Putin Strikes Back - Destroys GUR Bunker?

For the first time, Putin himself nonchalantly confirmed that Ukraine’s intelligence headquarters were hit:

As well as a video where Verkhovna Rada deputy Alexei Goncharchenko, whilst drunk, confirms in the affirmative to the question of whether the GUR HQ was hit:

⚡️⚡️⚡️ A video has leaked to the Internet, where drunk Goncharenko in shorts confirms the hit on the GUR headquarters😱

Many are speculating that this is tied to the big ‘earthquake’ in Kiev that was reported days ago. The common consensus is that there were deep underground bunkers beneath the GUR building where NATO intelligence officers were helping to coordinate the war effort with the GUR/SBU and Russia used some sort of powerful ground-penetrating munition—perhaps a Kinzhal with penetrating head—to hit it.

These theories are further supported by various rumors, like that NATO flights were taking off from Reszow, Poland toward an American military hospital in Berlin:

‼️Rybalsky melted in the bloody fog...

My source in Kyiv said that as a result of a strike on a military facility on Rybalsky Island, one of the control centers was hit. With the beginning of the air raid, the personnel of the center descended into the shelter, but the Russian Aerospace starwars Forces used a missile with a penetrating warhead, which pierced through the building, penetrated the foundation and exploded, destroying the shelter, where at that moment there were up to a hundred officers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and civilian personnel, including twenty foreign military from the USA and Great Britain, who interacted between the Center and similar Western headquarters. A rescue operation was immediately launched. Its results are unknown, but, according to the call center of the Kyiv "Ambulance", more than ten cars were immediately pulled there and about thirty flights were made. On the same evening, two helicopters urgently took off from Kyiv towards the border with Poland.

Rybar states the following:

The vague statements of the Ukrainian authorities and the very confused attack on Moscow in order to break the news coverage confirm the version about the exact hit of the Russian troops. According to some reports, more than 30 members of the SMM were wounded in varying degrees of severity as a result of the attack.

And that is not all: Yesterday, a C-21A aircraft of the 86th Air Medical Evacuation Squadron of the US Air Force flew to Rzeszow in an emergency from Ramstein Air Base, presumably to evacuate seriously wounded NATO servicemen.

Now, I’m going to go through this piece by piece because there is a lot of circumstantial evidence.

Firstly, the Rybalsky area is seen here on the map of Kiev. The red arrow is pointing to the Gavansky/Havansky bridge.

The white building on the top of this image is the GUR headquarters. Here’s another satellite view from above:

If you want to follow along, plug these geolocation coordinates into google maps: 50.47141384333114, 30.528840685203477

So, the first interesting thing is that, we do have confirmation that the Havansky bridge is in fact suddenly closed, or was as of yesterday, blocking access from getting to the isolated part of the district where the headquarters building is located:

Putin: #Russia attacked #Ukrainian military intelligence headquarters (GUR) a few days ago in #Kiev. “We have already talked about the possibilities of striking at decision-making centers.” Footage shows Havana bridge that leads to GUR HQ. It has been closed last 2 days.

In Kyiv, the Havansky Bridge, which connects Rybalsky Island with Podil, has been blocked for traffic since the morning. Yesterday and last night the enemy worked on the island... And on the island there is an office of the Main Intelligence Directorate and the Kuznya plant. Of course, there is no information about the results and possible arrivals at these objects, but ... remember Budanov's angry video, where the mask of composure could hardly hide the anger. I don't think it just happened.

👉 Ukrainian Post

First, here is how the frontage of the GUR HQ building looks from google maps in its normal state, as viewed from Rybalsky street which goes along the Havana bridge:

2015 photo.

2011 photo.

And here is an archived photo that appears to show the rear portion whose orientation would be looking from northwest towards southeasterly direction:

Now, the new photos which have appeared show the building looking as follows:

Clearly it’s been badly burned and a portion of it covered with some type of construction covering to conceal the damage. A few important things to note, which will play a role in the analysis:

• Note the roof, there appears to be some damaged equipment which is now lopsided as if it was torn off its supports by a powerful blast or shake

• Note how a building in the distant background also appears to have windows blown out and possibly charred

• Note how the GUR HQ itself, its greatest visible damage actually appears not at the top, where you would expect a missile to come in from, but rather a set of windows much lower down on what looks like the 4th or 5th floor (click on the image to open a larger version)

Most of the black smoke/fire damage does appear to have poured from that floor.

