Massive Iskander Attack Sends Rats Scurrying
It’s been an eventful past day, as major Russian attacks galvanized panic-headlines and seemed to catalyze a sudden Ukrainian government purge or mass exodus:
All the people who resigned in Ukraine in recent days:
➡️Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba;
➡️ Minister of Justice Denis Maliuska;
➡️ Minister for Strategic Industries Alexander Kamyshin;
➡️ Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ruslan Strelets;
➡️ Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olga Stefanishyna;
➡️Deputy Prime Minister - Minister for Reintegration of Uncontrolled Territories of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk;
➡️ Deputy head of Zelensky's office Rostislav Shurma.
The timing seems odd and obviously paints a portrait of a mass exodus of rats fleeing the now-obviously sinking ship.
The strike on the 179th training center of the Signal Troops military institute in Poltava—officially called the Poltava Institute of Military Communications—was particularly grievous for Ukraine because it appeared to house not only a vital drone-technical program, but valuable Swedish instructors for the upcoming transfer of Swedish AWACS planes, billed as more future ‘game changers’ that would work in tandem with the F-16s to decimate the Russian airforce from afar.
The direct reports from Ukrainians on the ground about the Poltava strike’s losses are staggering.
One Ukrainian medic claims 215 killed and 340 injured:
Ukrainian medic in Poltava claimed that the losses from the strike on the military training center is closer to 215 killed and 340 injured. The video has since been deleted but she is a medic of the AFU.
But this may have been at the start, before the majority of the bodies were pulled, because subsequent reports spoke of even more cataclysmic numbers. A local Ukrainian blogger gave the tally as over 700 dead alone:
He writes at the top of the video and says those aren’t even the ‘final numbers’:
Infamous ex-Aidar bigwig Ihor Mosiychuk gave the tally as dozens of dead with 600+ total victims, but his report was also early on.
POLTAVA HOSPITALS JAM-PACKED WITH SOLDIERS AFTER RUSSIAN STRIKE: Poltava City Council Chief Kaplin admits chaos reigns in Central Ukrainian region (vid above), with overcrowded hospitals filled with wounded troops after pinpoint Russian strike blasts army infrastructure in city. #Kiev officials claim 49 troops killed and 219 wounded, but Ukrainian sources on the ground insist death toll as high as 190 even as Mad Vlad #Zelensky tries to clamp down on concrete info regarding HUGE army loss.
In fact a Ukrainian medic was livid that underage children were being coerced to supply blood:
This medic is livid that, apparently, school kids are pretty much forced to donate blood for Swedish instructors wounded in Poltava. She brings up the fact that people under 18 years old are not eligible to donate and asks uncomfortable questions, such as what are medics supposed to do with fainting children - treat them instead of the wounded military?
She mentions the Swedish instructors, which are at the center of the story. This was validated by a post from a woman who says her mate from Sweden’s Linkoping University perished in the Poltava attack:
Reports that Swedish "instructors" among soldiers killed in Russian strike, allegedly working to train Kiev cannon fodder pilots on Swedish-supplied AWACS aircraft.
Among the students were several foreign instructors from Sweden - they were also destroyed. Britta Ellwanger, a foreign volunteer who was with them, writes about this. A few months ago, Sweden announced the transfer of two ASC 890 AWACS aircraft to Ukraine, and accordingly the Swedes trained future specialists on these boards.
Presumably, they were instructing Ukrainians on the Swedish Saab ASC 890 AEW&C ‘Erieye’ plane, pledged earlier to the Ukrainian airforce:
Such staggering losses are hard to believe, but apparently it was a Kinzhal or Iskander “double tap”. Granted, the losses appear obscenely high, but recall there’s not one Russian source there: who am I to argue with Ukrainian sources directly from the ground?
And speaking of Kinzhals:
Denys Kliap, the 26-year-old director of Free and Unbreakable, a volunteer emergency response team, was asleep when the first blast rocked him out of bed. “As soon as it happened, we went straight to the site,” Mr. Kliap said. “When we arrived, the only thing I remember was the pile of bodies scattered all over the territory of the institute.”
