Ukraine Revolt/Civil War News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter Jura The idiot
- Start date
Plenty of questions remain. To begin with three days before MH17 was shot down an An-26 was downed while approaching Lugansk airport, then in the hands of Kiev. Kiev said it was hit at an altitude of about six kilometres ( they gave three different values ). Photographs of the wreckage and comparing with MH17 show that a much smaller missile had done the damage and that the rebels who said they shot it down with a manpad from about two kilometres might well be right and that certainly Kiev lied. Why?
A Dutch governmental expert told a commission of the Dutch parliament that the Buk TEL in the hands of the rebels was defective and unable to launch a missile, I read in a Dutch newspaper. It didn't say how he knew.
What would have been the motive for Russia to provide the rebels with a Buk launcher and without the radar system belonging to it? It is a pretty big piece of equipment and would likely have caused comments from Western countries. At the time it was said that the launcher, with three missiles, was taken from an Ukrainian army base that was by then lost to the rebels and was near Lugansk when the An-26 was shot down.
When accusing either the rebels or Russia the big problem is motive. Until MH17 was shot down the Western press was not unsympathetic to the rebels and that changed immediately as was to be expected. Indeed the most absurd accusation were written for example about the way the bodies and the personal effects of the victims was treated and which had all to be retracted in the following weeks.
There is also the matter of technical facts for example the position of the aircraft at the moment it was hit and which gives a small area within which the launcher had to be positioned. That has still not been published nearly two years later. Why?
And a last point: What might have been the motive for either the rebels or Russia to fire just one Buk missile and to select a passenger aircraft to shoot down?
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HEAVY ARMORED MILITARY COLUMN SPOTTED MOVING TOWARD FRONTLINE IN UKRAINE
A video that appears to show pro-Russian rebels moving heavy weapons toward the contact line with Ukrainian troops is adding fuel to warnings by independent observers that neither side is upholding the withdrawal agreement.
Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern region of Luhansk are bound by a ceasefire agreement to pull high-caliber guns from the contact line between them. Violence has flared a few times over recent weeks, with two Ukrainian soldiers reported to have been killed during a truce to mark last Sunday’s Orthodox Easter.
Footage has emerged online showing a column of at least 35 Soviet-made armored vehicles, some bearing a striking resemblance to the Russian truck-mounted multiple rocket Grad launcher, moving through street traffic.
The bloggers who took the video claim it was taken last Saturday, in the rebel-held east Ukrainian city of Luhansk—roughly 10 miles from the contact line between Ukrainian and rebel forces.
The video appears to have been taken on Oboronna street in Luhansk, based on the shops in the background, as well as the local branch of Ukrainian savings bank Oschadbank and the large trade center toward which the vehicles are moving.
Some online users are asking where the rebels could have gotten the equipment from, considering Russia has consistently denied supplying the separatists with arms.
According to Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, the reason for this move is unclear, but it’s evident the armored column is heading northwest—in the direction of the frontline.
“It’s heading towards the contact line in that video, it’s clear they’ve got a significant amount of equipment in that video, and who knows what else might be moving towards the contact line,” he says.
The independent, international monitoring mission in east Ukraine, led by the OSCE, has reported several sightings of heavy weapons in violation of the withdrawal agreement. One sighting in Luhansk, which appears to allude to the scene in the video, recounts the sighting of seven multiple-launch rocket systems, seven self-propelled howitzers, ten towed howitzers and seven tracked vehicles mounted with surface-to-air missile systems in Luhansk city last Saturday.
The OSCE mission was not immediately available to confirm or deny if the incident in the footage was the same as the one its observers documented.
Source:
A video that appears to show pro-Russian rebels moving heavy weapons toward the contact line with Ukrainian troops is adding fuel to warnings by independent observers that neither side is upholding the withdrawal agreement.
Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern region of Luhansk are bound by a ceasefire agreement to pull high-caliber guns from the contact line between them. Violence has flared a few times over recent weeks, with two Ukrainian soldiers reported to have been killed during a truce to mark last Sunday’s Orthodox Easter.
Footage has emerged online showing a column of at least 35 Soviet-made armored vehicles, some bearing a striking resemblance to the Russian truck-mounted multiple rocket Grad launcher, moving through street traffic.
The bloggers who took the video claim it was taken last Saturday, in the rebel-held east Ukrainian city of Luhansk—roughly 10 miles from the contact line between Ukrainian and rebel forces.
The video appears to have been taken on Oboronna street in Luhansk, based on the shops in the background, as well as the local branch of Ukrainian savings bank Oschadbank and the large trade center toward which the vehicles are moving.
Some online users are asking where the rebels could have gotten the equipment from, considering Russia has consistently denied supplying the separatists with arms.
According to Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative journalism website Bellingcat, the reason for this move is unclear, but it’s evident the armored column is heading northwest—in the direction of the frontline.
“It’s heading towards the contact line in that video, it’s clear they’ve got a significant amount of equipment in that video, and who knows what else might be moving towards the contact line,” he says.
The independent, international monitoring mission in east Ukraine, led by the OSCE, has reported several sightings of heavy weapons in violation of the withdrawal agreement. One sighting in Luhansk, which appears to allude to the scene in the video, recounts the sighting of seven multiple-launch rocket systems, seven self-propelled howitzers, ten towed howitzers and seven tracked vehicles mounted with surface-to-air missile systems in Luhansk city last Saturday.
The OSCE mission was not immediately available to confirm or deny if the incident in the footage was the same as the one its observers documented.
Source:
The rebels have acquire a large amount of equipment, some of it damaged, in fighting against the Ukrainian army. Damaged equipment has been repaired, perhaps using Russian spare parts, and ammunition is also provided by Russia. We have seen allegations but no evidence of Russia providing heavy weapons.
Equation
Lieutenant General
Looks like an armored brigade with at least two batteries of artillery and one battery of mobile rocket artillery as fire support units on the move. That's quite a force there.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Fighting season must be on. Winter at home, Spring to the trenches.Looks like an armored brigade with at least two batteries of artillery and one battery of mobile rocket artillery as fire support units on the move. That's quite a force there.
Jura The idiot
General
delft also took to it to Private Messages, but I'll briefly comment here as well:
the completely unimportant part is I saw that blogpost hours after it appeared (which is two weeks ago since now); more important is that inside of it, there's this claim of Ukrainian armament losses:
(БТР = APC, БМП = IFV, the rest should be obvious)
irrespective if this claim is true or false (which I of course don't know), Ukraine paid high price for escaping the Moscow sphere of influence; now I looked at the following numbers:
together form
- about seven per cent of 2013 Ukraine area ((27+8+9)/604 thousand sq km), and
- about eleven per cent of 2013 Ukraine population ((2284+1000+1870)/45490 thousand people; this estimate is fishy as I guessed this "1000", I ignored demographic effects, etc.)
(thank you for not telling me that's apples to oranges comparison)