Now this is most peculiar because a missile entering from the roof or top floors would likely create the most damage at the top, not at the lower or middle floors. So this could give credence to the theories that in fact an underground bunker beneath the building was blown up, whose fires and damage spread upward through the building.

And the evidence for that is two new satellite photos showing a before and after from days prior to the strike and immediately after the strike:

Photo on the left is 5/25, on the right is 5/30. When you look closely the difference is the appearance of a lightened area right at the point of the GUR HQ building that many are interpreting as being ‘upturned earth’ or a large hole in the ground.

I’ve pored over higher quality zoomed in versions and, personally, I’m not as convinced. What it looks to me is not like upturned earth but rather a satellite photo taken at a different part of the day (morning) whereby the light is striking the building adjacent directly to the west of the HQ building, lighting up its easterly-facing facade, and making a ‘highlight’ of that sort. I could be wrong, of course, but that’s what I’m seeing. I have seen similar attack profiles, i.e. a building that looks a bit burned out but not destroyed. This has previously been the result of Geran drone attacks which don’t quite have the penetrative power of a missile due to their slow speed. But for that to be the case, the Geran would had to have hit the building from the other side we’re not seeing, or something like that.

Either way, it is an odd strike. The building appears damaged “from below” rather than above, and does coincide with a huge ground-rumbling earthquake which was said to have come from some underground explosion. Rumors of NATO generals being ferried now abound, though I take those as low confidence.

Popular Russian frontline correspondent, Rudenko V., claims to have insider info:

Rudenko V: "According to my information, a headquarters was set up in Kiev, which included the Western curators of the operation in Ukraine. The second time we hit the bull's eye. The first time such a headquarters was destroyed by "Daggers" in the Lviv region, then about two hundred foreign soldiers were killed."

Now, of course, there are the obligatory rumors that GUR head Budanov is missing and some claiming he was killed in the strike. Just recently coming off from the Zaluzhny debacle, I remain skeptical. But it’s definitely possible and we’ll just have to wait for any further information and see. After all, aspiring Bond-villain Budanov is a camera whore that loves making idle threats and zinging Russians so it is very odd that he’s suddenly so quiet. Recall, that after the previous round of strikes, the righteously indignant Budanov immediately recorded a threatening video, which I posted last time, where he told Russia that something is coming “soon” for them. One would think that after a hit completely burns out his HQ he would at least make some kind of retort, no?

Anyway, there’s a lot of funny business around this attack. For instance, Patriot missiles were similarly recorded falling from the skies in an area that appears to be near the HQ, as one can see something that could be the bridge in the background:

Intrepid viewers have freeze-framed it and compared to reach a consensus that it is a Pac-3 MSE missile from the Patriot system:

The middle fins look slightly different, leading to some disagreement. However, this could be a product of visual distortion of various characteristics, like speed of object, camera settings, and foreshortening of the missile in relation to the viewer.

The fact is, it fits every single other alternative even much less. Only BUK-2 missile comes close yet the one in the freeze-frame still fits Pac-3 better. Myself and others have compared it to every other possible missile type, including potential Russian cruise missiles, and it matches none of them. There could even be slightly damage or bending of a fin that could make it look slightly different. Also, the missile is coming straight down in a ballistic arc, which cruise missiles generally don’t do, and would come in at a diagonal trajectory. The only other thing that could come down in such a arc is a failing AD missile that’s gone haywire.

But the fact is, other videos and photos of crashed Pac-3 missiles now abound from all over Kiev, so it raises the probability that this one is a Pac-3 as well. For instance:

What’s interesting is the above was geolocated to right near the Rybalsky district as well:

So are these the failed Patriots which tried to stop the strike on the GUR HQ?

These Patriots really aren’t doing well, but there are clearly still some left at least.

@Stellarman22 did a deep dive on Twitter and estimates the following:

Why I am high confidence:

- Sat imagery confirms crater anomaly

- Bridge has been closed for 2 days

- Reports of construction equipment in area

- Direct statement by Putin

- SBU freaking out and arresting anyone that films anything

- Kiev Shaking 5/28

He’s right on the above, the SBU has now launched into an even more rabid pursuit of anyone filming arrivals. Not only have multiple new people been arrested (this is on top of the 32+ arrested during Kiev strikes last week which I already reported on), but Kiev’s webcams are now being mercilessly hunted:

Now, onto another big strike that occurred recently. We reported on the Zhitomir strike just days ago which blew another very big set of ammo depots. New satellite imagery now confirms this as well:

Satellite images of military warehouses southeast of Zhytomyr appeared on the network today with a difference of ten days - May 20 and 30. The footage shows serious damage caused by the strike of the Russian Armed Forces on the morning of May 28.