The NYT article remarks specifically on the missiles’ speed being such that they struck almost at the same time as the first warning sirens, which could not come on fast enough to give people time to escape:
Witnesses said the strikes, one after the other, had come shortly after the air raid sirens sounded. The Ukrainian Air Force said that the short time between the warning siren and the strikes demonstrated the speed of the missiles, which arrived “literally a matter of minutes” after launch.
This is the true ‘game-changing’ property of hypersonic missiles like the Iskander and Kinzhal. Though they may not be hypersonic at final terminal descent—the jury’s still out on the Kinzhal in that regard—their hypersonic traversal of the airspace prior to that still allows them to arrive on target extremely rapidly without giving time for defensive maneuvers. If there are any true ‘game changers’ that exist in this war, it is them. That’s not to mention the host of other potential hypersonic secondary effects, like the possibility that a plasma sheath could make them invisible to radar at certain stages of their burnout phase toward the apogee, etc. Unlike true ICBMs that go into space where no atmosphere exists, these still traverse enough of the atmosphere that such a sheath can neutralize all radio waves, making the missile’s ascent invisible to radars, which would give even less warning time.
The strike has also made me suspect that the Russian General Staff’s tactic is to not strike such gatherings too often, giving Ukraine time to get lulled into a false sense of security, and waiting until a real big juicy one with important figures—like these irreplaceable Swedish instructors—is gathered, then letting rip to take out an enormous amount of them at once.
Or it could be that Russia has changed targeting priorities recently as a consequence of Kursk, as Ukraine’s Podolyak seemed to insinuate:
Russia is changing its missile tactics and will increase the degree of escalation, - Podolyak.
"They stopped completely masking what they were doing. Missiles can reach any part of Ukraine. These are deliberate strikes on residential buildings to shock the population."
In fact, Russia has been utilizing Iskanders an extreme amount lately, which ties with the report from last time that Iskanders have been brought down to the brigade level, and now brigade commanders can order their own direct strikes without going up to divisional HQ or higher.
This comes as consequence of the ramp-up of Iskander production which reportedly sees upwards of 50+ per month now produced. Keep in mind, that’s still not a lot, as it only allows one or two per day usage, but this 600/year tempo is much higher than most missile production capabilities for any first rate military. The US and NATO allies produce 100-200 per year of their best missile systems at most.
Only hours after the Poltava hit, another Iskander strike reportedly took out another large gathering of AFU troops in Sumy, near the Russian border, with upwards of 80+ casualties suspected:
The aftermath of all the bodies being cleaned up can be seen from the drone BDA:
Full list of the alleged losses:
Russian troops struck a concentration of Ukrainian equipment near Sumy. 7 units of cargo vehicles, 4 combat armored vehicles, 9 cars and up to 80 Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters did not survive the missile attack. One missile: footage of objective control of a missile strike on a concentration of military equipment and weapons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces
The settlement of Noviye Basy (7 km southeast of the city of Sumy) As a result of the missile strike, the following were destroyed:
7 units of cargo vehicles
4 units of combat armored vehicles,
9 units of off-road vehicles
up to 80 Ukrainian Armed Forces militants.
The geolocation is: 50.8520703, 34.9322912
This is not too far from another major Iskander attack on a large Ukrainian convoy that happened just the night before, which Ukraine claimed were simple grain trucks despite them being very close to the Russian border:
Ukrainian authorities claim that the column of trucks near Sumy, attacked last night by Iskanders and MLRS, allegedly turned out to be simple grain trucks. It is reported that a total of about 20 vehicles were damaged or destroyed. The main issue is the number of successfully disabled tractors, which the enemy uses not only for civilian purposes, but also for hauling military cargo, which has been repeatedly observed in the rear and on the battlefield - ISZ
The most interesting part of that strike is for once we are able to see the results of the effectiveness of the Iskander cluster munition variant. That’s because today some post-strike photos leaked:
The Iskander cluster philosophy is a little bit different than the ATACMS: Iskander carries fewer but larger and more powerful elements—about 45 fragmentary submunitions—while the ATACMS carries ~300 smaller, less powerful ones.
