> Going for the GPO: Creating persistent, privileged access from which wipers can be deployed via group policy objects (GPO) using a tried-and-true PowerShell script.
So they specifically target Windows machines only? Or is that just the biggest attack vector and therefore easiest to do repeatedly?
Now part of Google Cloud My thoughts and prayers go with Mandiants. GC is a division with a history of laying off experienced people haphazardly to replace them with cheaper staff because it makes their managers look good in the short-term.
TL;DR the GRU first find a vulnerability, and break in; then they consolidate their bridgehead; then they create havoc, either by destroying static data, or by sending bogus information using bogus personas.
This doesn't sound like something I didn't already know.
And I thought this is the most transparent war ever. I mean, you've got tons of footage filmed by drones, helmet cams and smartphones from both sides. Not to mention high res commercial satellite images that you can pay for.
We're only 500+ days in to what the Russians planned a few weeks to take. This is clearly going fine. But it is good fun to see these shit takes from people, carry on.
Who ever said this was a plan? Please, point us to an exact quote from Putin or Shoigu or any other Russian official saying that it was the plan.
You won't, because this is official Western propaganda. Nothing like that was ever announced by Russian government, officially or unofficially.
> This is clearly going fine.
Exactly what is fine? Ukraine lost half of its population officially (people that fled to other countries, including Russia), lost around 250,000-300,000 soldiers (unofficially, nobody knows exact count but it's certainly would be astounding), lost immense amount of Western military equipment. And continue to loose more and more every day. Including loosing more territories (Russia is advancing right now, although probably you won't find anything about that in Western media).
Russia's summarily failed at every strategic goal it's tried to achieve in this war, which is the reason this has turned into a war of attrition.
- The original Russian push into Ukraine somewhat looked like blitzkrieg tactics -- a fast move across the countryside from the northeastern UA/RU border, which ended up turning into an overextension with a substantially failed retreat caused by difficult terrain.
- VDV troops were dropped into Hostomel and around the Kyiv region within the first few days of the war. If the 3-day figure wasn't official (I'm having trouble finding original Russian-language video or audio which confirms this), then certainly, taking Kyiv within the first days of the war was the plan, going off the moves RU made.
- Russian losses have so far, by conservative estimates, exceeded Ukrainian losses for both personnel and equipment, though I'll grant you that this is the kind of figure that gets manipulated during a conflict and we likely won't have truly reliable, hard-to-dispute numbers until long after the war ends. One thing's almost certain, though -- Russian equipment losses have been much more substantial than those of their western counterparts.
- Russia's personnel losses have also been at least substantial enough to warrant the implementation of multiple rounds of mobilization as well as penal battalions, and all accounts from both returned Ukrainian POWs, captured Russian POWs, and Russian defectors have been that the battlefield conditions on the Russian side are awful (notably; awful in the context of it being a shooting war).
- Russian advances and Ukrainian advances are effectively at a stalemate, with Russia repelling Ukraine's moves mostly through sheer volume of artillery fire. It's alleged that Russia's nearly burned through their artillery shell and rocket stockpile, and their military is resorting to dealing with North Korea to secure a supply for the coming winter. Any gains from now on will be pretty marginal barring either asymmetric depletion of resources or one side suddenly gaining a wonder weapon of some kind.
- Ukraine has been effectively employing both maritime and airborne drones to strike within Russian-held territory, both in Ukraine (see the recent strikes within the port of Sevastopol) as well as within Russia's borders proper (multiple strikes on military installations in the Rostov and Voronezh oblasts).
- Russia has also been responsible for striking indiscriminately at civilians, from cyberattacks on key pieces of civilian infrastructure (especially earlier in the war) to outright bombing of civilian locations which weren't being used to house UA armed forces.
- Last (in this comment) but certainly not least -- Russia also imposed mass deportation on people in Russian-held Ukrainian territory, which was documented by the UN earlier in the war. Those who stayed behind are reportedly being drafted into the AFRF.
