It’s clear that when Ukraine propounds such information, they are projecting what they themselves intend to do. So, once more, we see the flaring danger of the ZNPP situation and more implications that the coming ‘offensive’ attempt may revolve around capturing this key plant by way of some sophisticated falseflag/psyop event.

And a new concerted report from Euromaidan press came immediately after:

Which absurdly claims that Russia is planning on destroying the Zaporozhye plant and blaming it on Ukrainian shelling in order to suspend or somehow hamper the imminent Ukrainian offensive in that southerly direction.

The report goes on to ridiculously claim that Russia is going to do a mass joint nuclear-chemical attack on the entire frontline.

The only frightening part of the report is that if they’re telegraphing to us that ‘Russia’ intends to destroy the plant and spread radiation, then it can only mean it’s what they themselves intend to do to blame Russia.

However, for all those worried, we have the following report which shows that Russian forces are not simply ignoring this threat:

MI6 transmitted intelligence to the President's Office and the General Staff that the Russian General Staff continues to strengthen the defense of the nuclear power plant/Energodar and surrounding villages. According to British intelligence, the nuclear power plant is protected by about 5,000 military personnel, of which 700-900 people are constantly at the plant. At the same time, there is a group of 20 thousand people in reserve, in neighboring villages and military units that have heavy equipment/helicopters. The entire coast is mined and turned into a single complex of defensive structures, in order to prevent an amphibious operation of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Not to mention, in light of the Ukrainian pre-false flag field-sowing above, Russian federal security forces have in fact detained several saboteurs who were planning a terrorist attack on the plant:

Saboteurs who were preparing terrorist attacks on the NPP were detained in Energodar. They had with them maps and schematics of the nuclear power plant with marks for strikes that could lead to a nuclear catastrophe.

The suspects are involved in collecting and transmitting information about the facilities of the Zaporozhye NPP on the instructions of the Ukrainian authorities. To communicate with the curators, they used foreign satellite systems, as well as foreign weapons for strikes and equipment for conducting reconnaissance and sabotage activities.

Was the Ukrainian plot already foiled, then? It’s hard to say, but obviously it’s best to stay vigilant no matter what.

Here’s another video, though not translated, but shows some of the devices used:

Ukrovskie soldiers attempted to attack the nuclear power plant with a shock UAV, the device was planted and neutralized 500 m from the station, a representative of the law enforcement agency said.

Back to the offensive itself. Ukraine’s national security secretary Danilov has stated that the offensive may start “any day now”:

Here we go again.

In an interview with the BBC, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, said that a counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "could begin tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or next week,"

According to the Advisor to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Mykhailo Podolyak, the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has already started and has been going on for several days.

And Rybar reports that indications are the AFU have finished basic staging for the offensive in the southern direction:

Rybar is reporting that Ukraine is nearly done staging for their offensive against the land-bridge and that they may begin the operation before the end of the month. We’ll have to see if artillery preparation picks up in the next few days.

The above map shows the staging areas along the Orekhov, Pologi, and Gulyai-Pole axis. As well as one group called ‘Marun’, which Rybar identifies as a special raid group composed of elite Ukrainian paratroopers (Maroon berets?) which will act as a breakthrough force whose job is to bypass major population centers and break through to the rears of Russian defenses.

Zaporozhye direction. Judging by the characteristic signs, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have completed basic preparations for the offensive. The enemy group is practically formed to attack in three areas: Orekhovsky, Pologovsky and Gulyai-Pole.
In addition, in the south-east of the Dnipropetrovsk region, a tactical group "Marun" was created, which included the forces of 46 oaembr, 82 odshbr and 132 reconnaissance battalion of the DSHV, as well as 71 ebrs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Previously, 132 orb in Zaporozhye was not noted. Also in Gavrilovka appeared units transferred from the Kharkiv region, presumably, the assault brigade "Spartan". And in Chaplino, members of the 3rd battalion of the 33rd Separate Infantry Division of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were stationed.

As I said previously, all we can really do now is wait. The AFU is running out of time as the huge increase in Russian strikes is devastating their reserves and Russia’s own industrial capacities in guided weapons are growing exponentially to such a rate that in the future, Ukraine may find it impossible to even receive much Western arms at all, as Russia could destroy everything from afar.