Recall, this is all just days after the major Iskander strike on Krivoy Rog’s Aurora Hotel, which was said to wipe out a slew of mercenaries.
Now, the past couple weeks have also seen a number of Iskander strike videos claiming to destroy HIMARS, with one video claiming to have hit 3 HIMARs launchers at the same time.
The same goes for Patriot missile systems, although we have a little better confirmation with those.
Ukrainian air defense suffered two significant losses in personnel over the previous 48 hours. Yesterday the death of MIM-104 Patriot air defense system operator Ivan Kiyashko from the 138th anti-aircraft missile brigade was reported in the Kharkov region, today information emerged about the death of Colonel Viktor Polyvyany, who previously commanded the 160th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade which is armed with S-300PS.
By the way, many poked fun at Sweden receiving such a big blow in Poltava, the predestined town where the previous Swedish Empire had seen its demise.
Now only a day after the Poltava strikes reportedly wrecked the entire Swedish-Ukraine program, Sweden’s FM mysteriously resigns:
HELSINKI, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said on Wednesday he will step down next week after almost two years in office, during which his traditionally non-aligned country joined NATO.
"It is with a mixture of sadness and pride that I have today informed the prime minister that I will leave the post of foreign minister at the opening of parliament next week," Billstrom, a member of the conservative Moderate Party, said in a post on X.
What is going on here?
Last week saw “the largest-scale Russian strikes of the entire war”, followed by a few other high-profile ballistic attacks on sensitive Ukrainian targets with high casualties. Now, we see a mass exodus of the entire Ukrainian government and this. It’s tempting to jump to conclusions about causalities, but the connection seems too obvious to make. It feels like internally the rolling of heads has begun. This only underscores the recent feeling like events are accelerating, and Ukraine is hitting a sudden precipitous decline.
On that note, Zelensky just told MSNBC that he plans to hold Russian territory indefinitely ‘for now’.
But what’s most interesting about the interview, is you can really gauge the desperation and true lack of aim or direction in his plan. Listen below as he’s unable to answer Richard Engel about what, precisely, the plan is for the Kursk operation:
He’s asked if holding Kursk is his plan to end the war. Zelensky can only respond that holding Russian territory is his personal plan to force Russia to stop the war.
How does that work, exactly?
It seems more and more evident that Zelensky’s plan did in fact amount to simply taking some of Kursk and hoping that Russia would immediately sue for negotiations favorable to Ukraine to end the war. Of course, the true trump card that would have ensured such a plan was capturing the Kursk nuclear plant, which they failed to do.
Take it for what it’s worth, but a new Ukrainian POW from the Kursk incursion even claims they were under orders to plant explosives and detonate the Kursk plant:
WARNING: MAY BE SPEAKING UNDER DURESS
WE PLANNED TO BLOW UP KURSK NUCLEAR PLANT - UKRAINIAN POW: prisoner from #Ukraine's elite 82nd Air Assault Brigade admits that army boss Syrsky tasked them with committing nuclear terrorism during their incursion in pre-war #Russia's Kursk.
(Quoting Syrsky) You must quickly break through to the Kursk region, to the nuclear power plant. All these events were prepared by #NATO specialists with Ukrainian military specialists. They wanted to plant an explosive there ... And Ukraine will blame Russia that it blew (Kursk nuke power plant, NPP) up - prisoner of war reveals in above vid. Unfortunately for Kiev and fortunately for world, Moscow's forces stopped Ukrainian troops well before they could reach Kursk NPP and now Kiev's cannon fodder fertilizes Russian soil.
In short, it seems to me that there was no real advanced 7D plan by Zelensky, or a big “trap” as some commentators were expecting. Now he’s done nothing but thin down his forces with multiple fronts collapsing at once, without achieving anything of note.
The latest rumors from Rezident UA channel claim that Syrsky has now requisitioned forces from Kursk back to Pokrovsk to stem some of the collapse, which—if true—may have worked, as there has been a slight decrease to Russia’s tempo the last couple days.
