Strelkov's Vatic Fantasy Fulfilled as He's Taken Into Custody

Today, Igor Girkin aka Strelkov was arrested under Section 2 of Article 280 for ‘public incitement of extremism’, fulfilling his long-sought-after martyrdom.

Soon afterwards, his right hand man Pavel Gubarev was also arrested for creating an illegal picket for Strelkov’s release, though it’s said Gubarev was quickly released with a mere citation:

Gubarev allegedly ran the Club of Angry Patriots for Strelkov. It’s a new startup from earlier this year which agitates against the Russian government and its perceived ‘weak’ handling of the war, amongst other sundry failings.

Am I personally happy to see Strelkov arrested? To be honest, I’m agnostic on Strelkov. I neither particularly like nor dislike him. I respect what he did long ago and consider him to be a sort of misguided patriot who has slowly sunk into obscurity and depravity—the two quite possibly being linked, as it did seem that the malice of his attacks rose in inverse proportion to the ‘dimming of his star’, and gradual decline of his public relevance.

However, though I don’t harbor any strong ill feeling toward him, I nonetheless refuse to look past the crass and damaging nature of his most recent spate of propaganda assaults. As a quick refresher, here’s one of his latest posts, which has made the rounds in various MSM outlets:

“For 23 years, the country was led by a lowlife who managed to ‘blow dust in the eyes’ of a significant part of the population. Now he is the last island of legitimacy and stability of the state,” the post read. “But the country will not be able to withstand another six years of this cowardly mediocrity in power.”

Small correction—the above is supposed to read Gorby the Judas, not the Jew—blame the autotranslator.

So, why did Strelkov get taken in now? It’s up for speculation. The 5/6th columnists will claim that it’s part of an ongoing ‘purge’ of anyone who stands in the way of Shoigu. The only problem with that theory is that the great ‘purge’ narrative appears to be premised on completely misleading or outright fraudulent speculation.

For instance, we were meant to believe that upwards of 5-7 big Russian “anti-Shoigu” generals were recently purged; Popov, Teplinsky, Surovikin, Seliverstov, Kornev, and probably one or two others I may have missed off the top of my head.

One small problem: every single one of these has thus far been debunked.

Popov: I recently reported that there are conflicting reports, one stating he was sent to Syria, another stating that he was not removed at all, or rather ‘re-instated’ after the initial flare up and now continues his work. The fact is, no one currently has accurate 100% definitive proof of his current station, but it appears the misunderstanding was patched up and he may have been re-instated.

As for the others, just last night the official channels for the Russian 76th and 98th VDV Airborne posted the following:

The attempts of the Ukrainian CIPSO to disseminate fake informational news, stuck together on the knee, do not stop. Which logically fit into the anti-Russian information agenda that they have been actively promoting in recent days.

The purpose of these events is obvious - against the backdrop of extremely vague rumors about the fate of a number of Russian generals who disappeared from the information space after well-known events, as well as the recent high-profile resignation of the commander of 58A General Popov and the "drain" of his audio message to the personnel of the army, take advantage of the situation and try to cause discord in the ranks of the Airborne Forces, successfully performing combat missions in their assigned areas of responsibility in the area of ​​the NMD.

Not very confused, the TsIPSOshniks throw off their creativity on the net for general viewing. Recently, the commander of the 7th Airborne Division was already fired, having made sure of a weak reaction to their publications, they began to dismiss the commander of the 106th division, but they also do not respond. And now, in order to be sure, they decided to fire, and according to some reports, even “kill” it, by the hands of the country's top military leadership, the Commander of the Airborne Forces. As we wrote above, their work is done clumsily on the knee and cannot cause anything but a slight smile. In addition, channels such as “Ax 18+”, “Operation Z”, “Moscow Calling”, “Anatoly Nesmiyan”, “Kremlin Snuffbox”, “Evgeny Prigozhin in Telegram”, etc. used by them as primary sources of information. most often, being closed from public access, have long secured a bad reputation in the Russian segment of the media, or, to put it more simply, they are pro-Ukrainian garbage dumps that are under the control of the Ukrainian special services.

