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ChrisO_wiki

@ChrisO_wiki

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Independent military history author and researcher. Also at

Joined January 2010
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
2 years
THREAD OF THREADS: This is a quick link to the various threads I've written on the war in Ukraine.
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2 years
Some thoughts on the apparent sinking of the Russian Black Sea flagship Moskva: if confirmed, it's likely to go down in history as one of the most audaciously successful attacks in modern naval history. /1
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2 years
1/ A 34-year-old former Russian paratrooper, Pavel Filatyev, has published a remarkable in-depth account of his experiences of the Ukraine war. He served with the Feodosia-based 56th Guards Air Assault Regiment and fought in southern Ukraine for two months. A 🧵 follows.
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9 months
1/ Wagner Group fighters have been saying goodbye to their relatives over the past 24 hours and telling them to watch the TV news, which suggests that they may have had advance notice of today's dramatic events with Yevgeny Prigozhin.
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9 months
1/ Russia's security forces are reported to be in disarray following the attempted mutiny by the Wagner Group. It seems to have been perfectly timed for a moment – Friday night – when many personnel were too drunk to respond quickly, while others are refusing to fight Wagner. ⬇️
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9 months
Twitter's engineers, around seven hours ago:
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7 months
1/ Yevgeny Prigozhin may be poised to take posthumous revenge on Vladimir Putin. A source suggests that Prigozhin was keeping sensitive information - kompromat - on the regime, which may now become public. ⬇️
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2 years
Russia is running out of tanks. That's the inescapable conclusion from reports that it's transporting some of its reported 2,500 stored T-62s to support its war in Ukraine. What does this mean logistically and operationally? A 🧵 with some observations and deductions. /1
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9 months
1/ The security forces in Moscow are reported to be utterly incapable of resisting a heavily armed force like Wagner. Police generals are said to considering which side to back, while forces on the ground are already defecting to Wagner. ⬇️
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9 months
1/ An emergency security plan is reported to have been activated in Moscow in response to Yevgeny Prigozhin's 'rebellion', according to a Telegram channel with apparent links to the Russian security forces. An imminent attack on Moscow appears to be anticipated. ⬇️
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1 year
The #Blyatskrieg continues: Russia's retreat from the Kherson region is... not going well. (Make sure you watch to the end!)
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1 year
1/ The Wagner Group's huge losses and lack of reserves are said to have left it incapable of defending the territory it has captured, presenting a severe risk if Ukraine launches a major counter-offensive. The situation is described as 'desperate'. ⬇️
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2 years
1/ Did a culture of institutionalised lying contribute to Russia's recent disaster east of Kharkiv, by giving its senior commanders a distorted and false picture of the true situation on the ground? A 🧵 reviewing the evidence.
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5 months
1/ Hundreds of Russian soldiers may have mutinied in recent weeks as the Russian army accumulates huge losses in offensives in several regions of Ukraine. At least 173 men are reported to have been detained for refusing orders, and this may be just the tip of the iceberg. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Finland's national broadcaster Yle has published an interesting interview with an explosive ordnance disposal expert, retired Major Myka Tyry of the Finnish Defence Forces, on the Crimea Bridge blast. He makes a number of points I've not seen elsewhere.
