Putin Strikes Back: Ukrainian Ports Devastated To Cap Grain Deal's Termination

Last night Russia struck Odessa and virtually every other port involved in the grain deal (there are others like Yuzhne, Ochekov, Nikolayev, etc.), as well as other cities in west Ukraine. Odessa’s mayor called it the worst strikes of the entire war thus far:

Incidentally, it was said that the man who filmed the wild video of Odessa arrivals above has already been captured by SBU and ‘mobilized’:

CNN disingenuously ratcheted up the sensationalism, claiming they’ve “never seen anything like it”—I guess the reporter wasn’t around in Baghdad in March, 2003:

By the way, it’s interesting that Western media and officials are making such a big deal about Russia’s “barbaric attacks”, not only from a hypocrisy standpoint—after all, Kiev literally just attacked the Crimean Bridge the other day, killing civilians on camera and now they’re complaining that Russia has hit ‘civilian infrastructure’ in Odessa. But also, the fact that the U.S. has done the same thing many times to no great outrage.

Case in point: here’s an LA Times article from 1990 showing the U.S. utilizing the same tactics during the Gulf War:

Or Operation Pocketmoney.

Here’s a more recent one:

Seized Iranian oil just happens to be ‘stuck’ off the coast of Texas, phrased in that immortal passive-voice Newspeak style MSM loves to employ when they need to hide the culprit of the crime. You know, like when they report on Israeli missiles hitting Syria as “Damascus is hit by missiles”, leaving their dimwitted readers to wonder whose missiles they were. If you click on the actual article above, only later on do they mention that this is seized oil, nor do they mention illegally seized.

Now, MSM has the gall to repeatedly cry that Russia’s utilization of the same tactics is somehow more ‘barbaric’.

Getting back to the strikes, here’s another large compilation of strike videos from last night:

This move was clearly to finish off Ukraine’s grain deal infrastructure so that they cannot continue carrying out the deal without Russia, given that Zelensky had already attempted to woo Turkey and others into continuing the deal as if nothing had happened.

Screenshots from a Ukrainian air defense unit were reportedly leaked showing a swarm of missiles and drones:

Screen shots from the ACS "Virage-Tablet" of Ukrainian air defense operators near Odessa speaks for itself.

Dozens of targets representing Caliber, Onyx and Kh-22 missiles, as well as Geran-2 kamikaze drones.

The mayor of Odessa said "that we do not remember such a scale of attack since the beginning of the war"❗️

This ACS (Automated Control System) Virage system is said to be another analog of Ukraine-Western ‘Nettle’ and Delta systems, which is a data aggregator from a variety of sources, which can be air defense radars, manually inputted from spotters, NATO AWACs, etc. The Fighterbomber channel once explained it as such:

"Virage - Tablet" is a Ukrainian program that displays online data on the air situation to the user on any laptop. A kind of flyradar.

Data is entered into the system from anything. From combat radars of air defense systems, RTV locators, dispatch locators, and I suspect that data from NATO Avaks and RTR aircraft can also be thrown onto it.

For data transmission, the simplest radio modems are used and the Internet, with which, thanks to Elon Musk and his Starlink, crests have no problems at all. ("Starlink", unequivocally, the third imba among crests).

Thanks to this system, the type of target, the course and flight altitude of our strike groups are promptly issued to air defense calculations and crews, and air defense systems with MANPADS calculations are deployed to the desired azimuth and wait for targets to enter their affected area without turning on radiation, that is, remaining invisible to missile launchers and electronic warfare systems of aircraft and helicopters almost until the moment of launch.

Due to its compactness and mobility, this system can provide any calculation of air defense forces and, of course, infantry.

One interesting thing I’d point out is that it’s very difficult to believe that air defense radar systems from Odessa can track cruise missile and drone-sized targets at those distances from Crimea. You’ll note there are contacts even off the coast of Sevastopol, which is 320km+ away from Odessa. It seems more likely that NATO AWACS on the coast of Romania (also about ~320km) were tracking and digitally linking the info to Ukraine.

