A place for aggregated discussions of a possible conflict, it’s implications and effects, news updates and personal accounts if any. If the expected conflict kicks off, I will change the title but the function will stay the same.
Not that anyone here needed any convincing but Trump refusing to say that he thinks Ukraine should win the war and then expressing concerned for RUSSIA'S casualties says everything you need to know about what is at stake for Ukrainians in this presidential election.
The fact that Harris connected the dots and said that Putin would be sitting in Kyiv planning his invasion of Poland next really brought it home. I hope the 780k Polish Americans living in Pennsylvania were listening.
TIFF suspends screening of film on Russian soldiers after threats
The Toronto International Film Festival has announced it will pause all upcoming screenings of the film Russians at War.
Russians at War, a first-person documentary by Russian Canadian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova, spurred protest from Ukrainian officials and community groups who say the film amounts to propaganda. After a press screening earlier this week that brought hundreds of protesters to downtown Toronto, the feature was set to have its North American premiere at the Scotiabank Theatre at 2:30 p.m Friday. It was then scheduled to run additional screenings on Saturday and Sunday, all of which will be paused.
Organizers cited "significant threats to festival operations and public safety" as the reason for the cancellation but also stated they "support civil discourse about and through films, including differences of opinion."
"This is an unprecedented move for TIFF," the statement reads.
"This has been an incredibly difficult decision. When we select films, we're guided by TIFF's mission, our values, and our programming principles. We believe this film has earned a place in our festival's lineup, and we are committed to screening it when it is safe to do so."
What's the film about?
In Russians at War, Trofimova follows soldiers and medics on the front lines of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the United Nations estimates has killed more than 11,700 civilians and injured another 24,600 since February 2022.
Throughout the documentary, some of those profiled express doubts about the war and question their roles in it even as they proceed to follow orders and assert their patriotism. The film depicts scenes of Russian soldiers being killed.
"As Russia's unjust war on Ukraine rages on, it is critical to understand the long history of colonization that has led to this current moment," the official description of the movie on TIFF's website says.
"[Russians at War] takes us beyond the headlines to join Russian soldiers as they place themselves in a battle for reasons that become only more obscure with each gruelling day, each confusing command, each gut-wrenching casualty."
The joint Canadian-French production received $340,000 in funding provided through TVO, the Canadian Media Fund confirmed in a statement. On Tuesday, TVO later announced it was no longer supporting the film and would not be airing it in the coming months as planned.
Consulting producer on the film Sean Farnel posted on X that TIFF's decision was "heartbreaking" and called on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to "fully investigate this affront, from within a sovereign government, to our democratic values in a free media."
Our priority as producers, through its production, has been the safety and security of our courageous director, Anastasia Trofimova, despite her steadfast acceptance of these risks to make her documentary. We had assumed those risks would originate within Russia, not Canada.
Big talk, little man.
FAFO
Some thoughts on escalation:
- The escalation path is talked about like it's nukes or nothing. But RUS has a lot of other annoying things they could do.
- Send rocket/nuke tech to Iran.
- Mess with Africa even more.
- Send rocket tech to DPRK.
- Sabotage in EUR.
Some thoughts on now allowing (lolol) ATACMS/Storm Shadow strikes on RUS territory:
- Too late to make decisive impact (blowing up the Crimean bridge in 2022 would have had major impact).
- RUS has clearly learned to be more cautious; there aren't going to be 0% defended major targets anymore.
- How many ATACMS/Storm Shadows are even going to be used? It's not like RUS has no air defense, so these expensive weapons are going to need to overwhelm the defenders.
- This should push logistics lines back even further for RUS (finally).
They just hit a Turkish vessel in Romania waters with a missile because it was carrying Ukraine grain. I think we are already pretty far up the escalation ladder when they have directly attacked two nato members.
If I were a mischievous bastard and not the law abiding person I am, I’d be tempted to supply Ukrainian troops in Kursk with trillions of rubles in counterfeit currency. Have them loot local banks, mix the good cash in with the fake and hand it out to Russian internally displaced folks and tell them to spend it all before anyone finds out. That would result in the Rosgvardia having to spend acutely short manpower policing the folks fleeing and brutally repressing them or risk regional hyperinflation and critical shortages.
But I am not that person and it would be wrong.
Ukraine did it again. Weapon depot in Toropets gone earthquake 2.8-boom
Ukraine destroyed one of Russia’s largest weapons depots.A drone swarm struck the depot in Toropets in the Tver region, 480 km from the frontlines.
The explosion destroyed hundreds of S-300, S-400, Iskander & North Korean ballistic missiles, causing a 2.8 magnitude earthquake
I could watch that all day
Holy carp! That is some set of explosions.
Some of the estimates of the yield on the secondary explosions have it at the multi kiloton range with one particularly generous one estimating it was the explosive equivalent of the Little Boy bomb (obvs without the radiation and fallout). The surrounding city has been evacuated and the fires are ongoing even this morning.
