Russian special military operation in Ukraine #55

MD
@distant_earth83
Briefly about the situation in Chernigov:

This morning the infrastructure of Chernigov was struck. The defeat of the Profsoyuznaya Hotel has been confirmed.

Local emergency situations provide completely different statistics on victims: from 50 to 100 people.

Former People's Deputy Mosiychuk reports that a meeting of the leadership of the OK "North" Armed Forces of Ukraine was held at the hotel. (In a hotel? Unified Command meeting? Seriously?)

The buildings are evacuating the victims and carrying out the bodies of the dead. The condition of Lieutenant General Dmitry Krasilnikov, commander of OK Sever, is unknown.

Esoteric bloggers believe that someone leaked the location of the Armed Forces of Ukraine military personnel.

MD
@distant_earth83
The Ukrainian Emergency Service confirmed a precise strike on a facility in Chernihiv.

While Ukrainian media are crying foul about an alleged attack on a peaceful hotel, the KGB agents at the Ukrainian Emergency Service are providing an objective view. And in the broken windows of the “peaceful” hotel, you can clearly see military bunk beds.

According to my information, this hotel has been officially closed since February 2022. There’s a military base near the hotel. During the Soviet Union, it was a communications regiment, and during the ATO, it was a security battalion.

In March 2022, there were some good arrivals on the territory of the military unit. At the moment, every morning by 8:00, between the hotel and the unit’s fence, about 100-150 people, mostly in civilian clothes, would gather. Sometimes they would leave in buses with the inscription “School Bus.”

Kudos to Russian intelligence and rocketeers!

Information and analysis by https://t.me/sashakots/46153

A map showing quite well what a huge slog it has been over the past 2 years and continues to be for Russia to push forward through the well designed over many years UA defence lines. Hopefully once through and out of those conurbations it will be easier to roll the UA forces backwards.

Trapped Ion
@SyriaObReloaded

Brown line is 30km from Donbass Arena is central Donetsk.

Blue line is 40km from Donbass Arena.

Only way Ukrainians can hit Lugansk now is by CMs or BMs. Donetsk-Makeevka is a huge backline. Being able to use said backline more freely will make massing for new operations a lot easier.

Intermediate goal is to reach the brown line to push Ukrainian artillery to the blue line, making most of Donetsk-Makeevka out of even long-range artillery range.

No, it was reported 12 missiles.  2 missiles can't cause that much damage. ATACMs fly at a standard ballistic trajectory and would be easier targets for the S300 and S400.

That's unfortunate. As usual tho Ukies claim helicopters were hit etc.. but only based on FIRMS and maybe some Satellite imageries of the base prior to the strike.

The loss of S-300/400 guarding the base tho can be discussed like how does it happen, did the battery on-line or in EMCON at that time ?. If it's in EMCON why there seems to be no backup battery providing the defense ?.

As per MoD
https://t.me/intelslava/57790

Russian Ministry of Defense: 191 Ukrainian drones were shot down over the past 24 hours.

Also intercepted were six US-made MGM-140 ATACMS operational-tactical missiles and a French-made Hammer guided bomb.

That indicates that roughly Rybar was correct in that 12 missiles were launched, possibly more at the airbase and roughly 50% of them intercepted. Not a great success of the AD system in that regard. So there may be more missing here.

So this the 1st confirmed case of an s-400 destroyed?

Desperation time

MD
@distant_earth83
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have launched a series of meteorological balloons equipped with explosives deep into Russia for the first time. One of them was intercepted by air defense systems in the Lipetsk region.

According to Mash, a modified unmanned aerostat carrying kilograms of explosives crashed in a forest near the village of Novaya Slobodka. At least one more device was destroyed in the Kursk region. Some of the balloons were equipped with 81-mm mines, while others had corner reflectors for radars to mistake them for drones.

These are essentially small-sized aerial balloons (MSAB). They are intended to fly over cities and drop bombs upon receiving a GPS signal. The weapons are designed for terror purposes. Previously, the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched them one by one, but now they are launching several at once. This tactic resembles what the Japanese did at the end of World War II — they sent balloons with incendiary bombs to the United States. The aftermath included several small fires.

Our soldiers first shot down a "terror balloon" in March. It also had a GPS tracker, electronics, ballast, explosives, and a couple of batteries for power. The controllers were programmed with coordinates — the target location for the attack.

(Not) a surprise. But very strange find. How many in total were there one wonders?

