Todays 25th of August war update

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BevrSgU8xrA

Markus

That time the politburo was dying out after Brezhnev who was so demented he could only be present 15 minutes a day all leaders were old and sick 3 Soviet leader died in less than three years. Gorbachev was 54 when he became General Secretary, that was very young for a soviet leader.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfNJuV67iMM

Markus

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1562871756762673152

Markus

Russians are torturing us so we don't talk to UN, Ukraine nuclear plant workers say

Russian security forces are torturing personnel at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to prevent them from telling UN inspectors about safety risks, workers there have told The Telegraph.

The claims by serving and recently escaped workers come amid mounting fears that fighting near the facility, which Russian troops seized in March, could lead to a Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are expected to arrive at the power plant to check safety there in the coming days.

Rafael Grossi, the chief of the IAEA, and Alexei Likhachev, the head of Russian state nuclear monopoly Rosatom, held talks on the visit in Istanbul on Wednesday.

Rosatom said in a statement after the meeting that it would organise an IAEA mission to the plant “as soon as the military situation on the ground allows it” and that security at nuclear installations is a “top priority for Russia”.

But employees who spoke to The Telegraph on condition of anonymity described an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, including multiple arrests.

“We all worry about the possible visit of the IAEA representatives. That they will set up some provocations and then blame them on Ukraine. It feels like that’s exactly what they plan to do,” one engineer said.

“They grabbed our management by the balls: for the period of the visit, they plan to minimise the presence of our staff, and put a couple of their representatives in every control room, who will loudly shout how they were waiting for ‘liberation from the Kyiv regime’,” he went on.

The employee, whose identity The Telegraph has confirmed but is not publishing, added that multiple staff members had been arrested at home or on their way to work.

“Now I understand that their army is weak, but their FSB service is working. One of their methods here is to take the control room workers to the basement,” said the engineer, using a Russian colloquialism for detention and torture by secret police.

“Our management keeps silent about it, not to create panic, but people who return after those basement ‘conversations’ don’t say anything at all. It will be no surprise if during the mission they will suddenly start saying what they were told to say.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...out&li=BBoPWjQ

Ukraine recaptures territory larger than Denmark from Russian invaders

Russian forces have lost an area of captured territory larger than Denmark as they struggle to turn territorial gains into operation successes, according to military analysts.

The Kremlin's invasion has made little progress in recent months, after its troops were forced back from Kyiv in the early weeks of the war.

Vladimir Putin’s troops have only managed to seize an area the size of Andorra – an estimated one per cent of what they have lost – in the last 39 days, the latest assessment by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based think-tank, suggests.

It came as Sergei Shoigu, the Russian defence minister, told a conference that Russian forces had deliberately slowed down their offensive operations in Ukraine to reduce the number of civilian casualties.

Despite the apparent slow-down, Mr Shoigu insisted Russia's invasion was going according to plan and his forces would achieve their maximalist objectives.

Russia's ministry of defence has previously stated it still intends to topple the Ukrainian government despite its withdrawal from Kyiv to focus on the eastern Donbas region.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...out&li=AAnZ9Ug

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-62652133


How dared we expecting anything else than this?:03: No surprise to be seen here, don't read, just move on.

German media report that the German training for Ukrainian PZH2000-crews has been spied on and observed by Russian agents and drones.

I could imagine that reaction times, timetables for firing and moving procedures and such are relevant tactical data.

The german army has dismantled its last anti-air defence unit several years ago. It currently holds zero capability to defend itself against enemy drones, armed or unarmed. We had instead an interesting debate for many years whether we even need drones, especially armed drones, at all. Until the war the answer was a loud-sounding No. :haha:

Interesting the political coin Ukrainian grain has gained internationally. Now being used to win hearts and minds in Africa?

UN: US buying big Ukraine grain shipment for hungry regions

https://apnews.com/article/russia-uk...28afb40acb0cbf

- older article but relevant
AfDB president: Ukraine war could trigger a food crisis in Africa

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2...isis-in-africa

This is going on for months, and now they notice Russian burning surplus natural gas? Gazprom cannot process all gas into liquid at the LNG plant, so they burn it over 4 million cubic meters of natural gas per day.

Bayraktar producer ‘will never’ supply drones to Russia.

“No matter how much money they offer us, frankly, there is no question of handing drones over to them," Haluk Bayraktar, the CEO of Turkish Baykar, told BBC. "All our support is completely on the side of Ukraine."

https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/...59212167168002

Indeed, similar reports were posted already a few weeks ago, I am not certain but I think I linked to one such story.



One cannot just close and shut down an opene dgas fiueld, the pressure is too high, i mean you can do it, but only with immense financial burdens and engineering efforts for closiung it, and againf or openign it. A certain ammount always must be allowed to get out, and then gets burned.

For a long time, Eastern European NATO states have been stocking up on weapons from Germany. But now they are ordering from the USA and South Korea. Berlin has lost confidence because of its reluctance to support Ukraine.

Since Russia's attack on Ukraine, Poland has become a frontline state. More than any other country, it has supplied heavy weapons to Kiev and needs to replenish its stockpiles. Soon, Poland will have the largest conventional force in Europe. For Washington, the country is likely to become a key security partner. Smaller countries such as Slovakia and the Baltic states are also expanding their arsenals in the face of the Russian threat.

For Western arms manufacturers, this is an opportunity for huge business. However, German arms manufacturers such as KMW and Rheinmetall, which have been well represented in East-Central Europe, are not on Warsaw's shopping list.

Who can blame them?

LPR volunteer Murz on the 6-month results of the SMO: “We are in the a*s”.
 

The Russian volunteer and blogger Murz who has been deeply involved with providing repairs and collecting aid for the so-called “People’s Militia” of the so-called “Donbass Republics” has published his view of the results of the six months of the special operation. It is somewhat of a long post, but the level of self-awareness (with few exceptions) of Murz is quite striking.

Murz first admits that the most combat-ready Russian forces have mostly been destroyed in the first stages of the war, and Russia has no other choice but shell to death Ukrainian positions with hope of the latter to retreat. He admits this is an extremely inefficient and tedious process. He also says that the reservist recruitment program in Russia has failed, as these units are too fresh to be effective in the battle:
https://wartranslated.com/lpr-volunt...are-in-the-as/

Does not make sense. Poland and other eastern-european nations from the former Warsaw pact had mostly soviet-style military hardware, which they wanted to modernize or exchange for western-made weapons.
When they heard about the "Ringtausch" they wanted to voluntarily and oh-so-generously give their crap to Ukraine, while expecting Germany to send them the most modern weapons, in numbers Germany did not even have enough for itself.
So they did not get the most modern weapons without having to pay for those, but one or two generations back like Leopard 1 enhanced and so on.
How sad, it would have been such a good deal to get the latest technology with german citizens paying for it.
Not that one generation back is so bad at all, and it is still free.