World Politics

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, Mark F said:

"The Russian special vessel SS-750 was near the Nord Stream pipes four days before the pipes were blown up on September 26 last year. The special vessel is designed to carry out operations under the sea and has a mini submarine of the AS-26 Priz type on board.

The Norwegian Defense Command confirms in a response to a document inspection that 26 photos of the Russian vessel were taken from a Danish patrol boat that was in the area east of Bornholm on 22 September 2022.

"It's incredibly interesting. The SS-750 is a special vessel that is designed precisely for underwater operations,' says the Swedish researcher, Russia expert and intelligence expert Joakim von Braun.

Jacob Kaarsbo, who is a senior analyst at the think tank Europe and previously worked for 15 years in the Defense Intelligence Service, believes that the information "sheds light on what was going on in the area in the days before".

"The SS-750 is the most interesting vessel to confirm, because we know it has the capacity to carry out such an operation," says Jacob Kaarsbo.

Information has previously revealed that the Norwegian Defense Command is in possession of 112 images of Russian vessels in the area. But this is the first time that the defense has confirmed that it is the specific Russian vessel SS-750 with the mini-submarine on board.

At the same time, the Norwegian Defense Command refuses to provide access to the photos of the Russian special vessel, as the photos are "of an intelligence nature" and "are part of the intelligence work".

Several Russian naval vessels
The German media T-Online and the open source intelligence analyst Oliver Alexander have previously described that the special vessel SS-750 was one of a total of six Russian naval vessels that may have been in the area in the days leading up to the blasting of the pipelines. They based this, among other things, on information from anonymous sources and satellite images that showed that SS-750 had left the port of Kaliningrad at the same time as, among others, the vessels Aleksandr Frolov and SB-123.

These satellite photos, along with AIS data from a tugboat, indicate that SS-750 sailed from Kaliningrad at 00:22 on 21 September 2022. AIS transmitters are typically used by larger vessels to supplement radars. They send signals about the ship's name, number, direction, draft and speed and can thus be used to map the movement of vessels.

The SS-750 sailed even without the AIS on. However, the tug Alexandr Frolov had its AIS on when departing from the Russian naval port. AIS data from this vessel shows that the convoy of naval vessels headed for Bornholm, but north of Poland the tug's AIS was also switched off. Until now, it has been assumed that the SS-750 and the five other vessels continued to the area where the Nord Stream pipes were blown up a few days later.

Now the Defense Command has confirmed that the SS-750 was observed in the area.

Danish language site

https://www.information.dk/indland/2023/04/forsvaret-bekraefter-rusland-specialfartoej-naer-nord-streams-spraengningspunkt?lst_frnt

 

crazy people.

You ain't seen crazy Russian crap yet. Warehouses of supposed war goods for the Russian army far away from the front lines have burned to the ground apparently because the Russian suppliers who had manufactured and stored for the military were torched because although the goods had been paid for were were nonexistent. The fires occurred right after they were requisitioned. Russian officers demand money from their soldiers or they will be sent to the heaviest fighting, sometimes with WW2 weapons and little ammunition. Families of dead Russian soldiers are given a certificate for a Lada to be delivered at some point instead of a pension. And that's only a small sample.

[Tracker]

‘Stop Deceiving the Population’: Russia’s Mercenary Boss Threatens Full-Blown Mutiny

Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin is back to humiliating the Kremlin and threatening to sabotage Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

“Russia is on the brink of catastrophe,” he said in an interview with a pro-war military blogger on Saturday, openly calling B.S. on the Kremlin’s repeated claims that all is going according to plan in Ukraine.

“We need to stop deceiving the population and telling them that everything is fine,” he said, accusing Russia’s top military brass of deluding themselves about the war or “not giving a damn.”

Prigozhin blamed his foe, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, for a lack of ammunition that he said could cost Russia the war.

In the nearly hour-and-a-half long video interview—apparently filmed days earlier—he read out a letter he said he’d sent to Shoigu on Friday, in which he issued a brazen ultimatum threatening to pull his mercenaries out from Bakhmut if the defense ministry does not immediately provide the required ammunition.

Apparently for added effect, he also threatened to tattle on Shoigu to Putin personally.

“The bell is already ringing, we’re sounding the alarm,” he said.

The group, he said, has enough rounds of ammunition left only “for days, not weeks.”

When asked if perhaps the military didn’t want to provide weapons to Wagner out of a fear that the mercenary group “might storm the Kremlin” and seize power, Prigozhin conceded that the idea is “interesting” but said he wasn’t focused on staging a coup.