Coordinates: 50,1066970, 28,8038165

Then on the video, the residents of Zhytomyr recorded a powerful explosion and detonation of ammunition somewhere in the Zhytomyr region. The hangars themselves are located 17 kilometers southeast of the city.

According to open sources, this area was abandoned. However, in the village of Chervony Stepok, to which the hangars are adjacent, there was one of the units of the 433rd joint storage base for weapons and equipment of the Ukrainian Air Force.

It is likely that the vast system of the facility was used to store aviation ammunition for tactical aircraft stationed nearby at the Ozernoye airbase.

In other news, RAND Corporation released a concerned report that Russia is learning how to fight NATO while modernizing its own army, and NATO is not getting any real, on the ground, hands-on experience themselves, at least nothing comparable to what Russian soldiers are getting through this conflict:

"Noninsider" accidentally found out that there are alarming signals among Western military experts.

Conducting an analysis of the NWO process, they suddenly came to the understanding that, in fact, there was a constant practical training of the Russian army.

This conclusion follows at least two classified reports made by unrelated think tanks "RAND Corporation" and "Center for a New American Security".

It was revealed to them that in combat conditions, Russian troops are practicing the skills of countering Western military equipment, NATO standards of operational control and military tactics. Logistics is also being improved, and the process of modernizing the army has accelerated.

That is, pumping Ukraine with weapons and specialists, they teach us to fight with them, but at the same time their personnel do not receive such experience.

This is a rather weighty fact, which now haunts the military elite of the West, in particular the United States, and gives rise to the demand to "stop training Russians."

Exactly how they should "stop" is not specified.

However, the quotation is from the part of the report that gives the opinion of the Chief of Staff of the US Army, General James McConville.

In addition, the closed report of the "RAND Corporation" emphasizes the danger of high-ranking NATO military advisers falling into Russian captivity, with all the ensuing consequences. In this part there is a reference to "..an incident that occurred earlier..". That is, it is quite possible that ours did take someone serious from their high command. Unfortunately no details were provided.

We cannot judge what impact the findings of the reports will have, but we fully assume that US national security demands may begin to take precedence in disputes over assistance to Ukraine. Especially on the eve of the presidential elections.

The last bit of the report above is …interesting.

This dovetails with preparations for the coming offensive, which we’re all sick of hearing about at this point. It was reported last week that fearful of leaks, Ukraine has shared their offensive plans with only a tiny handful of people in the West. Apparently Lindsay Graham was one of them, as a new Politico piece reports with joy that Graham has been given a very thorough ‘deep-dive’ of the full offensive plans, which he calls very ‘impressive’. He further says that the Russians are in for a big surprise and ‘rude awakening’.

“In the coming days, you’re going to see a pretty impressive display of power by the Ukrainians.”

Weather has apparently been rainy recently but forecasts show the next period clearing up with warmer dry weather once again, so some believe it opens up a window for an offensive in the near term:

Others have noted that Ukraine doesn’t go by the astronomical seasons but rather meteorological ones, which means that summer officially starts on June 1st. We talked before about how Ukraine had likely planned to try to launch the offensive to coincide with the big NATO exercises which are kicking off in June. However, there was another rumor that they want the offensive to in fact coincide with the big NATO summit taking place in Vilnius on July 11.

This is an important summit where NATO intends to make several fateful decisions, one of which is their hope that Sweden will finally be admitted to the alliance. They will intend to make some ‘big decisions’ regarding Ukraine, security guarantees, etc.

The theory is that Zelensky wants to launch the offensive somewhere around the time of the summit, presumably in order to highlight Ukraine’s victories and needs for the meeting. But to me, it would make more logical sense to launch before the actual summit rather than right on top of it.

As I understand it, the big Air Defender exercises in Romania will be on June 12-23, so for now that remains the most likely time for an offensive, if one is to even launch at all. And if it’s true that Ukraine privileges meteorological summer, which starts on June 1, then the summer offensive theory in June can make even more sense.

