Russia/Ukraine

Irpin and Bucha Reveals Russian War Crimes

Published by Papa Giorgio

RFE/RL reporter Levko Stek visited the recently liberated Kyiv suburb of Irpin on March 30-31. He saw dead bodies, shattered buildings, and burned-out Russian military vehicles in the streets as sounds of distant fighting still echoed in the background.

  • Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that Russia is engaging in ‘genocide’ after mass graves and at least 280 people were found dead in a commuter city outside Kyiv as President Vladimir Putin’s troops started fleeing the capital city. (DAILY MAIL)

THE HILL has some info on Bucha:

Ukrainian civilians were executed and left lying in the streets of Bucha, Ukraine, and hundreds of people were buried in mass graves in the city, which lies just outside of the capital of Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak shared a photo appearing to show bodies lying in the streets of Bucha with hands tied behind their backs. Podoliak said the people had been shot dead by Russian troops.

“These people were not in the military. They had no weapons. They posed no threat,” he tweeted. “How many more such cases are happening right now in the occupied territories?”

Ukraine on Saturday announced it had regained full control of the Kyiv region amid the withdrawal of Russian troops from the area.

Later on Saturday, Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted out a video showing Ukrainian forces driving through Bucha. The video shows sensitive content: bodies littered across the city.

“The Ukrainian city of Bucha was in the hands of [Russian] animals for several weeks. *Local civillians were being executed arbitrarily*, some with hands tied behind their backs, their bodies scattered in the streets of the city,” the ministry tweeted.

In addition to the bodies strewn across the street, Bucha’s mayor, Anatoly Fedoruk, told news outlet AFP that 280 people had been buried in mass graves…………

Russian forces have been accused of committing atrocities in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital.

To be clear however, the Ukrainian military? militia? aren’t squeaky clean either.

“Ukraine’s Asymmetric War” (WSJ | Armstrong n Getty)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Armstrong and Getty read from the Wall Street Journal about Ukraine’s success in fighting a more tech-savvy war. Pretty interesting.

Here is the WSJ article, but unlocked:

Ukraine’s Asymmetric War — Moscow has more firepower, but Kyiv is using digital technology better.

Reports from Ukraine are filled with stories of Javelin antitank missiles and Turkish Bayraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicles taking out Russian tanks and armored vehicles. The Biden administration has announced $800 million in defensive weapons for Ukraine, including Javelins, Stinger antiaircraft weapons and Switchblade drones. More amazing is what Ukraine has also been doing on the cheap. And I don’t mean Molotov cocktails.

Wars are increasingly asymmetric—the lesser-armed side can put up a strong fight. The U.S. learned this in Iraq with insurgent use of improvised explosive devices, basically roadside bombs triggered with cellphones. Similarly, Ukraine has been deploying inexpensive, almost homemade weapons and using technology to its advantage.

The Times of London reports that Ukraine is using $2,000 commercial octocopter drones, modified with thermal imagers and antitank grenades, to find and attack Russian tanks hiding between homes in villages at night. Ukraine’s Aerorozvidka, its aerial reconnaissance team, has 50 squads of drone pilots who need solid internet connections to operate.

When the internet was cut in Syria in 2013, enterprising techies set up point-to-point Wi-Fi connections to bring internet access from across the border in Turkey. You can do this with Pringles potato-chip cans and $50 off-the-shelf Wi-Fi routers. Ukraine may be spared this ad hoc setup as

Elon Musk and his firm Starlink have donated thousands of satellite internet-access terminals to Ukraine, including to the Aerorozvidka squads, which come with warnings to camouflage the antennas. They typically cost $499 each and $99 a month for service.

Ukraine also effectively jammed Russia’s long-in-the-tooth wireless military-communication technology, which apparently uses a single-frequency channel to operate. Former Central Intelligence Agency Director

David Petraeus told CNN that Russians were then forced to use cellphones to communicate until Ukraine blocked the +7 country code for Russia and eventually took down 3G services that Russia uses for secure connections. Russian soldiers were forced to steal Ukrainian cellphones to communicate with one another. That’s no way to fight a war.

Ukraine also has taken advantage of crowdsourcing. The Journal told the story of Russian tanks that would fire on the city of Voznesensk and then back up a few hundred yards to avoid return fire. Civilians and Territorial Defense volunteers would then message the tanks’ new coordinates via the Viber social-messaging app.