Considering these were hardened shelters, it is unlikely this was a simple drone strike. It is outside the range of Storm Shadow and there is no way we authorized an ATACMS strike on a target 100km from Moscow. The speculation is that the Ukrainians have developed their own high yield cruise or ballistic missile. The real question is how in the hell did such a weapon make it 500+km across the most defended portion of Russian airspace to land within strategic pissing distance of Putin himself?
Maybe they too acquired north korean, russian, or iranian ballistic missiles?
How privileged is that dude to drive the bike he has, and go disaster sightseeing?
He still lives in Russia, so...probably not that privileged.
It does bring up the issue of how bad the Russians appear to be with Opsec. The open source intel they provide in real time is pretty outstanding.
How privileged is that dude to drive the bike he has, and go disaster sightseeing?
Errr yeah, I don't think being in an area that is actively being bombed during a war counts as privilege.
If my information is correct, this is the primary arsenal for the Russian military and stored a substantial portion of their ammunition stockpile. It may not be immediately felt at the front because the pushed supplies have yet to work their way through the system, but the logistical impact of this strike will definitely be hard to ignore. This is going to drastically affect their ability to put the hot stuff on the wet stuff in a few months. In areas where operations are very ordinance consumption dependent (e.g.: Donbas) this is going to mean a lot more substituting meat for explosives.
Beastquake 2: Электрический Бугалу
Volunteers dying as Russia’s war dead tops 70,000
More than 70,000 people fighting in Russia’s military have now died in Ukraine, according to data analysed by the BBC.
And for the first time, volunteers - civilians who joined the armed forces after the start of the war - now make up the highest number of people killed on the battlefield since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022.
Every day, the names of those killed in Ukraine, their obituaries and photographs from their funerals are published across Russia in the media and on social networks.
BBC Russian and the independent website Mediazona have collated these names, along with names from other open sources, including official reports.
We checked that the information had been shared by authorities or relatives of the deceased - and that they had been identified as dying in the war.
New graves in cemeteries have also helped provide the names of soldiers killed in Ukraine - these are usually marked by flags and wreaths sent by the defence ministry.
We have identified the names of 70,112 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, but the actual number is believed to be considerably higher. Some families do not share details of their relatives’ deaths publicly - and our analysis does not include names we were unable to check, or the deaths of militia in Russian-occupied Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine.
Among them, 13,781 were volunteers - about 20% - and fatalities among volunteers now exceed other categories. Former prisoners, who joined up in return for pardons for their crimes, were previously the highest but they now account for 19% of all confirmed deaths. Mobilised soldiers - citizens called up to fight - account for 13%.
Since October last year, weekly fatalities of volunteers have not dipped below 100 - and, in some weeks, we have recorded more than 310 volunteer deaths.
As for Ukraine - it rarely comments on the scale of its deaths on the battlefield. In February, its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, but estimates based on US intelligence suggest greater losses.
The story of Rinat Khusniyarov is typical of many of the volunteer soldiers who died. He was from Ufa in Bashkortostan and had been working two jobs to make ends meet - at a tram depot and a plywood factory. He was 62 years old when he signed his contract with the Russian army in November last year.
He survived less than three months of fighting and was killed on 27 February. His obituary, in a local online memorial website, simply called him “a hardworking, decent man”.
According to the data we analysed, most of the men signing up come from small towns in parts of Russia where stable, well-paid work is hard to find.
Most appear to have joined up willingly, although some in the republic of Chechnya have told human rights activists and lawyers of coercion and threats.
Some of the volunteers have said they did not understand the contracts they were signing had no end date, and have since approached pro-Kremlin journalists to, unsuccessfully, ask them for help ending their service.
Salaries in the military can be five to seven times higher than average wages in less affluent parts of the country, plus soldiers get social benefits, including free childcare and tax breaks. One-off payments for people who sign up have also repeatedly risen in value in many parts of Russia.
Most of the volunteers dying at the front are aged between 42 and 50. They number 4,100 men in our list of more than 13,000 volunteers. The oldest volunteer killed was 71 years old - a total of 250 volunteers above the age of 60 have died in the war.
Soldiers have told the BBC that rising casualties among volunteers are, in part, down to their deployment to the most operationally challenging areas on the front line, notably in the Donetsk region in the east, where they form the backbone of reinforcements for depleted units, Russian soldiers told the BBC.
Russia’s “meat grinder” strategy continues unabated, according to Russian soldiers we have spoken to. The term has been used to describe the way Moscow sends waves of soldiers forward relentlessly to try to wear down Ukrainian forces and expose their locations to Russian artillery. Drone footage shared online shows Russian forces attacking Ukrainian positions with little or no equipment or support from artillery or military vehicles.
Sometimes, hundreds of men have been killed on a single day. In recent weeks, the Russian military have made desperate, but unsuccessful, attempts to seize the eastern Ukrainian towns of Chasiv Yar and Pokrovsk with such tactics.
An official study by the primary military medical directorate of the Russian defence ministry says that 39% of soldiers’ deaths are a result of limb injuries and that mortality rates would be significantly improved if first aid and subsequent medical care were better.