However, with that said, many of the contacts appear to point to indigent Ukrainian radar systems. For instance, on the screens, you can see many designations of 35D6M, which is a Ukrainian radar station manufactured by ex-Soviet Zaporozhye-based Iskra systems. Also, you can see 79K6 which appears to designate another homegrown Pelikan radar.

The radar’s own stats show it can track a target at 300km+ only if it’s flying at an altitude of 10-30km. If it’s flying 100m off the ground, it can only be tracked at 40km maximum.

So how is it that they’re tracking presumably low-flying cruise missiles at such ranges? The designations also point to several types of Russian missiles, for instance there appears to be one contact written in as P-700, which would presumably be a Russian P-700 Granit missile. Another designation shows “Malakhit”, which could be a Russian P-120 Malakhit.

We do know from reports like this one, that Russian subs were firing P-700s as early as last year in exercises. So, given the scale of last night’s attack, it’s conceivable that almost everything was launched.

For instance, we know that Kh-59Mk2s were used, as photos of one that was shot down appeared online. We further know that Onyx missiles fired by Bastion coastal units in Crimea were used, as videos of that emerged:

We also know that Tu-22M3s specifically were up in the air, which typically launch Kh-22s, rather than the Kh-101s the Tu-95 Bears launch. So, all in all, last night was a smorgasbord of missiles which probably included: Kh-59s, Kh-22s, Kh-101s, Kalibrs, Onyx/P-800s, sub-launched P-120s and P-700s, and possibly even others like Kh-35s or Iskander-M or K (R-500) variant, as well as a mass of drones led by Gerans/Shaheds.

In short: it appears Russia has finished off Ukraine’s port and grain future. Western apparatchiks are already rushing in to salvage what they can:

Meanwhile, Whitehouse spokesman Karen Jean-Pierre has stated that the U.S. has not decided on any action as of yet, and Turkish officials have likewise hinted that they will not be pursuing any ‘bruteforce’ actions to militarily intervene or attempt to use their warships to escort grain cargo.

Moscow has firmly stated that as of July 20, any and all ships heading toward Ukrainian ports will be treated as adversarial targets:

Russian MoD re: ships sailing to Ukrainian ports: In connection with the cessation of the functioning of the Black Sea Grain Initiative and the сlosing of the maritime humanitarian corridor, from 00.00 Moscow time on 20 July 2023, all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo. Accordingly, the countries of such vessels will be considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.

In addition, a number of sea areas in the north-western and south-eastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily dangerous for navigation. Corresponding information warnings on the withdrawal of safety guarantees to mariners have been issued in accordance with the established procedure.

BBC reports that upwards of 60,000 tons of grain was destroyed in the strikes, quoting Ukraine’s agriculture minister:

Russian missile attacks on Ukraine's Black Sea coast have destroyed 60,000 tonnes of grain and damaged storage infrastructure, officials say.

Agriculture Minister Mykola Solskyi said a "considerable amount" of export infrastructure was out of operation.

A cursory search seems to give me that a typical large grain ship carries about that much grain, so this would appear to be the equivalent of one full grain ship destroyed—if the reports are even true. Also, it’s claimed that it would take up to a year to restore the damaged terminals.

Recall that at the time of the strikes, Ukraine’s typical fake reports were claiming that “all missiles and drones” were being shot down by their valiant air defense teams. But now that the damage was too severe to hide, they’re forced to change the story, and now reports like the following abound:

⚡️⚡️⚡️Even the Ukrainian TG channel " Woman with a Scythe" reports that Odessa has almost no air defense ammunition left that could shoot down missiles.

"There is only ammunition left for the Cheetahs. Ammunition is being urgently transferred from western Ukraine, preparing for a second attack on Odessa's ports and infrastructure⚡️⚡️⚡️

And in fact, as of this writing, a large new series of strikes is happening on Odessa for the second night in a row. This is typical as Russia will wait a day for the smoke to clear and do satellite BDAs (Battle Damage Assessment), then launch a new strike to finish off the objects which weren’t satisfactorily hit the first time around.

