Ukraine Always Get What You Want

still bad?

 

Wind blowing from the east the next few days?

 

still bad

Ukraine and Russia Accuse Each Other of Plotting Attack on Nuclear Plant

 

Quite the thread here, much more included beyond the Black Sea Fleet.

 

Well, this is gonna be awkward reporting in Moscow. Explains why the three-day military action has turned into one-hindered-seventy-something days, though.

KYIV, Ukraine — In the final days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security service began sending cryptic instructions to informants in Kyiv. Pack up and get out of the capital, the Kremlin collaborators were told, but leave behind the keys to your homes.

The directions came from senior officers in a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) with a prosaic name — the Department of Operational Information — but an ominous assignment: ensure the decapitation of the Ukrainian government and oversee the installation of a pro-Russian regime.

The messages were a measure of the confidence in that audacious plan. So certain were FSB operatives that they would soon control the levers of power in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian and Western security officials, that they spent the waning days before the war arranging safe houses or accommodations in informants’ apartments and other locations for the planned influx of personnel.

“Have a successful trip!” one FSB officer told another who was being sent to oversee the expected occupation, according to intercepted communications. There is no indication that the recipient ever made it to the capital, as the FSB’s plans collapsed amid the retreat of Russian forces in the early months of the war.

The communications exposing these preparations are part of a larger trove of sensitive materials obtained by Ukrainian and other security services and reviewed by The Washington Post. They offer rare insight into the activities of the FSB — a sprawling service that bears enormous responsibility for the failed Russian war plan and the hubris that propelled it.

An agency whose domain includes internal security in Russia as well as espionage in the former Soviet states, the FSB has spent decades spying on Ukraine, attempting to co-opt its institutions, paying off officials and working to impede any perceived drift toward the West. No aspect of the FSB’s intelligence mission outside Russia was more important than burrowing into all levels of Ukrainian society.

And yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin.​

Russia’s spies misread Ukraine and misled Kremlin as war loomed — The Washington Post

Post reporters did their jobs, though: “The FSB did not respond to requests for comment.”

 

A story about propaganda, logistics and everything else about the Russian invasion.

A former Russian soldier who invaded Ukraine as part of an airborne unit said it took him weeks to realize the war was unprovoked and that his homeland was not under attack.

Russian paratrooper says it was weeks before he realized that Russia hadn't been attacked and that he had actually invaded Ukraine

 

There's a reason why while the Navy Seals and the other special Ops (Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force) get honors (deservedly) its the Army that is huge because one of its major jobs is logistics and supplies.

 

Russia has lost two squadrons worth of its best fighter jets.

Russia Has Lost Two Squadrons of Its 'Best' Su-35 Fighters

 

Maverick get ahold of another F-14?

 

It might not be related.

But it might.