"All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again." (14 Viewers)

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MiTasol said:
The question that some people should be considering is what will be the next target if Russia ends up winning this war in any way shape or form
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If Russia "wins" in UKR, including just hanging on to what they have seized - they will be tied up with that insurgency forever. The UKR has not started implementing wide scale terrorism in Russia but they are ideally positioned to do so and highly motivated as well.
 
Interesting assessment from RUSI on the impact of Storm Shadow on the conflict:

The significance of Storm Shadow in the Ukrainian arsenal is that it holds a wide range of Russian critical dependencies at risk: fuel, ammunition dumps, command and control bunkers, and other high value targets. The Storm Shadow stockpile is small, and Ukraine will have to select the targets to be struck with great care. The critical priority will be to perform strikes that achieve disproportionate effect and that create specific disruption in areas that Ukraine can exploit in its conduct of offensive operations.

The introduction of Storm Shadow should not be seen as an escalation, but rather a means of resolving serious tactical challenges in support of Ukraine's efforts to liberate its territory
The impact of Storm Shadow on the Russians, however, goes significantly beyond the targets struck.

Confronting Russian forces with a new system that can evade their defences, which their operators do not know how to distinguish clearly from other targets, and which can be used in combination with existing Ukrainian capabilities – from loitering munitions to GMLRS or HARMS – will create conflicting imperatives for air defence crews. Do they start looking for objects with much smaller radar cross-sections? Doing so risks they're being saturated and wasting missiles. If they are receiving a raft of false positives from electronic warfare systems, do they fire when they think they have a target, even though it could be friendly?
 
An opinion piece from "New Voice of Ukraine" (NV) so we may want to take the message with a pinch of salt. According to NV, neither of the elderly men seated beside Putin during last week's Victory Day parade were soldiers during the Great Patriotic War. Instead both were security officers with sordid pasts, repressing nationalist identities in countries Russia was occupying. However, if NV's reporting on the identities and histories of the 2 men is accurate, then it clearly sends a message about what's truly important to Putin...and it's NOT about an ongoing war against Nazism:


Putin May Parade.jpg

To Putin's right sat the 98-year-old Yuri Dvoikin, who volunteered for the Red Army during World War II but never actually made it to the front lines. Instead, after training as a sniper in 1944, he was dispatched by the Soviet secret police to Lviv in western Ukraine, where his job was to assist in the liquidation of the Ukrainian nationalist underground. The campaign against Ukraine's independence movement was particularly brutal, with the Soviet authorities employing terror tactics and large-scale deportations. Although the Ukrainians were able to inflict significant casualties on Soviet forces, they were ultimately defeated by the early 1950s.

On Putin's left sat the 88-year-old Gennady Zaitsev, who, like Dvoikin, never served in what Russia still refers to as the Great Patriotic War. He was drafted into the Red Army in 1953 and joined the KGB six years later after completing his military service. In 1968, he helped suppress the Prague Spring by, among other things, capturing the Czechoslovak Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the 1970s, KGB chief Yuri Andropov appointed Zaitsev to lead the elite Alfa anti-terrorist unit.

Putin did not have to sit between these two former secret policemen. Indeed, on Victory Day of all days, it would have been far more natural to appear alongside veterans of the war against Hitler's Germany. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Putin's choice of neighbors was a deliberate and symbolic move.


Here's the article for those interested:

Deciphering Vladimir Putin's unspoken Victory Day message
 
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buffnut453 said:
But that puts Putin in the role of master strategist....which I struggle to accept.
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Hmmmm .... good point. Was Hitler PERSONALLY responsible for plotting the purging the SA, or was it more of a 'Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?' kinda thing? While Putim himself might well be incapable of plotting and executing such a purge, there are probably better-connected and ambitious minions who would love to make the boss happy.......
 
Warspite63 said:
Hmmmm .... good point. Was Hitler PERSONALLY responsible for plotting the purging the SA, or was it more of a 'Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?' kinda thing? While Putim himself might well be incapable of plotting and executing such a purge, there are probably better-connected and ambitious minions who would love to make the boss happy.......
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Prigozhin is clearly hanging out in places where Wagner forces are numerous, no doubt as a means of preventing him falling out of high windows. No amount of politicking in Moscow will impact Prigozhin if he stays within the Wagner protective cocoon.

The only organization capable of taking on Wagner is the Russian military but the invasion of Ukraine proved that they couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery. Also, if the military was abandoning Wagner to its fate, why move four battalions of VDV troops to shore up the Bakhmut defences?

Finally, if the Russian military does take on Wagner, then it's the ultimate example of a house divided. It will result in Russia losing the war and almost certainly would spawn a civil war in Russia.
 
buffnut453 said:
Prigozhin is clearly hanging out in places where Wagner forces are numerous, no doubt as a means of preventing him falling out of high windows. No amount of politicking in Moscow will impact Prigozhin if he stays within the Wagner protective cocoon.
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One thing Prigozhin may not be considering, is the FSB, which is far better at doing "things" that the Army can't, and the FSB answered directly to Putin.
 
GrauGeist said:
One thing Prigozhin may not be considering, is the FSB, which is far better at doing "things" that the Army can't, and the FSB answered directly to Putin.
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I can see the FSB having operatives inside Wagner and, potentially, removing him from the equation via a deliberate decapitation operation (either figurative or literal). However, I do not see the FSB having the means to "starve Wagner in the field." Doing that requires the involvement of the army…and isn't borne out by some of the recently reported VDV troop redeployments.
 
The FSB would most likely catch him off-guard, by creating a situation like a car bomb, a "smoking accident" or something similar. Perhaps some Polonium Tea or other means.

While the FSB is estimated to have a considerable force (including border services), it's highly doubtful they would bum-rush him en masse.
 
GrauGeist said:
The FSB would most likely catch him off-guard, by creating a situation like a car bomb, a "smoking accident" or something similar. Perhaps some Polonium Tea or other means.

While the FSB is estimated to have a considerable force (including border services), it's highly doubtful they would bum-rush him en masse.
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In political terms does this mean Putin is waiting for a "window" of opportunity ?
 
re post#19,550 ("All of Vlad's forces and all of Vlad's men, are out to put Humpty together again.") "May 17 (Reuters) - Three Russian academics who have worked on hypersonic missile technology face "very serious accusations", the Kremlin said on Wednesday, in a treason investigation that has spread alarm through Russia's scientific community"

It looks to me like the Russian propaganda machine is trying to manufacture a reason why the Patriot is capable of shooting down the Kinzhal - ie it must be due to the treasonous behavior of our scientists, it could not possibly because hypersonic missiles are not particular hard to shoot down if you have the right equipment. Since the Russian propaganda machine has been claiming from the start of the war that the Kinshal could not be shot down, the recent shoot-downs may be straining the Russian belief system.
 
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