Returning to the subject of the Airborne Forces, we have reliable information. On behalf of the competent officers of the two formations, we can officially declare that the commander of the 7th Guards Infantry Division (g), Major General Kornev A.V. was on a planned vacation, but a couple of days ago he left it and began to lead the formation in the NVO zone. Commander of the 106th Guards Airborne Division Major General Seliverstov V.V. after being continuously on the line of contact with personnel, he departed on a scheduled vacation, but at the same time receives daily reports from regiment commanders on the state of affairs in the units and gives appropriate orders, after the end of the vacation he intends to return and continue to smash the enemy. As for the Commander, there is no reason to panic here either, he, according to his custom, is with his guardsmen at the forefront and personally leads the troops. Due to the lack of free time, it is very rarely under the scrutiny of the Russian media, which is often used by the enemy, making contradictory statements on his behalf.

There are no reasons for concern and panic, Russia is under reliable protection. Paratroopers at combat posts, destroy the enemy and liberate the Russian land.

Trust only official sources, links to them are traditionally fixed below

So, the official Ivanovo and Pskov paratroopers declare that the famed VDV generals which were said to have been ‘purged’ recently are in fact still there and have not been fired in any way.

Above, I highlighted something of interest, which is the ‘Evgeny Prigozhin in Telegram’ channel—it’s a fake, pretending to be Prigozhin. The reason it’s noteworthy is because Strelkov himself recently fell for this channel’s fake Ukrainian-hasbara propaganda and amplified it in order to drive his harmful narrative:

"Igor Strelkov once again follows scam advertising in Telegram channels, mistaking it for real news publications. There was no meeting between Prigozhin and Putin, just as there is no “recording of negotiations with the president,” and the link in the post leads to the channel “Prigozhin on Telegram,” which has nothing to do with Yevgeny Prigozhin and his structures. In fact, Strelkov put scam advertising in his channel for free."

This is in fact only the recent instance of the same; Strelkov has repeatedly fallen for fakes in the past few months, scrambling for any little morsel of propaganda he can use to gin up his agenda.

But getting back to why now. First, a Wagner doctor named Dmitry Petrovsky released an audio stating that he submitted a complaint to the prosecutor’s office about Strelkov only days ago, pursuant to the fact that Strelkov has allegedly been collecting ‘large donations’ of money with no audit or accountability of where the funds are going:

🇷🇺 A doctor from PMC "Wagner" confessed to writing a statement against Strelkov.

Former municipal deputy Dmitry Petrovsky revealed to the media that he did this four days ago.

💬 "He allegedly collects large donations to help our guys, but doesn't provide any accountability for the expenses. The final straw, of course, was Strelkov's words about our President Vladimir Putin. I believe that insulting the head of state is a crime," Petrovsky stated.

ℹ️Meanwhile, the media also reports on other reasons for Igor Strelkov's detention. It may be related to the completion of the examination of his streams and videos for the purpose of discrediting the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

Additionally, a resident of Novosibirsk filed a statement against the former Defense Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, asking to investigate Strelkov for attempting to discredit the Russian Armed Forces.

There are currently no official confirmations of any of these versions.

There are a few things to unpack here, so bear with me.

Firstly, the man makes a point about the fact that there is something odd about Strelkov’s tenure of the past few years. He’s had no real ‘job’ or position, yet he has a fully funded studio from which he films his screeds, an apartment, etc., among other things. Some have ‘suggested’ in the past that Strelkov is being subsidized by some kind of oligarch or Western anti-Russian figure/NGO/intel apparatus, etc.