 

[Tracker]

Intel Reveals Depraved New Way Russian Commanders Punish Own Troops
 

-REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
Russian military commanders have likely resorted to punishing their troops by imprisoning them in underground pits covered with metal bars, according to a British intelligence memo published Sunday.

“In recent months, Russian commanders have likely started punishing breaches in discipline by detaining the offending troops in ‘Zindans’ which are improvised cells consisting of holes in the ground covered with a metal grille,” the report says.

The makeshift prisons have been used to punish Russian soldiers for alleged “violations” as minor as drinking or attempting to cancel their contracts with the military, according to the intelligence report, which cites “multiple recent reports from Russian personnel” who provided accounts of the incidents.

The report notes, “draconian” shift among Russian commanders since the early days of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, when “many Russian commanders took a relatively light touch in enforcing discipline, allowing those who refused to soldier to quietly return home.”

According to the British intelligence department, that all began to change in the fall of 2022, when the higher-ups of the Kremlin’s military began enforcing stricter punishment for perceived transgressions among Russian forces fighting the war in Ukraine. The drastic pivot, the agency notes, took an even harsher turn “since Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov assumed command of the operation.”

[Tracker]

 

                                 

[Mark F]

supposed to be intercepted American military conversation. 😂

 

"The Russians have published what they claim are secret wiretapped recordings of voice messages sent between NATO troops in Ukraine. Its supposed to be mainly American soldiers. The accents are slightly off though"

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1648829730131435521?s=20

"who the chelle knaose!  I keel them! " 🤣

 

Edited May 2, 2023 by Mark F

[Tracker]

9 hours ago, Mark F said:

supposed to be intercepted American military conversation. 😂

 

"The Russians have published what they claim are secret wiretapped recordings of voice messages sent between NATO troops in Ukraine. Its supposed to be mainly American soldiers. The accents are slightly off though"

https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1648829730131435521?s=20

"who the chelle knaose!  I keel them! " 🤣

 

The Russian military has repeatedly proven themselves utterly incompetent in every facet of their war effort- military action, logistics, medical support, public relations, morale, leadership, recruiting, and discipline. They are very close to collapse.

[Mark F]

18 minutes ago, Tracker said:

The Russian military has repeatedly proven themselves utterly incompetent in every facet of their war effort- military action, logistics, medical support, public relations, morale, leadership, recruiting, and discipline. They are very close to collapse.

given their incompetence, it makes me wonder why it was so easy for them to subvert the 2016 American election. partly inside help probably, from Republicans, Fox, et al.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Mark F

[Tracker]

39 minutes ago, Mark F said:

given their incompetence, it makes me wonder why it was so easy for them to subvert the 2016 American election. partly inside help probably, from Republicans, Fox, et al.

Because they were able to identify the neo-fascists in the US that were egotistical, and self-serving and therefore corruptible. The NKVD (Russian version of MI6) was much more successful in penetrating US, French and British intelligence services using this model than vice-versa.

[Tracker]

 

 

                                   

ukraine

[Tracker]

Russians media are preparing for a possible defeat on the battlefield. The Kremlin has already sent instructions to state and pro-government media on how to communicate the possible success of the expected Ukrainian counter-offensive.

[FrostyWinnipeg]

Drone strike over Kremlin

 

[Tracker]

10 minutes ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Drone strike over Kremlin

 

Unlikely this was aimed at Putin as has been purported by Russian media. It was either a false flag operation designed to increase support for Putin or a deliberate targeting of a iconic landmark to show what could happen.

[HardCoreBlue]

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/russia-accuses-ukraine-of-attempted-drone-attack-on-putin/ar-AA1aGcLl?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=0c88bd0253504aac8251c6954a5ac3d7&ei=23

 

What am I missing here?

Person leading said country responsible for waging war and destruction on my country then said country is upset at us retaliating against this person who attacked us? 

[blue_gold_84]

Russia can eat all the dicks.

[Wanna-B-Fanboy]

1 hour ago, FrostyWinnipeg said:

Drone strike over Kremlin

 

False flag. It detonated above and did not damage anything. 

May 9th is coming and it's probably staged to:

A) drum up support.

Convenient excuse to cancel the military parade... to, yiu know, hide the fact all their vehicles are out fighting or are destroyed.

 

[Wideleft]

5 minutes ago, Wanna-B-Fanboy said:

False flag. It detonated above and did not damage anything. 

