Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Barrister]

Russians hit a hydro damn at Kryvyi Rih, knocking out power and flooding the river below.

No military value of course.  Just trying to make Ukrainian civilians suffer.

[viper37]

We will have to revise the list of hazardous occupations.  CEO of a gaz company in Russia seems to have a high death rate.

Russian energy exec found dead after 'falling overboard' in latest mysterious death

[Berkut]

Russians hit a hydro damn at Kryvyi Rih, knocking out power and flooding the river below.

No military value of course.  Just trying to make Ukrainian civilians suffer.

Not to apologize for Russians, but taking out power stations most definitely has military value.

[The Brain]

I hear it's heroic even.

[Legbiter]

I wonder what the Russian wargoal is at this point.

[Admiral Yi]

I wonder what the Russian wargoal is at this point.

Honestly, I think it's for Putin to stay in office.

[The Brain]

I wonder what the Russian wargoal is at this point.

WC as North Korea.

[Malthus]

You guys may find this interesting: official Ukrainian propaganda for the social media age:

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1570119986349318146?s=20&t=iQbz6Wpjl7KvQqD5plt1MA

[The Brain]

You guys may find this interesting: official Ukrainian propaganda for the social media age:

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1570119986349318146?s=20&t=iQbz6Wpjl7KvQqD5plt1MA

Nice. And was that an AT4?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Christian Science Monitor had some interesting conversations with a resistance fighter in Russian-occupied Kherson:

"We will wait as long as necessary," he says. "We have already heard so many promises of a counteroffensive that will liberate the city that now we do not pay attention – we just do our job."

And that job, he reckons, entails 80% collecting and analyzing information about "the movement of the enemy" for precision strikes. The remaining 20% is "so-called creative work on the destruction of orcs," he adds, using a derogatory nickname for Russian troops often given them by Ukrainians that references the evil warriors in J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

"We kill no more than 10 to 15 orcs per month," he says of the toll exacted by his own unit. "Most of the destruction of Russians and explosions is carried out by professionals, those [security and intelligence operatives] who were here before the occupation.

"We killed some local collaborators who did some very bad things," he says.

After a string of such assassinations in August, Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to the Ukrainian president, tweeted that when Kherson "falls asleep, the partisans wake up."

And with a Kherson resident:

As it has in other parts of Ukraine it has occupied, Russia has tried to introduce the Russian ruble as currency in Kherson and impose the Russian language and school curriculum in advance of any attempted referendum.

"Resistance in Kherson is to pay in [Ukrainian] hryvnia, it is to speak Ukrainian, and it is to continue to educate your children online in a Ukrainian school and not send them to a Russian school," says a journalist with Vgoru called Liza, who asked that only her first name be used.

Constant shelling has made some residents blasé about their own safety, including, Liza says, her grandmother, who lives close to a Russian military base and often hears Ukrainian rockets flying past on the way to their Russian target. She tells her granddaughter she won't move, "because these sounds make me happy."

"The liberation of Kherson will be a great victory," says Liza. "But it will also be a very bitter victory, because the full scale of the crimes committed by the Russians will be revealed to us. People are tortured, people are kidnapped, and most don't talk about it because people are afraid."

[Tamas]

I wonder what the Russian wargoal is at this point.

Honestly, I think it's for Putin to stay in office.

Pretty much.

[crazy canuck]

Perhaps Putin will pull the Russian trick of unilaterally declaring peace (and victory) out of the bag, and just hope for the best.

[PDH]

Russians hit a hydro damn at Kryvyi Rih, knocking out power and flooding the river below.

No military value of course.  Just trying to make Ukrainian civilians suffer.

Not to apologize for Russians, but taking out power stations most definitely has military value.

And being upstream on a river that flows through one of the Axes of the attack, there might be a hope it slows it down in that sector.

Still it is churlishness at best.  The position in Kherson is untenable, but the suffering will continue due to pig-headed decisions.  The real tragedy will come when the Russians start to really target the civilian population of Kherson.  I don't think for a moment they won't in the end.

[Barrister]

The initial war aims were obvious - overthrow the government in Kyiv, install a puppet government, and probably to have fake referendums to join Russia.  That didn't work.

Then the objective was to liberate all of DOnetsk and Luhansk while holding on to other gains, then forcing a "frozen" conflict while again incorporate DOnetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson into Russia.

Now?  Who knows.  It's hard to tell just how much Putin knows about what is going on.  He could be moving units around in his bunker that don't exist, Downfall-style.

I think the "plan" is to hold on to the land he has while more units are created.  There's creepy video of the founder of Wagner going into a Russian jail, promising prisoners who join up they'll never come back to prison: they either serve for six months on the front lines, or if you decide you don't want to fight they'll shoot you.

But still hard to see that working well since the Ukrainians keep getting more and better arms and training from NATO.

The interesting question would be what what would the world do if Putin pulled back to the Feb 23 lines - that is keeping the 2014 lands stolen, but giving back everything taken this year.  Would the west still support Ukraine in trying to re-take the 2014 lands (DOnetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea)?

[Barrister]

Russians hit a hydro damn at Kryvyi Rih, knocking out power and flooding the river below.

No military value of course.  Just trying to make Ukrainian civilians suffer.

Not to apologize for Russians, but taking out power stations most definitely has military value.

And being upstream on a river that flows through one of the Axes of the attack, there might be a hope it slows it down in that sector.

Still it is churlishness at best.  The position in Kherson is untenable, but the suffering will continue due to pig-headed decisions.  The real tragedy will come when the Russians start to really target the civilian population of Kherson.  I don't think for a moment they won't in the end.

Maybe not all power plants, but it is against the Geneva Convention to attack dams and dykes:

https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v2_rul_rule42