Friday, September 23
Mobilization has turned Russia into chaos. Russia unofficially seeks to draft 1+ million
🇺🇦 All HIMARS are still active and accounted for
🇺🇦 Armenia, Vietnam and Kazakhstan suspend use of Russian Mir cards.
🇺🇦 Reports of Russians selling their equipment to Ukraine and making more in a day than they’ll make in a year. Single source, no confirmation.
🇺🇦 Ukrainians are voting on a referendum to annex Ukrainian territories to Russia. Russians are bringing ballots to people’s homes, and forcing them at gun point to vote in favor for annexation.
ℹ️ Mobilization
🇺🇦 The classified seventh paragraph of Putin's decree on mobilization, intended states that up to one million people can be drafted into the army. This is according to Russian media Novaya Gazeta citing unnamed sources in the Kremlin.
🇺🇦 Russian support for the war came in large part from the lack of participation, especially from the connected, the elites, Muscovites, and ethnic Russians.
🇺🇦 Protests have erupted in 38 cities. (Time stamp: 12:43 EST, Sept 22)
🇺🇦 1,386 people have been arrested (Time stamp: 12:43 EST, Sept 22)
🇺🇦 Fighting-age men are frantically attempting to flee the country.
🇺🇦 Huge car lines have formed at Finland, Georgia, and Mongolia as fight-age men flee Russia. The head of the Finnish border guard’s international affairs stated that 4,824 Russians arrived on Wednesday alone.
🇺🇦 Some men have been hauled out of bed in the middle of night and told they have four hours to pack and obey the mobilization order.
🇺🇦 In Luchegorsk, men who refused to open doors at night were handed summonses when they arrived to work in the morning.
🇺🇦 …there are a lot of individual stories of people attempting to escape the draft.
🇺🇦 This exacerbates Russia’s demographics problem quite a bit
🇺🇦 Men seeking to leave via plane or car are being filtered to see if they are liable to be mobilized.
🇺🇦 One way flights out of Russia are fully booked
🇺🇦 A lot of the above stories are hitting the news desk so fast that I am not able to find secondary sourcing, and just have to rely on the credibility of the news outlets.
🇺🇦 Unverified, but it seems that men with more than 3 children aren’t being drafted (this makes sense as Russia has a big demographics problem, and Putin knows this). Because of this, there was at least one anecdotal story about how a single mother of 5 is suddenly very popular and receiving marriage proposals.
🇺🇦 Germany is preparing to take in Russian deserters
🇺🇦 List of 305,925 names comprising the 1st of presumably 3 waves of Putin's draft has been leaked.
🇺🇦 The above provides further evidence that that 1 million people are intended for the draft, not 300,000.
🇺🇦 Viral video making the rounds: During the anti-war protests, three young Russian men come out to support Putin's mobilization and to shout at people protesting the war…a few minutes later, authorities drafted them on the spot and purp-walked them away.
🇺🇦 Russian student: The war in Ukraine finally feels real. “[For] seven months, this war was only on our TV, and it [didn't feel] like it was really a war. But yesterday, I felt that it's really about my family, it's really about my country, my friends, and that everybody can suffer from it.”…”But now, for people, it's a real war because they need to send the members of their family to die there. “…”And I can see that a lot of people are changing their opinion on this issue. And now, of course, they are against [it].”
🇺🇦 Russia is mobilizing people who manufacture their weapons. This is insanity. Employees at the Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Center in Moscow, which produces rockets, missiles, and ICBMs, are getting conscripted.
🇺🇦 Reports of new military conscripts getting drunk and milling about in civilian clothes outside of their busses asking where they’re going. "What are we going for? Where are going? Fuck knows!"
🇺🇦 Edit: I’m seeing more and more videos of drunken mobilization
🇺🇦 Protesters in Moscow are being drafted upon arrest.
🇺🇦 Five military enlistment offices have been set on fire
🇺🇦 There was a molotov cocktail attack on the government administration in Kamyshin, Russia
🇺🇦 Conscripts will receive 2 weeks of training
🇺🇦 Chechnya is refusing to mobilize
🇺🇦 Traffic checkpoints in Russia are manned by military commissars. They are taking eligible Russians into custody for mobilization.
ℹ️ Operations:
🇺🇦 Ukraine has slowed the counter offensive…but not because of failure, but because of overwhelming success. UA needs logistics to catch up.
🇺🇦 Weather is affecting the front. Rain, snow, and cool temps.
🇺🇦 Putin is giving directions directly to generals in the field. This is coming from US intel.
🇺🇦 Ukraine reportedly broke Russian lines east of Oskil River
ℹ️ Azov:
🇺🇦 I posted this last time, but just to highlight it, many of the Azovstal defenders are safe in Turkish custody. This happened as a result of the Kharkiv counter offensive.
🇺🇦 In the above prisoner swap, Russia received Viktor Medvedchuk in exchange for 215 Ukrainian POWs.
🇺🇦 Putin’s ultranationalists are really upset by the above. They hate the Azovstal defenders, and they hate Medvedchuk even more
📢 Countries apply to be in NATO. NATO is a defense alliance that has never, and does not, consider offensive operations. Saying NATO is encroaching on Russia is Kremlin messaging. Russia has three primary propaganda efforts directed at the West, and that’s the first.
📢 Yes, Ukraine has a nazi problem, but it’s a very small percentage of the country, and not representative of the whole. Using a small group to smear the entire group is called “guilt by association.” Russia has three primary propaganda efforts directed at the West, and that’s the second.
📢 If you ever hear anyone say “What about this thing America did…” in an effort to redirect attention away from Ukraine and onto the west, that is called “Competitive victimhood” and the associated meme is *always* created by Russian-backed media. Russia has three primary propaganda efforts directed at the West, and that’s the third.
⚠️ I have stopped daily posts (although I constantly regret it). I compile a lot of this over time, so some of the bullet points may be several days stale
⚠️ Sorry about the typos or awkward sentences!!!! This is the inevitable result of putting out a finalized research product once every 24 hours, with no staff. If anyone feels like giving me staff, we can polish this b right up!
⚠️ I got lazy with my citations and I apologize. My top sources are: Current and former military planners, singularly-focused pundits, and all manner of vetted open-source intelligence. Top cited open source pundits and sources include: CP Scott, Institute for the Study of War, Kyiv Independent, and mainstream news with high levels of journalistic integrity and track records. Sadly I can’t source private individuals, of course.
⚠️ Speaking of sources, thanks to all of you who have forwarded me tips or given me data from the front line. You’re the private individuals I wish I could source publicly
⚠️ Though my awesome employer taught me everything I know about OSINT, these posts are not affiliated with my employer, nor done during my employer’s time. Every item I report is from my own research, my own opinion, and written during my own time.
⚠️ Note: War happens fast and even high fidelity news needs a ton of corrections after the dust settles.
🇺🇦 Sorry to my Substack readers who get this weird “ua” symbol instead of a flag emoji!
🇷🇺 I hope Russians rebel and achieve peace, self-government, and freedom