With that said, last time I reported that Ukraine wanted four squadrons of F-16s, for a total of 48, to be comfortable. Now they’ve already doubled that and are begging for over 120+:

Kotz: "Kiev needs about 120 Western-style fighters, most of them should be F-16s," said Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov.

To want, of course, is not harmful. But Kiev's appetites are growing by leaps and bounds. Back in mid-May, adviser to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Yuriy Sak announced more modest figures - 40-50 aircraft. However, it will be very difficult for Western countries to meet these needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, given that the United States is not ready to share its equipment and forces its European allies to charity.

Yes, the F-16 is the most massive and commercially successful fighter in the world. In total, more than 4,600 aircraft were built, and they are in service in 25 countries around the world. But it is in Europe that there are not so many of them. Western European countries prefer fighters of their own design, or Eurofighters built in cooperation.

Most of the "sixteenth" - 550 cars-in the United States itself. Turkey — 250, Israel-230, Egypt-209, South Korea-150, Taiwan-140. The largest European operators are Greece with 135 aircraft, the Netherlands with 61 fighters, Norway with 57 aircraft and Denmark with 44. The last three countries have already expressed a desire to share aviation equipment with Kiev."

And in light of that, there’s another interesting report which underscores this mad rush for aviation. Others have noted that the biggest problem for Ukraine would be getting the pilots to even fly such a larger number of planes, so this new report claims that Western intel services are now desperately hunting for pilots from other countries:

Based on Turkish report:

In the last few weeks, representatives of the special services of NATO countries, primarily Great Britain and the United States, have been actively been approaching active and retired pilots of Soviet aircraft from the countries that operate such aircraft.

First of all, the emphasis is on the flight crews flying the MiG-29, Su-24, L-39 and Mi-8/24. Recruitment is carried out within the framework of new deliveries of aviation equipment, intended for the staffing of about four new regiments of the Ukrainian Air Force, since the preparation of personnel from among Ukrainians takes a lot of time and resources.

According to known data, negotiations were held with Sudanese, Libyans, Egyptians and Angolans. Demands were also made for the release of former Afghan Air Force pilots who fled the country in 2021

The question all this plane hubbub brings up to me is, what exactly are they planning? Could it be that all current “offensive” noise is nothing more than a smokescreen as I’ve suspected, and in fact Ukraine is not planning any major offensive until they get all those planes and actually feel comfortable about their chances of surviving? Keep in mind, even if they were to get any planes at all, which is still questionable simply due to the logistical ability to even field more than a tiny token number of F-16s, it would not happen for many months. So is this their way of delaying out of the offensive and saving face toward their allies?

Or do they still intend to launch an offensive, but these are merely preemptive plans for what comes next? But if that’s the case, we’ve already hypothesized for a long time, that the likely conclusion will be the drawing up of a Korean-style DMZ scenario to freeze the conflict. And if that’s the plan, then why the desperate scramble for planes now?

It’s clear that we’ve been dragged along and already hoodwinked to a large degree. If you’ll recall, the AFU was supposed to launch a big scary offensive as far back as last winter, then it turned to late winter, then spring, now summer. And each time, there was always a bevy of excuses—from meteorological ones (blame the weather!) to indirect blaming of allies not supplying arms fast enough, etc.

The truth is, it can be said that Ukraine is desperately trying to pull a fast one on us all, buying precious time until they can get enough arms which continue to be destroyed in their hangars, transit points, staging areas, etc. It’s clear, when you read between the lines, that they don’t appear as satisfied with their current arms as they try to project. Not only have they made numerous recent statements about “still waiting for more arms supplies” but now we see these urgent appeals for hundreds of fighter jets. Not to mention, the arms they did get—how many of them are actually functional? Recall the 76% of Strykers being DOA and out of commission from my last report, for instance.

Of course, we can also say that perhaps it’s all deliberate mind games, and Ukraine is intentionally projecting weakness and disarray in order to lull the Russian side into a state of complacency that can be exploited by the ‘offensive’.

These things are in line with what Rybar recently said about Ukraine’s strikes on Moscow:

Today's raid on Moscow is another carrot for the Ukrainian population, which needs to be constantly fed with inflated positivity after massive strikes throughout Ukraine, the loss of Bakhmut and the ongoing mobilization. And a gift for Ukrainian propaganda. Militarily, an attack solves almost nothing. But it solves in the PR plan: it turned out to be an unpleasant click on the nose, which will probably be answered with another massive blow to Ukraine (thus confirming the thesis about retaliatory strikes for the sake of retaliatory strikes). (Rybar)

To wit: Ukraine’s only objective in this war as of this point is to consistently string along enough small events to serve as temporary bumps of ostensible activity and provide a psychological/morale boost. It’s cheap parlor tricks, the practiced hand-waving of a street magician trying to distract you. They have no real military ability so they subsist on a diet of any sort of bump they can get every few days to string along this conjured illusion that they’re actually still in the war, still scraping and fighting back.