Putin made a number of statements on the situation:

Here is a summary of most salient points:

🇷🇺 President Putin on the grain deal:

— The grain deal was concluded exactly a year ago, on July 22, 2022. We extended this deal again and again, showed miracles of endurance and patience;

- Nobody [in the West] was going to fulfill the agreements, they just constantly demanded something from Russia. Just outright arrogance;

- The authority was undermined, among other things, by the leadership of the UN secretariat, which acted as a guarantor of the grain deal. I believe that the UN staff sincerely sought to fulfill all the promises made by the West, but they could not achieve anything, they did practically nothing to ensure the normal operation of the deal;

- The West did everything to derail the grain deal, spared no effort;

— The withdrawal from the sanctions of Russian exports of grain and fertilizers to world markets has not been completed. Moreover, Russia is being hindered even from donating Russian fertilizers to the poorest countries;

- Russia will replace Ukrainian grain in the food market both commercially and free of charge;

— The continuation of the grain deal in its current form has lost all meaning. Starting from July 18, its implementation was completed;

- Russia will consider the possibility of returning to the grain deal only if all the principles of Russia's participation in this deal, without exception, are fully taken into account and implemented.

Now, Russian grain is shooting up in the markets:

And presidential advisor Podolyak explains that it’s not the carriers but the insurers who won’t take up the risk on insuring ships crossing the contested warzone waters:

Not a single cargo ship will call at the ports of Ukraine on the Black Sea after the termination of the grain deal, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, admitted on the air of the Rada TV channel.

"No country will dare to send its ships [to the ports of Ukraine]. And this is not a question of ships, this is a question of insurance companies," Podolyak said.

However, Ukraine is now begging companies to continue shipping with the promise that they’ll provide some sort of quasi-insured ‘damage guarantee’ to them:

⚡️⚡️⚡️Ukraine said in a letter to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which is a United Nations agency, that it has created a mechanism to provide "damage guarantees" to companies and ships visiting ports Ukrainians after the completion of the grain deal, Reuters reports, citing the letter.

Kiev says the mechanism will work for ships that are in Ukrainian territorial waters or heading to or from Ukrainian ports.

Yes, because the big shipowners are gullible enough to believe that the Kiev regime has the money to reimburse the cost of huge ships and insure their crews. As soon as, so immediately, yes⚡️⚡️⚡️

There were reports that Russia is not yet finished, which appeared to prove true as a new series of attacks is ongoing as of this writing. British intel claims the following:

"MI-6 has transmitted new intelligence to the Office of the President and the General Staff, indicating that Russian military forces are preparing a series of strikes on maritime infrastructure using deep-sea and naval drones. By employing this method, the Kremlin aims to demonstrate Russia's possession of new types of weaponry that have not yet been utilized in Ukraine. British intelligence believes that the attacks on seaports are intended to prevent Ukraine from reopening the grain corridor in a unilateral format."

🐻 As always, take what Rezidents says with a grain of salt.💥💥

Another such report states that Ukraine plans to create a provocation with the intention of drawing Western powers into the conflict:

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦🇬🇧 From Rezident_UA's Telegram Channel:

💬 "Our source within the Presidential Office has revealed that with the support of British intelligence, a plan is being developed for cargo ships to pass through the ports of the Odessa region. Currently, negotiations are underway with private companies to acquire several ships that will symbolically sail to Odessa and provoke Russia into an attack. If the cargo ships pass through peacefully, Ukraine will declare the grain corridor safe. However, if an attack on these peaceful ships occurs, Ukraine aims to launch an international campaign against Russia."