#Inside
Our source in the General Staff said that Syrsky is forced to transfer part of the reserves from the Kursk direction to the Pokrovsky direction in order to stop the collapse of the front. At Bankova, they demand that the Glavkom continue the offensive deep into Russia and send the prepared parts from the front there, replacing them with new brigades.
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On that note, there is a hilarious new article from CFR’s Foreign Affairs:
Most humorous about it is the defeatist tone, which causes the author to make some uncharacteristically-desperate conclusions.
In essence, it states that Putin is “all in” and the only way to defeat him is try to prolong the fight as long as humanly possible until he “dies”—presumably of natural causes:
I’ve never seen a “professional” outfit write something so unintentionally humorous and stultifyingly sophomoric. The analysis in the rest of the piece is so astoundingly bad I won’t even demean myself by explicating on it—the snippet is enough to demonstrate simply how rudderless the Western commentariat has become.
That being said, that was only the second stupidest article of the day—here’s your prize winner:
And yes, they are serious. They even provided actual maps of territory Russia ‘stole’ from China in a farcical attempt to provoke a conflict between the two:
Can these people get any more pathetic?
It just shows how low journalistic standards—particularly of the editors-in-chief who are supposed to be responsible for greenlighting this crud—have dropped in the abject West.
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This one however is only sadly funny:
Three of America’s four major military services failed to recruit enough servicemembers in 2023. The Army has failed to meet its manpower goals for the last two years and missed its 2023 target by 10,000 soldiers, a 20 percent shortfall. Today, the active-duty Army stands at 445,000 soldiers, 41,000 fewer than in 2021 and the smallest it has been since 1940.
The Navy and Air Force missed their recruiting goals, too, the Navy failing across the board. The Marine Corps was the only service to achieve its targets (not counting the tiny Space Force). But the Marines’ success is partially attributable to significant force structure cuts as part of its Force Design 2030 overhaul. As a result, Marine recruiters have nearly 19,000 fewer active duty and selected reserve slots to fill today than they did as recently as 2020.
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A few last videos.
Russian troops reportedly captured some young female soldiers in Kursk:
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Polish journalist Anna Gusarskaya wrote a column for WaPo wherein she was shocked that a Kharkov cemetery she returned to had double the amount of graves as the previous year:
I wish someone in the Biden administration would look at my video and ask themselves, “How many more graves will there be next year if we keep Ukraine from fighting back?”
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Interesting update to the goings on at the Kerch Bridge:
Russia has brought a huge number of air defense systems to Crimea and is building a "mysterious structure."
On the peninsula, the Russians are using all available air defense systems of different ranges. We are talking about the S-300, S-400, and even S-500 systems.
Also, a structure is being built in parallel on both sides of the bridge - "this could be either a protective structure, or a technical one, or a parallel crossing."
/Speaker of the Ukrainian Navy Pletenchuk/
There was a photo of the structures a few weeks ago.
Some have speculated it’s a redundant pontoon in case the bridge is hit, or simply a permanent seawall to block naval drones from attacking the bridge, given that previously Russia relied on more provisional solutions like sunken barges and mine nets.
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A Russian commander in the Ugledar direction details how his unit’s latest assault saw no losses at all, not even wounded according to him, despite capturing the enemy positions successfully in the ongoing Ugledar stranglehold:
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Lastly, to give an idea of Ukraine’s Kursk losses, here’s a brief video showing a road of death full of NATO vehicles, followed by another video of many of them being destroyed—you can see the characteristic white triangle belonging to the Ukrainian northern Kursk grouping on most of them.
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>Throw away your country's neutrality and make them targets for Russia
>Run away and leave your nation holding the bag
This pattern has repeated so many times that everyone responsible ought to strung up outside their respective country's legislative center as an example of what not to do.
LOL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clsJQMRPerw
Zelensky in that video is starting to get that "Final days Hitler in the bunker" vibe, and you see they are apparently willing to commit nuclear terrorism, I would guess it's a good thing they had to give up their nukes.
They would use them, Zelensky would for sure.