I don't think they were the original source. Every Twitter account is posting that same pic right now with no attribution

74OA said:

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Very interesting take on the condition of the Russian invasion force.

1/I am going to try to explain the irrational Russian Armed Forces behavior towards strategy, common thought, or even the chances repatriated SSO that are now POW try to murder a bunch of men with stars.

— Stanimir Dobrev (@delfoo) February 26, 2022

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Thanks for posting.

That apartment building strike that is getting so much publicity had to be a mistake. Bad intel, bad coordinates, really bad optics.... If they were going to do that, they would already have started bombing/shelling that area. IMO!

japantiger said:

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Here is what I can come up with on the current overall status from Live UAMAP:

• The RU's currently appear to control ~10% of the Ukraine.
• They control areas of the NW with Chernobyl being on the far NE edge. That area is roughly 60 miles long by 35 miles wide. This includes the one large airfield outside of the Kyiv ring road (Gostomel). This appears to be as close to Kyiv as they control (per another poster, airfield destroyed after RU counterattack to retake airport from UKR's).
• The RU's control two other small areas along the border to the North.
• The RU's control areas in the S adjacent to the Crimea
• The breakaway republics still appear to be within their original separatists borders and do not appear to have expanded to the full land mass of those two republics.
• Reports of attacks appear to be continuing from the NE to the Crimea.
• Kyiv is reportedly under attack; but the RU do not appear to be in control.

Critiques or corrections welcome. I put this on the other thread...Unclear to me where the current major thrusts of attacks are coming from.

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Crazy to think that the Russians have tried to hold Kherson and the bridge over Dneiper River to the west multiple times and the Ukrainians keep repelling them and retaking both. Also equally surprised that Donetsk and Luhansk are relegated back to their pre-invasion border.

Looks like the Russians are making a push to encircle Mariupol in an effort to at least get something out of ****storm. Yesterday the Russians were trying to finalize securing Melitopol. Now that they've done that, it seems they have moved on to Tokmak (tanks and TOS-1 spotted) and Mariupol. Based on the map either the reported amphibious landing never happened yesterday or the city successfully repelled the landing.

I'm interested to know what the current status of the town is for Mariupol. We haven't seen anything that I can recall since the first day when people were hitting up grocery stores for their own stores.

Another video from that same block in Tokmak. T-72B3 and T-72B tanks with roof screens. Looks like they knocked over the power lines. https://t.co/vpTdzFdtmF pic.twitter.com/lmJ83ICRJl

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) February 26, 2022

Air assault coming also on Ternopil, sirens.

— Gregor Martin (@Guderian_Xaba) February 26, 2022

Haven't seen this posted yet but maybe I missed it:

Latest intelligence update on Ukraine pic.twitter.com/k3XadYzUoL

— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) February 26, 2022

LostInLA07 said:

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Russia is going to end up as isolated as Iran and North Korea. I have to admit I didn't imagine Putin would do something like this.

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The danger of assuming someone is going to act rationally in a situation like this. We like to think that escalation to mutually assured destruction is off the table and that directs decision making on both sides. Can't do that. That was the thinking during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We found out later that Castro was urging Kruschev to launch and let consequences be damned.

Will Putin act rationally or is he willing to pull the walls of the temple down on top of himself? Scary as hell.

Looks like heavy fighting can be seen from just north of Kyiv https://t.co/cxJGWv6hPU

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) February 26, 2022

jabberwalkie09 said:

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Red Pear Realty said:

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aeroag14 said:

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Rumors of another IL76 downed tonight!!

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⚡️ #Ukrainian Armed Forces shot down the second IL-76 with #Russian paratroopers

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 26, 2022

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OK, at this point there should be three IL-76 crash sites out there in the fields of Ukraine. Honest question at this point:

Has anyone seen a picture a crash site for any of these aircraft?

These are pretty sizable aircraft so I'd think that these crash sights would have been found and posted by now… I want to believe that the Ukrainians are this good but I'm getting a little skeptical.

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I think this refers to the 2nd aircraft from last night but who knows.

jabberwalkie09 said:

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Red Pear Realty said:

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aeroag14 said:

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Rumors of another IL76 downed tonight!!

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⚡️ #Ukrainian Armed Forces shot down the second IL-76 with #Russian paratroopers

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 26, 2022

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OK, at this point there should be three IL-76 crash sites out there in the fields of Ukraine. Honest question at this point:

Has anyone seen a picture a crash site for any of these aircraft?

These are pretty sizable aircraft so I'd think that these crash sights would have been found and posted by now… I want to believe that the Ukrainians are this good but I'm getting a little skeptical.

