So for weeks now we've been getting told by the commentariat at large that the Ukrainians have been launching a big and fairly successful counterattack in West Zaporozhie. Their sources? Vibes and Ukrainian propaganda on Telegram.
Today their hype video dropped. And, uh...
Apparently this "grand counterattack," which was being hyped up as having secured dozens of square kilometers and several villages and towns from the Russians by war mappers on all sides, consisted of two AFU vehicles getting into the western dacha district of Stepnogorsk during very poor visibility conditions sometime in the March-April timeframe and dismounting about a squad of infantry (fig. 1). These infantry have never been heard from since, but if you look at Sentinel imagery of Stepnogorsk during that timeframe (fig. 3; imagery from May 12th, anomaly highlighted) there appears to be a large bomb crater around where they were geolocated in town (fig. 2). You can connect the dots on that one yourself.
It's rather noteworthy that the Ukrainians, in a bizarre OPSEC measure considering this was a video they themselves decided to release to the public, took the measure of HEAVILY blurring most of the scenery visible in this video. This may have been an effort to keep people from drawing the exact same conclusions as I did, or perhaps simply an attempt to present their operation as being more successful than it actually was. In any event my old heuristic - Armchair's Second Law, I guess - that the Ukrainians always show the best footage they have and then cut it to make themselves look as good as possible, seems to be a good guide here.
Now the absurd thing about this entire affair is that the war mappers (including Russian ones like DivGen!) handed this entire area over to the AFU a while ago and with no apparent critical examination of the evidence they had - which at that point consisted largely of Ukrainians going "trust me bro" on Telegram. Meanwhile General Gerasimov was accused by these same people of lying to the public about the status of Borovaya until the Russian Army produced video showing Russian troops operating in town - at which point the obviously enraged mappers drew the tiniest, most conservative little control zones around the exact geolocations they could pull off a similarly weeks-old video of Russian troops. Obviously that's not the actual front line trace and everyone knows it, but apparently the Russians have to have a Victory Day parade and establish a bus route to get some red on the map.
I want to underline this here. There is exactly as much hard evidence right now that the Russians control Borovaya as there is for the Ukrainians controlling Stepnogorsk - one video of an infantry detachment in the general urban area, sometime in March-April when the snow had melted but the leaves were still off the trees - but one map update is "realistic analysis" and one is "insane cope." And this, by the way, is not how pro-Ukrainian mappers are behaving - it's how allegedly pro-Russian ones are. DivGen hasn't even marked up Borovaya yet, they're apparently too busy hallucinating Ukrainian attacks in Kupyansk. Rybar has the AFU south of Stepnogorsk and attacking Kamenskoe!
I am increasingly sick and tired of these people.
Apparently this "grand counterattack," which was being hyped up as having secured dozens of square kilometers and several villages and towns from the Russians by war mappers on all sides, consisted of two AFU vehicles getting into the western dacha district of Stepnogorsk during very poor visibility conditions sometime in the March-April timeframe and dismounting about a squad of infantry (fig. 1). These infantry have never been heard from since, but if you look at Sentinel imagery of Stepnogorsk during that timeframe (fig. 3; imagery from May 12th, anomaly highlighted) there appears to be a large bomb crater around where they were geolocated in town (fig. 2). You can connect the dots on that one yourself.
It's rather noteworthy that the Ukrainians, in a bizarre OPSEC measure considering this was a video they themselves decided to release to the public, took the measure of HEAVILY blurring most of the scenery visible in this video. This may have been an effort to keep people from drawing the exact same conclusions as I did, or perhaps simply an attempt to present their operation as being more successful than it actually was. In any event my old heuristic - Armchair's Second Law, I guess - that the Ukrainians always show the best footage they have and then cut it to make themselves look as good as possible, seems to be a good guide here.
Now the absurd thing about this entire affair is that the war mappers (including Russian ones like DivGen!) handed this entire area over to the AFU a while ago and with no apparent critical examination of the evidence they had - which at that point consisted largely of Ukrainians going "trust me bro" on Telegram. Meanwhile General Gerasimov was accused by these same people of lying to the public about the status of Borovaya until the Russian Army produced video showing Russian troops operating in town - at which point the obviously enraged mappers drew the tiniest, most conservative little control zones around the exact geolocations they could pull off a similarly weeks-old video of Russian troops. Obviously that's not the actual front line trace and everyone knows it, but apparently the Russians have to have a Victory Day parade and establish a bus route to get some red on the map.
I want to underline this here. There is exactly as much hard evidence right now that the Russians control Borovaya as there is for the Ukrainians controlling Stepnogorsk - one video of an infantry detachment in the general urban area, sometime in March-April when the snow had melted but the leaves were still off the trees - but one map update is "realistic analysis" and one is "insane cope." And this, by the way, is not how pro-Ukrainian mappers are behaving - it's how allegedly pro-Russian ones are. DivGen hasn't even marked up Borovaya yet, they're apparently too busy hallucinating Ukrainian attacks in Kupyansk. Rybar has the AFU south of Stepnogorsk and attacking Kamenskoe!
I am increasingly sick and tired of these people.The media could not be played.