And these ‘bumps’ are not just of the falseflag/psyop variety like the strikes on Moscow, but they include the chest-puffing false image of strength and bluffs that Ukrainian officials continue feigning with their constant talk of a never-materializing offensive.

The ever-approaching Ukrainian offensive.

This has even somewhat been confirmed by Ukrainian ex-NatSec deputy Major General Kryvonos:

So no major AFU offensive until the Airforce is built up?

🇺🇦🏴‍☠️The offensive of the Armed Forces without aviation will not be successful and will lead to heavy losses - General Krivonos

▪️"An offensive operation is a ground-air operation. The fact that we have strengthened our ground capabilities is one thing, but we still need to strengthen our air capabilities... Attacking without aviation support will be a nightmare, huge losses and will not bring any benefit. It is better to delay this situation, it is even better to prepare and wait for the aviation," said ex-Deputy Secretary of the National Security Council and ex-Commander of the SSO of Ukraine, Major General Kryvonos.

▪️"Russia has enough resources. We still have problems with ammunition and weapons. And the Russians have the opportunity to attack - they have all the strength and means for this," he added, saying that the potential of the Russian army should not be underestimated.

Some might argue: well, isn’t that hypocritical, because Russia, too, was supposed to have launched a winter offensive, spring offensive, etc.

Maybe so, but, the difference is: Russia has no real obligation to launch any offensives at all—why should it? Russia is in Ukraine already. They’re literally holding a massive portion of Ukrainian land, 20% or so by some estimations. Russia can end the war tomorrow and it would technically come out ahead, having gained new territories and millions of new citizens. Sure, their main war aims wouldn’t have been accomplished and Ukraine would still pose a ‘threat’ on their periphery, but who cares? It’s still no where near the threat that Russia poses to Ukraine’s peripheries, is it?

Not that I’m actually advocating for Russia to sit and do nothing, but simply pointing out that it’s Russia who’s inside Ukraine—it’s Ukraine’s obligation now to do something about what they claim to be their country and push Russia out. Russia can squat on this land forever and not move another inch and they would in some sense not be ethically letting anyone down. Ukraine on the other hand—from their perspective—owes an ethical responsibility toward freeing the lands that an ‘invader’ has already taken from them. So, the onus is on them to do something. Russia has in fact already taken most of the crown jewels they wanted, Crimea and the vast majority of Donbass, for one. So the fact that Russia hasn’t launched offensives yet means nothing. The fact that Ukraine hasn’t means a lot more—the urgency, moral imperative, and responsibility rests solely with them to act and ‘liberate their land’ from the ‘invader’.

And speaking of which, this doesn’t sound very promising for Ukraine, should the offensive ever finally materialize:

MI6 transmitted intelligence to the President's Office and the General Staff that the Russian General Staff is using the capabilities of the aerospace Forces by only 5%, accumulating forces for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Over the past year, the number of modern fighters has increased by 20%, and military helicopters by 15%, but their use at the front is minimal, due to the preparation of Russian troops for the upcoming battle of the Azov Sea.

And in light of all the recent strikes on Kiev and commotion about Patriot missiles, some have wondered why, exactly, is it that Russia is even striking Kiev to begin with? Some on the Ukrainian side have even claimed that Russia is wasting its own precious guided missiles on Kiev while leaving actual military targets unharmed in the rest of the country.

Well, firstly, as to the last point, we know Russia is having its cake and eating it too. It’s striking Kiev and all over the country, as evidenced by the Zhitomir strike break-down earlier in this very report.

But as for Kiev, this Russian military channel recently brought up a very good point and explanation which is apposite to this discussion:

What is the point of destroying the Patriot air defense system?
In addition to the defeat of the American air defense system as a legitimate military target, there are other reasons.