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9 months
1/ A retired Russian tank battalion commander has given a frank interview about the rampant corruption that he says has led to the "complete collapse of the Russian army" in the last 16 years. His comments highlight how the army has rotted from within during the Putin era. ⬇️
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4 months
1/ The deaths of crew members of the Russian submarine 'Rostov na Donu', destroyed in a Ukrainian missile strike on 13 September, has reportedly become the subject of a scandal after relatives were denied compensation and the dead had to be buried at their comrades' expense. ⬇️
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8 months
1/ The Wagner Group is reported to have effectively been kicked out of Belarus, with thousands of its remaining fighters being bussed back into Russia. The Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is reported to have refused to finance Wagner's stay in his country. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Dozens of mobilised Russians from Volgograd are reported to have died after being sent to fight in Ukraine without being given any ammunition. Their deaths are said to have been covered up subsequently, but independent Russian journalists have reported on their story. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Russia's ammunition shortage in eastern Ukraine is reportedly so severe that its troops there have reportedly been issued with completely unusable munitions, including shells which are so rusty they have simply disintegrated. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ The accounts of mobilised Russian soldiers who survived the Ukrainian HIMARS strike on Makiivka are beginning to emerge. Many more than the official figure of 63 are reported to have died. "We are cleaning their brains off our boots," says one survivor. ⬇️
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2 years
By now, many will have seen the video of a Ukrainian drone dropping a small bomb through the sunscreen (!) of a car driven by Russian soldiers. Here's a short thread on how it was done (with thanks to @ian_matveev , on whose thread this is based). /1
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4 months
1/ A cannibal serial killer who is said to have murdered 13 people and filled his refrigerator with human flesh has been pardoned by Vladimir Putin and sent to fight in Ukraine. The decision has caused shock on Russian social media networks. ⬇️
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11 months
1/ Rampant corruption is reported to have rendered Russia's ballistic missile early warning system virtually useless. Scams by contractors are said to have led to unsuitable foreign-made components being used on a wide scale. ⬇️
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10 months
1/ Russian soldiers fighting against the cross-border incursion in the Belgorod region are complaining that they are being "slaughtered" and "entire regiments" have been lost. They blame bad leadership, inadequate equipment, lack of artillery support and no reinforcements. ⬇️
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2 years
@AVindman Translation: Just in the Kiev region, near Severinovka, the Russian occupation forces came into battle with ... the Russian occupation forces. As a result, thanks to "friendly fire", 9 tanks and 4 armored personnel carriers were destroyed. Accordingly, it saved us 13 Јavelin./1
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2 years
Either way, the total loss of the Moskva as a military asset is highly, highly likely. The man in the Kremlin is having a very bad day today. /end
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2 years
1/ @ian_matveev , who's one of the smartest Russian-language commentators on the Ukraine war, has posted a very interesting and detailed thread discussing the reasons for Russia's defeat east of Kharkiv. An English translation, with his permission, follows (LONG thread ahead!). ⬇️
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1 year
1/ With the dismissal of Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin as the commander of Russia's Central Military District, ugly stories are emerging about his treatment of mobilised soldiers. He's said to have put his pistol to the head of a lieutenant and threatened to shoot him. ⬇️
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5 months
1/ More details have emerged of events relating to a recent disastrous offensive in which 300 Russians are said to have died. Survivors say their commander called them "a piece of meat" and told them that he "wished them to die quickly" when he ordered a fresh assault. ⬇️
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2 years
Video of an apparent Ukrainian attack on a Russian tank on 6 May is getting much attention for the turret's attempt to go to the Moon. It should be getting a lot more attention, though, for where it happened and what this means for Russia. A short 🧵. /1
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6 months
1/ Russian sources say that as many as 70-90% of all Russian deaths on the battlefield are caused by bleeding, rather than fatal wounds. An effective collapse of the Russian army's combat medical care means that anything more than a light wound is likely to be lethal. ⬇️
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3 months
1/ An 18-year-old Russian has become the youngest person confirmed to have died fighting for the Russians in Ukraine. His death, only two and a half months after signing up, followed the Russian government's decision in 2023 to let teenagers go to war straight from school. ⬇️
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6 months
1/ A new analysis has found that mobilised Russians who have been sent to Ukraine have only survived, on average, for 4.5 months before being killed. One in five of the mobilised has not survived longer than eight weeks. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Why are far-right 'influencers' suddenly claiming, against all evidence, that the Ukraine war is a fake? They can't really be that stupid, can they? Indeed, they're not – it's cynical manipulation, not stupidity. Here's what's going on.
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1 year
1/ Mobilised men of the Russian 4th Guards Tank Division are sheltering in an abandoned house in Svatove without food or water after fleeing from the front line under intense Ukrainian fire that killed their commander. They are now being threatened with court martials. Thread ⬇️
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9 months
1/ Russian sources reportedly say that Sergei Shoigu's plan to defang the Wagner Group failed because he didn't anticipate Yevgeny Prigozhin's personal popularity. Prigozhin had prior knowledge of the moves being made against him, leading to his strike against Rostov-on-Don.
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10 months
1/ Ukrainian deception operations and recent border incursions are reportedly creating great tension among Russian forces on the front line in Ukraine. Russian troops are said to have been moved from Ukraine to guard the border in the Belgorod region. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ More unhappy mobilised Russian soldiers deployed to Ukraine have spoken out about a chaotic mobilisation that has left them on a front line in eastern Ukraine with no training, no usable weapons, no food, no water, no orders and commanders they feel are lying to them. ⬇️
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2 years
So it's likely that the Ukrainians purposefully got the Moskva to point its best radar in the wrong direction while the Neptunes sneaked under the coverage of the other radars. Very smart. /13
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1 year
1/ Russia appears to have recently removed a span of the Kerch railway bridge to Crimea, presumably to carry out repairs following the (likely Ukrainian) bomb attack on the bridge last October. Here's why this is significant.