I agree with the following assessment:

The woman with the scythe: The" counter-offensive " of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is delayed due to massive missile and UAV strikes by the Russians. Many rear ammunition depots have been lost, and there is also a shortage of BC for air defense.The Armed Forces of Ukraine also have internal problems due to the corruption of the Ministry of Defense, and there is a shortage of spare parts for military equipment. Everyone is sure that Ze wanted to coincide the offensive with the July NATO summit, but there is less and less time left."

And this is the total number of munitions launched in just the past few weeks:

Ukrainian monitoring groups estimate that during the month of Russian attacks (the new wave began on April 28), Russia launched about 160 missiles (cruise + ballistic), as well as 340+ kamikaze drones "Shahed".

Part of this increased performance comes from Russia’s continual improvement of its ISR and particularly space-recon capabilities. Two days ago, a new Russian Kondor-FKAopto-electrical spy-satellite was successfully launched:

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The trusted Soyuz-2 rocket was used to lift the new satellite into orbit.

 

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This adds to the list of half a dozen new satellites launched in the past few months that I covered in depth previously. In fact, this could now tie U.S.’s number of opto-electrical Keyhole satellites, as Russia’s previous such launch was said to put it at around five total to the U.S.’s six. Note, this is only in reference to the premier flagship opto-electrical sats, as U.S. has many other different sensor type satellites, not to mention this isn’t counting commercial sats like Planet Labs, Maxar, ICEYE, etc., which all provide services to U.S./NATO/Ukraine.

So, if Ukraine waits too long, Russia can hunt down all their reserves and new weapons (if it hasn’t already) and destroy them in their static storage locations. Compound this with us already soon entering summer, and Ukraine’s offensive is getting long in the tooth and in need of immediate launching if they want to stand a chance. Just look, for example, how they already waited so long that their Storm Shadow platforms are being annihilated, now they could have one less important tool to use during the offensive. Which tool will be next to go extinct?

In fact, in light of this, there are now reports that Russia is creating a new type of specialized air group composed of elite pilots, called ‘Storm’ (Shturm). Its mission will be to specifically hunt high value ground targets, and perhaps SEAD/DEAD.

This is straight from the UK defense ministry’s official Twitter account:

(3/4) Credible Russian media reports suggest that the Russian MoD aims to attract highly skilled and motivated pilots by offering large pay incentives and opening recruitment to retired aviators.

(4/4) The creation of the group highlights how Russian assesses its regular air force squadrons have severely underperformed in their core function of conducting airstrikes on Ukrainian lines.

Of course, they couldn’t resist the obligatory dig at the end, farcical as it is. But that’s expected of sore losers who are being humiliated in their proxy war, so we don’t think much of it.

Meanwhile, the German foreign minister said the upcoming offensive will be ‘the largest land battle in Europe since the 1940s’:

The AFU offensive will be the largest land battle in Europe since the 1940s, the former German Foreign Minister said.

"We are probably on the eve of the worst land battle since the Second World War. After the terrible images and events that have already taken place in Ukraine, we will see an even worse picture. And I'm afraid it will take a long time. It's going to be a huge battle: 30-40 thousand people from the Ukrainian side and at least the same number from the Russian side, " said Sigmar Gabirel in an interview with ZDF TV channel.

And Joseph Borrell is no longer ‘optimistic’ about the oncoming summer:

Additionally, the common consensus is now that Ukraine will need at the minimum four total squadrons of F-16s, or nearly 50 total planes to succeed in any way:

For the complete liberation of the territory from Russian troops, 48 American aircraft are needed, - the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. "4 F16 squadrons (48 aircraft) are exactly what is needed to liberate our country from the aggressor," the report says.
Earlier, the head of the US General Staff, Mark Milley, said that a small number of aircraft would not change the picture, since " the Russians have thousands of 4th and 5th generation fighters." He also estimated the transfer and support of 10 F-16 aircraft at $ 2 billion. That is, the amount requested by Ukraine can cost the United States almost 10 billion.

(Note: As of 31 May 2023, Ukraine has revised its demand for advanced aviation to 120 planes.—Ed)

But on that account, a new Bloomberg article takes the wind out of the AFU’s sails a little bit:

The General Dynamics Corp fighter-bombers will be a significant upgrade on the Soviet-era planes that Ukrainian pilots have been flying so far. But the F-16s that are likely to be sent to Ukraine will still have inferior radar and shorter range missiles than the most modern Russian jets and air defenses.

Woah, woah, woah. Wait a second there. So first they drop the bombshell that the F-16s may just be used for defense, that is, they will be sent up during Russian cruise missile attacks to plug the holes in Ukraine’s attrited AD network by trying to shoot down the cruise missiles with A2A missiles.

