Weekly megathread for news/updates/discussion of Russian invasion of Ukraine - August 24

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/08/23/ukraine-just-blew-up-russias-main-missile-base-in-occupied-crimea/?sh=7d317b9b6dd8

Ukraine Just Blew Up Russia’s Main Missile Base In Occupied Crimea

An “S-400 surface-to-air missile battery, a battery armed with Bastion anti-ship cruise missiles and a suite of radars including a Podlet K1 and potentially others” was destroyed in Crimea.

Spectacular video of the explosion on that page as well.

All the Evidence Points To Kyiv (Der Spiegel)

According to the findings of the investigation thus far, a commando of divers and explosives specialists chartered the Andromeda almost exactly one year ago and sailed unnoticed from Warnemünde in northern Germany across the Baltic Sea before, on September 26, 2022, blowing holes in three pipes belonging to the natural gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. It was a catastrophic assault on energy supplies, a singular act of sabotage – an attack on Germany.

[E]ven though countless criminal investigators, intelligence agents and prosecutors from a dozen countries have been searching for those behind the act – it has not yet been determined who did it. Or why. The findings of the investigation thus far, much of them coming from German officials, are strictly confidential.

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But there are leads. DER SPIEGEL, together with German public broadcaster ZDF, assembled a team of more than two dozen journalists to track them down over a period of six months. Their reporting took them around the globe: from the Republic of Moldova to the United States; from Stockholm via Kyiv and Prague to Romania and France. Much of the information comes from sources who cannot be named. It comes from intelligence agencies, investigators, high ranking officials and politicians. And it comes from people who, in one way or another, are directly linked to suspects.

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That consensus in itself is striking, say others – particularly politicians who believe the attack from the Andromeda may have been a "false flag" operation – an attack intentionally made to look as though it was perpetrated by someone else. All the leads point all-too-obviously towards Kyiv, they say, the clues and evidence seem too perfect to be true. The Americans, the Poles and, especially, the Russians, they say, all had much stronger motives to destroy the pipeline than the Ukrainians.

Still others believe that too many inconsistencies remain. Why did the perpetrators use a chartered sailboat for the operation instead of a military vessel? Why wasn't the Andromeda simply scuttled afterwards? How were two or three divers on their own able to blow up pipelines located at a depth of around 80 meters (260 feet) beneath the waves?

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On September 6, according to reporting by DER SPIEGEL and ZDF, a sailing crew checked in at the Mola shack in the early afternoon to take out the Andromeda. The charter fee had apparently been paid by a Warsaw travel agency called Feeria Lwowa, a company with no website or telephone number.

According to the Polish commercial registry, the company is headed by a 54-year-old woman named Nataliia A., who lives in Kyiv. She completed a course of study in early childhood education, but has no recognizable experience in the tourism industry. She has a Ukrainian mobile phone number. If you call it, a woman answers – before immediately hanging up once you identify yourself as a journalist. A few days later, a Ukrainian "police officer" called back, threatening the reporter with charges of "stalking," citing a rather flimsy justification. Feeria Lwowa's address in Warsaw likewise leads nowhere. There is no office and there are no local employees. It looks as though it is a shell company.

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But the data from his passport, officials believe, seems to have been used to produce another document, a falsified passport that was then used to charter the Andromeda. Complete with a new photo. The photo, though, is not of Ştefan Marcu, the 60-year-old from Moldova, but of a young man in his mid-20s with a penetrating gaze and military haircut. The man in the photo is very likely Valeri K. from the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. He apparently serves in the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian army.

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A 2021 survey among supporters of all political parties found that an average of 75 percent of Germans were in favor of Nord Stream 2.

Security policy experts and many of Germany's international allies, by contrast, were aghast. Nord Stream 1 had already tied Germany far too closely to Russia, they felt. And now Berlin wanted to import even more energy from Vladimir Putin's empire? The Americans, in particular, were vocal about their opposition to the project. Indeed, Washington thought Nord Stream 2 was so dangerous that it warned Germany that its completion would significantly harm U.S.-German relations.

Ukraine was also radically opposed to the new pipeline. Significant quantities of Russian natural gas flowed to Western Europe through overland pipelines across Ukrainian territory. A second pipeline beneath the Baltic would make parts of the Ukrainian pipeline network obsolete. Kyiv saw Nord Stream as a direct threat to the country.

