Ukraine SitRep – Recent Incidents Of Concern For All Sides

SATURDAY, 8 OCTOBER 2022 — MOON OF ALABAMA

Yesterday saw two significant developments or incidents with regard to the conflict in Ukraine.

Ukraine SitRep – Recent Incidents Of Concern For All Sides (18+)
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Related:

Ukrainian forces report Starlink outages during push against Russia (archived, as original is behind paywall)

18+: Daily pictures : the final moments of foreign mercenaries in Ukraine:

Several distinct characters appear in the pictures. Some were displaying foreign badges, US, British, German or Polish ones. Bezsonov reports that foreign mercenaries [or also special operations forces (SOF) from the West, possibly decommissioned in the context ?] were involved in this Ukrainian recce formation. During fighting, they were bearing the blue armband of the Ukrainian national guard, not the yellow one of the regular army

A Ceasefire Can Ensure Ukrainian Independence

A Ceasefire Can Ensure Ukrainian Independence

There is only one way the West can prevent Ukraine from being defeated on the battlefield over the next several months and avoid a nuclear conflict with Russia: a return to diplomacy. President Joe Biden needs to call for an immediate cease-fire and armistice agreement to save Ukraine, ensure its security, and preserve its political and economic independence with control of at least 81 percent of its territory. It is in the U.S. national security interest to have Russia and Ukraine negotiate a permanent cease-fire as soon as possible and avoid potential nuclear escalation. The Biden administration should offer to not implement new economic sanctions against Russia, stop sending more U.S. troops to Eastern Europe, and suspend lethal military assistance to Ukraine in exchange for an immediate and sustained Russian ceasefire. A relaxation of sanctions following a peace deal would provide economic relief to millions of Americans suffering from a recession triggered by Western sanctions against Russia.

While writing this proposal, one of the provisions of the proposed armistice agreement I included was that Russia would resume natural gas shipments to the European Union via the Nord Stream 1 or Nord Stream 2 pipelines. But on September 27, both of them were severely damaged by acts of sabotage that appear to be retaliation against Russia. It is unclear which country is responsible for damaging the pipelines but reopening them might have saved thousands of Europeans from freezing to death this winter. The day after the pipeline attacks, former President Donald Trump offered to mediate peace talks to end the war in Ukraine out of concern that sabotaging the pipelines might spark “World War III,” particularly if Moscow believed that the United States or another NATO member was responsible.

Hypocrisy(and irony): The man, that the media cried about having his finger on the nuclear button (not to mention his tearing up of nuclear treaties and expanding America’s nuclear arsenal), is the one willing to mediate to prevent WWIII! Meanwhile, Brandon refuses to negotiate and the media cheers on nuclear war?!

Mark Sleboda on the new reality unfolding in Ukraine after Russia’s Kharkov retreat

Loud in the press this week has been the major development in the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, what is described as a massive “Russian defeat” in the Kharkov region of east Ukraine. Russia’s manpower-lite and artillery-heavy military formation was forced to organize a withdrawal from Kharkov, facing multi-axis and casualty-heavy attacks from the Kiev forces, which unlike the now-destroyed Ukrainian military of some months ago, are fully equipped and operated as a NATO army manned by Ukrainians. Despite evacuation efforts, this leaves behind Eastern Ukrainians who will pay brutally with their lives as the Kiev bureaucracy implements what it has already announced as cleansing for anyone deemed a Russia-collaborator. There is now a massive movement of both NATO-Ukrainian and pro-Russian military building up in the south and south-east, preparing for a storm in the next weeks.

To assess this situation, “On the Barricades” has the pleasure of bringing repeat-guest Mark Sleboda onto the show for a two-part series this weekend. Mark is a former US Navy specialist, military expert, and academic who attended the London School of Economics before becoming a senior lecturer at Moscow State University.

In this first episode, hosts Maria Cernat and Boyan Stanislavski enlist Mark’s military analytical expertise to help piece together interpretations of the events in Kharkov, and to dissect the big questions that follow. He tells us about what’s happening on the ground, what military entities are engaged, what the events represent in terms of the Moscow and Kiev-NATO strategy, and what changes to the dynamic could come out of this now unstable balance of forces. We also hear updates about the role of Belarus in the war, the relevance of the renewed Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, as well as the general mood of the Russian population toward the Putin regime and their attitude toward escalating the conflict to a full-out mobilization for war with NATO.

Mark Sleboda on the new reality unfolding in Ukraine after Russia’s Kharkov retreat via The Barricade

Izyum is Bucha 2.0, new Ukrainian false flag war crimes and Western PSYOP + Dissecting Some War Propaganda

While the authorities have ordered lawsuits and detention of collaborators but private channels are simply spurring the murder of civilians, Ukraine pretends on September 15, 2022, to have found out a mass grave of 440 bodies near Izyum

Izyum is Bucha 2.0, new Ukrainian false flag war crimes and Western PSYOP

Related:

Ukraine – Dissecting Some War Propaganda News Items

In the AP video several soldiers and investigators are moving around. One Ukrainian soldier says he saw a video that the Russians made when the soldiers were buried in that one mass grave. From it, he says, he estimates that more than 17, maybe 25 or 30, he says, were buried in that grave.

The video he refers to is likely this one (h/t Elena Evdokimova) which was published on May 8. It seems to show the same graveyard with that one mass grave. One sees civilians with red cross armlets collecting and burying bodies of dead soldiers. I count a total of 17 dead bodies but there may be one or two more. One Russia soldier is around and explains what is happening. The title in Russian translates to:

Ukraine refuses to take away the bodies of dead soldiers. Russian military bury them in mass graves

Clint Ehrlich Changes His Tune on Ukraine

Clint Ehrlich: What I got wrong about Ukraine

Clint Ehrlich is an analyst commonly accused of being too ‘pro-Putin’. He belongs squarely to the ‘realist’ side of the argument — critical of NATO provocations, eager for a negotiated settlement. In the past few days, however, he has done that rare thing among commentators, and admitted he made a mistake. The success of the Ukrainian offensive took him by surprise, and he is now vocally critical of Putin’s strategy.

Watch the video on YouTube

U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Gilbert Doctorow, 9/9/22

The UK and Commonwealth may be mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday. I am in mourning as well, but for a very different reason: the gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in the Ramstein air base in Germany yesterday reshuffled the deck on Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine, raising contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from still more nations and adding new, still more advanced precision strike weapons to the mix of deliveries to Kiev. It was an open summons to the Kremlin to escalate in turn, as were the test firing the same day of a new intercontinental rocket, the Minuteman III, from Vandenberg air base in California and the unannounced visit to Kiev yesterday of not only Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was featured in Western media accounts, but also other top officials of the Biden administration. The most notorious member of this delegation was surely Blinken’s deputy, Victoria Nuland, who had stage managed the February 2014 coup that put in power in Kiev the Russia-hating regime that Zelensky now heads.

Gilbert Doctorow: U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Related:

A Former US Marine Corps Officer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War (archived, in case the original is removed)

H/T: Natylie’s Place: Understanding Russia