Then they drop an even bigger bombshell: that the much vaunted American AN/APG-68/83 full AESA radars, which were always touted as so astronomically superior to any Russian equivalent are in fact…..inferior, like we knew all along?

This is where Western propagandists fail. AESA vs. PESA is not just a black or white battle. AESA clearly has some advantages for certain niche abilities like being more resistant to jamming due to their ability to electronically channel-hop. But it’s a simple fact of life that Russian IRBIS-E and Zaslon-M radars on the Su-35s and Mig-31s for instance, are more powerful and have higher detection and tracking ranges.

 

Suddenly, after all that bluster, the F-16s in fact will only offer an “incremental ability” for Ukraine.

In the eye-opening piece, American F-16 pilots even give this admission:

Were they to fly at Russian lines to take out artillery, air defenses, or jets, Ukraine’s F-16 pilots would likely get an alert to signal detection by enemy radar long before getting close enough to shoot, according to John Venable, a former F-16 pilot in the US Air Force.

“All you can do is dive for the dirt and hope you can put a hill between you and the missile’s guidance systems,” said Venable, now a senior research fellow for defense policy at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank. Without that cover “your chances of survival are not great,” he said.

Well, color me shocked.

The American pilot even confirms all my previous reporting about Ukraine’s desperate method of lofting munitions from below Russian radar coverage:

“You aren’t going to be hitting anything.”

This is just the latest in the long line of Western ‘wunderwaffe’ built up as invincible and later discarded and memory-holed like they never existed.

On that note, this article from 2018 is an old gem uncovered recently, from Foreign Policy:

Noting the contents of the article, it’s absolutely crazy that the Patriot system could possibly be ‘sold’ to us these days as a potential “game changer” in Ukraine.

The author is irate and sick of the dangerous propaganda of the Patriot being a good system, because he says this puts all American allies in danger, having to rely on such an obvious, proven ‘lemon’.

Read the article if you want a good laugh as the author highlights the history of abject failure of the Patriot missile system:

On March 25, Houthi forces in Yemen fired seven missiles at Riyadh. Saudi Arabia confirmed the launches and asserted that it successfully intercepted all seven.

This wasn’t true. It’s not just that falling debris in Riyadh killed at least one person and sent two more to the hospital. There’s no evidence that Saudi Arabia intercepted any missiles at all. And that raises uncomfortable questions not just about the Saudis, but about the United States, which seems to have sold them — and its own public — a lemon of a missile defense system.

Social media images do appear to show that Saudi Patriot batteries firing interceptors. But what these videos show are not successes. One interceptor explodes catastrophically just after launch, while another makes a U-turn in midair and then comes screaming back at Riyadh, where it explodes on the ground.

In fact, what’s interesting is he does a detailed post-op on two of the strikes, and the results are horrifyingly comical:

In both cases, we found that it is very unlikely the missiles were shot down, despite officials’ statements to the contrary. Our approach was simple: We mapped where the debris, including the missile airframe and warhead, fell and where the interceptors were located. In both cases, a clear pattern emerged. The missile itself falls in Riyadh, while the warhead separates and flies over the defense and lands near its target. One warhead fell within a few hundred meters of Terminal 5 at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport. The second warhead, fired a few weeks later, nearly demolished a Honda dealership. In both cases, it was clear to us that, despite official Saudi claims, neither missile was shot down. I am not even sure that Saudi Arabia even tried to intercept the first missile in November.

He makes a shocking statement: that there’s no evidence the Patriot has ever even shot down anything. Followed by an even more shocking question: does the system even work at all?

The point is there is no evidence that Saudi Arabia has intercepted any Houthi missiles during the Yemen conflict. And that raises a disquieting thought: Is there any reason to think the Patriot system even works?

And a new Business Insider article yesterday highlighted how the Bayraktar drones were hailed as ‘saviors’ and quickly disappeared, never to be heard from again:

Last year, the admission below would have gotten you labeled as a Putin propagandist and deplatformed, now it’s just old hat:

 

Remember when Oryx and his fake list claimed only a small handful were “confirmed shot down”, and anyone claiming that the entire fleet of Ukraine’s 70-90+ TB2 drones were shot down would be called crazy? How times have changed…

Of course, this also completely invalidates Oryx’s numbers which still show a tiny, symbolic fraction of “confirmed Bayraktars destroyed” when in reality, every official Western source now blithely acknowledges that the entire fleet has been annihilated.

