Another refinery/storage boom this morning in Omsk.
The issue that "caused" the weaknesses in the frontline, allowing the Russians to make a breakthrough this week has been addressed. The Ukraininas successfully played Whack a Mole.
The US equipment started rolling into Ukraine from early yesterday.... the first 60 US "advisors" have arrived. Taken alongside some AD systems arriving thanks to France, Holland, Germany and Greece ... on top of the US Patriots ... Ukraine should have much more effective Air Defence within days. There's new stuff guarding Odesa now (which is a relief to me). The new gear and consumables will be on the front "in days", I'm told.
Now for some Russian weirdness. Shoigu's right hand man and future son-in-law arrested:
Thoughts from our man
"In short, the deputy Prime Minister & Deputy Defence Minister of Russia, Timur Ivanov have been arrested together with his righthand man Sergei Borodin.
I will put in a link at the end that gives a pretty good runup of these two gentlemen.
The initial claim was that they had been arrested on corruption charges, and no clue was giving about what the arresting body was.
I already at that point lifted my eyebrows, people that high are just not arrested for those things, it is sort of expected of them to steal as much tosh as they can grab, as long as they share the spoils with the boss (Shoigu) they are supposed to be safe.
This sort of made me think that this a play against Shoigu to weaken, or remove him outright.
I especially thought this to be likely since Ivanov is divorced and it is not a secret that he and Ksenia Shoigu (Soyghurts daughter) are a couple, they are even engaged.
And later today the bomb exploded, he had been arrested on charges of treason by the DVKR FSB.
This is the Counter-espionage and Counter-intelligence Directorate of the FSB.
Court Politics
Here we need to detour into the intricacy of Kremlin Court Politics.
Yuriev, the head of the DVKR could have arrested Borodin after getting sign-off from the head of FSB Bortnikov.
He could not arrest a deputy prime minister and the righthand man of Shoigu even with Bortnikov's signature on the arrest warrant.
At this point Shoigu went ballistic and called and yelled at Yuriev, who told him to b***r off.
There's like 5 steps on the power ladder between those two, so he must have felt very sure that nothing would fall down on him.
Remember that Shoigu is number in the top five in Russia.
To arrest Timur Ivanov Yuriev have had to go to Bortnikov, who then would have had to go to Patrushev for a signature.
And even then it would have been those two that was first on Shoigu's speed dial to complain too.
It sort of Implies that neither Patrushev, nor Bortnikov, even deigned to pick up the phone, and that they had instructed Yuriev to tell Shoigu to put a sock in it.
This implies several things.
One of them is that they are either cutting into Shoigu to weaken him, or this is the first step in arresting him.
I am certain that when the thugs of the DVKR are done with Ivanov and Borodin in the cells under Lefortovo, that they will be more than willing to sing like birds in regards of true and false things that Shoigu has done.
If now that is the game.
Since things so far have been done in the open(ish), so it sort of implies that Shoigu might be set up as the fall guy.
Look how a chain of traitors have led the army, and destroyed the Russian army, sort of thing.
If there is a real Putin still around it implies that he knew about it, and Peskov stated that he had been made aware of the case by Bortnikov.
How much now that is worth as a source.
It might also push towards a putch of sorts as the major players try to save themselves firstly, and Russia secondly.
As things go, this is the highest Game played in Russia since the Soviet days.
I am pretty convinced that this is highly important.
I am also not entirely sure what it is about yet.
Oh, forgot... Neither Ivanov, nor Borodin, are known sources to a Western intelligence service.
That does not exclude entirely that they may have been that, or been sources to China.
If the "traitor" part is even remotely true I would say that China would be the more likely option.
But, I suspect that the treason charges are just so much bullhork and a convenient path to take to remove Shoigu.
We shall soon see I think.".