It’s true that someone is paying for and entirely subsidizing Strelkov’s operations and ‘movement’, but no one knows who that is exactly. There have been more intricate theories woven together in the past, by others much more knowledgeable than I on the matter, but it’s pointless to get into that now, as my intention is not to do a deep dive on all the skeletons in Strelkov’s closet, but simply give a broad and balanced contextualizing overview of the situation.

Now, keep in mind that I didn’t miss the irony of the ‘Wagner doctor’s’ complaint about Strelkov. Here is Wagner, fresh from having carried one of the largest rebellion attempts in Russia’s recent history, is accusing Strelkov of sedition; classic pot and kettle. Moreover, there does appear to be—on the surface at least—a notably unfair injustice in the fact that Prigozhin has been allowed to go free without punishment while Strelkov is now detained.

But one must note that Prigozhin made specific note to never take his case overtly or ostensibly against Putin; he never even mentioned his name during his screeds. Thus, when he carried out his actions, it gave them the character of being more a squabble among generals/commanders, rather than a genuine coup d’etat against the Kremlin or presidency. Strelkov, on the other hand, openly began to call for Putin’s dismissal or overthrow, using increasingly less euphemistic language.

Secondly, Prigozhin was after all responsible for some of Russia’s greatest triumphs on the battlefield of recent, whereas Strelkov is seen as a guy who ran away from Slavyansk. This buys you a certain amount of political currency and protection that—like it or not—can go a long way toward forgiveness. In short: if you come adorned in tangible glory, you’ll be considered useful and your arguments will carry farther than those of a basement dweller spewing unfounded vitriol who hasn’t accomplished anything in nearly a decade.

Does that completely absolve Prigozhin? No, it’s just the realpolitik facts of how the world works.

Also, it should be mentioned that neither man’s fate is sealed yet, so everything is just speculation anyway. Prigozhin may yet get his comeuppance and Strelkov himself may yet get away with a light admonishment. Things are still in motion and are being played out.

Strelkov himself famously issued a stark prophecy earlier this year: should the day come that he gets arrested, it will mean that the worst case scenario has activated and that Russia will certainly lose the war and collapse soon after. Of course, the fact that the prophecy conveniently hinges on the legitimate punishment of his own malfeasance in such a way is meant to be dismissed as mere coincidence.

Nor should we forget that Strelkov has in fact been a master of prophecy, to the tune of Jim Cramer; in that, whatever he portends—one would be judicious in banking on the opposite actually transpiring.

In 2015, after all, Strelkov famously predicted that Assad would fall, that Russia’s airpower would be too weak to hold back the rebels, and that after catastrophically losing in Syria, Russia would collapse, leading to Putin’s ouster (is he just obsessed with Putin’s overthrow, or what?)

Check the date on the article below:

Earlier this year, he predicted that Russia would not capture Bakhmut, and after capturing it, he further predicted that it cannot hold Bakhmut and that it would soon fall back to the AFU:

Russian military blogger Igor Girkin has played down the significance of reports that Russian troops have encircled Bakhmut and expressed doubt that the Donetsk city can be held by Moscow.

And for those that have been poisoned by 5th column propaganda which repeatedly claims that Strelkov is regarded as a hero everywhere he goes, thus making his word pure and virtuous, I present to you famed Donbass fighter Russell ‘Texas’ Bentley’s take on Igor Girkin, a video which was called ‘Texas Takes Strelkov To The Woodshed’ before it was unceremoniously removed by YouTube:

Note Bentley’s own prophetic final words above, from 2016 to boot: “Someday, Girkin will be on trial in Russia for being a traitor to Novorossiya but also Russia…”

Now that, conversely, happens to be an example of an accurate prophecy.

Let me end by again re-iterating that, despite heaping some justified dirt on him above, I don’t actually have an axe to grind against Strelkov. A part of me thinks that he may be mentally unwell, given his long isolation and diminishing reputation over the years. Certainly, when I saw the videos of him today, he didn’t look like a mentally “hale” person, and I think that years of personal grudges and having to reconcile the failure of his idealized world view (he envisioned the Novorossiya project becoming a Monarchist Utopia) has gotten to him, eaten away at him, and perhaps created a broken, resentful, and spiteful man who—despite having many good intentions—began to lean far too heavily on attention-grabbing gimmicks in order to shore up his ego.

