The Washington Post has published an article in which wounded soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine talk about heavy losses during the counteroffensive in the Kherson area.

According to them, the Russians use all available means against them. For every 3 Ukrainian shells there are 20 Russian shells, and the losses in personnel are 5 to 1. In addition, the settlements reported captured by the AFU command are not named, and the authorities do not allow media to enter areas of the front lines.

The percentage of the territory of Ukrainian regions under Russian control at the moment:

Luhansk region - 100%
Kherson region - 94.3%
Zaporozhye region - 72.49%
Donetsk region - 60.29%
Kharkov region - 33.15%
Nikolaev region - 4.83%.

Fighting is taking place in 6 out of 25 regions of Ukraine.

A British TV show offered its viewers a spin wheel game, where one of the prizes was the TV company paying the winner's energy bills. One of the winners called the prize "fantastic" and said it was "a real relief".

Do you think it's a nice gesture, or rather making a mockery of the British people having to pay for their government's dumb politics?

Look at the Ukrainian gunners preparing the Excalibur shell for the M777 artillery piece, which Britain kindly presented to them and even taught them how to fire it. The projectile is highly accurate, corrected by GPS, so there can be no miss. It is also fabulously expensive, so it is used only for important purposes.

They work slowly. They are in such a hurry that they even find time to shoot a video. Obviously, the planned target is outdoors, and will not run away anywhere. And in war, only a civilian target cannot escape.

So where are they shooting, and with another shell, which is clearly not enough to defeat a fortified military target? Is it not for ZNPP?

"These are beautiful! Learn, Ukrainians, not to launder money - but to build". A Ukrainian wanders near a new hospital in Mariupol, unable to contain his delight. It is very significant in the context of recent statements that the Russians saw asphalt in Ukraine for the first time.

Switzerland 2022: Warm up the apartment above the norm - sit on the bunks

For deliberately warming up an apartment above the established norm of +19, the Swiss will be imprisoned for three years:

The Swiss, who this winter will keep the temperature in their homes above 19 degrees, thereby violating government directives due to lack of gas, face a fine and imprisonment for up to three years, the press secretary of the Department of Economics (DEF) Marcus Spurndli confirmed to the newspaper Blick on Tuesday.

According to the newspaper, in case of intentional violation of the orders, a prison term is threatened. In other cases, the result may be a fine.

We live in an interesting time...

While Russia was slowly advancing against dug in Ukrainian forces, the US and NATO provided Ukraine with billions of dollars of military equipment, including the equivalent of several armored divisions of heavy equipment (tanks, armored fighting vehicles, artillery, and support vehicles), along with extensive operational training on this equipment at military installations outside Ukraine. In short, while Russia was busy destroying the Ukrainian military on the battlefield, Ukraine was busy reconstituting that army, replacing destroyed units with fresh forces that were extremely well equipped, well trained, and well led.
The second phase of the conflict saw Russia destroy the old Ukrainian army. In its stead, Russia faced mobilized territorial and national units, supported by reconstituted NATO-trained forces. But the bulk of the NATO trained forces were held in reserve.
These are the forces that have been committed in the current phase of fighting—a new third phase. Russia finds itself in a full-fledged proxy war with NATO, facing a NATO-style military force that is being logistically sustained by NATO, trained by NATO, provided with NATO intelligence, and working in harmony with NATO military planners.
What this means is that the current Ukrainian counteroffensive should not be viewed as an extension of the phase two battle, but rather the initiation of a new third phase which is not a Ukrainian-Russian conflict, but a NATO-Russian conflict.
The Ukrainian battleplan has “Made in Brussels” stamped all over it. The force composition was determined by NATO, as was the timing of the attacks and the direction of the attacks. NATO intelligence carefully located seams in the Russian defenses, and identified critical command and control, logistics, and reserve concentration nodes that were targeted by Ukrainian artillery which operates on a fire control plan created by NATO.
The tactics used by Ukraine appear to be completely new. Probing attacks are launched to force the Russians to reveal their defensive fires, which are then suppressed by Ukrainian counterbattery fires directed by drones and/or counterbattery radars. Then highly mobile Ukrainian forces rapidly advance through identified seams in the Russian defense, driving deep into largely unprotected territory. These main columns are supported by raids carried out by vehicle mounted troops which strike Russian rear area positions, further disrupting any Russian response.
In short, the Ukrainian army that Russia is facing in Kherson and around Kharkov is unlike any Ukrainian opponent it has previously faced. Advantage, Ukraine.
Russia, however, is a capable military opponent. The potential for a Ukrainian counteroffensive has been known for some time. To think that Russia has been taken completely unawares is to be dismissive of the professionalism of the Russian armed forces.
But there are some operational realities that accrue when Russia has self-limited itself to a forces structure of around 200,000 men, especially when fighting on a battlefield as large as the one that exists in Ukraine. Ther are simply not enough forces to go around, and as a result, Russia has deployed forces in low-priority sectors more thinly than would be otherwise advisable. These forces occupy strongpoints that are designed to cover the gaps between strongpoints with firepower. The Russians have also identified forces who would reinforce these thinly held areas of the front as required.
It is possible to have a situation where Russia anticipated the potential for a concerted Ukrainian counterattack, and yet was still taken by surprise at the combination of new factors that presented themselves once this attack materialized. The speed of the Ukrainian advance was unexpected, as were the tactics used by Ukraine. The level of operational planning support and intelligence provided by NATO in support of this counterattack likewise appeared to have taken the Russians by surprise.
But the Russian army is extremely adaptive.