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1 year
1/ What is the price of defeat? Few episodes in the Ukraine war illustrate this more vividly than the five-month battle for the village of Dovhenke, an episode which likely cost hundreds of lives but was entirely futile for Russia. A 🧵.
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2 years
She will likely be irreplaceable - the only ship of her class, built in Ukraine (!) in 1979. Russia can't transfer warships from elsewhere to replace her as Turkey has closed the Bosphorus to military traffic. /4
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9 months
1/ The Russian authorities appear to be regretting recently passing a law that makes criticism of the Wagner Group a criminal offence. Thousands of Russians, likely including Vladimir Putin himself, are now theoretically subject to criminal charges attracting years in jail. ⬇️
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11 months
1/ The Commander of the Eastern Group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi, has given an interesting interview to Interfax-Ukraine. The full interview is worth reading, but his comments about the fighting in Bakhmut are particularly noteworthy:
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9 months
1/ Mobilised Russians facing the Ukrainian counter-offensive say they were "abandoned like kittens" by their commanders, faced Ukrainian tanks and artillery with light weapons, little ammo and no counter-fire, took heavy casualties, and had no medical evacuations on hand. ⬇️
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8 months
1/ A training centre in Tambov, Russia, has hung a banner showing a 'new Russian empire' comprising all of central and eastern Europe, a re-divided Germany, Finland, central Asia, Mongolia and Alaska, with the slogan "We will teach you to love the Motherland". ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Only four out of 91 mobilised Russians lasted a week under HIMARS and shell fire on the front line in eastern Ukraine. They were told by their colonel that their "equipment is worth its weight in gold, and we will recruit new ones instead of you". ⬇️
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11 months
1/ Russia's defence industry has deep weaknesses that mean it's unlikely to be able to meet government targets for boosting production, according to independent journalists who have interviewed employees working for weapons manufacturers. ⬇️
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10 months
1/ Vladimir Putin is reported to be refusing to hear bad news about the war in Ukraine, attributing it to "Western propaganda", and is said to be listening only to those who are reporting successes. ⬇️
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10 months
1/ Russian defence workers say they are facing a chronic shortage of electronic components, leading to them reusing old components, 'cannibalising' them from other devices and increasingly using unreliable Chinese substitutes. ⬇️
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10 months
1/ Another account has emerged of the fate of the Russian 1439th Regiment, which was reported to have been virtually wiped out in March 2023 during disastrous attacks on Ukrainian positions near Avdiivka. The mother of one of the casualties has spoken of what happened. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ In what may be a bizarre case of mistaken identity, the Russian FSB has killed a group of Russian people it claims are pro-Ukrainian saboteurs – but who reportedly appear to be Airsoft enthusiasts who were engaged in live-action roleplay of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video games. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Mobilised Russians from Irkutsk are being sent "to slaughter" in Ukraine and have been told that they are "expendable". Their commanders have fired at them to 'motivate' them and their unit has taken so many casualties that it has had to be reconstituted six times. ⬇️
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2 years
If she's been sunk, the Moskva will be the biggest warship lost since WW2: at 12,490 tons she's bigger than Argentina's General Belgrano, sunk by the Royal Navy in 1982. /2
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1 year
1/ Mobilised Russians are falling sick en masse with bronchitis and pneumonia at their training camp in Siberia, where they are living in tents in temperatures of -30°C (-22°F) according to their wives. They are being given no medicines and are having to buy their own. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Cadets at the Moscow Police College have reported an attempt to forcibly mobilise them en masse under false pretences. They say they were locked in a hall while attempts were made to get them to sign up to join the army. They had to call the police to be released. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ If Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had succeeded in 2022, Ukraine's industries would have been seized and taken over by Russian oligarchs. A leaked document shows that oligarch Konstantin Malofeev intended to create a 'DMZ Concern' from Ukraine's largest plants. ⬇️
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4 months
1/ The Russian authorities are reportedly not telling relatives of soldiers that their men have been taken prisoner in Ukraine, leaving the relatives to find out directly from the Ukrainians – or from scammers. Since August, the Russians have stopped exchanging POWs. ⬇️
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10 months
1/ Russia's missile defence system is supposed to be able to detect a football-sized object from 8,000 km away. However, corruption is said to have left it "full of holes" and the head of Russia's Space Forces may now face prosecution, as a scandal at the Russian MOD deepens. ⬇️
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8 months
Girkin / Girkout
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4 months