And if that wasn’t painful enough, there’s even news that Turkey has completely cut off Ukraine from any new deliveries:

"Turkey has stopped deliveries of Bayraktar TB2 to Ukraine, there has been no information about deliveries for 8 months, and no one will build the promised plant in Ukraine. At the front, information about the use of Turkish UAVs has almost disappeared, and all information about the termination of cooperation is kept secret."

I wonder why!

Remember these cringe-inducing antics which were meant to showcase the adamantine morale of the AFU amid their elevation of Bayraktars to holy objects?

The article goes on:

However, a little over a year later, the once-prized drones have almost entirely been shot down, and those that remain reduced to reconnaissance duties, according to an expert.

"The general assessment of drones like TB2 is that they work well without sophisticated air and electronic warfare defenses arrayed against them," Samuel Bendett, an analyst and expert in unmanned and robotic military systems at the Center for Naval Analyses, told Insider.

Ukraine said last year it had received 50 TB2 drones since the Russian invasion began, but by the end of 2022, it had largely disappeared from the battlefield.

The commander of the Russian air defense force, Lieutenant-General Andrey Demin, claimed that Russian forces had destroyed more than 100 of the drones in April.

Meanwhile, Prigozhin believes Russia should launch a mass-scale offensive of their own now:

“After the capture of Bakhmut, the operational space is open, and the Russian army has every opportunity to launch a colossal offensive in the near future with the capture of Kramatorsk, Slavyansk, Druzhkovka, Konstantinovka, Chasov Yar, that is, the “Donbas ring”.

Next, it will be necessary to clarify whether the throw will be an offensive, lightning-fast, decisive throw towards the Dnieper in order to put our units on the left bank of the Dnieper.

And speaking of Prigozhin, while Wagner has officially vacated Bakhmut and handed it over to the nominal Russian forces, they have released some interesting new audit reports. This includes the final tally of Ukrainian forces and equipment destroyed which Wagner meticulously totted up for each monthly period, and it’s a doozy:

 

PMC "Wagner" published a report on the liquidated fighters and equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

In total, since March 2022, "Musicians" have destroyed 72,000 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine

PMC "Wagner" presented a report on its combat path during the NWO.

Musicians in numbers:

During the fighting, the Orchestra destroyed over 72 thousand Ukrainian soldiers, captured a little more than five hundred.

Prigozine destroyed:

Tanks - 309

BMP - 566

BTR - 131

Armored vehicles - 1134

Cars - 2075

Mortars and guns - 3155

ATGM / LNG - 300

SAU - 124

MLRS - 83

Air defense systems - 45

UAV - 282

Aircraft - 5

Helicopters - 4

EW / radar systems - 149

The losses visualized below:

And Prigozhin explained one of the reasons he was so angry with the Russian MOD. He recounted a touching story that goes as follows:

Prigozhin recalls how a guy Yevgeny Istomin approached him in the zone. He decided to redeem himself, to return to his family, to return his daughter, who had fallen into another family. He was jailed under Article 228.

Went to Wagner, trained, Prigozhin saw him more than once. He fought. Then Prigozhin saw him in a pile of corpses, torn apart by a shell-just at the time when the Ministry of Defense, laughing (really for them a joke is like this, give - not give), cut off the supply of ammunition.

Istomin's 13-year-old daughter jumped from the 12th floor and died. Shoigu's son-in-law at this time was "twisting rolls" in Dubai and telling what fools all are in the SMO.

And speaking of statistics, I’ve written for a long time how much of the equipment supplied to the AFU is out of order, expired old stock, etc. There are countless examples, like the video released today (though likely from a few months ago) showing some well-tuned mortars (sic) supplied to the AFU. 

But a new damning leak reportedly shows that an unprecedented amount of the much-vaunted Stryker units supplied by the U.S. are defunct. You can see the auto-translated leaked charts below:

Zrada from the main ally: the Stryker armored personnel carriers delivered by the USA turned out to be faulty.

In March of this year, it became known that the Ukrainian troops would be replenished with American Stryker armored personnel carriers. It was assumed that Stryker should strengthen the counter-offensive potential.

According to our information, the cars sent to Ukraine have malfunctions. The source provided data on the vehicles that entered the service in one of the units of the Airborne Assault Forces.

As can be seen from the document, in only one part, 76% of Strykers cannot fully participate in combat operations. Of the 68 machines in disrepair, 52. Strykers have a large number of malfunctions in electronics and chassis. Soldiers complain about non-working fuel pumps, communication systems, nitrogen supply, etc.