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However you look at it, the operation could not have been performed by amateur divers – nor by hobby sailors. When the team of reporters in the Andromeda arrived at the site above where the explosions took place, a force 5 or 6 wind was blowing, it was raining, and the swells were significant. Standard Baltic Sea weather, in other words – in which it is difficult to keep a sailboat in one spot. According to weather data, mid-September 2022 was similar for several days, though it was calmer both before and afterward.

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The B pipe of Nord Stream 2, meanwhile, wasn't harmed at all – and could easily be put into use even today. But why did the perpetrators leave one of the four pipes undamaged? There are some indications that the saboteurs confused the A and B pipes of Nord Stream 2 in the darkness and unintentionally attacked the same pipe twice.

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The confidential dispatch sketched out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. The plan called for six commando soldiers from the Ukraine, concealed with fake identities, to charter a boat, dive down to the bottom of the Baltic Sea with specialized equipment and blow up the pipes. According to the information, the men were under the command of Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had apparently not been informed of the plan. The attack was apparently planned to take place during the NATO exercise Baltops on the Baltic Sea. The content of the secret dispatch was originally reported on by the Washington Post in early June.

The BND forwarded the warning to the Chancellery, but at German government headquarters, it was deemed irrelevant. After all, it only arrived at the Chancellery after the NATO maneuver had come to an end, and nothing had happened. That is why nobody sounded the alarm, says one of the few people who learned of the warning when it arrived. Most German security officials believed the information contained in the dispatch was inaccurate.

As a result, no protective measures were introduced, no further investigations were undertaken and no preparations were made to potentially prevent an attack at a later point in time. The Federal Police, the German Navy and the antiterrorism centers never even learned of the warning.

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The U.S., by contrast, apparently sprang into action in summer 2022, even if the Americans didn't initially trust the Netherlands' source. Washington carefully approached Kyiv with a clear message: Don't do it! Abort the operation! The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit and public broadcaster ARD were the first to report on Washington's warning to Kyiv. But the message from the American's apparently wasn't taken seriously. Perhaps Washington lacked a certain amount of credibility, particularly given how clear they had made it in the past that they were deeply opposed to the gas pipelines connecting Germany and Russia.

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The most striking thing about the younger Valeri K. is that he is a follower of the openly nationalist youth organization VGO Sokil. It offers young men training in shooting and diving.

His most recent active VK profile is under the name "Chechen from Dnipro," and it is linked to a telephone number. If you enter the number into an App like Getcontact, you can see the names under which the number is saved in other people's contact lists. Among the names for Valeri's number is: "K. 93rd Brigade."

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Officially, politicians and the Office of the Federal Prosecutor are still holding back with any conclusions. Currently, it is not possible to say "this was state-controlled by Ukraine," Federal Prosecutor Otte says. "As far as that is concerned, the investigation is ongoing, much of it still undercover."

Behind the scenes, though, you get clearer statements. Investigators from the BKA, the Federal Police and the Office of the Federal Prosecutor have few remaining doubts that a Ukrainian commando was responsible for blowing up the pipelines. A striking number of clues point to Ukraine, they say. They start with Valeri K., IP addresses of mails and phone calls, location data and numerous other, even clearer clues that have been kept secret so far. One top official says that far more is known than has been stated publicly. According to DER SPIEGEL's sources, investigators are certain that the saboteurs were in Ukraine before and after the attack. Indeed, the overall picture formed by the puzzles pieces of technical information has grown quite clear.

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But crucial questions remain unanswered. From how high up was the attack ordered and who knew about it? Was it an intelligence operation that the political leadership in Kyiv learned about only later? Or was it the product of a commando unit acting on its own? Or was it a military operation in which the Ukrainian General Staff was involved? Intelligence experts and security policy experts, however, consider it unlikely that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy was in on it: In cases of sabotage, the political leadership is often deliberately kept in the dark so that they can plausibly deny any knowledge later on.

Geopolitics Decanted: What the Death of Prigozhin Means for Wagner, Russia and Ukraine

Dmitri Alperovitch talks to Russian military analyst Rob Lee and Wagner Group expert Jack Margolin about the implications of reports of Prigozhin's fiery death in a plane crash in Russia. Where does Wagner go from here? What happens to Russian ambitions in Africa? Does this event help restore Surovikin, Russia's most competent commander of this war, back to command one day? And what impact this might have on the future of the war?

Ukrainian commander hails breakthrough in south

A Washington-based think tank has said that Ukrainian forces were pushing forward in Zaporizhia after taking the village of Robotyne earlier this week.

President Putin last night ordered Wagner fighters to sign an oath of allegiance to the Russian state.