1/ Relatives of Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine are finding that they are unable to obtain compensation due to a "no body, no case" policy. Many dead Russians have not been retrieved, or their bodies have been completely destroyed, making retrieval impossible. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Russia's deployment system is so dysfunctional that many soldiers are reportedly spending weeks "wandering around in search of their units" in border and rear areas, with some being listed as deserters because they have not reported to the units they cannot find. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Russia's regions lack money to pay mobilised soldiers, leading to the mobilised and their families being paid with potatoes, fish, coal, firewood, deer carcasses or not getting any payment at all. Many are now complaining: "The Motherland has rotted away," says one wife. ⬇️
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10 months
1/ Men mobilised by the Russian Army were reportedly sold to a mercenary group for 25,000 rubles each ($310) and told they would be shot unless they fought in the Battle of Bahkmut. Hundreds are said to have become casualties. Now their relatives cannot contact the survivors. ⬇️
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7 months
1/ Wounded Wagner fighters have reportedly been thrown out of hospitals with their treatments unfinished, their payments for medical care have been terminated, and payments and benefits to their families have also stopped. "A total scam!", says one outraged Wagnerite. ⬇️
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2 years
In a now-famous thread on Russian Army tires, @TrentTelenko highlighted problems that likely arose from failures in vehicle maintenance. That got me thinking: how does Russia store its vehicles and what does this imply for how many usable tanks it actually has? A (long) 🧵. /1
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2 years
1/ What are the reasons for Russia's Blyatskrieg – its rapid collapse east of Kharkiv – and why might Napoleon Bonaparte have known some of the answers? Here's a 🧵 exploring some possible deeper reasons for Ukraine's stunning successes in recent days.
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9 months
1/ Yevgeny Prigozhin's business empire is rapidly being dismantled. It's lost its contract to provide (rotten, infected, adulterated) food to the Russian army, and his media empire is shutting down. Thousands of his staff have been made redundant, many with no severance pay. ⬇️
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2 months
1/ At least 2,500 scientists are reported to have left Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 and the number of published scientific papers has collapsed. This comes as the result of isolation due to sanctions, visa restrictions and state paranoia. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ The Russian Telegram channel 'Cheka-OGPU' has posted a detailed account of the recruitment by the Wagner Group of 200 prisoners from the Rostov region and their subsequent massacre by the Ukrainians in their first combat engagement. Translation follows: ⬇️
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2 years
Reportedly, the Ukrainians used a Bayraktar TB-2 drone to distract the Moskva. The Ukrainian Navy introduced TB-2s into service in August 2021. /8
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1 year
1/ Huge numbers of casualties in eastern Ukraine have left Russian prisoners wary of joining the Wagner Group. As many as 80% of those from some penal colonies are said to have been killed, which has deterred those remaining from signing up to fight. ⬇️
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2 months
1/ Vladimir Putin has reportedly built a luxury residence on an estate twice the size of Monaco, on the shore of Lake Ladoga just 31 km (19 miles) from the Finnish border. The @dossier_center has published some remarkable drone images of the complex. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ A volunteer from Tatarstan's Alga volunteer battalion has spoken out about his experiences fighting in Ukraine. He says his unit was 'almost completely' destroyed near Vuhledar. He is now facing criminal charges for leaving it and returning home after being injured. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and recently demoted General Sergey Surovikin have been defeated in a bid to push out Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, according to a prominent Russian dissident. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Russian mobilised troops have lost half their number killed under constant Ukrainian bombardment near Svatove in under a month. They are drinking out of puddles and are being fed only every two or three days, but fear being shot by their own side if they try to surrender. ⬇️
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7 months
1/ With Ukrainian drones regularly hitting Moscow, the local police are reportedly very unhappy with the anti-drone guns they have been issued. The guns are said to lack the claimed range and are considered to be a bigger threat to policemen's testicles than to UAVs. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Moscow students are reportedly being handed mobilisation orders along with their diplomas, literally at the very minute that their exemption from military service expires. This is happening at the same time that Russia is reportedly seeking 400,000 new soldiers. ⬇️
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2 months
1/ A blanket of silence has descended in the Russian media around the fate of the corvette Ivanovets, sunk by Ukrainian sea drones on 1 February 2024. 32 members of the crew are unofficially reported to have survived the ship's sinking. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ Female Russian soldiers are reportedly being subjected to sexual abuse and violence by male soldiers, and being pressured into becoming the "field wives" of officers, according to an account published by Radio Free Europe (RFE). ⬇️
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2 years
The Moskva was reportedly struck by Ukrainian-designed Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles. These only entered service in 2019. They apparently hadn't seen action before in this war. /6
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9 months
1/ Are Russian frontline troops suffering from a critical shortage of small arms ammunition and weapons? Recent videos and accounts from soldiers and their relatives suggest they are. Let's review the recent evidence.