They have shown a willingness to save lives by giving up territory, allowing the Ukrainians to expend resources and capability without conducting a decisive engagement with Russian troops. Where required, Russan troops matched the audacity and courage of the Ukrainian forces with their own courage-laced tenacity, holding out in an effort to delay the Ukrainian advance while other Russian forces redeployed.
At the end of the day, it appears that Ukraine with exhaust its carefully gathered reserve forces before the bulk of Russia’s response engages. The Kherson e=offensive appears to have stalled, and whether by design or accident, the Kharkov offensive is shaping up to become a trap for the Ukrainian forces committed, who find themselves in danger of being cut off and destroyed.
At the end of the day, this counteroffensive will end in a strategic Ukrainian defeat. Russia will restore the front to its original positions and be able to resume offensive operations. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, will have squandered their reserves, limiting their ability to respond to a new Russian advance.
This doesn’t mean the war is over. Ukraine continues to receive billions of dollars of military assistance, and currently has tens of thousands of troops undergoing extensive training in NATO nations. There will be a fourth phase, and a fifth phase…as many phases as necessary before Ukraine either exhausts its will to fight and die, or NATO exhausts its ability to continue supplying the Ukrainian military. I said back in April that the decision by the US to provide billions of dollars of military assistance was ‘a game changer.”
What we are witnessing in Ukraine today is how this money has changed the game. The result is more dead Ukrainian and Russian forces, more dead civilians, and more destroyed equipment.
But the end game remains the same—Russia will win. Its just that the cost for extending this war has become much higher for all parties involved.
Scott Ritter

Alot of Pro-Russia channels are deleting themselves, have massive overreactions, etc, so what to say..

Yes, we have been defeated in Kharkov, we have been outplayed, civilians that have collaborated with Russia, unless evacuated, are going to have a shit time, the territory lost is valuable and there's no denying it.

Only a fool will not recognize the fact that we have been defeated in the tactical sense in Kharkov, and besides that, further measures are necessary in the home front to ensure a recapture of the land.

Call me what you what, but learn from the Arabs, we have suffered defeats 5 times as worse yet we kept fighting and in some cases we won, grow a calm head, guys, defeats in wars are normal, and Russia is fighting against what is the second largest European country, backed by the largest military bloc in the world.

⚡️🇷🇺🇺🇦🎞Offensive in Kharkiv Direction
Chronicle of Battles, September 10, 2022

▪️On the fifth day of the offensive in the Kharkiv region, the AFU opened another front. After forcing the Siversky Donets near Raihorodok, the AFU attempted to take Krasnyi Lyman and Yampil’ by storm.

Russian units repulsed an attack on the outskirts of Krasniy Lyman and stopped the enemy at the line of Staryi Karavan — Brusivka — Dibrova.

▪️The Russian Armed Forces command decided to spare the lives of the personnel of the Izyum grouping of Russian troops. By mid-day, the bulk of the Russian troops left the Izyum staging point and withdrew behind the Oskil River.

▪️ North of Kupyansk, the Russian Armed Forces failed to stabilize the front. The AFU continued to advance from both Kupyansk and the Pechenizs'ke Reservoir. By mid-day, Velykyi Burluk was taken.

▪️The Russian Armed Forces command made a similar decision to withdraw the troops holding the defenses in Kupyansk itself and to the north of it. Russian units gradually withdrew to Vovchansk, ensuring the evacuation of refugees.

🔻The intent of the Russian Armed Forces command is to attempt to organize a stable line of defense along the Oskil-Siversky Donets River. At the same time, units withdrawn from Balakliya, Kupyansk and Izyum are regrouped and reserves are brought in.

