Massive Iskander Attack Sends Rats Scurrying – Simplicius
Thu 11:26 am +01:00, 5 Sep 2024 It’s been an eventful past day, as major Russian attacks galvanized panic-headlines and seemed to catalyze a sudden Ukrainian government purge or mass exodus:
The timing seems odd and obviously paints a portrait of a mass exodus of rats fleeing the now-obviously sinking ship. The strike on the 179th training center of the Signal Troops military institute in Poltava—officially called the Poltava Institute of Military Communications—was particularly grievous for Ukraine because it appeared to house not only a vital drone-technical program, but valuable Swedish instructors for the upcoming transfer of Swedish AWACS planes, billed as more future ‘game changers’ that would work in tandem with the F-16s to decimate the Russian airforce from afar. The direct reports from Ukrainians on the ground about the Poltava strike’s losses are staggering. One Ukrainian medic claims 215 killed and 340 injured:
But this may have been at the start, before the majority of the bodies were pulled, because subsequent reports spoke of even more cataclysmic numbers. A local Ukrainian blogger gave the tally as over 600 dead alone: He writes at the top of the video and says those aren’t even the ‘final numbers’: Infamous ex-Aidar bigwig Ihor Mosiychuk gave the tally as dozens of dead with 600+ total victims, but his report was also early on.
In fact a Ukrainian medic was livid that underage children were being coerced to supply blood:
She mentions the Swedish instructors, which are at the center of the story. This was validated by a post from a woman who says her mate from Sweden’s Linkoping University perished in the Poltava attack:
Presumably, they were instructing Ukrainians on the Swedish Saab ASC 890 AEW&C ‘Erieye’ plane, pledged earlier to the Ukrainian airforce: Such staggering losses are hard to believe, but apparently it was a Kinzhal or Iskander “double tap”. Granted, the losses appear obscenely high, but recall there’s not one Russian source there: who am I to argue with Ukrainian sources directly from the ground? And speaking of Kinzhals:
The NYT article remarks specifically on the missiles’ speed being such that they struck almost at the same time as the first warning sirens, which could not come on fast enough to give people time to escape:
This is the true ‘game-changing’ property of hypersonic missiles like the Iskander and Kinzhal. Though they may not be hypersonic at final terminal descent—the jury’s still out on the Kinzhal in that regard—their hypersonic traversal of the airspace prior to that still allows them to arrive on target extremely rapidly without giving time for defensive maneuvers. If there are any true ‘game changers’ that exist in this war, it is them. That’s not to mention the host of other potential hypersonic secondary effects, like the possibility that a plasma sheath could make them invisible to radar at certain stages of their burnout phase toward the apogee, etc. Unlike true ICBMs that go into space where no atmosphere exists, these still traverse enough of the atmosphere that such a sheath can neutralize all radio waves, making the missile’s ascent invisible to radars, which would give even less warning time. The strike has also made me suspect that the Russian General Staff’s tactic is to not strike such gatherings too often, giving Ukraine time to get lulled into a false sense of security, and waiting until a real big juicy one with important figures—like these irreplaceable Swedish instructors—is gathered, then letting rip to take out an enormous amount of them at once. Or it could be that Russia has changed targeting priorities recently as a consequence of Kursk, as Ukraine’s Podolyak recently seemed to insinuate:
In fact, Russia has been utilizing Iskanders an extreme amount lately, which ties with the report from last time that Iskanders have been brought down to the brigade level, and now brigade commanders can order their own direct strikes without going up to divisional HQ or higher. This comes as consequence of the ramp-up of Iskander production which reportedly sees upwards of 50+ per month now produced. Keep in mind, that’s still not a lot, as it only allows one or two per day usage, but this 600/year tempo is much higher than most missile production capabilities for any first rate military. The US and NATO allies produce 100-200 per year of their best missile systems at most. Only hours after the Poltava hit, another Iskander strike reportedly took out another large gathering of AFU troops in Sumy, near the Russian border, with upwards of 80+ casualties suspected: The aftermath of all the bodies being cleaned up can be seen from the drone BDA: Full list of the alleged losses:
The geolocation is: 50.8520703, 34.9322912 This is not too far from another major Iskander attack on a large Ukrainian convoy that happened just the night before, which Ukraine claimed were simple grain trucks despite them being very close to the Russian border:
The most interesting part of that strike is for once we are able to see the results of the effectiveness of the Iskander cluster munition variant. That’s because today some post-strike photos leaked: The Iskander cluster philosophy is a little bit different than the ATACMS: Iskander carries fewer but larger and more powerful elements—about 30-60 fragmentary munitions—while the ATACMS carries ~300 smaller, less powerful ones. Recall, this is all just days after the major Iskander strike on Krivoy Rog’s Aurora Hotel, which was said to wipe out a slew of mercenaries. Now, the past couple weeks have also seen a number of Iskander strike videos claiming to destroy HIMARS, with one video claiming to have hit 3 HIMARs launchers at the same time. The same goes for Patriot missile systems, although we have a little better confirmation with those.