For anyone that’s watched him from the beginning as I have, you’d note the slow but marked decline, and the odd uptick in his more attention-seeking type of behavior, the cheap, shock value stuff which almost had the character of outright mental illness. For instance, who remembers this video from this past Christmas where Strelkov jumped the shark, absurdly claiming that Putin is either not real, a clone, or body double:

And there was an increasing uptick of such videos in the past few months, where he appeared to become more and more unhinged. In the above, he plays directly into Budanov and the SBU’s own brand of outlandish propaganda, almost to the point of suggesting a type of subtle coordination with the Atlanticist forces in discrediting Putin. Perhaps those years of predicting his overthrow were in fact a form of wishful thinking, and an attempt to effect a self-fulfilling prophecy?

What more can be said?

I didn’t plan to do an update on the other SMO developments today, but seeing as how we’re already here, why not bring ourselves up to speed on some of the more pressing things.

Most interesting today was Putin’s remarks on the Polish situation, where he echoed much of what I’ve been writing about recently. In short, the situation is turning dire with Ukrainian ‘meat’ running out, Polish-Lithuanian meat will be next up on the menu as far as NATO’s gameplan is concerned:

This is striking because it appears to be the first time that Putin himself has addressed this issue in such a forthright and direct manner. The fact that Putin himself is addressing it so openly now, after months of SVR and other lower end officials laying hints, means that things must really be spiraling in this direction.

Note that, inherent to Putin’s remarks above, appears to be a not-so-subtle ‘threat’ toward Poland, where he offered a reminder that some of its lands were in fact generously gifted by Stalin—the clear implication being: the lord giveth and the lord taketh away.

Given Putin’s very robust words above, the repositioning of Wagner troops to Belarus, as well as the recent statements of the Duma defense committee chair about Wagner’s Suwalki Gap purpose, this gives a new dimension to these developments.

In line with the above video, below is a summarization of Putin’s main points from his speech:

▪️Kyiv's Western handlers make no secret of their disappointment with the results of the so-called counter-offensive.

▪️ Ukraine is depleting its mobilization resource. Stockpiles of Western weapons are depleted and technological capabilities are limited.

▪️ The command of the special operation shows professionalism, soldiers and officers courageously perform their duty, and Western "invulnerable" equipment burns perfectly on the battlefield.

▪️ Public opinion in Ukraine is gradually changing, and the population is “gradually coming to its senses”, and attitudes in Europe are also changing.

▪️ Dragging out the Ukrainian conflict is beneficial to US elites.

▪️ The independence of Poland after the Second World War was largely restored thanks to the participation of the USSR.

▪️ The western territories of today's Poland are Stalin's gift to the Poles.

▪️ Russia sees that the Kyiv regime is ready to use any means to "preserve its corrupt nature."

▪️ Traitors in Ukraine are ready to “open the gates” for foreign influential forces in the West and sell the country again.

▪️ Polish leaders appear to be seeking to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella to intervene in the conflict in Ukraine and take a large piece of territory for themselves.

▪️ Poland also wants to seize part of the land in Belarus, unleashing a war by the Poles against the Union State automatically implies a war against Russia.

▪️Putin instructed the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Naryshkin, to monitor Poland's plans for Ukraine.

▪️ Poland seized part of Lithuania, seized its historical lands from Russia and participated in the division of Czechoslovakia, taking advantage of the civil war.

▪️ Russia will fight back with all available means in case of Western aggression against Belarus.

