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I'm seeing some chatter that Russia may be beginning the long awaited eastern offensive.

Hard to say if they're jumping the gun a little given the groups that withdrew from around Kyiv are still regrouping in Belarus but I guess we'll see.

Edit: stand corrected, it looks like Russia isn't in Belarus anymore, they've all shifted to the east.
 
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AlvinofDiaspar said:
Speaking of which - Google Maps are now showing Russian military bases in high res.

AoD
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Google Maps Removes Blurring For Russia’s Military Sites​

See link.

Google Maps made Russia’s strategic facilities visible to users Monday, revealing the details of the country’s military infrastructure.

Searches on Google Maps showed newly accessible images of military bases, intercontinental ballistic missiles launch pads, naval facilities and key command posts all across Russia.

“Now everyone can see [Russian military infrastructure] with a resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel,” tweeted the Ukrainian armed forces.

Some of the newly-available images include the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier, a nuclear weapons store near Murmansk, submarines in the Far East peninsula of Kamchatka, and a military airbase in the Western city of Kursk, just 150 kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border.

The move comes amid strained relations between Russia and U.S. tech giant Google.

Google banned advertisements for Russian users following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, and Russian officials have accused Google-owned YouTube of stirring an “information war” after the video-hosting platform blocked Russian state media.

Satellite images of military facilities are traditionally blurred, or displayed in lower quality, by Google Maps to protect their classified status.
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We should also be prepared for the likelihood that Putin will declare a general mobilization on May 9th if the gains from this offensive aren't a sufficient.
 
kEiThZ said:
We should also be prepared for the likelihood that Putin will declare a general mobilization on May 9th if the gains from this offensive aren't a sufficient.
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You think he'd mobilize on victory day?

I suspect this offensive will go better, he'll take considerable territory in the Donbass, claim victory on the 9th and then shortly thereafter say NATO (not Ukraine) is directly attacking Russia and thus they need to mobilize. I guess time will tell though.
 
A small but growing number of top Kremlin insiders are reportedly questioning President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, Bloomberg reports.

Senior Kremlin insiders in high-level posts in government and business believe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “catastrophic mistake that will set the country back for years”, ten sources told Bloomberg.

These people see “no chance” Putin will change course and no prospect of any challenge to his position inside Russia, the sources said.

The Russian president has become increasingly reliant on a narrowing circle of hardline advisers, they said, while Putin has reportedly dismissed warnings of the crippling economic and political cost of the war in Ukraine.

Some Kremlin insiders increasingly fear that Putin could resort to using nuclear weapons if faced with failure, the sources said.


I fear if the Donbass offensive fails, nukes are on the table. Lavrov saying yesterday that Russia had no plans of using nukes in Ukraine made me substantially more worried than their threats lmao. Lavrov has lied though his teeth all the way through.
 
Bjays92 said:
I fear if the Donbass offensive fails, nukes are on the table. Lavrov saying yesterday that Russia had no plans of using nukes in Ukraine made me substantially more worried than their threats lmao. Lavrov has lied though his teeth all the way through.
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Your fear of nuclear weapons is simultaneously both rational and substantially misinformed. The concept of MAD is based on a nuclear exchange between nuclear powers. Putin nuking Ukraine will sadly just add to the pile of rubble there.

It won't suddenly lead to WWIII because there's no NATO territory involved. And NATO isn't going to nuke Russia in response to a nuclear attack on Ukraine.

I wish people understood that there are far worse things than tactical nukes. Like some of the chemical weapons that the Russians got together with the Syrians to use over there. The levels of contamination from this stuff is worse. By contrast, 1.2 million people live in Hiroshima and 400k in Nagasaki today. They are functional and safe cities.

The worst part about the above misunderstanding is that the world is far more willing to tolerate the use of chemical and biological weapons, since it's below the threshold of nuclear warfare. So Putin could literally kill millions of Ukranians with Chem Bio and draw less sanctions than he would by popping one small tactical nuke that kills may be a few thousand (or even no casualties if it's a demonstration over the Black Sea).

I don't buy that Putin will use nukes unless actual Russian territory is threatened (with marginal ambiguity here over Crimea). Nor do I buy that the nuclear chain of command will follow through with a random order to nuke Ukrainian cities. They know there's no coming back from that.

Understand this, Russia needs a way out of this. And their primary way out going forward is to rely on China and to some extent India. If they use nukes, that support is finished. Russia and Putin will be seen as more unstable and dangerous than North Korea. The odds of a civil war erupting immediately after that would be high.
 
Admiral Beez said:
A bit late, no?
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Better late than never.

Also, this is a donation that needed to be coordinated. Both for permission from the manufacturing country (UK) and to ensure that they can be supplied with ammo to use the guns. In this case, Canada got together with the US and UK to coordinate a large donation of both M777s, 155mm artillery rounds and training for Ukrainian personnel to operate these.
 
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