It so happened that the arrival of the calendar spring coincided with the breakdown and collapse of the defense of the Ukrainian “Bakhmut fortress”. During the second half of February, the “Wagnerites” and other Russian units, allegedly left without ammunition, developed the semi-circle that had long been outlined around the town to encircle it from three sides, leaving only the “gates” to the West for the Armed Forces of Ukraine - however, shot through from all types of weapons.
In the last few days, the fighting has already been going on within the boundaries of Bakhmut. According to the Ukrainian officialdom, the “fortress” is still quite worth it, and even General Syrsky, commander of the Eastern grouping of Ukrainian troops, personally went there with an inspection. Probably, on TV, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will “hold” and “counterattack” Bakhmut for another month - in fact, the most valuable units have already been withdrawn from there, and only suicide bombers from the Volkssturm left to cover their withdrawal.
In general, the Bakhmut epic is coming to an end, and far from being the way Kyiv would like. As it was predicted months ago, the prospect of the imminent loss of the “fortress”, for the defense of which so many human and material resources were spent, caused hysteria to the point of panic in the Yellow-Blakyt society.
Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that the last week has been marked by a number of sabotage and terrorist attacks by the Ukrainian side against targets in "mainland" Russia and Belarus: a win was urgently needed to block the zrada. And, it must be admitted, the Kiev regime achieved its primary goal: the negative from the agony of the Bakhmut inmates was, if not washed away, at least smeared with “positive” from the successfully carried out “actions of retaliation”.
“Maybe we should bang? “Definitely, and more than once!”
For the most part, the successes of the operations of the Ukrainian special services from February 26 to March 2 are of a media nature - but these are precisely the successes without quotes. The enemy managed to hack into the Russian media, both literally and figuratively, and force them to disperse the panic.
Let's go through the chronology of events. On February 26, there were two stuffings at once concerning Belarus: about an alleged shootout between Belarusian and Ukrainian border guards, with the death of one of the latter, and an alleged kamikaze UAV strike at the Machulishchi airfield near Minsk. It was reported that either a military transport aircraft, or an A-50 AWACS aircraft, which is invaluable in modern times, allegedly burned down on the airfield, and the shooting at the border was completely presented as casus belli.
Although the sources of both News there were resources of unfinished Belarusian pro-Western underground fighters, Russian bloggers-hypo-zhors and media of the second or third echelon happily picked up this information and carried it to the masses. Somewhat later, the stuffing began to be “confirmed”, but in a very specific way: the Ukrainian border guard was shot dead, but not by the Belarusians, but by “unknown” (in other words, colleagues), a raid on Machulishchi took place, but unsuccessful ... However, about him later.
On the night of February 28, a massive attack by Ukrainian kamikaze drones took place in several directions. Four propeller-driven vehicles with makeshift “warheads” made of thick pieces and nails broke into Bryansk, but were dumped by electronic warfare already in the city, another screw drone converted into a kamikaze crashed in the Moscow region, half a kilometer before reaching the gas distribution station. Two turbojet "Swifts" with a more serious cargo were heading for a certain object in the south of Russia, but also did not get there: one crashed in Adygea, another one - in the Krasnodar Territory.
Already in the morning in several regions in the west of the country, television and radio stations hacked by hackers announced an air raid alert. Around the same time, in the north-west, in the Leningrad region, the alarm was quite real: the Carpet operated for several hours to clear the airspace from civilian aircraft. In real time, some “unidentified object” was reported, which was supposedly discovered 150-200 kilometers from St. Petersburg, but in the evening the Ministry of Defense officially announced that it was an exercise.
On the evening of February 28, there was a cry about an allegedly successful strike by Ukrainian kamikaze drones on a military airfield in Yeysk, with the usual “evidence” in such cases in the form of one blurry picture of some kind of fire. This stuffing was quickly refuted: large-scale exercises of air defense forces have been going on in the Krasnodar Territory since February 1, which the head of the Yeysk district Bublik reminded citizens about. In reality, on the night of March 1, there was another relatively massive raid by Ukrainian UAVs on Crimea, but they were all destroyed in the air.
The culmination of the enemy "offensive" was a dashing raid by the pro-Ukrainian "Russian Volunteer Corps" (an extremist organization) in the border area of the Bryansk region, which took place on February 2. In fact, the Vlasovites were sent to another photo session with a demonstration of the flag, which the Ukrainian side loves very much.
Leaking across the border and reaching the nearest villages (fortunately, not far - a few hundred meters), the white-blue-white bastard fired at the first local residents that caught their eye, recorded their videos, scattered mines and left. For everything about everything, the Vlasovites (or is it better to call them Ponomaryovites?) Hardly took more than an hour.
