Stalemate And Escalation Risk In Ukraine

[Khandro]

Updated assessment of the present position, - sobering reading;
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/08/18/the-growing-risk-of-escalation

[ichkeria]

The fire is adjacent to the airport.
Putin is apparently in the area.

[douglas9401]

Perhaps the ghost of Sebastian Coe's underpants have combusted near the Olympic site.

[Khandro]

Where are you getting your intel from, I can't find anything on Sky or the Beeb.

[ichkeria]

It was on Twitter, but also now reported on several media sites: you’ll wait a while for the BBC :-)
They do do a very good Ukrainecast podcast which I caught in the car radio the other morning at about 4.30am

https://amp.censor.net/en/video_news/3361975/there_is_fire_near_sochi_airport_videophotos

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1657860/russia-burns-explosion-sochi-airport-update/amp

[Khandro]

" Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (SOF) or possibly partisan fighters have conducted successfully attacks on three significant targets in occupied Crimea since 10 August...... [then listed].......
All three attacks were initially blamed on accidents and then sabotage by the Russian Ministry of Defence and Russian media, often in wildly conflicting reports. Dzhankoiskyi is over 160 km from the nearest Ukrainian frontline positions, and Gvardeyskoye and Saki are both over 210 km away. As such, they sit well beyond the range of the famous HIMARS rocket artillery system that has been used so successfully by the Ukrainian army to hit Russian ammunition dumps and other key logistical and headquarters targets in the immediate Russian rear areas since mid-June. This led some western and Ukrainian commentators to conclude that Ukraine was fielding powerful new long-range missile systems such as the US-made ATACMS, modified Neptune anti-ship missiles or the developmental Ukrainian HRIM-2 short-range ballistic missile system. However, based on the observable pattern of fire and secondary explosions, these attacks and much more likely to have been the work of SOF teams and saboteurs, probably using small drones to drop grenades onto ammunition and fuel storage sites.

This would fit an established but seldom-discussed pattern of daring deep-penetration raids by Ukrainian special forces since the invasion in February – against railway bridges and other key logistics targets, including at times across the borders into Russia itself. Since 2014, Russia has itself carried out several highly destructive special forces attacks using munitions-equipped small drones against Ukrainian ammunition depots.

The Spectator today

[ichkeria]

However aerial photography of Saki shows several craters which suggest missile strikes.
SOF almost certainly active but Russian air defence has been shredded recently