A modification of the Patriot PAC-3 air defense system with MIM-104F (MSE) missiles, presumably deployed in Kiev, is the most modern version of the American air defense system. This version significantly expands the capabilities of the radar for detecting high-speed targets with low visibility, such as Iskander or Kinzhal missiles, and also improves anti-missiles. The destruction of such objects by ballistic and cruise missiles will confirm the capabilities of Russian sea -, land-and air-based missile weapons.

In addition, the destruction of the Patriot air defense system will allow you to collect a huge array of data on the tactics of using these weapons, characteristics and other features of the American air defense system. Almost certainly, we can say that during the strikes, an accurate electronic portrait of the main systems and subsystems of the Patriot PAC-3 air defense system was obtained, which in the future will allow detecting these targets when deployed anywhere in the world.
The average consumption of more than one MIM-104F anti-missile for each Russian "Dagger" or "Iskander-M" is due to the fact that both types of missiles are equipped with modern means of overcoming enemy missile defense.

In particular, Iskanders and Daggers are equipped with containers with dipole reflectors, electronic warfare stations, and can also perform anti-missile maneuvers with overloads of up to 25 units, which makes their interception almost impossible. (Military chronicle of TG)

I found this interesting because it actually converged with my own recent thinking. There really aren’t that many targets in Kiev that Russia could possibly want to hit; after all, unless they’re hitting decision centers, what else of military value could possibly be inside Kiev? It’s not like Ukraine is going to be hiding their armored divisions there, meant for the offensive 600km away on the Zaporozhye frontline.

No, I believe one of Russia’s chief objectives in the last few months of strikes on Kiev have been specifically to degrade Ukraine’s air defense network; and the above quote plays into that, as this gives Russia a rare opportunity to both test and profile NATO’s so-called premier defense system. This further plays into the quoted passage pasted earlier in the article, where NATO expressed their worry about how Russia is learning how to counteract all their systems, receiving first hand frontline training for all their troops, while NATO is not.

If you’ve read the Pentagon leaks from a few months ago, you’ll note that in the section about air defense, it specifically noted how, as each premier system, i.e. the SA-10 and 11s (S-300s and Buks) are depleted, this will cause not only the acceleration of the depletion of other ancillary systems, as they will have to be brought in to play double duty, but also will cause other important regions to be robbed of their AD capabilities as those systems will have to be requisitioned toward protecting the most critical population centers.

You see, U.S. intel services categorized the different areas of importance as, for instance, the FLOT (Front Line of Troops) and CNI (Critical National Infrastructure), and each one was assigned certain systems; SA-10/11s to CNIs, etc. But as the CNI defenses get progressively depleted, you have to pull critical assets from FLOTs which now leaves your FLOT vulnerable.

So, in essence: I believe Russia is hammering the largest target and concentration of Ukrainian AD—which is in the Kiev CNI zone—in order to massively deplete Ukrainian AD missile stockpiles (as well as the systems themselves with opportune SEAD/DEAD), which results in a cumulative domino effect that helps to deplete critical frontline defenses allowing Russian CAS / frontline strike craft to operate much more freely, which they have in fact been doing for several months now, particularly with their new lines of UMPC glide bombs, AGMs like Kh-35/38/59, etc.

This is the main reason Russia is launching mass Geran drone strikes on Kiev. They are a great equalizer in making the AFU waste precious expensive AD missiles, most of which cost hundreds of thousands to millions (for the Western variety) each, all to shoot down a drone that costs somewhere in the $10-20k range or less. Basically, these are large-scale ammunition depletion operations—for the most part at least. They do still strike various infrastructure facilities like power centers, oil/fuel depots, etc., in the Kiev region, but these are almost secondary by comparison.

And in fact, all of this is confirmed in the following report from today:

Echoes of the destruction of another American air defense/PRO missile system MIM-104F Patriot

▪️Russian military analysts announced that the battery of the 🇺🇸 American air defense/PRO system ✖️MIM-104F Patriot PAC-3, during an attempt to intercept Russian ballistic missiles launched from the 9K720 "Iskander-M" operational-tactical missile system, fired in a very short period of time a salvo of rockets 🚀 PAC-3 CRI, when due to an extremely large number of launches in a narrow time interval, mutual interception occurred, or rather, the rockets instead of hitting enemy targets, knocked each other down.

📌 This could also be read in the comments of the 🇺🇦 Ukrainian media, where it is also stated that the AFU has recently been systematically weakening the air defense of other cities, at the expense of Kiev, where every night there is a 10-25 million American dollar for sale.