The propaganda war is also being fought on the cheap, from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Zoom call with the U.S. Congress to Ukraine’s work spreading news inside Russia. The Russians have blocked Facebook and Twitter, independent media has been shut down, and on Russian television no one is allowed to say “invasion” or “war.” But no country can completely filter and firewall real news. The Telegram and WhatsApp messaging apps encrypt their communications. Ukraine has begun using facial recognition to identify killed and captured Russian soldiers, even contacting their families and posting their photos on Telegram channels. Twitter now is using a service to disguise its origin and restore service to Russian users.

Most surprisingly, after much hype and many warnings, Russian cyberwarfare has been deemed fairly ineffective. Hours before the invasion, someone, presumably the Russians, launched a Trojan.Killdisk attack, disk-wiping malware that hit Ukrainian government and financial system computers and took down Parliament’s website. Cyberattack tracking firm Netscout called the attack “modest.” A Ukrainian newspaper then released a file with details on 120,000 Russian soldiers, including names, addresses, phone and passport numbers. Where the information came from is unknown.

But we have a hint. Ukraine is filled with smart coders, and the government set up an “IT Army of Ukraine” Telegram channel to coordinate digital attacks on Russian military digital systems. As many as 400,000 have volunteered so far. An officer of the Ukraine State Service of Special Communications said they were engaged in “cyber-resistance.” This digital flash mob has taken down Russian websites, though I doubt we will ever fully know the damage it may have inflicted. This is definitely a social-network-influenced conflict.

In the fog of war, stories and disinformation swirl. Most are impossible to verify. I’ve heard of foreign volunteers swarming to Ukraine who then post photos on Instagram. Both Facebook and Instagram strip GPS location coordinates from smartphone photos, but they allow these volunteers to tag nearby locations, potentially giving away refugees’ hiding places. These could be targeted by Russian missiles and may have been the reason the Mariupol theater was destroyed.

New technology for use in commerce often emerges after the smoke of battle clears. World War I produced tanks, field radios and improved airplanes. World War II brought radar, penicillin, nuclear power, synthetic rubber, Jeeps and even duct tape. What we are seeing in Ukraine is the asymmetric power of pervasive inexpensive commercial technology, especially citizen-empowering social networks and crowdsourcing. So far these tools have been altering the war’s outcome. Welcome to 21st-century warfare.

As Russian invasion continues, Makariv may be small in size, but it has big strategic value as it blocks Russia’s armed forces from encircling Kyiv. Ukrainian volunteer fighters use drones in the area for reconnaissance that can be used by Ukrainian artillery units to strike back.

Footage out of Ukraine shows the impressive accuracy and timing of an air-to-ground anti personnel operation by means of a quadcopter dropping a small point-detonating explosive.

Helicopters Used Like Multiple Launch Rocket Systems?

Published by Papa Giorgio

(FUNKER350 TAKES A SHOT AT TRYING TO DESCRIBE WHAT IS GOING ON HERE)

This is a weird one, and definitely not something I’ve seen before. This video was recorded in the city of Popasna and it shows a mixed section of Russian attack helicopters doing something a little weird. The first helicopter, what appears to be a KA-52, comes in low and fast, then tilts his nose upwards and randomly expends his entire rocket pod. The second helicopter, what looks like an Mi-28N, follows suit with the same fire mission, but does so from a little deeper. This angling the nose up bit to expend your rocket pod is not something I’m personally familiar with, so if anyone does recognize this technique before I theorize go ahead and hit the comments.

Here’s my theory. What goes up, must come down. When it’s a rocket, the point of impact is still going to be explosive, same with a MK-19. When you have two known factors, you can eyeball in a range to your target and use just about any weapon system as an indirect fire one. Did the pilots do some quick math here based off of the maximum range of their rockets and just turn their aircraft into flying MLRS platforms? Or, maybe they needed to expend all rockets before returning to base?

Seriously, this one is vexing me. Someone give me a hand. Am dumb grunt. No understand pilot things.

U.S. Funded Bio-Labs in Ukraine

Published by Papa Giorgio

Tucker Carlson asks why the US isn’t coming clean about funding bio labs in Ukraine with deadly pathogens: “It’s a ridiculous semantic debate.”

