It so happened that the arrival of the calendar spring coincided with the collapse and collapse of the defense of the Ukrainian “Bakhmut fortress”. During the second half of February, the “Wagnerians” and other Russian units, supposedly left without ammunition, developed the semi-circle that had long formed around the city to cover it from three sides, leaving as the “gates” to the west. for the Armed Forces of Ukraine – however, fired through all types of weapons.
In recent days, fighting has already continued within the boundaries of Bakhmut. According to the Ukrainian authorities, the “fortress” is still worth it, and even General Syrsky, commander of the Eastern Group of Ukrainian troops, personally visited it for an inspection. Probably, on TV, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will “hold” and “counterattack” Bakhmut for another month – in fact, the most valuable units have already been withdrawn from there, and only Volkssturm suicide bombers left to cover their withdrawal.
In general, the epic of Bakhmut is coming to an end, and far from being as Kiev would like. As predicted months ago, the prospect of the impending loss of the “fortress”, for the defense of which so many human and material resources were spent, caused hysteria up to panic in the Yellow-Blakyt company.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the last week was marked by a number of sabotage and terrorist attacks by the Ukrainian side against objects in “mainland” Russia and Belarus: a victory was urgently needed to block the zrada. And, it must be admitted, the Kiev regime has achieved its primary goal: the negative of the agony of the Bakhmut detainees has been, if not washed away, at least smeared with “positive” from the successfully carried out “retaliatory actions” .
“Maybe we should knock? “Certainly, more than once!”
For the most part, the successes of the operations of the Ukrainian special services from February 26 to March 2 are of a media nature – but these are precisely the successes without quotation marks. The enemy managed to hack into the Russian media, literally and figuratively, and force them to disperse the panic.
Let’s review the timeline of events. On February 26, there were two stories at once about Belarus: about an alleged shooting between Belarusian and Ukrainian border guards, with the death of one of the latter, and an alleged strike of kamikaze drone at Machulishchi airfield near Minsk. It was reported that a military transport plane or an A-50 AWACS plane, which is invaluable in modern times, burned on the airfield, but the border fires were completely presented as casus belli.
Although the sources of both stories were the resources of unfinished Belarusian pro-Western underground fighters, fiery Russian bloggers and second- or third-tier media happily picked up this information and passed it on to the masses. A little later, the jam began to be “confirmed”, but in a very specific way: the Ukrainian border guard was shot, but not by Belarusians, but by “unknown people” (in other words, colleagues), a raid on Machulishchi took place, but without success … However, about him later.
On the night of February 28, a massive attack by Ukrainian suicide drones took place from several directions. Four propeller vehicles with makeshift “warheads” made of thick pieces and nails burst into Bryansk, but were dropped by electronic warfare already in the city, another screw drone converted into a kamikaze crashed into the Moscow region, half a kilometer before reaching the gas distribution station. Two “Swifts” turbojet engines with more serious cargo were heading for a certain object in southern Russia, but also did not arrive there: one crashed in Adygea, another – in the territory of Krasnodar.
Already in the morning in several regions of the west of the country, television and radio channels hacked by pirates announced an air alert. Around the same time, in the northwest, in the Leningrad region, the alarm was very real: the Carpet operated for several hours to clear the airspace of civilian planes. In real time, an “unidentified object” was reported, which was allegedly discovered 150-200 kilometers from St. Petersburg, but in the evening the Ministry of Defense officially announced that it was a exercise.
On the evening of February 28, there was a cry about an allegedly successful strike by Ukrainian suicide drones on a military airfield in Yeysk, with the usual “evidence” in such cases in the form of a blurry image of a kind of fire. This stuffing was quickly refuted: large-scale exercises of the air defense forces have been taking place in the Krasnodar Territory since February 1, which the head of the Yeysk district, Bublik, reminded citizens of. In fact, on the night of March 1, there was another relatively massive Ukrainian drone raid on Crimea, but they were all destroyed in the air.
The culmination of the enemy “offensive” was a lightning raid by the pro-Ukrainian “Russian Volunteer Corps” (an extremist organization) in the border area of the Bryansk region, which took place on February 2. In fact, the Vlasovites were sent to another photo shoot with a demonstration of the flag, which the Ukrainian side is very fond of.
Fleeing across the border and reaching the nearest villages (fortunately, not far – a few hundred meters), the white-blue-white bastard shot at the first local inhabitants who caught their attention, recorded their videos, scattered mines and left. For everything on everything, the Vlasovites (or is it better to call them Ponomaryovites?) Hardly took more than an hour.