May 9th is coming and it's probably staged to:

A) drum up support.

Convenient excuse to cancel the military parade... to, yiu know, hide the fact all their vehicles are out fighting or are destroyed.

 

And most importantly, to prevent groups of people from booing Putin.

[Mark F]

1 hour ago, Wanna-B-Fanboy said:

False flag.

next week, an apartment building or two will be bombed .

russian apartment bombings brought putin to power.

"Then there was speaker of the Duma (Russian parliament) Gennadiy Seleznyov’s announcement about a bomb exploding in Volgodonsk. Such a bomb would explode — three days after he relayed news of that blast. Attempts to question Seleznyov proved fruitless."

https://news.yahoo.com/putin-1999-apartment-bombings-ukraine-175001959.html

edit

This Russian sci fi book ... read it from start to finish, could not put it down. written in 2006.  savagely brilliant.

Day of the Oprichnik (Russian: День опричника, Den' oprichnika) is a 2006 novel by the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin. The narrative is set in the near future, when the Tsardom of Russia has been restored, and follows a government henchman, an oprichnik, through a day of grotesque events. Sorokin in one of the later interviews^[1]confessed that he did not anticipate his novel be an accurate picture of the future, even in some subtle details, but rather wrote this book as a warning and "mystical precaution" against the state of events described in the storyline. The title is a reference to the Oprichnina, the black-clad secret police of Ivan the Terrible, whose symbol was a black dog's head (to sniff out treason) and a broom (to sweep away all traitors.

some parts are a bit  hard. some amazing sci fi ideas. 

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by Mark F

[Bigblue204]

That's 100% a false flag. What does Ukraine gain by doing that?

[blue_gold_84]

Was that a laughably bad false flag?

It's like asking if Boris Yeltsin was a drunkard.

[WildPath]

On 2023-05-02 at 7:33 PM, Mark F said:

given their incompetence, it makes me wonder why it was so easy for them to subvert the 2016 American election. partly inside help probably, from Republicans, Fox, et al.

Putin, like Stalin, is known for being paranoid and surrounding himself with people who tell him only what he wants to hear. I think a large reason their military doesn't pull their weight is because it is hard to make strategic plans when the country is led by a madman that only hears embellished good news rather than bad news from his underlings. Stalin made the same errors. Executing, demoting or otherwise disabling anyone who attempting to tell him anything he didn't want to hear. I also wouldn't be surprised to know that Putin feels the need to micromanage every military move. They've been dreadful.

 

 

I don't think it was Ukraine and maybe a false flag, but I'd be careful with that if I were Putin. He's gaining lots of enemies in the country and these repeated attacks in Russian territory may convince his foes that there is a lot of (violent) support to end him within the country.

If it was a false flag, perhaps it is being setup for assassination attempts on Zalenskiy, though I'm sure that has been tried already.

 

[Tracker]

                                              

[Bigblue204]

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-accuses-us-being-behind-alleged-kremlin-drone-attack-2023-05-04/?utm_source=reddit.com

 

It was Ukraine!! No wait...it was US....

[Tracker]

1 hour ago, Bigblue204 said:

https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-accuses-us-being-behind-alleged-kremlin-drone-attack-2023-05-04/?utm_source=reddit.com

 

It was Ukraine!! No wait...it was US....

And Russian anti-Putin partisans have claimed it as well. All the usual suspects.

[Tracker]

Have fun with the counter offensive, we'll wait for the start of the civil war. Peace out.'

 

 

[blue_gold_84]

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-wagner-bakhmut-40eea0f86be16a77830c369acd0a9d9f

Quote

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The owner of Russia’s Wagner military contractor threatened Friday to withdraw his troops next week from the protracted battle for the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, accusing Moscow’s military command of starving his forces of ammunition.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy entrepreneur with longtime links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claimed that Wagner had planned to capture Bakhmut by May 9, Russia’s major Victory Day holiday celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany. But he said they were undersupplied and suffering heavy losses, and would hand over operations to Russia’s regular army on May 10.

It is not the first time Prigozhin has raged about ammunition shortages and blamed Russia’s military, with which he has long been in conflict. Known for his bluster, he has previously made unverifiable claims and threats he hasn’t carried out.

Prigozhin’s spokespeople also published a video of him Friday standing in front of about 30 uniformed bodies lying on the ground and saying they are Wagner fighters who died on Thursday alone. He angrily demands ammunition from Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov.