[Macros]

18 months ago.

That's truly awesome planning.

How does Putler paint this as anything other than evidence that Russia is losing?

[Mentalist]

Macros, on 01 June 2025 - 07:18 PM, said:

18 months ago.

That's truly awesome planning.

How does Putler paint this as anything other than evidence that Russia is losing?

"we still have 66% of our long range planes. Ukraine has zero (because they gave them to us in the 90s after we promised never to invade them). So we are still winning"!


Medinsky refused to comment to orc TV in Istanbul today. "Tomorrow, tomorrow"
Sure will be hard to deliver an ultimatum to Umerov (the head of UA MoD), when (reportedly) all the Tu-95s that were gearing up for a massive strike on Ukraine tonight and were loaded up with cruise missiles already, got exploded on the runway.

[Werthead]

Ukraine isn't holding back, there's a massive drone attack going on right across south-western Russia. Lipetsk Airfield is under attack, multiple targets in Kursk Oblast, AA fire over Voronezh and Ryazan, something being hit in Rostov city, huge explosion in near Kursk city (unconfirmed report of a military stockpile going up), Borisoglebsk Airbase is under attack (some reports Russian fighters rapidly scrambled to avoid being destroyed on the ground), naval drones operating off Crimea. This is a very heavy attack.

[Mentalist]

Meanwhile, presidential election in Poland is gonna be real close.

Another nailbiter, for sure.

[Chance]

Mentalist, on 01 June 2025 - 08:47 PM, said:

"we still have 66% of our long range planes. Ukraine has zero (because they gave them to us in the 90s after we promised never to invade them). So we are still winning"!

Should be the largest loss of strategic air power since WW2 for just about anyone I guess.

[Mentalist]

Still waiting for hi-rez satellite imagery of the hit airbases, so tally counts are very preliminary and somewhat speculative.

The Instanbul talks happened. More prisoner swaps- "all for all" for heavily wounded and aged 18-25, and 6k bodies swap. Ukraine also presented lists of abducted children.

Potentially next meeting by end of June.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 02 June 2025 - 04:57 PM

[Werthead]

Initial report suggesting that 3x Tu-95 destroyed, 1x Tu-95 damaged possibly beyond repair, 4x Tu-22M3 destroyed at Irkustk alone.

1x Tu-95 appears to have been destroyed at Ukrainka Airfield in Russia's far east.

Total Russian inventory in 2023 was 56x Tu-22M3 and 47x Tu-95., which obviously can be knocked down to 52x and 43x respectively. But not all of those are airworthy, with several apiece believed to have been cannibalised for spare parts in the face of the sanctions regime. That's also not counting the damage from the other airfields, which was considerable.

Today's discussions in Turkey apparently saw a provisional agreement for both sides to swap all wounded soldiers and all under the age of 25. Russia has also apparently accepted to return 339 Ukrainian children "rescued" from the combat zone by Russian forces (vomits). Russia has also said it will return the bodies of up to 6,000 Ukrainian soldiers recovered from the battlefield (these are currently listed as MIA in the Ukrainian casualty rolls).

Apparently the operative who masterminded the operation on Russian soil was code-named "Artyom." This is likely a reference to the protagonist of the Metro trilogy of video games (Metro 2033, Metro Last Light and Metro Exodus), created by a Ukrainian studio based on the novels written by a Russian dissident.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 02 June 2025 - 05:31 PM

[Cause]

Ukraine is punching so far above its weight. When the war is over Ukraines officers are going to be highly sought after by allied nations for training (they are the only combat hardened troops of a modern peer to peer combat). Spiderweb will be a movie one day.

Billions in damages, shattering troop moral, deep penetration into ‘safe’ Russian territory and deeply embaresssing for Putin. Also stategic bombers as in nuclear triad strategic bombers? I have always seen the bombers as likely the least useful part of the triad if not outright obsolete but I have no idea what the current military thoughts on this are. Still major loss.

At this point Putin seems to be running this war purely on emotion rather than reason. Somewhere between 1-7 billion in losses I read (is there any precedent for something like this?). Just more losses on top of a pile of losses and now a million casualties. I hope this brings him closer to the negotiating table but also wonder if it won’t do the opposite.

If this thread didn’t exist and I wasn’t a member of this forum I would also hear almost nothing about this war other than its ongoing. It shouldn’t take something on this scale to break through the noise.

[Lady Bliss]

Cause, on 02 June 2025 - 05:58 PM, said:

Ukraine is punching so far above its weight. When the war is over Ukraines officers are going to be highly sought after by allied nations for training (they are the only combat hardened troops of a modern peer to peer combat). Spiderweb will be a movie one day.

Billions in damages, shattering troop moral, deep penetration into ‘safe’ Russian territory and deeply embaresssing for Putin. Also stategic bombers as in nuclear triad strategic bombers? I have always seen the bombers as likely the least useful part of the triad if not outright obsolete but I have no idea what the current military thoughts on this are. Still major loss.

At this point Putin seems to be running this war purely on emotion rather than reason. Somewhere between 1-7 billion in losses I read (is there any precedent for something like this?). Just more losses on top of a pile of losses and now a million casualties. I hope this brings him closer to the negotiating table but also wonder if it won’t do the opposite.

If this thread didn’t exist and I wasn’t a member of this forum I would also hear almost nothing about this war other than its ongoing. It shouldn’t take something on this scale to break through the noise.

Agreed on the last. The news channels are leaving us in the cold.

This post has been edited by Lady Bliss: 02 June 2025 - 06:55 PM

[Chance]

Cause, on 02 June 2025 - 05:58 PM, said:

Also stategic bombers as in nuclear triad strategic bombers?

Yepp one of the reasons it is notable. They are also currently irreplaceable since they have been out of protection for a long time, kept flying by cannibalizing other airframes.

[Abyss]

Cause, on 02 June 2025 - 05:58 PM, said:

...Spiderweb will be a movie one day. ..

Honestly, the visual of trucks stopping, false cargo tops pulling back, and hundreds of AI drones rising up into the air and dropping on Russian airbases... it's pretty wild.

[Werthead]

Whilst they are nuclear-capable bombers, more to the point they are the only Russian aircraft large enough to carry long-range cruise missiles. Otherwise they have to rely on shorter-range missiles fired from fighters or similar missiles fired from ships, but between Ukrainian AA defences and Ukraine establishing dominance over the western Black Sea (despite not having a fleet to speak of), these options are severely more limited for Russia.

[Mentalist]

Interesting things happening in Crimea. SBU's Malyuk clearly got jealous of all the Budanov memes, so SBU's been one-upping HUR something fierce.


More sat footage from airbases, and also some comments about "unreleased footage" showing even more significant damage to the bomber force. UA to brief Congress committee on operation Spiderweb soon, so expect US press leaks.

[Werthead]

Massive explosion at the Kerch Bridge. Ukraine smuggled up to 1,000 pounds of explosive onto a barge they placed right next to one of the main support pillars and detonated today.

Russia initially said the explosion did no damage and reopened the bridge, only to close it again hours later and rushed in inspectors to take a second look. Some demolitions experts saying the explosion may have gone off a bit too far away to shatter the pillar, but likely cracked it, and they'd want a thorough repair job before even thinking about reopening the bridge. Ukraine has blown the deck a couple of times, but that's easily repaired, replacing a whole pillar would be a massive, massive job.

[Werthead]

Ukraine is carrying out a huge attack on Russia using drones. Melitopol's power supply was disrupted, Rostov's air defences have engaged. The Millerovo Airbase has taken multiple hits. Kherson has been hit by drones and long-range cluster munition strikes.

Both Pope Leo XIV and Trump have spoken again to Putin, with limited success in convincing him to pause the war.

NATO intelligence believes that Russian forces poised to attack Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk may have been diverted to Kursk, Belgorod and other areas of the front. They anticipate the main thrust to continue at and around Pokrovsk, with a smaller effort in Sumy and a medium-level effort in Kharkiv. Russia may be planning a southern thrust through Sumy and western thrust through Kharkiv to encircle Kharkiv City, but this would require their biggest and most rapid advance since February 2022 and maybe much more than that, through much thicker and fiercer defences, with much less manpower available.

Some grumbling on Russian channels that Russia is wasting resources in Sumy and Kharkiv instead of direct all resources through the Donbas, which is where they are having more success, if at a slow clip.

Updated tally of at least 6 aircraft destroyed at Olenya and 8 at Belaya, with 22 aircraft in total across four airbases destroyed and 19 further damaged.

For the first time, the US will not participate at a NATO Ramstein meeting or a Ukraine-NATO Council meeting over the next day or so.

Russia wants to deploy 10,000 troops to Transnistria. It's unclear how they'd get there.

This post has been edited by Werthead: Yesterday, 09:40 PM