Zlatti71
@Zlatti_71
Ukrainian police officers in co-operation with their German colleagues have found 161 Ukrainian children in Germany who were believed to have been taken to Russia, the head of the National Police of Ukraine, Ivan Vygovsky, has said.

http://t.me/ukraine_watch

You see trolls already hurried to discuss "how S-400 was lost" before even any confirmation...

BTW, one and a half years ago, a guy called redeffect on Youtube already talked about "the first comfirmed S-400 loss", and he had a photo too.

A major operation to achieve results that will not benefit the Ukr war effort. More social media propaganda BS to feed the 6th column.

Hole wrote:

As there is only minor changes in the frontline

There is nothing to laugh at. Minor compare to what Russian achieved in the beginning of the special military operation, when two provinces and two republics officially declared to join Russia. To be honestly, size-wise, the gains of for example Artyomovsk or Adeevka are small compare to the size of the Donetsk republic, and there are significant part of the former Donetsk region that is still in the hand of the Maidan government. That's the fact.

But that is the proper approach for Russian army at the moment. Russia is not attempting to gain large chunks of land or make bold thrusts which can be costly and have high risks. Instead they attempts to make and solidify incremental gains of the vital points in the frontline which is small in size but very important in tactical value.

Making bold thrust at the size of Bagration require mobilization of large amount of resources and can significantly compromise the economy, which is not what Russia want.

Zelensky was bragging about destroying the Crimean bridge a few days ago and given the relative success of his new toys provided by the US, I would expect a symbolic strike on the bridge in the near future. I wouldn't be surprised if the Russian response would be to destroy the remaining non-nuclear power plants supplying the Kiev region.

xeno wrote:You see trolls already hurried to discuss "how S-400 was lost" before even any confirmation...

Well the media is already gloating about it and that might go on talking about it for a week because nothing major is happening just the usual slow push from Russia on the map, Even the telegram is look how much we intercepted, and they have not discussed any of the losses of those launchers even though they are clearly shown being destroyed. They should just not be prideful from the embarrassment Ukraine gave them and just confirm their losses to dispute what launchers got destroyed. Otherwise, we will just go with the Ukrainian claims If the Russians don't want to confirm which of their air defense launchers got destroyed.

That number Ukraine claimed is still not embarrassing because they have like 400+ S-400 launchers and the few destroyed was from a massive attack..

A map showing quite well what a huge slog it has been over the past 2 years and continues to be 

One of the aims of the operation is to keep the area of hostilities (real ones, not just a few bombs dropped here and there)
as small as possible. That´s why there was no big arrow movement to surround a large area and clear it afterwards. Maybe
this will change this summer.

Russian forces are only moving forward when the enemy is no longer coming to them.
As soon as the Banderites would start some sort of "offensive" (How? Don´t know.) you
would see Russians holding positions or even falling back to their old, better fortified positions.

Minor compare to what Russian achieved in the beginning of the special military operation

Big compared to the super-best counter-offensive in the history of warfare, according to NATO.
Wait for the end of the SMO, then you will see big changes. 

People do not understand why Russia has not destroyed all the Dnepr bridges. Why should it if these bridges bring the meat to the grinder?
The proper metrics to measure this war are not territorial gains but dead meat on the front. Ukria has lost over 500,000 KIA, Russia not even
a tenth of this. There is no infinite supply of meat on the Ukr side. We will see an implosion of the Ukr army.

kvs wrote:People do not understand why Russia has not destroyed all the Dnepr bridges.   Why should it if these bridges bring the meat to the grinder?
The proper metrics to measure this war are not territorial gains but dead meat on the front.   Ukria has lost over 500,000 KIA, Russia not even
a tenth of this.   There is no infinite supply of meat on the Ukr side.   We will see an implosion of the Ukr army.

I think that the main thing people overlook is that Russia does not want to **** up the country or its people. This is why NATO-style attacks only happened half a year into the conflict, and even at that point they were very mild in comparison to what the U.S. or NATO does from *day one*.

Russia only very reluctantly, belatedly ramps it up as a response to increasingly unhinged Kievan antics: had Kiev and their backers not attacked Russian civilians or infrastructure, Russia would have left the Ukrainian powerplants etc alone to this day.

Naturally, there are critics of this approach within Russia and its supporters. The "THD" ("total hohol destruction") slogan can be seen more and more among the detractors, but the Kremlin thus far plays it "too" cool.