And here’s French journalist Jean-Dominique Marchais on French TV stating that Poland is preparing to take West Ukraine:

💥💥💥French journalist Jean-Dominique Marchais - on Poland's preparations to invade western Ukraine: I confirm that there are reflections, particularly in Poland and in the Baltic States, about the creation of one of the multinational divisions, let's say including Ukrainian forces, Polish forces, if Russia could break through the front and resume the offensive there. I think there would indeed be such a division, as Poland and others, they would send troops outside of NATO.

Jean-Dominique Merchet cites many official sources. This is not the first time this possibility has been mentioned. A few weeks ago Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former head of NATO, already confirmed this with our Guardian colleagues: 'We know that Poland is very committed to supporting Ukraine, and I don't rule out that Poland will be more involved on a national basis and that the Baltic states will follow with a possible ground troop intervention'."💥💥💥

Recall my recent exegeses on this very topic and how the Polish-Lithuanian situation has been developing under the surface. Recall the main points about how Ukraine has run out of big ‘milestones’ to look forward to in order to save the AFU in some way, whether it’s new wunderwaffen, key NATO summits, falseflag opportunities, etc.

That means as Russia ratchets up the pressure in the near future, and the AFU begins to collapse, the forces of which Putin is talking about will begin to truly ramp up toward a potential major escalation. One interesting thing Putin noted was that there are particular ‘traitors’ in Ukraine who are acting as the ‘postern gate openers’ to let in Polish forces.

One possibility I can see—which is in line with my earliest predictions from the very first two or three reports I made here—is that once Russia captures the Donbass or everything east of the Dnieper, if at that point the AFU still has the morale and wherewithal to continue the fight, they could retreat to the right bank and make a bastion of it there. Then, Poland can enter in the west of the country under a special deal with the collapsing Ukrainian government which will basically quid pro quo trade sovereignty of the western lands for ‘Polish protection’.

Note that months ago I already reported on rumors that Poland could offer to “temporarily” take some of the western territories under its full governmental protection ostensibly to prevent Russia from ‘attacking’ them. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book used by the likes of Erdogan in Idlib and North Syria, for instance, to actuate a full annexation of a desired land under the guise of some sort of ‘temporary’ protectorate. This is the most likely way that Poland would enter the conflict in the medium term future, at least initially—then it could develop from there depending on how Russia reacts to this and other exigencies.

This comes on the heels of the following news, as well:

Poland to move military formations from the west to the east of the country due to possible threats related to the Wagner group, Poland's press agency reports - Reuters

Now, a few quick updates on the grain deal corridor situation.

Russian UN representative Polyansky re-iterated that vessels traveling toward Odessa will be regarded by Russia as potentially carrying weaponry to the Kiev regime:

Russian Duma deputy Petr Tolstoy promisingly stated:

Petr Tolstoy, Deputy of the State Duma of Russia: "Withdrawal from the grain deal is a big step forward for Russia. Now we need to take full control over the entire northern coast of the Black Sea, depriving Ukraine of access to it. We need to hit not only the port, but also the military infrastructure, not looking back at the howl that has risen to the west of our missile strikes. This is just gray noise."

Some have expressed the concern that Ukraine can simply transport the grain by rail cargo to Romania’s port of Galati, and that’s true to an extent. However, today I saw the figure that doing so would halve Ukraine’s monthly grain exports. There may be other even larger obstacles that preclude this as well.

As for the strikes—Russia did a new round of strikes last night with Onyx missiles, as well as others. There were reported hits, such as this confirmation from a Nikolayev underground/partisan network member, who relayed that one such strike reportedly hit a mercenary base with many casualties:

Today, targets continued to be hit all over the country, including this spectacular explosion in Zhitomir, which was said to have been caused by a Geran drone:

If you look closely you can see a huge amount of sparkling secondaries, which some have astutely pointed out could be the new shipments of American cluster munitions going off in the fire.