Of course, this is all par for the course. The entire dog and pony show that Zelensky is currently doing by begging companies to continue shipping under the guise of some ersatz insurance ‘damage guarantee’ is all done under the intention of either creating a falseflag by blowing up these ships and blaming it on Russia, or simply by hoping Russia accidentally hits the ships anyway. As usual, the desperate ploy here is to create the appearance of Russia striking or harming the West in some way, shape, or form in order to finagle them into a clash with Russia. It’s the same tired old trick being used over and over in every instance. However, most Western companies are likely hip to it and know they would be ‘sacrificial lambs’ used to incite a larger war and would rather not take the chance of having their ships and crews destroyed in a falseflag.

For now, Kiev is considering a new route for transporting the grain through Bulgaria and Romania and one can see that as of now all the ships are lined up by the Romanian coast, according to some heading to Ukraine’s port Izmail on the Danube:

In the meantime, things are looking worse and worse for Ukraine and the West. Judging by Putin’s statements, he’s becoming increasingly hardened and jaded to their games and repeated double-crosses which can only mean good news. Lavrov, too, issued a statement cementing Russian resolve by stating that Russia will never back down from the goals of the SMO.

The West is simply running out of options as the grain deal was one of their last big trump cards and leverage points in Ukraine. Ayden has a good take on this in his thread:

First we have the grain silos and elevator in the Odessa port. Ukraine still had ambitions to force the grain deal without the attendance of Russia following the collapse of the grain deal. By destroying the functionality of the port Putin has removed leverage that Ukraine had over the EU and Turkey, as well as reducing the Ukrainian economy as one does in a war. I won’t even get into the rumors of weapons smuggling through the port but that’s also a factor here.

He correctly points out that NASA’s FIRMS heat-sensing satellite showed major strikes on Odessa’s Shkolny airfield as well:

One full list of the attacks was as follows:

Heavy attacks were made on:
- Odessa commercial seaport
- Black Sea Commercial Sea Port
- Rybport
- Bridge across the Dniester estuary (bridge in Zatoka)
- Bridge across the Dniester in Mayaki
- Odessa airport
- Shkolny airfield
- fuel storage facilities
- uncertainty atm about the ports of Yuzhny, Reni, Izmail and Kiliya

Urgent calls for blood donations in the Odessa region were made:

And there are some reports that large troop concentrations were also struck.

Occasionally I post a series of headlines showing the souring morale as judged by the lens through which the MSM reports the conflict. Now, it’s getting worse than ever with headlines like the following:

Note the change in tone from stunned hosts, for instance, in this report:

The press lackey calls for U.S. to get into a ‘wartime footing’ in order to compete with Russia. In fact, more and more the realization is hitting Western leadership that they simply can’t compete. For instance, one European minister even called for the creation of a federated ‘United States of Europe’ as it’s beginning to dawn on them that Europe simply can’t compete with the modern world unless fully united under one central government. Interestingly, he named the U.S., China, Russia, and India as the main powers that a united Europe must compete against, which the individual European countries can’t do. We hear so much about Russia being a weak ‘gas station’ it’s revealing to see how these technocrats really regard it.

Admitting that this position is “not at all popular,” the minister proposed that the European Union should be turned into “a European Federation or a United States of Europe,” which he claimed would put it in a position where it could be “a truly equal partner in the game between China, America, or Russia and India.”

Another stroke in this direction is this report that the leadership of five Nordic countries want to subordinate their armed forces to NATO entirely:

🇳🇴🇩🇰🇫🇮🇮🇸🇸🇪 Last week, Norwegian Defense Minister Eirik Kristoffersen said (https://klassekampen.no/artikkel/2023-07-13/jobber-for-ny-nato-kommando) that the leaderships of the five Nordic countries have expressed a desire to subordinate their national armed forces to NATO Atlantic Command in Norfolk, one of the alliance's three Joint Armed Forces Commands.

The CEPA analytical center notes that at the moment the command in Norfolk does not have sufficient operational capacity to implement such an idea, however, they do not exclude the possibility of reforms in the NATO defense structure.

🔻According to our American colleagues @CIG_telegram, the unification of the armed forces of five countries into a certain structure is necessary (https://t.me/CIG_telegram/33259) in order to focus efforts on the Arctic direction, which in recent years has become increasingly relevant for the NATO leadership as a potential area of conflict between the interests of the alliance, Russia and China.

