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Ukraine Update: Russia is trying to erase Popasna, scene of a heroic stand and a ghastly war crime [1]
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Date: 2023-03-16
As The Economist points out, while we may be inured to images of Russian or Chinese jets making close approaches to U.S. planes and ships, incidents like the one that happened on Tuesday are genuinely rare. Under 5% of encounters between U.S. and Russian military aircraft include “assertive” behavior—“dipping wings to reveal weapons; using afterburners to create turbulence; in more extreme cases, locking onto the target with weapons radar.” Even then, the vast majority of the incidents pass with nothing more happening. Only two actual collisions have occurred going all the way back to the end of World War II.
The area the Reaper drone was operating in wasn’t just international waters, it was a route that such drones have been flying over the Black Sea for years. But on this occasion, Russia sent not one but two Su-27 jets to shadow and then harass the drone. Following the crash, Russia has openly declared its intention to attempt to salvage the drone, while the U.S. says it purposely damaged software in the drone as it was coming down to prevent classified materials from coming into Russian hands.
While there has been some inclination to put the collision down to inexperience or simply bad piloting (Russian pilots are not trained in dogfighting), the video makes it clear that the Russian jets were out to damage the drone. This incident follows another in which a Russian jet released a missile while near a British RC-135 reconnaissance plane that was also operating in international airspace over the Black Sea. As The Guardian reported last October, that incident also involved a pair of Russian Su-27 fighter jets, though it’s not clear if either of those jets were among the pair that damaged and forced down the Reaper drone.
At that time, Russia claimed the missile release was accidental, and the event was largely attributed to the actions of a reckless, poorly skilled Russian pilot. However, with the Reaper incident this starts to look like a pattern of behavior, one in which Russia is attempting to intimidate NATO aircraft engaged in reconnaissance above the Black Sea. Russia certainly isn’t helping this impression by making a grab for a U.S. plane that fell in waters that are nowhere close to the Russian coast.
In 2016, China seized a U.S. autonomous boat in international waters, taking the drone craft right in front of U.S. ships there to retrieve the craft. But in this case, Russia clearly caused the Reaper drone to come down, and now it is trying to benefit from that act of aggression by capturing the drone. Unpiloted or no, that act seems incredibly provocative.
And maybe that’s exactly why Russia is doing it.
If you’ve been reading these updates long enough, you might remember the very early days when we took an extended look at a town called Popasna. That town was part of the border established with Russian-occupied areas following the 2014 invasion, and the area between Popasna and neighboring Pervomaisk became heavily mined and laced with trenches. But it was obvious, even at the outset, that Popasna was key to any Russian advance in the east. So months before the war came to Bakhmut, it arrived in Popasna in an all too familiar form.
When word comes that Russian forces have tried to break through at a location like Popasna, what it means—especially right now, in mud season—is that they have attempted to drive a column of vehicles up that wreck-strewn, potholed, heavily mined highway with entrenched forces firing into them from both north and south. It should be no surprise that such attacks are getting regularly repulsed.
And they were repulsed, day after day, week after week, with many of the assaults resulting in losses that looked similar to those Russia is now facing a Vuhledar. Finally, in mid-May Russian artillery had so reduced the town there was literally not a building remaining, and Russian vehicles had hit so many mines east of the city they had established a kind of trail that new tanks and transports could follow. Ukrainian defenders were left with nowhere to stand. Popasna fell. Russian forces began the slow advance on Bakhmut, 25 kilometers to the west. It was this road running west of Popasna that would be a major theater for the next year of war in the east.
A destroyed van along the road running west out of Popasna, May 2022.
Now, as Ukrainska Pravda reports, Popasna is not only gone, it’s officially gone. At least as far as the Russian-controlled government of the LPR is concerned. Following the Russian advance, a new list of cities and towns has been created as the LPR dreams up new administrative districts.
In particular, 11 city and 17 municipal districts (raions) have been adopted. There is no Popasna in any of the lists.
Before the war, Popasna was home to 20,000 people. It was not only the site of heroic resistance that foreshadowed the kind of destruction Russia would bring to towns and cities all along the front, the resistance at Popasna showed how Ukrainian fighters would refuse to back down, even when the world was being shattered around them.
That spirit of resistance may have been what caused Russian soldiers to perpetuate a horrific war crime on the ruins of the town.
Horrific video and photos have emerged that appear to show the head of a Ukrainian prisoner of war stuck on a pole outside a house in the eastern Ukrainian city of Popasna, which was captured by Russian forces in May and is close to the current frontline in the Donbas.
I’m not posting those images. Note that Russian troops didn’t just butcher a body already dead in the field. This was a prisoner, in their custody, who they beheaded before putting his head on a pike.
Russia may think they can just erase Popasna. They’re wrong about that.
Speaking of atrocities, there may be no moment in this war more horrific than the events that happened on this date one year ago.
x A year ago, Russia deliberately dropped a bomb on the Drama Theater in Mariupol. Next to it was the inscription "Children", which was impossible to overlook. Hundreds of people were hiding there. We are working to hold the terrorist state to account for what it has done. pic.twitter.com/iZICS5Q5J0 — Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 16, 2023
One possible result of the Reaper incident could be to accelerate calls for the U.S. and others to provide Western aircraft to Ukraine. But in the meantime, Poland is stepping up again to help fill some of the slots in Ukraine’s air force.
x BREAKING:
Poland will send 4 MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in the coming days.
The rest of Poland’s MiG-29s are being serviced and will all be made available to Ukraine in the future.
- Polish President Duda speaking at a press conference with Czech President Pavel.
🇵🇱🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/q0dmfakdQn — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 16, 2023
The Economic Security Council of Ukraine has accused American manufacturer Haas Automation of violating sanctions and providing high-tech manufacturing equipment to multiple Russian companies involved in production of weapons and military systems. PBS Newshour has covered the story, and ponders whether the U.S. government will step in to investigate a company that provides the same manufacturing technology to U.S. defense contractors.
This might not be quite as important a practical skill as it use to be as thermal imaging and other forms of enhanced vision creep into the battlefield. Still, 99% of Russian soldiers are likely relying on their unenhanced eyeballs 99% of the time, and ...
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/16/2158563/-Ukraine-Update-Russia-is-trying-to-erase-Popasna-scene-of-a-heroic-stand-and-a-ghastly-war-crime
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