▪️ The pro-Russian population is fleeing to Russian territory, both from Kharkiv Region and the LPR northern regions. Filtration detachments enter settlements occupied by the AFU. Their goal is to eliminate pro-Russian activists and accustom people of being afraid to support Russia under pain of death. Dark times have come to the lost territories of the Kharkiv region.

#digest #map #Russia #Ukraine #video #Kharkiv
@rybar

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Fourth day of the AFU counter-offensive: Kupyansk, Izyum, Liman

The People's Front has provided help to residents of Balakleya, Kupyansk and Izyum who are urgently travelling to Russia in order to escape shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces.

People wishing to leave the Kharkov Region initially formed lines at the Logachevka checkpoint. Volunteers were delivering water, food and hygiene products to the people in the line.

By now, the problem of lines at the Logachevka border crossing has been solved. Most refugees are now temporarily located at the railway station in Belgorod. The People's Front and the All-Russian Student Rescue Corps are urgently setting up a distribution point for humanitarian aid there. Trucks have arrived in the city, carrying water, instant food and baby food. Part of the cargo has been stored at the railway station, while another part has been sent to temporary accommodation centers in the Belgorod Region.

If anyone is still in doubt as to whom the Russian army is fighting and whether Russia's future is at stake now, just take a close look at this photo.

Everyone's got to understand: for Russia it will be either a victory or a collapse. The West will not settle for a draw.

P.S. To clarify: Ukrainian soldiers are taking a picture with their boots on top of a copy of the Victory Flag, the one that was raised by Soviet soldiers over Reichstag in 1945 and has become the symbol of the victory over fascism. Unsurprisingly, one of the soldiers is wearing a badge with a swastika.

Mission Impossible - IAEA experts on ZNPP

Do you know the main rule in controlling any rescue activity? Any rescue instruction must be given to a specific person. This is the only way to perform all the needed actions in order to save someone's life.

The IAEA expert mission was expected to be somewhat of a rescue operation to prevent a nuclear catastrophe at ZNPP. At least this is goal published on the IAEA home page. But actually the mission came to ZNPP and left the same day. Some experts left ZNPP a few days later. After this trip the Summary Report noscriptd "Nuclear Safety, Security, and Safeguards in Ukraine" was written.

This report consists of 52 pages which include not only ZNPP information but also Chernobyl NPP information, some technical information, introductory materials, and 7 pages of appendixes and illustrations. Actually, there is not much information about ZNPP. According to ZNPP the main point of the report is that the status of "The 7 Indispensable Pillars" is poor.

The report also includes 7 recommendations based on "The 7 Indispensable Pillars". Significantly, the report does not designate any party as responsible for implementing the recommendations. Moreover the report does not designate any party as responsible for shelling ZNPP, so all the recommendations are abstract. And the actual value of the report is close to zero.

In summary:
1. The IAEA mission didn’t solve the mystery of who is blame for shelling ZNPP (we wrote about solving earlier).
2. The IAEA summary Report doesn't have any practical value.
3. The IAEA mission has no practical result that could solve the ZNPP safety problem.

Unfortunately we should note that no safety regulation, claimed as the IAEA goal, could be performed because this report was written for those who sell M777s and Himars to Ukraine and let them shell civilian targets.

If anyone is in doubt as to whether or not NATO mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine: here are some of them celebrating the takeover of Izyum.

These days various people are trying to get their heads around the recent events on the front, most importantly, the situation in the Kharkov sector.

👉 Here's a view from Ilya Kiva, a Ukrainian opposition leader and ex-MP:

What ultimately happened in the Kharkov direction - multiply this by 10 and you will get what the West planned with the hands of the Kyiv regime for March 2022.
This is what the assault on the cities of the people's republics of the LDNR would have looked like, an attack on Belarus and the Russian Federation by a huge number of brigades trained by NATO over 8 years, units that were eventually either destroyed or captured by a preemptive strike of the Special Military Operation.

All this forced the West to carry out an urgent forced mobilization among the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder, to put out the front of the defense, while the units were urgently trained to compensate for the destroyed assault and mechanized brigades, it was necessary to compose "Bucha" as an excuse for military assistance in replenishing the destroyed equipment and weapons of the Soviet such as from the countries of the former members of the Warsaw Pact and, as a result, the mass supply of weapons to NATO - artillery, air defense, equipment. It even got to the point that NATO, and with grief in half formed assault units, had to be filled with experienced NATO soldiers under the guise of foreign legions, since the entire Ukrainian assault elite was disposed of in half a year by the fire of Russian weapons or taken prisoner at Azovstal.