It is noteworthy that for the head of the Norwegian defense department, Sweden's entry into NATO is already a fait accompli. The path to the alliance is not so thorny if they really want to see someone there.

This is all just part of the slow consolidation of Europe into an increasingly centralized command structure as they are economically gutted out by the global-geopolitical realities stoked by the U.S. The weaker each individual state gets the more servile they will become, scrambling to give up more and more of their sovereignty as the world slowly drifts towards a much wider future European war.

Seeing that Ukraine is now doomed and stands no chance, with options running out, the U.S. intelligence state will push to accelerate the above developments so that they can unify Europe under one rule and then preferably use them as the next fodder with which to attempt to dismantle Russia.

In fact, in his new article, MK Bhadrakumar notes that “CDU’s leading foreign and defence expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, the Nato should consider to “cut off Kaliningrad from the Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure.”

The point being that, slowly, the powers are converging to continue their war on Russia in any way possible once Ukraine is used up and discarded like a wet rag. Unfortunately for them, Russia at that point will be by far the most experienced, powerful, and technologically advanced military nation in the world, having sharpened its teeth on NATO’s latest and best thrown into the cauldron of the Ukrainian war.

We’ve seen them testing the waters before, with Lithuania attempting to blockade Kaliningrad last year by banning Russian trains, as well as the Baltic Sea nations, like Estonia and Finland, threatening to blockade the passage of Russian ships, which I wrote about extensively long ago. They have several means to do this, by extending their maritime economic zone borders and playing other such geographic ‘technicality’ tricks.

Now, Poland (as well as all of NATO in general) is setting up more and more troops near the Belarus and Kaliningrad border, and the Russian Duma Defense Committee chair already let the cat out the bag, as I mentioned here, about Wagner being positioned in Belarus for the purpose of defending the Suwalki corridor.

My prediction is the following: there are huge tectonic shifts currently underway for which the Ukrainian war serves only as a surface level symbolic playing field. The true play happening beneath the surface are the major moves that BRICS are making. Now that a lot of the long awaited summits and other milestones of the past few months have passed, the next big milestone to look forward to is the BRICS summit on August 24th in South Africa.

Today, Putin announced he will be attending by video conference only, though maybe that will change, as they seemed to vacillate on that. But the big point is that there have been rumors that the summit would inaugurate several new BRICS members and/or possibly make some important decisions on the long-awaited gold-backed currency which the entire world has been awaiting with bated breath. I doubt either of these things will actually occur at the upcoming summit—though it sure would be nice—but, there could be important steps taken towards bringing either one to fruition; i.e. either concrete steps towards announcing a timeline for new member accession or a further development and solidarity around the currency issue.

But my point is the following. Should these things continue to develop down this path, it brings an existential crisis to the U.S. and the entire Western banking hegemony which uses the fiat spell as their last grasp over their vassals of the world. They absolutely cannot allow this, which means that the closer that Russia brings the world towards either de-dollarization or some sort of global currency bifurcation, then the more the U.S./UK deepstate will push the world toward a great reset ‘war’, which will presumably start as a continental European war.

The scheme will be perfect for them: just like in WW1 and WW2, they can get Russia and Europe to destroy themselves, bringing their infrastructure to ruin while completely collapsing any chances of the world moving away from the dollar, or at the least, the dollar’s upcoming replacement—under their control—by way of some Western central bank or BIS CBDC.

The U.S.’s goal in this would be to create a low simmer style war that doesn’t break out into a complete nuclear exchange. They can do this by managing it carefully and making sure the deepest ‘red lines’ aren’t crossed, while both sides still suffer massive losses and infrastructural/economic ruin.

The best way to do that, by the way, is simply to ensure that it’s Russia which is doing the invading, while keeping the others from triggering any sort of nuclear Article 5—which U.S. can easily do. The reason being that as long as Russia itself is not invaded or faced with an ‘existential threat’, then the chance of them launching a nuclear first strike is low.