Also, Russia has been using a lot of Onyx missiles in the last few strikes, which Ukrainian airforce spokesman admitted are un-interceptable for the AFU, given their extreme near-Mach 3 speed:

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦 Ukrainian Air Defense Unable to Intercept Russian "Oniks" Missiles Used in Attacks on Odessa and Nikolaev Last Night

Yuriy Ignat, the spokesperson for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, stated that the Ukrainian Air Defense will not be able to shoot down Russian "Oniks" missiles, which were used in the recent attacks on Odessa and Nikolaev.

"The 'Oniks' missiles are originally designed to target surface ships, with a speed exceeding 3000 km/h. As a result, they are difficult to detect and intercept," he said.

The same applies to the "X-22" missiles, which travel at speeds over 4000 km/h.

Most risible about that is the fact that just earlier they claimed to be routinely taking out Russian Kinzhal missiles which are said to travel upwards of Mach 10.

So, they shot down “13 Kinzhals” at Mach 10, but can’t shoot down a single P-800 Onyx at Mach ~2. Only in Ukraine!

Also, it should be noted that Russian ex-General Evgeny Buzhinsky has stated that the Odessa strikes were actually already planned even before the Kerch Bridge attack, and that the real retaliatory attacks for that are still being finalized and will take place in the near future:

Apart from that, there’ve been more videos of the mass destruction of Ukrainian armor on every frontline, including this M2 Bradley graveyard:

And another:

As well as this Ukrainian armor column being decimated from every side near Bakhmut’s southern flank:

Many Ukrainian POWs continue to be taken as well:

Speaking of cluster munitions—which Western MSM has now admitted that Ukraine has begun using in full:

Including this British news report on their arrival to the frontlines:

Reports claim the following on Russia’s behalf:

❗️Here we go….Ukrainian telegram channel "Resident": "MI-6 transmitted new intelligence to the Office of the President and the General Staff of Ukraine that the Kremlin has decided to use its arsenal of cluster munitions in Ukraine in full. The Russian military has begun shipping cluster bombs/missiles/shells to the front."

Meanwhile, photos from Fort Moore (formerly Fort Benning) show U.S. soldiers now training in digging trenches:

Lastly, a little Western news headline wrap up to get a sense of current sentiments:

An American instructor describes the triple loss of Ukrainian soldiers and the misuse of expensive Western equipment, which causes dissatisfaction among sponsors.

"Ukraine is facing a closing window of opportunity to avoid a 'perpetual war' with Russia," said a U.S. special forces veteran who now trains Kyiv troops. The director and co-founder of the Kiev-based Ukraine Defense Support Group, Eric Kramer, said in an interview from Kyiv that Moscow's forces are well entrenched and expelling them will be a long and costly project for Ukrainian forces.

Losses of Ukrainians are growing. “Several of my guys work at the collection point for the wounded. And they're seeing three times as many victims as they saw a few months ago. It's pretty terrible," Kramer said .

Via Ukraina_RU

Not only is the window closing, but they’re seeing three times as many casualties as months ago. That’s saying a lot, considering that months ago was the Bakhmut meatgrinder where Ukrainian casualties were at historic highs.

It’s no surprise that there’s been more and more news coming out about the developing cemetery problems in Ukraine. For instance:

The scale of the failure of the counteroffensive promised to the West, which was supposed to liberate not only the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, but also the Crimea, can be estimated from the graves of dead Ukrainian servicemen. We have to bury so much that there are not enough places in cemeteries.
In Kharkiv, places at the Bezlyudovsky cemetery, as well as at cemeteries No. 17 and No. 18, have run out of space. In Lviv cemeteries, old graves are being dug up and graves for fallen soldiers are being prepared in their place. American journalists are already writing about this.

But the hardest part is in Kiev and the region. Only at the Bykovnyansky cemetery near Kiev in the spring of this year, 50 thousand places were allocated for the burial of fallen soldiers, which ended by mid-July. And in the Obukhov district of the Kiev region, local authorities are even forced to get old documents in order to officially refuse residents to bury their dead relatives in the cemetery.

