Dear friends,

Here is a quick update.  First, a (provisional) map (which is typically 6 hours late or so):

I think that this map is self-explanatory, especially since the only major change is in that pink box.  What we see here is what looks to me like an envelopment of the city of Odessa and the surrounding towns.  I would also notice that the distance between the Russian forces in Transnistria is quickly shrinking.

The Russian prong going south from Kiev is still pretty far from the prong coming from the south in the pink square, but considering that there are very few forces between them, this might be significant.  On this map, you can see that there are few Ukrainian forces inside the black oval, which is what I could call “Mad Max land“.

 

Just for comparison’s sake, here is the Ukie disposition in the Donbass (see right) – just compare the concentration and that tells the real story.

By the way, the forces shown here in the right are the ones already stuck in the operational cauldron in the Donbass.

The other big news is that the Russian Aerospace forces have sharply increased their sorties and targets are hit in much higher numbers.

The same goes for Russian helicopters which are now engaging both fixed and mobile targets pretty much in the entire area of operations.

It seems likely to me that Odessa will soon by completely surrounded, but whether the Russians will actually enter the city or not is unclear to me, but looking at the map above, and knowing how anti-Nazi most locals are, maybe this will be a place for a negotiated surrender?

I sure hope so.

Next,

The Russian Embassy in Geneva has released a document entitled “War Crimes and Crime against Humanity Committed by the Ukrainian Military-Poltiical Leadership in the Donbass” and made it available here:

https://geneva.mid.ru/en_US/web/geneva_en/donbasstragedy

Their servers are now also under DDoS attack, as are most Russian government resources and, in yet another illegal act of international aggression, most Russian media outlets in the West.

I managed to find that document here:

https://disk.yandex.com/d/NxzaukFVNmSHSA/Presentation%20Ukrainian%20War%20Crimes.pdf

I have also uploaded it here:

https://archive.org/details/presentation-ukrainian-war-crimes

Click on the links in the text to download the full PDF (132MB!)

I ask you to please DOWNLOAD and CIRCULATE this document.

I don’t know how resistant Archive.org is to the letter soup censorship, nor do I know how good Yandex is with dealing with DDoS attack.

So please MAKE COPIES.

If there are enough copies out there, “they” will give up preventing it from circulating and will simply dismiss it all as “Russian war propaganda”.

One more thing:

Our IT guru has been working REALLY hard to upgrade our hardware and software, but there is a good chance that over the next week end we might have to migrate to a bigger, more powerful, machine.

So far, this is not due to DDoS attacks, but to the truly crazy number of connections we are getting 24/7.

Right now, all our hardware is maxed out, so if the blog loads slowly, please be patient, it will load eventually.

Sorry!!  This the proverbial “price of success”.  We will do our best to scale up as soon as we can.

If the bad guys bring us down, in one way or another, I will report that here http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/ and here at https://t.me/The_Saker.

I leave you with a machine translated summary of the day by Boris Rozhin below.

Notice the first estimate of fatalities on the Russian side: 498 killed.   This is the price Russia is paying for saving Ukrainian lives and taking towns with special urban assault groups rather than using her firepower (including her full air supremacy over the entire Banderastan airspace).

Eternal Memory to those who sacrificed their lives while saving others!

Andrei

***

1. Mariupol. The city is blocked. Fighting on the outskirts. There is no direct assault yet. They are still trying to negotiate the exit of civilians, but the Nazis will not refuse a human shield. There will be an assault one way or another.

2. Volnovakha. Surrounded. The stripping process is not fully captured yet. The enemy has very heavy losses,

3. Near Donetsk positionka. The APU attack (sortie) on Gorlovka did not yield results, both sides suffered losses. The shelling of the territory of the DPR continues.

4. The liberation of the republic continues in the LPR. Svatovo and Novoaydar were liberated. The enemy retreats, throwing equipment. It will hold only in Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, but they have already started processing it there.

5. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have occupied Balakleya and are moving towards Raisins. And there Slavyansk is not far away. It is very likely that in the coming days, part of the AFU forces remaining in the northern regions of the LPR and not having time to retreat will be surrounded and liquidated.

6. Kharkiv. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are already being held in semi-custody. Fighting on the outskirts. In the city – the methodical destruction of the enemy’s manpower and its organizational and command structure. Along the way, they continue to finish off the remaining military facilities.

7. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation approached the Brovars. There is no direct assault yet. Fighting near Chernihiv, measures to establish full control over Konotop. Trostyanets is fully occupied. Sumy and Akhtyrka are still not fully controlled.