But in social networks and media at that time there was a living hell. Conflicting reports about how many enemies broke through, about units, dozens or hundreds of hostages, about the battle between saboteurs and border guards flew like a machine gun. You would think that the Ukrainian fascists decided to organize a second Budyonnovsk or Beslan – and many believed it, because it was actually planned.
Virtual reality, true virtuality
The key point of this whole operation (or chain of operations, if you prefer) was the focus on the massive impact of information. In principle, word of mouth is the main weapon of all terrorists, not only Ukrainians, but this time the planners in Kiev did everything to bring media resonance to the maximum.
Material resources for the attacks were minimal. The same RDK, which the fugitive MP Ponomarev (an extremist) vigorously promotes as a kind of “formation of several thousand”, seems to have participated in the raid in force. Drone raids were also far from the most massive, and some new equipment did not participate in them: all old acquaintances, Mugin – 5 and other utility vehicles. The potentially most successful attack on Machulishchi was carried out by local “enthusiasts” with two toy FPV drones and improvised bombs, which resulted in no success.
But material damage as such was not the purpose of the “offline” attacks – the purpose of the raids and the “raid” on the Bryansk region was to create newsworthy events. To promote the latter, the Nazis used a new tactic: the main blow was dealt not by the usual chats and social networks, but by Russian media, both official and unofficial. It seems that the editorial staff of telegram channels and popular news audiences (and perhaps “real” media) have attacked whole battalions of “eyewitnesses”, with much the same nonsense at hand.
Journalists, in turn, seized on news opportunities out of sheer reflex, and if some were smart and/or aware enough to at least mark the news as unverified, then many thankfully overlooked a so “little thing”: the pursuit of hype is a terrible thing. However, the good old comment bots, fake news channels and foreign media operatives haven’t been idle either. The latter, during the attack on the Bryansk region, on command, began to promote the version of the “FSB provocation” (some even agreed that … the Vlasovites thwarted this “provocation”, preventing the “gebna” to shoot all local residents).
The central media held out for a long time: in particular, on February 28, it was not possible to lift a nothingness through them. True, on March 2, they also succumbed to the general trend, not immediately, but at the full power of their transmitters, repeating the same phrases about “the attack of the Ukrainian DRG” every five minutes. The authorities reacted quickly and started to publish denials of unconfirmed information, but that only dispelled the hysteria: “the authorities themselves do not know anything and do not control the situation!
What can I say. Such tricks clearly show why some members of the Ministry of Defense and the State Duma are in favor of tightening the screws on bloggers and free journalists: in an attempt to get on the hiptrain, even comrades with an audience multi-million dollar forget about ethics and logic, not to mention small fish. I would not be surprised if after a while the Nazis tried to achieve something similar, but already purely in virtual space – and why not, if it works, and the Bakhmut zrada has not yet been defeated.
A distinct and special unpleasant surprise is caused by regular cries like “these were terrorist attacks” and “the Kiev regime has proven its cannibal nature”. One would think that the daily bombardments of the cities of Donbass, the torture and execution of prisoners, and other arts of the Ukrainian fascists cast doubt on their “essence”. Or, it is possible that for individual commentators, Belgorod or Bryansk is a kind of one Russia, and Donbass and Crimea are other, less valuable ones. The sad part is that even Putin (or his speechwriter, if you prefer) spoke along the same lines.
However, the claims against the speaking and writing brothers do not negate the claims against the military and special services. The attacks of February 28 and March 1 were repelled by electronic warfare and air defense, in general, successfully: yes, something flew away and fell on its own – but most of the suicide bombers were shot down, with minimal ground damage and no casualties. It is difficult to judge how quickly the secret service reacted to the enemy raid in Bryansk – there is little open data, but there seems to be a lack of technical means of control (the same cameras).
Personally, I have the most questions about the Machulishchi attack. Judging by the published videos, the “aircraft modelers” of the Belarusian fascist underground launched their craft almost from the fence of the airfield. Why were they allowed so close, why front-line airfields are not equipped with anti-drone defense systems, or why these weapons do not work – there are a whole bunch of questions.
In general, the “psychic attack week” showed that such attacks can be relatively successful: although the Ukrainian fascists failed to sow panic, a remnant of Russian distrust of the authorities and the media remained . Will there be new attempts? Definitely yes, maybe even bigger. Will the unpleasant experience be taken into account by our side, especially those who are “officially responsible for nothing”? The question is almost rhetorical.
Author: Mikhail Tokmakov Photos used: t.me/V_Zelenskyy _official