Also, Ukrainian minister of veteran affairs revealed a frightening projected figure for the number of expected veterans from this war for Ukraine:

‼️🇺🇦🏴‍☠️“Frightening figure”: 4 million is exactly how many veterans will be in Ukraine after the end of the war, – Minister of Veterans Affairs

▪️"Our predicted number after the victory is that there will be at least 4 million such people," said Y. Laputina.

▪️"The figure is very frightening, because it is more than 4 times higher than the current strength of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," the Ukrainian media comment on the news.

This could point to the fact that Ukraine is actually both utilizing and losing far more men than we can imagine.

The above illustrious ‘Richard Kemp’, by the way, is the same ‘oracle’ responsible for such gems over the course of the past year as the following:

How times change.

And the new directive is that allies will be shifting more toward ‘repairing’ Ukrainian vehicles rather than supplying new ones:

I suppose that’s one way of admitting they don’t have anymore to send.

Russia continues to play satellite tricks with NATO, now painting fake planes on runways to fool ISR:

Lastly, in his latest video, Yuri Podolyaka states that he believes after Ukraine’s meat assaults run out of steam soon, Russia will launch its own large offensive somewhere around August:

I find this particularly interesting given the previous video I posted of the state Duma Defense Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov stating that Wagner has an ulterior purpose being in Belarus. He outlined that purpose as being the retaking of the Suwalki Corridor. However, given that the potentially foreseen clash with Poland could still be a ways off, Wagner could be utilized prior to any such escalation.

And interestingly, if you’ll recall, Prigozhin repeatedly stated that Wagner will be back to fight on August 5th. Given that we now do have confirmation of Wagner being in Belarus, with new satellite photos apparently showing the military camps filling up, this leads one to conclude that a potential Wagner northern front could still be in play.

⚡️⚡️⚡️The Wagner PMC camp near Osipovichi is expanding every day.

At the moment, at least 10,000 fighters have been deployed or will be redeployed to the territory of the Republic of Belarus⚡️⚡️⚡️

Recall that it’s been Ukrainian officials endlessly bleating about Russia forming an invincible 100k man strike fist in the northeast Kharkov-Svatove region. Consolidating these developments, one can infer that there could be the possibility of a larger Russian offensive in that region with a fixing incursion by Wagner from the north of some kind.

Keep in mind, I still consider it a low confidence extrapolation for now—until further information/developments—but just mentioning the possibility. The more likely thing will be the continual expansion of Russian operations in the Svatove-Kremennaya region and gradually branching out from there, but we’ll see if we get wind of any new indications to point to something greater.

A couple last disparate items:

Last time I reported on the new Russian version of Starlink, the first satellite of which is up and working. This time I have a better subtitled version plus some new contextualizing info about its progress:

🚨Russian Starlink analog is developing.

Three domestic low-orbit communications satellites launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome, which were developed by the Russian company Bureau 1440, broadcasted the first Internet connection.

Now the data transfer rate to the device is 12 Mbps, and the delay is 41 milliseconds. The next stage is serial and mass production of domestic devices, as well as an increase in the data transfer rate to more than 100 Mbps.

The goal of the project is to create a commercial satellite broadband Internet access service that will operate in low orbits, at high speed and with minimal delays. It will begin its work in 2027.

From 2025, it is planned to launch 10-12 rockets per year into orbit, about 15 satellites are placed in one rocket. In total, by 2035 more than 900 low-orbit domestic satellites will be created and launched into orbit. They will provide high-speed satellite Internet to residents of all of Russia. The plans are to provide broadband access services using Russian spacecraft in 75 countries around the world.

Next:

A Ukrainian captain from the 72nd mechanized brigade recounts some very interesting experiences he’s had while fighting against Wagner in Bakhmut, notably the tricks Wagner used against his forces, such as trained attack dogs to storm trenches, amongst other things:

And lastly, another new clear view of Russia’s UMPC ‘Orthodox JDAM’ glide-bombs being dropped by Su-34s:

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