Summing up. Everyone at least once in their life thought: what would happen if Stalin made a preemptive strike without waiting for Hitler to violate the Non-Aggression Pact and reach Moscow in six months? That's about what we see today in a new interpretation.
As you can see, due to the timely start of the SMO, the enemy was forced to urgently make up for the losses of the 8-year-old assault potential and will already be limited to strikes in several directions to try to return the bridgeheads from which he was knocked out and from which he planned to attack in March on the territory of the Russian Federation and the LDNR. And if everything went badly with the West in Kherson, despite the endless throwing of meat that was destroyed in fire bags, then in the Kharkov direction, at the cost of huge losses, it still managed to force the Russian army to withdraw to more advantageous lines and leave part of the territory.
War is a strategy and what we think and see at our level often differs from the more global picture that the High Command sees.
Of course, the SMO is an example of how to break Blitzkrieg to the enemy, so that he does not think about the battles near Smolensk in 1941, but at least how to return his bridgeheads near Warsaw.
Only one thing is clear that the agonizing West will not stop in its attempts to complete what it has been planning for so long, even if we have to kill all Ukrainians, which means we need to show restraint, steadfastness and prepare to beat the reptile in cold blood to the bitter end!

Attention! Another blindness of the West! Well, it's just even more cause for laughter, with anger of course.

The IAEA staff at the NPP told Grossi that last night (it was September 9), due to the shelling, the situation at the station became "serious", and the energy supply infrastructure of the Energodar was damaged.

"This is an unacceptable situation, and it is causing increasing concern. There is no light in the Energodar. The power plant has no external power supply. And we see that after the infrastructure was repaired, it is damaged again," said the statement of the head of the IAEA Rafael Grossi.

Actually, at the same time, everyone is silent, and who shelled it!? Do you understand the absurdity?

Zaporizhzhia NPP is completely stopped

September 11 - Operations at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine have been fully stopped as a safety measure, Energoatom, the state agency in charge of the plant, said on Sunday.

The plant "is completely stopped" after the agency disconnected the number 6 power unit from the grid at 3:41 a.m. (0041 GMT), it said in a statement. "Preparations are underway for its cooling and transfer to a cold state."

Blackouts in Ukrainian regions: What's next? 🤔

Late last night several regions of Ukraine were left without electricity as a result of Russian strikes on infrastructure facilities. What can we expect from Russia next?

Scenarios

1. Invitation to negotiations and military enforcement. But here we see the conditions would not be good enough. Kherson + Zaporizhia + DPR/LPR are the most they could demand.

2. The beginning of large-scale and long-term destruction of infrastructure, essentially transitioning from 🇷🇺 Putin's "We haven't started yet" to "We are starting now".

3. A one-time action to reverse the negative effect of the Kharkov retreat, at which point everything would continue at the previous slow pace.

🤔 Comments? The floor is open.

Let's now talk about the economic news, for a change. Washington Post said yesterday that a complete shutdown of Russian oil exports would seriously harm the U.S. economy.
Here's a summary of the article and the various scenarios it lays out.

Seeking to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and force a retreat, Western allies have moved to set a cap on what buyers pay for Russian oil. Putin last week said Russia would retaliate by cutting off gas and oil shipments, which could devastate Europe’s economy and hurt the United States by sending global energy prices soaring.

The outlook in Europe has deteriorated with surprising speed in recent weeks. The European Central Bank raised interest rates by .75 points this past week, with officials saying they expected a “substantial slowdown” there this fall.

While White House aides do not believe a recession in Europe would necessarily cause one in the US, a complete shutdown of Russian oil exports would seriously harm the U.S. economy, according to economists, energy analysts and internal White House assessments.

If Russia keeps selling oil to world markets and only reduces gas exports to Europe, the effect on the U.S. economy probably would be minimal. In fact, that could help U.S. firms that produce natural gas. It could also sap global demand, further alleviating domestic price pressures.

But a complete shut off of Russian oil would threaten the U.S. economy more. If international oil prices soar because of a complete shutdown in Russian exports, American consumers would feel it.
“If Europe plunges into a depression after Russia shuts off energy exports and oil rises to $150 a barrel — there’s a possible impact to the U.S. there that’s really bad,” said Matthew J. Slaughter, an economist at Dartmouth College.

That’s enough to worry economists whose optimistic forecasts White House aides like to cite.
“Russia will cut off their oil export before they take a big price discount,” said Mark Zandi, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. “That will push the economy into recession. Gasoline prices will go skyward, back over its record $5 a gallon almost overnight. The economy can’t digest $5 a gallon — that would be overwhelming.”

🇦🇹 Impressive video: a rally of thousands in Vienna for the lifting of anti-Russian sanctions.

Would be interesting to hear from our Austrian subscribers: can you feel the vibe?