The U.S. can likewise easily goad Russia into attacking Poland or the Baltics first as there are many pressure points the U.S. can puppeteer its vassals into pushing which would leave Russia with no choice but to act on—the aforementioned Kaliningrad blockade being one of them, of course. After all, Ukraine was the same type of pressure point. The U.S. activated it exactly at the point it wanted to by simply ordering its abject vassal to begin attacking, which evoked the perfectly expected and desired response from Russia.

With all that said, the timeline for such things could still be several years off. It all depends on how quickly Russia-China can fast-track their de-dollarization efforts.

But getting back to the earlier idea of NATO ‘running out of options’ in Ukraine: this is happening in concert with major Russian battlefield victories which are now utterly undeniable. Ukraine has desperately attempted another series of assaults in the Orekhov and Vremevske Ledge (near Velyka Novoselka) directions, and since these were particularly desperate attacks, they were rebuffed with an elevated brutality. These three videos from today alone tell a story of yesterday’s assaults—though a warning, they are slightly 18+:

For the first time in these assaults, Leopards were actually seen on the Vremevske side at the far east of the Zaporozhye grouping. Previously, they were only seen on the Orekhov side in the early part of the offensive last month. The 2A6 model was reportedly taken out by a Lancet:

It’s so bad that Ukrainian soldiers are complaining that their leadership is outright lying about any major ‘gains’ happening. A post from one such soldier about the Klescheyevka area near Artemovsk:

In the Kupyansk direction, the situation is even worse, with the AFU desperately trying to reinforce their broken grouping, which is on the run:

⚡️⚡️⚡️In the Kupyansk direction, the enemy leaves its positions

According to Lieutenant Colonel Andriy Marochko, due to the critical losses of Ukrainian fighters and the successful actions of the Russian army northeast of Kupyansk, the enemy is forced to pull its forces to the second and third lines of defense. From many positions, the ukroboeviki flee in panic, not listening to the commanders. In this regard, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have begun to implement a number of repressive measures to return bloodless enemy units to their previous positions, already under the control of Russian troops⚡️⚡️⚡️

Russian forces captured Molchanovo railway station in Liman Pervi near Kupyansk, with fighting moving into Sinkovka:

At the same time, Russia has been doing large strikes on troop gatherings. There are several reports of such effective strikes over the past few days. One is claimed to be from Koblev, between Odessa and Nikolayev:

In Koblev (Mykolaiv Oblast), they called from the hotel where the soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were staying. The Russians were almost never effective there, but the previous night they had hit well. There are great losses. A large number of losses among military personnel were also recorded in Odessa. Hospitals were once again filled with a large number of wounded.

Slavyangrad reports there were over 100 KIA, with the following video:

Another was a train station in Kharkov, which had an indirect confirmation by an obituary of a train worker who died during the attack. But the fine print included the fact that the train was transporting Ukrainian forces:

One version above says Vinnytsia while the other Kharkov, though the discrepancy could perhaps be explained as the train’s origin vs. destination.

Elsewhere in the other two hottest zones where the AFU has seen some advances/success, Russia has either kicked them out or continues to put up a stiff defense. In Staromayorsk, south of Velyka Novoselka, Russian forces continue to repel the AFU despite erroneous earlier reports that the town was taken.

And near Artemovsk’s Klescheyevka, the so-called ‘heights’ which the AFU briefly took on the outskirts of the town were again retaken by Russian forces, with huge losses to the AFU. An earlier advance that took a patch of territory near the western end of Soledar was also retaken by Russian forces as I understand it.

Like I said, now we enter an interesting period where there is nothing big on the horizon coming up for the AFU that could possibly ‘put wind in their sails’, in terms of some big summit, falseflag opportunity, or a new wunderwaffen delivery. The F-16s and ATACMs still seem stuck in limbo and the cluster munition hype has already died down.

That means for once in a long time, the Zelensky regime’s military has to actually rely on some type of tangible battlefield achievement in order to give the semblance of success or simply to stave off the encroaching discouragement and fatigue that all in the EU have now been feeling about the outlook of Ukraine’s effort.