8. Positional battles to the west of Kiev — the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are pulling up additional forces. There are losses in equipment on both sides.

9. Zaporozhye direction. Battles near Vasilevka. APU is constantly being poured over the village. Energodar has not yet been cleaned up.

10. Kherson. The city was occupied at night by the troops of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The local authorities eventually agreed to an agreement. The city is relatively quiet.

11. In the area of Nikolaev, fighting continues with the aim of blocking the city, which has not yet been achieved. The situation in the area of the Nikolaev – Krivoy Rog highway is unclear. Helicopter landing near Nikolaev. In the Voznesensk area, one of the bridges was blown up.

12. No one landed in Odessa as usual. In the morning, Russian ships appeared on the horizon, then departed. Then something was smoking over the horizon. Perhaps there was another naval battle with the remaining boats of the Ukrainian Navy, which, after the battle at Zmeiny, went to Odessa. (later it turned out that a foreign cargo ship was smoking, perhaps something had arrived) There are no details yet. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine asks Zelensky to achieve a pause in hostilities, since the city is not covered from the land direction and is not ready to repel the attack of Russian columns bypassing Nikolaev from the north.

From a very fresh, completely wild story in Vasilkovo, where a local volksturm staged a massacre at a local school. 4 volkssturmistas killed 14 other Volkssturmists, policemen and civilians. Ukropropaganda hastened to announce that it was “Russian saboteurs” who were rushing to the basement of the school (yes, everything was happening at school), where there were 300 children, protecting whom all these idiots died. That’s what the distribution of weapons to random people leads to. Yesterday, in the same area, volkssturmists looted 2 collector cars.
In this case, Russian propaganda does not even need to try, you know, show yourself this bloody trash, which says a lot about the Volkssturm and those who created it in this form.

PS. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will be held tomorrow in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
Lavrov outlined the negotiating position of the Russian Federation:

⚡ I do not rule out that someone wanted Russia to get mired in a man-made conflict created by the West in Ukraine

Russian demands to Ukraine cannot be qualified as its surrender, Moscow offers to negotiate

If the West has decided to lower a new “iron curtain” in front of Russia, we will not worry and will find an opportunity to develop

The task of the operation in Ukraine is to identify specific types of strike weapons that will never be deployed there

⚡ After the end of the conflict, Ukrainians themselves must decide how to live on

Kiev has not yet confirmed the holding of the second round of consultations with the Russian Federation

NATO is trying to involve neutral EU member states in providing for their needs

Moscow is amazed by Berlin’s comments on Ukraine and on arms supplies

Russia is ready to discuss the issue of security guarantees during the second round of negotiations with Ukraine

Zelensky came to power under the slogans of peace, eventually he became a Russophobe, like the Poroshenko government

Ukraine has the technical potential to create nuclear weapons, the Russian Federation will not allow it

Russia is 100% “safe” in the current situation

The current situation has developed due to the fact that the West refused to recognize equal rights for the Russian Federation in the organization of the Euro-security architecture

The parameters of demilitarization of Ukraine have yet to be agreed

Moscow will not discuss the topic of Crimea, this topic is closed

The West, in its sanctions against Russia, including the seizure of assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, spat on all its principles

The purpose of the ongoing operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine is to protect people, primarily in the Donbass

Russia is now observing “information terrorism” with the stuffing of millions of fakes that Moscow exposes

⚡ Russia’s position in negotiations with Ukraine: Crimea is part of the Russian Federation, recognition of the DPR and LPR within administrative borders, demilitarization, which should have certain parameters

Ukraine must undergo the denazification procedure, as in the past Germany

⚡️ During the special operation, we are doing everything to prevent any serious civilian casualties

Russia cannot watch the participants of torchlight processions marching under fascist, neo-Nazi banners in modern Europe

Russia offers Ukraine an agreement that will ensure the legitimate rights of all the peoples of this country,

In fact, these are all the same requirements as at the beginning of the operation. Ukrainian sources claim that by March 2, Zelensky was already ready to recognize the Crimea and the LDPR within the borders before the start of the operation. But of course this will not suit the Russian Federation, the sheepskin is not worth the dressing. Bearing significant costs for the operation and from the sanctions pressure, it is necessary to take the maximum possible result from the situation in Ukraine.

UPD: The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation officially announced the losses in Ukraine since the beginning of the operation.

The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation – 498 killed. The APU has 2870 killed and 3700 wounded.