The Russian government’s actions suggests it is keen to avoid forcing people to fight through a new, official wave of mobilisation - instead, it is ramping up calls for service volunteers, along with the incentives to do so.
Remarks by regional officials in local parliaments suggest they have been tasked from the top with trying to recruit people from their local districts. They advertise on job vacancy websites, contact men who have debt and bailiff problems, and conduct recruitment campaigns in higher education establishments.
Since 2022, convicted prisoners have also been encouraged to join up in return for their release, but now a new policy means people facing criminal prosecution can accept a deal to go to war instead of facing trial in court. In return, their cases are frozen and potentially dropped altogether.
The real question is how in the hell did such a weapon make it 500+km across the most defended portion of Russian airspace to land within strategic pissing distance of Putin himself?
In their own words, "what air defence doing?"
Ah yes. The Classics.
The strikes on Russian weapons depots demonstrates a revolutionary leap in Ukrainian capabilities well beyond the predictable iterative progress they have up to now been making. They represent a sharp escalation in competence that, if you were Russian, strongly implicate deep Western cooperation.
First, if the damage to concrete reinforced bunkers was accomplished with Ukrainian made jet drones as reported, those drones would have to be capable of speed, payload, accuracy, and air defense evasion capabilities beyond anything even the Russians themselves have demonstrated with any kind of regularity. Russian cruise missiles have not demonstrated the ability to reliably hit targets as small as an ammo bunker 150 miles away.
Second, the ability to pull off a massive, coordinated strike which overwhelms air defense capabilities takes a lot more than just firing them all off at the same time. Deconfliction, deduplication of targets, target verification, damage assessment... there is a whole lot involved. And the fact that the Russians have thusfar failed to pull off anything similar despite having an order of magnitude more ordinance with which to do it demonstrates they lack some crucial aspect of this capability.
Third, no one suspected that they would have the industrial capacity to build a sufficient number of these new drones to be able to pull of such a series of massive strikes. By most estimates, the strike on Toropets alone required between 100 and 200 such drones.
Fourth, this was the first use of them which means that they effectively carried off an alpha strike with a beta product in production. The level of confidence they had in the efficacy of this drone given the short development timeline and the level of commitment without live testing strikes me as foolish. But it isn't stupid if it worked.
Fifth, the intelligence collected to know where targets were, how hard to hit them, and when they would be vulnerable was just about absolute. Apparently, the one in Tver was hit just as a trainload of North Korean munitions arrived, which accounted for the majority of the catastrophic damage.
Sixth, considering not just the use of but the overuse of Russian EW to jam GPS over targets of strategic significance, it is probably safe to assume that the systems Ukraine used to hit these bases relied on multiple redundant terminal guidance options. If I were Russian internal security, I would seriously consider the possibility that bunkers were being laser painted with drones operated by covert agents and/or whether the drones were being TV guided with help from Western LEO satellites.
In total, this was a quantum leap in demonstrated capability. This would be like if a Roman legion showed up to Alesia with muzzle loaders. Not saying the Ukrainians *couldn't* pull it off on their own, but if I were Russian, I would be smelling fish.
Perun's latest epic video essay is on the state of the Ukrainian economy. Not too bad considering how much damage they've taken, but as noted above, the coming winter is going to be critical.
So it is starting to look like the Toropets facility was not just a "depot", but a "relaboration" facility. That is, it was the primary military base where old, long term storage ammunition was taken to rehabilitate before being sent off to other depots for distribution.
Old ammunition or ammunition of questionable provenance (i.e.: North Korean) needs to be disassembled, inspected, repacked and primed, and sent on its way. The process is HIGHLY skill and labor intensive and is akin to explosive ordinance disposal .... without the disposal. Think performing high pressure surgery on chain smoking cancer patients where the patients explode from time to time.
This isn't the sort of skill set you can put out a Russian Craigslist ad for and, more importantly, it isn't the sort of thing you are going to pick up in an afternoon of drinking vodka and reading manuals. Considering how old a lot of that ammunition is, I would imagine much of what is required is tribal knowledge. Knowledge that now resides someplace at the bottom of an 85m wide Tunguska style crater.
So it is starting to look like the Toropets facility was not just a "depot", but a "relaboration" facility. That is, it was the primary military base where old, long term storage ammunition was taken to rehabilitate before being sent off to other depots for distribution.
Old ammunition or ammunition of questionable provenance (i.e.: North Korean) needs to be disassembled, inspected, repacked and primed, and sent on its way. The process is HIGHLY skill and labor intensive and is akin to explosive ordinance disposal .... without the disposal. Think performing high pressure surgery on chain smoking cancer patients where the patients explode from time to time.
This isn't the sort of skill set you can put out a Russian Craigslist ad for and, more importantly, it isn't the sort of thing you are going to pick up in an afternoon of drinking vodka and reading manuals. Considering how old a lot of that ammunition is, I would imagine much of what is required is tribal knowledge. Knowledge that now resides someplace at the bottom of an 85m wide Tunguska style crater.
Pedant here - Tunguska was an airburst and didn't leave any particularly noticable craters
Has Russia confirmed a number of casualties from the depot attack yet?
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