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7 months
1/ Former Wagner Group fighters are finding, to their dismay, that few employers want to hire them; they can't even get jobs at Burger King. "They were promised a life with a clean slate and [the authorities] failed to fulfil their promises," a relative complains. ⬇️
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1 year
1/ What's life like for newly-mobilised Russian troops in their barracks and temporary accomodation? Terrible, from all accounts, with no heating, no food, no sleeping bags, no hot water, no toilets, freezing tents, bedbug-infested mattresses and no training. 🧵 follows.
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1 year
1/ People across Russia are freezing in their homes in temperatures as low as -38°C because essential utility workers have been mobilised – even after the supposed end of mobilisation – and sent to Ukraine, hindering repair and maintenance work at home. ⬇️
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2 years
1/ Why do Russian soldiers break on the Ukranian battlefield? This third 🧵 in a series looks at at how their personal experiences of war have prompted some Russian contract soldiers to refuse orders, resign from their contracts and try to go home.
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9 months
1/ Russia's deepening economic problems have resulted in a collapse in commodities earnings, drastic cuts in federal government spending and rail freight yards being clogged with thousands of Chinese shipping containers that are sitting empty for want of goods to export. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
1 year
1/ A Russian 767 aircraft that suffered an engine failure when trying to take off from Phuket airport in February had reportedly gone 3 years without the engine being inspected, due to Western sanctions. This has serious implications for air safety. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
1 year
1/ A Telegram channel linked to the Wagner Group has published an insider account of the only known clash between the mercenary group and the US military – the 7 February 2018 battle near Khasham in Syria, in which many Wagner fighters reportedly died. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
9 months
1/ Russian construction firms are reportedly being told to send their workers to fight in Ukraine or face losing lucractive contracts from the city of Moscow. It illustrates an ongoing 'hidden mobilisation' as Russia uses every possible option to find manpower for the war. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
11 months
1/ A Russian colonel has been arrested for stealing seven T-90 tank engines worth 20.5 million rubles ($251,000), according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
1 month
1/ More details have emerged about the destruction of the Russian large landing ship Novocherkassk on 26 December 2023. According to a report, the local air defence system was inoperative and could not intercept the two incoming Storm Shadow missiles. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
9 months
1/ Reports suggest that Russian commanders are demanding a standard bribe of a month's salary – 100,000 rubles ($1,100) – to allow their men go on leave. Those without money or connections are spending months fighting on the front line without being rotated or rested. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
1 year
1/ It's a dog-eat-dog world in the Russian army: the Telegram channel Baza reports that the newly mobilised troops have been fighting off attempts by existing contract soldiers to rob them. Translation follows. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
1 year
1/ Mobilised Russians in Sverdlovsk region are suffering from a mass outbreak of infectious disease, but doctors are unable to treat them due to a lack of equipment and medicine. This is likely the result of overcrowded, insanitary conditions at their training area. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
8 months
1/ The arrest yesterday of Igor "Strelkov" Girkin may be the start of a crackdown on jingoistic "hurrah-patriots", according to an apparently leaked report which is said to have led to his detention. It also denounces many others including broadcaster Vladimir Solovyov. ⬇️
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@ChrisO_wiki
ChrisO_wiki
2 years
The Russian economists Maxim Mironov ( @mironov_fm ) and Oleg @itskhoki (of IE University and UCLA respectively) have published an important thread estimating the likely demographic impacts of mobilisation on Russia. A translation follows. ⬇️ /1
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