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Depending upon where the aircraft came down they could either be unlocated or in an area under Russian control and difficult to access. The first two Il-76 shoot downs were confirmed by the U.S. DoD last night, which leads me to believe they had some means of independently verifying that those birds went down, e.g. from the USAF collection aircraft that have been active from Polish airspace.

US + EU commit to removing selected Russian banks from Swift

Will impose "restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian central bank from deploying its int'l reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions" pic.twitter.com/GcO2P9tZzM

— Saleha Mohsin (@SalehaMohsin) February 26, 2022

GAC06 said:

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Not exactly an expert on airborne tactics but parachuting into a city seems like a really bad idea

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Yes it is.

And combat drops are about 500' AGL.

jabberwalkie09 said:

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Red Pear Realty said:

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aeroag14 said:

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Rumors of another IL76 downed tonight!!

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⚡️ #Ukrainian Armed Forces shot down the second IL-76 with #Russian paratroopers

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 26, 2022

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OK, at this point there should be three IL-76 crash sites out there in the fields of Ukraine. Honest question at this point:

Has anyone seen a picture a crash site for any of these aircraft?

These are pretty sizable aircraft so I'd think that these crash sights would have been found and posted by now… I want to believe that the Ukrainians are this good but I'm getting a little skeptical.

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Should be no prob, start walking out there and let us know.

JJxvi said:

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jabberwalkie09 said:

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Red Pear Realty said:

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aeroag14 said:

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Rumors of another IL76 downed tonight!!

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⚡️ #Ukrainian Armed Forces shot down the second IL-76 with #Russian paratroopers

— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 26, 2022

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OK, at this point there should be three IL-76 crash sites out there in the fields of Ukraine. Honest question at this point:

Has anyone seen a picture a crash site for any of these aircraft?

These are pretty sizable aircraft so I'd think that these crash sights would have been found and posted by now… I want to believe that the Ukrainians are this good but I'm getting a little skeptical.

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Should be no prob, start walking out there and let us know.

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I understand your sarcasm here, but I figured that the Ukrainians would provide visual confirmation of the crash site at this point. Especially if the IL-76 was carrying VDV troops. One of the shoot downs from yesterday was reportedly to have been about 20km south of Kyiv. Russians control at least parts of the north and west of the city, not the south last I heard.

I've just seen enough stuff on Twitter over the last 24 or so hours being rehashed that is either from 2 days ago and already been posted, Syria which isn't even connected to this theater, or from the initial conflict in 2014 that I'm not taking stuff like an IL-76 being shot down on blind faith right now.

Conversely, if it was shot down with a ton of Russian paratroopers on it and presumably maimed and dead, that could be used as propaganda back in Moscow.

I see both sides on this one. I believe that those two were shot down since DoD confirmed

JFABNRGR said:

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GAC06 said:

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Not exactly an expert on airborne tactics but parachuting into a city seems like a really bad idea

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Yes it is.

And combat drops are about 500' AGL.

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The air drop photos floating around are not actually an air drop. Per military people on Twitter, probably smoke or flak. Also, image looks way too bright for the actual conditions on the ground right now. It's very dark there.

Malibu2 said:

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Some and "select"? Sounds like horse**** to me to placate internal politics while not doing a meaningful thing to me.

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These ****** just can't commit to anything with some backbone. It isn't the presence of thermobaric weapons enough to demonstrate these Russian leaders are Barbarians

oldmanguy said:

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Conversely, if it was shot down with a ton of Russian paratroopers on it and presumably maimed and dead, that could be used as propaganda back in Moscow.

I see both sides on this one. I believe that those two were shot down since DoD confirmed

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I don't think that cuts it for an explanation. There's plenty of videos out there on Twitter, some in this thread, not to mention probably on telegram of soldiers that burned with their armor. There's photos on Twitter of destroyed T-72's and T-80's, even a T-80 turret that had been blown off the tank sitting on the road. And that's not even from official sources like the Ukrainian government.

I understand what the Reuters article quoted the DoD official as saying and the Ukrainians said, but like I said I'm trying to treat this with an honest skepticism so we don't get duped with crappy info.

I was refreshing my memory on Iraq war and reminded it took 3 weeks to capture Baghdad. It wasn't until May when Bush declared mission accomplished. The war began in mid March.

Maybe we're being a little too harsh expecting Russia to capture Kyiv over a weekend.

This is how we started the war. We started stronger than Russia.

Do we have Special Ops in Ukraine?

Saw a report on twitter suggesting paratroopers were getting caught in powerlines. Don't have a link and it didn't have any pictures.

Nm