By the way, many poked fun at Sweden receiving such a big blow in Poltava, the predestined town where the previous Swedish Empire had seen its demise. Now only a day after the Poltava strikes reportedly wrecked the entire Swedish-Ukraine program, Sweden’s FM mysteriously resigns:
What is going on here? Last week saw “the largest-scale Russian strikes of the entire war”, followed by a few other high-profile ballistic attacks on sensitive Ukrainian targets with high casualties. Now, we see a mass exodus of the entire Ukrainian government and this. It’s tempting to jump to conclusions about causalities, but the connection seems too obvious to make. It feels like internally the rolling of heads has begun. This only underscores the recent feeling like events are accelerating, and Ukraine is hitting a sudden precipitous decline. On that note, Zelensky just told MSNBC that he plans to hold Russian territory indefinitely ‘for now’. But what’s most interesting about the interview, is you can really gauge the desperation and true lack of aim or direction in his plan. Listen below as he’s unable to answer Richard Engel about what, precisely, the plan is for the Kursk operation: He’s asked if holding Kursk is his plan to end the war. Zelensky can only respond that holding Russian territory is his personal plan to force Russia to stop the war. How does that work, exactly? It seems more and more evident that Zelensky’s plan did in fact amount to simply taking some of Kursk and hoping that Russia would immediately sue for negotiations favorable to Ukraine to end the war. Of course, the true trump card that would have ensured such a plan was capturing the Kursk nuclear plant, which they failed to do. Take it for what it’s worth, but a new Ukrainian POW from the Kursk incursion even claims they were under orders to plant explosives and detonate the Kursk plant:
In short, it seems to me that there was no real advanced 7D plan by Zelensky, or a big “trap” as some commentators were expecting. Now he’s done nothing but thin down his forces with multiple fronts collapsing at once, without achieving anything of note. The latest rumors from Rezident UA channel claim that Syrsky has now requisitioned forces from Kursk back to Pokrovsk to stem some of the collapse, which—if true—may have worked, as there has been a slight decrease to Russia’s tempo the last couple days.
— On that note, there is a hilarious new article from CFR’s Foreign Affairs: Most humorous about it is the defeatist tone, which causes the author to make some uncharacteristically-desperate conclusions. In essence, it states that Putin is “all in” and the only way to defeat him is try to prolong the fight as long as humanly possible until he “dies”—presumably of natural causes: I’ve never seen a “professional” outfit write something so unintentionally humorous and stultifyingly sophomoric. The analysis in the rest of the piece is so astoundingly bad I won’t even demean myself by explicating on it—the snippet is enough to demonstrate simply how rudderless the Western commentariat has become. That being said, that was only the second stupidest article of the day—here’s your prize winner: And yes, they are serious. They even provided actual maps of territory Russia ‘stole’ from China in a farcical attempt to provoke a conflict between the two: Can these people get any more pathetic? It just shows how low journalistic standards—particularly of the editors-in-chief who are supposed to be responsible for greenlighting this crud—have dropped in the abject West. — This one however is only sadly funny:
— A few last videos. Russian troops reportedly captured some young female soldiers in Kursk: — Polish journalist Anna Gusarskaya wrote a column for WaPo wherein she was shocked that a Kharkov cemetery she returned to had double the amount of graves as the previous year:
— Interesting update to the goings on at the Kerch Bridge:
Some have speculated it’s a redundant pontoon in case the bridge is hit, or simply a permanent seawall to block naval drones from attacking the bridge, given that previously Russia relied on more provisional solutions like sunken barges and mine nets. — A Russian commander in the Ugledar direction details how his unit’s latest assault saw no losses at all, not even wounded according to him, despite capturing the enemy positions successfully in the ongoing Ugledar stranglehold: — Lastly, to give an idea of Ukraine’s Kursk losses, here’s a brief video showing a road of death full of NATO vehicles, followed by another video of many of them being destroyed—you can see the identifying white triangle belonging to the Ukrainian northern Kursk grouping on most of them. Your support is invaluable. If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one. Alternatively, you can tip here: buymeacoffee.com/Simplicius |