There is no more ‘shtick’ he can pull; only the same tired strategy of throwing endless waves of meat against the grinder. Certainly, a falseflag could still be possible—and they could revive the ZNPP plan at any time, though I haven’t seen a recent update as to the status of the reservoir and its bed.

But it will be interesting to see what Ukraine attempts to pull in order to keep headlines away from their absolutely catastrophic losses. The Crimean Bridge hit was meant to be the first fusillade in this effort. I believe that attack was meant to be far worse. They were hoping to bring down either both spans or an entire pylon, completely severing the bridge. This would have been a triumphal achievement they likely had entire PR packages already long prepared for, which would have gotten rotation on the airwaves for weeks and bought them critical time for ‘perception management’.

But the attack was a failure. One span barely broke and one way traffic was already restored on the parallel one. The railway wasn’t even affected. That means they need to do something fast to win back the momentum in the ‘perception game’. As I said, they have nothing big coming up to look forward to which they can chain together as they’re used to doing—from one propaganda ‘victory’ to another, chaining them along to keep the false simulacrum of triumphalism alive.

Since they have no artificial gimmick by which to do this for the time being, I predict the only thing left will be to scrabble tooth and nail with massive meat assaults in order to grind out some token victory at any cost. That means we should expect to see continued reinforcements pouring into the hottest areas with nothing but human-waves hoping to overrun Russian positions with unprecedented losses.

Currently, the initiative has shifted to the Vremevske ledge, as they see the success here as being most tenable, which is why Leopards were seen there. Thus, they’ve shifted resources from the Orekhov-Rabotino line to this direction, and will likely continue trying to pour everything into capturing Staromayorsk, which would put them just one last settlement away from reaching the actual full blown, official “first line of defense”—you know, the ones with the dragon teeth.

By the way, this is how Western media is processing the current setup:

Their ‘cope’ take is that this recent broad-fronted strategy of shifting from Lobkove, Rabotino, toward Vremevske, etc., is causing Russian units to “weaken” and fatigue. The claim is that Russia is forced to plug the gaps by sending its best units ‘hither and thither’ endlessly which is wearing them out. I’ve seen this same new analysis repeated ad nauseam by several of the top pro-Ukrainian analysts on Twitter.

It’s interesting, though, that we’re meant to believe Russia is tiring out from running back and forth massacring the AFU while the Ukrainian units themselves—according to this logic—suffer no ill effects from the abominable losses they’re taking, particularly in the new meat assaults where they’re hardly using any armor at all.

As a last note on this, here’s an interesting write up of current mercenary force disposition:

⚡️⚡️⚡️Currently, the main forces of NATO military experts are concentrated in Izyum, represented by active German military personnel and specialists of Polish PMCs. These forces are used in the Luhansk direction. According to our information, conducting active covert and technical reconnaissance in the area of the Svatovo-Kremennaya line (LPR), the enemy, with the support of foreign mercenaries and regular NATO formations, planned to advance in the Lugansk direction, having previously hit at the junction of the zones of responsibility of the 6th OA and the 1st tank armies of the RF Armed Forces. The task was to cut the supply channels, block Troitskoye (LPR) and go along the border to the Kantemirov direction (Voronezh region).

Over the past two months, reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the territory of the Chernihiv and Sumy regions have been transferred to the border with the Belgorod region, their number is allegedly from 3000 to 5000. There has also been an active saturation of the entire front line with equipment and field artillery from Novoselovka (LNR) to Liman-1 (Kharkiv region). The larger units, equipped with heavy Western equipment and artillery systems, were well camouflaged in the forests along the Oskol River. But the Iskanders did quite a good job on them a couple of weeks ago.

Thus, while conducting the main offensive operations in the Zaporozhye and South-Donetsk directions, the enemy was secretly concentrating serious forces in the Kupyansk region.