A couple last items:

For anyone wondering how the mythical Bakhmut counter-offensive has been going, here’s a new post straight from the AFU themselves, and it’s not sounding good:

‼️UKRAINIAN POST ‼️

On the flanks of Bakhmut, it finally stalled. The thing is that the offensive that was [started] was originally launched based on the simultaneous actions of the garrison in the city, which, in turn, could start them only if serious reinforcements arrived. But there were no serious reinforcements, and the attacks on the flanks, it seems, turned out to be another attempt to prove to the layman that "not everything is so simple." By the way, neither Zelensky, nor Reznikov, nor anyone from the Command has yet announced what happened to Bakhmut. That's despite the fact that a number of European and American publications have already analyzed and criticized all actions with Bakhmut from beginning to end.

Now this section is being "reinforced with concrete" and will soon become unpromising for standard offensive actions. Well, if some "genius" in the Command decides to start the announced counteroffensive with the return of Bakhmut in mind, then we will simply repeat everything that the enemy has been through since August. But we don’t have enough meat for this meat grinder.

So, not only do they admit that the ‘counter-offensive’ was nothing more than an attempt to steal headlines from Russia’s capture of Bakhmut, but that the whole point of it was to coincide with garrisons inside the city which can add supporting actions. But now that the city is taken, the AFU forces alone on the flanks can’t do much themselves, and in fact in some areas, particularly in the northern flanks, Russia has already re-taken much of the territory. Now, they say, Russia is already ‘digging in’ (“reinforcing with concrete”) and any prospective offensive against Bakhmut is unrealistic at this point and would just be a mindless slaughter.

Interestingly, Chechens have now been sent towards Marinka, but we’ve yet to see if that’s part of a wider initiative or just a relieving/rotational action.

Russia wiped out what’s being called Ukraine’s last naval ship:

The ship reportedly spent the last year playing hide-and-seek in the Dnieper river but had finally resurfaced somewhere near Odessa where it was promptly sent to the abyss by Russian airstrikes. Many crewmembers reportedly perished.

As Daniel Bezsonov writes , the city is searching for residents who leaked the ship's parking place to our military. Despite the Gestapo terror, residents of Odessa and the Odessa region still provide significant amounts of information to our military about the movements of enemy troops and places where equipment and ammunition are stored.

It is also worth noting that the enemy periodically changed the ship's parking place and took measures to disguise it. (Boris Rozhin)

Rebelnews reports that Gonzalo Lira faces 13 years in prison:

https://www.rebelnews.com/us_citizen_in_ukraine_faces_13_years_in_prison_for_supporting_russian_actions_and_criticizing_zelensky

American 101st Airborne have been busy, spotted in the KFOR vs. Serb protestor clashes, and fully armed to boot:

Interesting photo of yesterday's clashes between KFOR "Peacekeepers" / ROSU "Special Forces" and Serb peaceful protesters.

101st Airborne member and a ROSU soldier with a rifle, which confirms yesterday's claims that ROSU opened fire on Serbian civilians.

Remember, the elite 101st was ready to Rambo their way in to Ukraine a few months ago. What are they doing in Kosovo?

And Newsweek now proudly investigates how the AFU flourished under the guidance of ISIS tactics:

It’s interesting that they immediately modified the headline after posting the article:

The article tiptoes very carefully in not overtly comparing their beloved AFU to ISIS, but hems and haws around at the edges, by basically tacitly implying that Ukraine is using ISIS’s best tactics to propitious results:

Sean Heuston, a professor who teaches courses on propaganda, social conflict, and media studies at The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, told Newsweek the clip is "a great example of the gamification of combat videos and the strange quality overlap between video games and real-life footage" that ties in with video techniques employed by ISIS.

ISIS, Heuston said, emphasizes a type of propaganda video that "unfortunately is much more appealing to younger audiences."

"They often resemble action movies and prioritize dramatic conflict, whether that be combat footage or on-camera beheadings. And thus, they're more likely to generate views and clicks," he said.

They go on to say that Zelensky has taken ‘brilliant’ advantage of basically being ISIS:

"I think Ukraine has figured that out and has sort of reverse engineered the important parts of or some important parts of the ISIS propaganda approach, while separating it from the morally horrifying or morally repugnant parts of ISIS," he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has used media "brilliantly" so far in the war, Heuston said.

The CIA Mockingbird press appears so proud of their newfound terrorist hatchlings spawning from the fetid corpse of their previous one!

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