Now we know that the U.S. funded Bio-labs story which “fact-checkers” claimed to be Russian dis-information has turned out to be entirely true. So what do we know about what was inside these 30 or more labs?


Truth About U.S. Funded Bio-Labs in Ukraine – powered by sovren.media

The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin | Shellenberger

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • “It was the West’s focus on healing the planet with ‘soft energy’ renewables, and moving away from natural gas and nuclear, that allowed Putin to gain a stranglehold over Europe’s energy supply.” — Michael Shellenberger

Armstrong and Getty read some of Michael Shellenberger’s article titled, “The West’s Green Delusions Empowered Putin“. An article of similar nature is found over at THE FEDERALIST, and it is titled: “Stop Letting Environmental Groups Funded By Russia Dictate America’s Energy Policy“.

Both are must reads.

Tulsi Gabbard’s Quick Realignment on Ukraine

Published by Papa Giorgio

Tulsi Gabbard, the last of the freethinking Democrats, also steps out of line. Personally, I’m rooting for Ukraine. But which gang of unsavory characters runs an obscure country on the other side of the world is a local issue. We have our own very serious problems to address, starting with the border and inflation. — MOONBATTERY

plays the Tulsi Gabbard short with xtra commentary.

NOQ REPORT has a decent article.

Most of my readers didn’t trust corporate media’s portrayal of Russiagate or the alleged pee tape that was manufactured for effect by Hillary Clinton’s operatives. You laughed when they tried to tell us the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. You were skeptical of the narratives surrounding the after-dark counting of ballots following the 2020 election, as well as the dismissal of mountains of evidence of massive, widespread voter fraud. You didn’t buy the January 6 “insurrection” narrative. You haven’t fallen for Pandemic Panic Theater.

Why, then, are so many people buying into the notion that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is some sort of good guy in the Russia-Ukraine fiasco? The answer is found in human nature; we tend to look at things as “A vs B.” If Vladimir Putin is the bad guy, then his opposition must be the good guy. Governments and corporate media networks across the globe are playing on this false notion and compelling even lucid patriots into thinking that Zelenksy is fighting the good fight.

I’m not taking a side in the regional conflict. It’s not because I’m indecisive; my long-time readers know I take a strong stance on just about every important issue. In this situation, neither side is worth supporting. Zelensky is not a good guy, and while it’s extremely unfortunate that Ukrainian civilians as well as reluctant members of both militaries are being victimized by their two leaders, I don’t see Zelenksy’s actions serving the interests of his people. Most importantly, I don’t see an upside for America to get involved.

I’ve received hundreds of emails regarding the conflict. Some try to convince me that Putin is a crusader for good. I’m not ready to buy that. Others tell me that it’s our responsibility to help Ukraine even if I don’t trust their leader. I can appreciate that perspective, but I see no way to help while the conflict is happening. Any intervention on our part will result in more loss of life, not less.

If NATO were to get involved militarily in any function, the loss of life would increase exponentially. We cannot save Ukraine through military action without going all-in and declaring war on Russia. Any “minor” assistance such as no-fly zones or drone strikes will result in a shooting war with Russia at best, possibly a far worse cyberwar, or the worst outcome of all — nuclear.

Volodymyr Zelensky has been documented as a puppet of George Soros. He has worked closely over the years with Klaus Schwab, a graduate of his school of thought with the likes of Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau. Those two blaring klaxons alone should make you question the mainstream narrative that this charismatic and defiant leader is operating from an agenda that benefits his people or the world. He is a pawn who has been set up as a messiah. There’s only one Messiah, and Zelenksy isn’t Him………

 

 

Ukraine’s Sending Some Russians to Hell

Published by Papa Giorgio

Footage appears to show the moment a Ukrainian drone strikes a Russian missile launcher. The video was released on social media by Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s chief commander of the armed forces. On Sunday, 27 February, Zaluzhny wrote in a post on Facebook that a Turkish-made Bayraktar drone was used to destroy the heavy Russian machinery. He also explained that the attack took place in the city of Malyn, which sits in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region.

The Ukraine Armed Forces continued to release footage on Monday showing what it said were successful strikes against Russian forces using the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drone. Fedorovich said the strike was near the village of Ivankiv, in Kyiv Oblast, some 80 km north of the capital.