear reasons.
They just did it anyway. Most western media reported that either Russians mined their own separatists urban areas in a false flag attack, or that it's 'fake news'.
These are not 'civilians' but separatists or terrorists. The entire area was initially called an anti-terrorist operation zone..
They have been hitting it with various seemingly terror attacks since 2014.
There's zero military utility in a strike aircraft shooting unguided missiles into a city center. These aircraft have no advanced targetting beyond a allistic computer, so pretty much no chance of homing in on any military target. It's just pure spite, basically.
Both sides there have very little in the way of 'warm feelings' towards each other.
How to tell someone is not not a military analyst without them telling they are not a military analyst.
The mines are trivially easy to clear out from roads and paved areas.
Their utility lies in making advancing through vegetation tricky. Was Donetsk a vegetated area Russia had to advance through ? No.
There's videos of them deployed correctly during the UA's summer retreat in DPR.
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The current concern is that the actual text of the edict does not limit mobilisation as much as Putin's mouth words did.
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