Yeah, I doubt you will find much on them. I suspect neither the Ukrainians nor the Legion want them to be closely looked at, for various reasons (e.g. the Legion does not want retaliation, the Ukranians don't want to show how much support they are giving them).
Could these mostly be full on Ukrainian loyalist who happen to have Russian passports? Certainly. Its that technically "illegal" (whatever that means in this situation), probably not. Are there any, actual, Russian freedom fighters in there? I would suspect yes. Do they actual expect to start a revolution in Russia? They might, but I suspect the Ukrainians are more realistic.
It's all very foggy...
Advan046 said:
In reply to aircooled :
Not a concrete guy but a Mechanical Engineer.
My curiosity is increased (not just by the definite enhancement or alteration to the second photo) due to what appears to be fluid staining originating from cracks. Efflorescence or staining like that isn't instantly created.
When was it assumed to have started cracking?
Was there a massive storm or high water? Is roadway run off flowing down columns?
I would say that it's very recent. The amount of staining is minor and looks to be primarily water. If they were older, you'd get rust stains from the rebar, dirt and what not.
Advan046 said:
So I actually returned to this thread to see what the hive thought about the growing volume of Ukraine disillusionment stories. At least I have noticed an uptick of more negative clickbait towards Ukraine when I never really got much negative clickbait against Russia....
Is this a subtle campaign or just actual turn of public opinion. Maybe it is just my feed. But I actually never search about the war just visit my 10 different news sites.
Yeah, this is VERY hard to know. Some of this of course is intertwined with US politics, and that of course is very active in that space.
I can say, as I have noted before, I definitely noted a few suspiciously popular social media threads (Reddit) that had obvious pro-Russian leanings (e.g. how Russia really won WWII ) right before the invasion, and we are right before a Ukrainian offensive.
I have not noticed that myself, but it is an eventuality, that at least US public support will likely wain going into the future if it is seen as a huge money pit accomplishing nothing (the US has a LOT of experiance in that unfortunatly).
As also noted many times. The results of whatever offensive the Ukrainians can accomplish, will VERY much influence further support / encouragement to come to some sort of treaty / agreement (assuming Russia has any interest of course).
Stampie said:
In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Sorry to tell you but ain't nobody in Congress that cares about you.
That's obvious. They don't care about you either or anyones kids. That's an actual problem worthy of discussion.
Truth matters, but in a dynamic situation, the truth can only be determined by the facts known. One must be willing to change their view of the truth when facts and evidence support a new version of the truth.
Aircooled and others present news articles and information they have access to. One can read these articles and is free to believe them or not believe them. If someone has data to present a different point of view, they are welcome to present them. This is the point of having a discussion: to debate evidence.
But to question evidence solely on the stance of not wanting to believe it without presenting contrary evidence is not a discussion nor a debate.
Looks like these Freedom Legion guys have tanks (tank?) and even at least one helicopter(!):
Note the super low altitude of the helicopter. This is likely a very active SAM area! (and obviously... these are not necessarily real / current pics...)
Also of note, that tank looks a bit like a Leopard (they have a very similar wheel layout to Russian tanks), but that would be VERY unlikely, I suspect it's just a T72 with some extra armor / reactive armor at the front of the turret. Turret looks to small anyway.
The fact that this little band of guys calling themselves the Freedom Legion weren't summarily crushed within a matter of hours if not days says a lot about the weakness of the Russian military right now.
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:
The fact that this little band of guys calling themselves the Freedom Legion weren't summarily crushed within a matter of hours if not days says a lot about the weakness of the Russian military right now.
You can say that again.
They seem to be able to stomp out unarmed protestors in mere minutes. But the second that someone brought a gun to the gun fight, well... Let's just say I came here to post this:
It looks like there's an admin building on fire in Belgorod
https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1664201022003204096?s=46&t=pjhYyQO-8UqZkXH_Oi1gmg
Hungary Bill (Forum Supporter) said:
Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:
The fact that this little band of guys calling themselves the Freedom Legion weren't summarily crushed within a matter of hours if not days says a lot about the weakness of the Russian military right now.
You can say that again.
They seem to be able to stomp out unarmed protestors in mere minutes. But the second that someone brought a gun to the gun fight, well... Let's just say I came here to post this:
It looks like there's an admin building on fire in Belgorod
https://twitter.com/tendar/status/1664201022003204096?s=46&t=pjhYyQO-8UqZkXH_Oi1gmg
It's not Belgorod - it's Shebekino - the red circle on the map below - the Legion acted here today
Belgorod is the regional center
I completely agree with what Kreb says about the ru army
In fairness, Shebekino is what, 3 miles into Russia? It's not like this is a monumental accomplishment. More psychological than tactical. (Not to poor-mouth the Russian resistance. This was a very brave move on their part)
In reply to tuna55 :
Does anyone have some credible reading material on the Freedom Legion? I don't know what to make of these guys. Where are their allegiances? What will they do if they "win"? What does that even look like?
i read their official info-channel
as they say - they are fighting for the freedom of russia from Putin's regime and their units consist of russian citizens(the appeals in the videos that i've seen are Russian people - i can tell by their accent). The equipment they have is captured from the ru army on russian territory.