At the same time, the harassing fire on the border settlements of the Belgorod region, in parallel with the calls of the DRG GUR MOU and RDK militants to our territory, were distracting the maneuvers to hold back the reserves of the 6th OA and the 1st tank army.

Active operations continue in the Kremennaya area, where the RF Armed Forces also launched a broad offensive operation in the direction of the O-131306 highway. Ukrainian sources report that the fiercest battles are taking place in Novovodyanoe, Makeyevka, Novolyubovka, Nevsky, Ternoy, Yampolovka, Torskoy and west of Dibrova and Belogorovka⚡️⚡️⚡️

With that out of the way, let’s get to a last few disparate items:

While NATO’s industries choke and putter, Russia continues expanding its own vast productions. New announcements from Russia’s prime minister include the following:

⚡️⚡️⚡️It is planned to increase the volume of deliveries of the fifth generation fighters - Mishustin

The adjustment of technological chains for the production of components for the needs of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is nearing completion – Mishustin⚡️⚡️⚡️

The important note there is that Russia has almost finalized the required import substitutions and technological chain ‘adjustments’ to increase the volume of the Su-57 and others.

This followed this announcement:

🇬🇧🇺🇦 The group of troops "South" used the latest Russian tanks T-14 "Armata" in battle.

On that same front, Putin again acknowledged that AI is of paramount importance:

This is very reassuring to hear as you can tell from his deportment that he truly understands the existential nature of AI development, which should follow that Russia is likely apportioning the requisite resources toward this direction. Of course, as we just saw in the latest Lancet developments which I posted in the last update, this has already borne fruit.

This video is a bit older but is a must watch. Google’s Schmidt, who now basically works for the DOD, says he was shocked at the level and power of Russia’s EW capabilities:

And to link those together, here’s a new video of Sergey Alymov, captain of the 72nd mechanized brigade of the AFU. He says that Russia’s EW is shockingly effective to the point where their communications don’t even work at all. Walkie-talkies which are meant to function at 5km only work at maximum 100m distance:

Next:

Prigozhin addresses Wagner in Belarus:

Next:

A video of the first possible retaliatory use of cluster munitions by Russia. A whole position filled with Ukrainian vehicles was destroyed by what appears to be cluster-style munitions:

Next:

Putin remarks on Western censorship of RT and Russian media:

Next:

Stooping to the most heinously inhuman lows possible, pro-Ukrainian supporters have spent the past two days gloating over the deaths of the civilians from the Kerch Bridge terrorist attack.

First, here’s a disgusting “meat shop” in Lvov, which now advertises some sick meat patties made in the style of the killed “orcs” (yes, it actually says “orcs” at the top of the foil):

Here’s another Ukrainian supporter who simply wrote the following beneath the photo of the deceased:

The bottom basically says the other pig, i.e. the 14 year old girl who lost her parents, is in intensive care and that they hope she will also die. How sick can they get?

But if that wasn’t bad enough, here are two NAFO members, one of whom had already revealed himself previously, saying some similarly sickening things:

For those who haven’t seen the video, after the Kerch attack, the dead couple was filmed by passersby with their 14 year old daughter gruesomely hanging out of the car windshield after having gone through it due to the bridge’s explosion. The NAFO member above wants a t-shirt of the scene to fill his heart with joy.

It simply goes to show the types of people Russia is up against.

Next:

Ukraine has almost finished construction on the crowning achievement of their desecration of Soviet legacy. The large Motherland monument in Kiev will have its USSR emblem replaced with the Ukrainian trident:

Lastly, I happened to see this wall in a Russian VDV Airborne trench dugout. Recall, we were told by the 2D bloggers that not only do all Russian servicemen “universally hate Shoigu”, but the VDV, under General Teplinsky, particularly loathe and despise him. Yet, here we are, in a random run of the mill stronghold of VDV soldiers who have no obligation to honor their defense minister in such a way:

It only goes to show, as I’ve said before, that reality and the truth are far more nuanced and complex than some shysters would have you believe by their misleading narratives, meant to push their own private agendas and grind their own personal axes.

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