This war is going poorly for all involved, but right now it seems like Russia's going to much more desperate measures at the time.
I'm personally hoping for quick regime change in Russia leading to the end of the war, withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine's territory, and criminal prosecution of those responsible for the (frankly, at this point, countless) atrocities committed in this war. Realistically, I know this is unlikely to happen, since by all accounts this war remains popular in large parts of Russia.
At a minimum, I do hope that Ukraine comes out of this alive, and that it becomes eligible to join NATO and the EU down the line, since Russia clearly can't be held at their word after promising to respect the territorial sovereignty of other nations (as they did in Budapest, Minsk, and later Minsk II after the initial 2014 invasion).
> If the 3-day figure wasn't official (I'm having trouble finding original Russian-language video or audio which confirms this), then certainly, taking Kyiv within the first days of the war was the plan, going off the moves RU made.
The automatically posted then deleted victory articles on Russian state run RIA and Sputnik news agencies certainly suggests that they were expecting the war to be short.
According to who? Are you intentionally demonstrating how silly pro-Ukrainian propaganda is? Russia made the objectives very clear from the beginning: demilitarization and denazification. I don't think anyone aware of that could come away thinking "Yeah, so obviously they expect to accomplish that in a few weeks."
> According to who? Are you intentionally demonstrating how silly pro-Ukrainian propaganda is? Russia made the objectives very clear from the beginning: demilitarization and denazification. I don't think anyone aware of that could come away thinking "Yeah, so obviously they expect to accomplish that in a few weeks."
Considering that two Russian state run news outlets RIA and Sputnik automatically posted a victory article less then a week into the war and then quickly deleted it, I dare say they expected this war to not take very long.
Delusion on whose part? That was an explicitly stated objective. It has been a long known and well documented fact that Ukraine has an abundance of neo-nazis, a magnitude like nowhere else. So much so that the ADL had to run interference with the goofiest defense: "All those pictures of captured Ukrainian soldiers with swastikas? Ironic race-hate... they're just trolling guyz!"
> The objective has been genocide and this is what has been happening in some places.
Can you define genocide? Can you pinpoint a difference between Russian and Ukrainian? Considering that it was historically one country for centuries, Ukraine exists only for the last 30 years.
How comes that Russia wants to "genocide" Ukrainians, but most of the refugees from the war fled to Russia and live happily here?
You are either a troll or a Russian which believes the propaganda.
In any case you kind sir seem to be full of shit. :)
You are spewing the kind of lies that are typical of Russian propaganda. It might work on some people but I don't think that it will work here. Too much cleverness in one place.
BTW, I can't reply to the other two comments, I guess the authors banned me.
But my grand-grandparents are from Ukraine. Am I Russian or Ukrainian? I guess there are hundreds of thousands of people like me fighting on Russian side (as I said, we were one country for centuries). This is more a civil war, nothing like a genocide. Here many people consider it a civil war for sure. In Ukraine also, but they have no voice.
Also, if it is a genocide, why "bloodthirsty" Russians haven't killed all population of Crimea since 2014 - it would be so much easier. On the contrary, nobody was killed in Crimea.
It's a weird genocide. But only a "Russian troll" would understand.
I asked you to defined what is genocide and how you can call what's going on in Ukraine a "genocide".
You failed to reply to either question. Because it's clearly not a genocide. Even UN acknowledged that.
So, instead you're repeating propaganda lines you've read yesterday in WaPo or Bloomberg or BBC, in order to deflect the direct question. And call me "brainwashed".
> I asked you to defined what is genocide and how you can call what's going on in Ukraine a "genocide". [...] Because it's clearly not a genocide. Even UN acknowledged that.
No, it didn't. The most recent on the issue of genocide from the UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine:
“The Commission is also concerned about allegations of genocide in Ukraine. For instance, some of the rhetoric transmitted in Russian state and other media may constitute incitement to genocide. The Commission is continuing its investigations on such issues.”
So they specifically target Windows machines only? Or is that just the biggest attack vector and therefore easiest to do repeatedly?