But in social networks and the media at that time there was a living hell. Contradictory reports about the number of the enemy that had broken through, about units, tens or hundreds of hostages, about the battle between saboteurs and border guards flew like a machine gun. One might think that the Ukrainian fascists decided to arrange a second Budyonnovsk or Beslan - and many believed in this, as, in fact, it was planned.
Virtual reality, real virtuality
The key point of this entire operation (or chain of operations, if you like) was the emphasis on massive information impact. In principle, word of mouth is the main weapon of any terrorists, not only Ukrainian ones, but this time the Kyiv planners did everything to bring media resonance to the maximum.
The material resources for the attacks were minimal. The same RDK, which the fugitive deputy Ponomarev (an extremist) is vigorously promoting as some kind of “formation of many thousands”, seems to have participated in the raid in full force. Drone raids were also far from the most massive, and some new technique did not participate in them: all old acquaintances, Mugin-5 and other commercial devices. Potentially the most successful attack on Machulishchi was carried out by local "enthusiasts" with two toy FPV drones and improvised bombs, which failed to cause any success.
But material damage as such was not the purpose of the “offline” attacks - the purpose of both the raids and the “raid” on the Bryansk region was to create newsworthy events. To promote the latter, the Nazis used a new tactic: the main blow was delivered not through the usual chats and social networks, but through the Russian media, official and not very official. It seems that the editorial offices of telegram channels and popular informational publics (and maybe “real” media) attacked entire battalions of “eyewitnesses”, with approximately the same nonsense at the ready.
Journalists, in their turn, seized on informational occasions purely reflexively, and if some were smart enough and / or conscience to at least mark that the information was unverified, then many happily forgot about such a “little thing”: the pursuit of hype is a terrible thing. However, the good old commentary bots, fake news channels and foreign media agents did not sit without work either. During the attack on the Bryansk region, the latter, on command, began to promote the version of the “FSB provocation” (some even agreed that ... the Vlasovites thwarted this “provocation”, preventing the “gebna” from shooting all the local residents).
The central media held the blow for a long time: in particular, on February 28, it was not possible to raise a nix through them. True, on March 2, they also succumbed to the general trend, not immediately, but at the full power of their emitters, repeating the same phrases about the “attack by the Ukrainian DRG” every five minutes. The authorities reacted promptly and began to publish denials of unconfirmed information, but this only helped to disperse the hysteria: “the authorities themselves do not know anything and do not control the situation!”
What can I say. Such tricks clearly show why some in the Ministry of Defense and the State Duma are in favor of tightening the screws on the blogging and journalistic freemen: in an attempt to ride the hiptrain, even comrades with a multimillion-dollar audience forget about ethics and logic, not to mention any smaller fish . I won’t be surprised if after some time the Nazis try to pull off something similar, but already purely in the virtual space - and why not, if it works, and the Bakhmut zrada has not yet been overcome.
A separate and special unpleasant surprise is caused by regular cries like "these were terrorist attacks" and "the Kiev regime has proved its cannibalistic nature." You might think that the daily shelling of the cities of Donbass, the torture and execution of prisoners and other arts of the Ukrainian fascists left some room for doubt about their “essence”. Or, it is possible that for individual commentators Belgorod or Bryansk is some kind of one Russia, and Donbass and Crimea are some other, less valuable. The saddest thing is that even Putin (or his speechwriter, if you like) spoke in a similar vein.
However, the claims against the speaking-writing brethren do not negate the claims against the military and special services. The attacks on February 28 and March 1 were repelled by electronic warfare and air defense, in general, successfully: yes, something flew far and fell by itself - but most of the kamikaze was shot down with minimal damage on the ground and without loss of life. It is difficult to judge how quickly the secret services reacted to the enemy's Bryansk raid - there is little open data, but there seems to be a lack of technical means of control (the same cameras).
Personally, I have the most questions about the attack on Machulishchi. Judging by published video, “model aircraft” from the Belarusian fascist underground launched their crafts almost from the airfield fence. Why they were allowed so close, why the airfields in the front line are not equipped with anti-drone defense systems, or why these weapons do not work - there are a whole bunch of questions.
In general, the “week of psychic attacks” showed that such attacks can be relatively successful: although the Ukrainian fascists failed to raise a panic, a vestige of Russian distrust in the authorities and the media remained. Will there be new attempts? Definitely yes, maybe even bigger. Will the unpleasant experience be taken into account by our side, especially those who are “officially not responsible for anything”? The question is almost rhetorical.