So, 52 out of 68 Strykers don’t work, a whopping, hard-to-believe 76%. I’d probably find it much harder to believe if it weren’t for the recent spate of NATO revelations that demonstrated to us just how badly off and in ill-repair NATO forces are. Do you recall the story, for instance, of the German Pumas a few months ago?

All 18 out of 18 Pumas broke down during exercises in one way or another. To be honest, as others have speculated in the past, such a mind-boggling decrepitude can only possibly be explained by intentional sabotage. Just like some have hypothesized about the Pentagon leaks, one can only wonder if some anti-imperialist patriot went to town on those Strykers. But given the fact that their problems appear all over the place, rather than from something that can disable them uniformly and en masse, like an adulterated oil/fuel supply, it does seem to point to a simple, unprecedented quality issue.

In other news, a video dated from 11/27/22 emerged of Ukraine’s presidential advisor Podolyak promising to be in ‘liberated’ Crimea in exactly six months. That’s right, he expected to greet the beaming hosts from a beach in Yalta on May 27, 2023, after the peninsula has been gloriously liberated by the heroic AFU.

November 27, 2022. Podolyak promised to expel the last Russian from Crimea till May 27 and personally come to Yalta: “In six months, I will specially go to the embankment in Yalta. I have a favorite place there. And I will definitely turn on the phone there, and we will talk about what Crimea will be like. And at this time, there will be no Russians there."

This now joins the wall of shame next to many other of Ukraine’s risible prognostications.

UK MOD complained that advanced Russian EW jamming has spoofed ship traffic data in the Black Sea, creating a giant Z symbol on the global open-source tracking map:

A few last bits of housekeeping.

Firstly, as most have seen by now, Zaluzhny did in fact reappear with a new video days ago, which had a verbal timestamp and so it seems we’ve all been had and the Zaluzhny disappearance was in fact a joke, psyop, or something else. With that said, some persist in theories that the video still may be fake, or that not all is as it seems. For instance, Zaluzhny was known to have blue eyes and some note that in the new ‘reappearance’ video he clearly appears to have brown eyes.

 

Personally, I don’t put too much stock in that because eye color is known to be highly elusive in different lighting and photographic conditions. For instance, it’s well known that a person’s eye color often resembles the shirt they’re wearing because the reflected light gets picked up by the eyes. Note on the left photo the ‘brown’ eyes are in fact a sort of hazel similar to his shirt. And in the older photo, his blue eyes again are the same color as the shirt.

Without wasting more time on this psyop, all I’ll say is that it’s possible he did suffer some undisclosed injury which took him out of action for a while (after all, he did seem slumped/slouched and more haggard and drained looking than usual), but the ‘telephone game’ of propaganda greatly distorted the type of injury. Maybe we’ll find the truth eventually, but for now it’s not really worth wasting more time on.

As a last news item, events in Serbia-Kosovo are kicking off just in time for NATO’s historic presence in Romania during the coming exercises in June billed ‘the largest ever’, and Ukraine’s escalating provocations. One can only assume these events are tied together, and that the U.S. is igniting the region to further imbalance Russia on the eve of the most pivotal point of the war.

As of now, however, Serbian civilians have taken to the streets and mopped the floor with NATO KFOR forces (the Serbs' fighting spirit is conceded even by Germany's state news channel, DW):

May 30, 2023 #Kosovo #Serbia #NATO

NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR clashed with protesters on Monday in northern Kosovo, where the Serb minority is protesting ethnic Albanian mayors taking office in Serb-majority areas. The Serb communities had boycotted the election that led to new mayors being installed.

As a final note, Poroshenko once gave a notoriously bombastic political speech where he threatened the children and civilians of Donbass with the promise that Ukrainian children will go to school, while those from Donbass will be sitting in basements and shelters:

"We will have a job - they don't. We will have pensions - they don't. We will have the support of people - children and pensioners - but they don't. Our children will go to schools and kindergartens, and they will sit in their basements. Because they don't know how to do anything! That's how, that's how we will win this war," Poroshenko said about the residents of Donbass in 2014.

Now, it seems that boomerang of fate and karma has come around full circle for poor Porky. Last night, he found himself sitting in one of those very bomb shelters he promised for Donbas children.

As well as the rest of Kiev:

Kievans huddling in the Metro for refuge against Russian missiles.

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And as of this writing, there’s a new ongoing very large attack happening both on Kiev and the rest of Ukraine, so we’ll check back on Porky and the situation next time.

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