Will they achieve their goals? hmmm... i don't know... not sure...
But they showed very well that the border is not guarded at all and the ru army - it's just not there.
Watching developments...
In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :
absolutely agree 
in my opinion they did one important thing - they showed that all the greatness of the ru army(as they talk about on TV) is nothing - this army is unable to protect its citizens.
There were reports that it was the ru army that hit the homes of their own countrymen trying to get the Legion.
It sounds like Russia had just assumed there would be no ground-based incursions at all. I wonder if they will actually move troops to protect the border or if they will let them continue in order to use the attacks to say "see, the Ukranians are a threat to us!"?
Here is a GRM local structural engineers opinion on the bridge crack photo (which theoretically could even be an old photo):
I don’t see any rust around the cracks so it is not a jacking situation over time.
With them being vertical and on both sides of the columns, it looks like the whole bridge was subject to a big shock / pushes parallel to the direction of the roadway/bridge. The steel rebar encased in the columns bent and moved with the bridge, while the piers did not move. The concrete inside the rebar cage is most likely cracked but holds the vertical weight because it is trapped in the rebar cage in the column. The trapped concrete prevents the rebar cadge from bending or collapsing under compression. The outer concrete around the rebar cracked as the two sides of the column wanted to move in different directions.
Make sense?
A simple way to show what happened is to take your hands and put them together like you are praying, Now, keep the base of your palms together and move your fingers side to side by pressing one way and then the other with your fingers. At the extremes, the top of your fingers are not lined up anymore.
This is what happened to these columns. The base was fixed in place, and the bridge moved. This caused the top of the column to move so much that the two sides of the column were being pushed in two different directions. Something had to give, so it made its own expansion/control joint in the form of a crackdown on the sides (between your hands in the example above).
On a side note, I would bet that the movement was so great that the rebar inside the column was bent, and pieces of concrete cracked off. The crack did not close when it moved back, so it looks exaggerated.
Also, I bet that there was an initial big movement followed by smaller movements back and forth. It would be interesting to see a video of the bridge and see if it captured the movement.
The photos are low resolution but don’t present as fake. (They could be, but I don’t see obvious indications that they are.)
Here's an infographic for May 
this does not include the daily "Grad" shellings
Twitter thread about Russia's funding and promotion of fascist "New Conservative" movements throughout Europe to destabilizae NATO. Fascist blinders are amazing to me, thousands in photos will raise their right arms in nazi salutes and fly the totemkomph but claim they're "de-nazifying".
Back to the bridge supports.
Are the supports in question repaired supports, or are these original supports failing?
Is there anyway to tell?
No idea, just a picture. Might not even be current, but it does appear to be what it shows. Comparing the pictures below, it does appear to be the almost exact design as Kerch.
Looking at the top picture, you can see how there is stripe running across it that seems to be a different color or more marked up. Could this be from the original bridge? Not sure why it would be colored differently otherwise, although, I cannot tell if the supports come through the roadway from the repair picture below.
Looking at it more, it appears this is a taller part of the bridge. Note that the lower pic shows the explosion damage part of the bridge, that is almost certainly closer to the water. This seems to be a part of the bridge a good distance from the explosion. You can imagine the taller columns might be more susceptible to damage from shaking from the explosion. If this one is doing it, you have to imagine most of the tall columns are likely suspect.
You can also see in the damage shot, the explosion is to the right, yet the area they are working on has fallen. This seems to be evidence that the shockwave traveled down the bridge with significant force.
The last shot is a more distant shot (its a long bridge). The damaged area appears to be similar to the area more distant in the picture, which the cracked area appears to be an area closer to the camera, though clearly not in the suspension span... hmmm....
I think we can reasonably say, if this is the Kerch bridge, it has some potentially very serious issues.
Thoughts?
(note: I am not a structural or bridge engineer, nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn last night)
https://mil.in.ua/uk/news/yaponiya-stane-postachalnykom-vybuhivky-dlya-ukrayiny/
Japan will become a supplier of explosives for Ukraine
I wonder what this will be used for...
...rapid orc disassembly.
Wild rumor department: Some guess June 6th. (which would be a bit strange since that is WWII's D-day)
Reports that the Ukrainians are rolling up Russian sympathizers within the ranks. Why is this potentially significant? Doing it right before a significant operation gives the Russians no time to replace them or look for more sources, and makes them more blinded until they do.
In reply to Noddaz :
This is a neurotic fiddly pedantic "well akshually..." level of detail BUT if people are arguing about accuracy/bias/sloppy 'journalism'/ whatever: the lead picture for the story shows plastic explosive demolition charges. The story is about TNT filler for artillery shells. Meh, close 'nuf to being the same thing.
In reply to Oapfu :
If you look at the photo where it showed up in the source article, in small print is says: "Explosive Photo from open sources." which is another way of saying "stock photo". They didn't have anything else, so they threw something in there to get more hits. If that's worth a demerit, it should be a damn small one.
