The Daily Mail reports that Russian military sites have been made visible on its maps, while Google insists that they have always been visible. This comes at the same time as the official launch of Russia’s major offensive in the Donbas.

A Google spokesperson insisted that there has been no change in policy of blurring sensitive sites and that the images have always been available.

A Google spokesperson said: ‘We haven’t made any blurring changes to our satellite imagery in Russia.’

Sensitive military installations in the UK are also visible on Google Maps, including the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth in its home port of Portsmouth.

It should be noted that the images are not thought to be up-to-the-minute and sometimes satellite images are not updated for years, meaning that the configuration of Russian ships and hardware could be very different today.

Update: On second thoughts, there has been extensive bombing in Kharkiv recently and I know I posted a few days ago that the Internet was down. Since then thousands of buildings have been turned into rubble. Maybe Lira lost his internet connection and then had to evacuate…..or, sad thought, he got caught in one of those buildings.

ORIGINAL POST

Gonzalo Lira, the Chilean/American businessman whose reports from Kharkiv made him an internet star, seems to have gone missing.
I didn’t post this earlier, because Lira has previously gone dark for a few days and there was a good chance this was again the case. However, this time, there seems to be some reason to believe that the Ukrainian police/secret service might have apprehended him.

The UN makes a proposal:

As “a measure of progress to build upon,” the UN chief said, noting that over the past seven weeks, some 2.5 million people have been provided with assistance, including many in the east.

“For all these life-or-death reasons, I call on Russians and Ukrainians to silence the guns and forge a path to safety for so many at immediate risk,” he appealed.

Stop the bloodshed and destruction – UN chief

“The four-day Easter period should be a moment to unite around saving lives and furthering dialogue to end the suffering in Ukraine

It is not enough for one side to stop. Both sides, including NATO and its members, must also stop covert assistance, cheer leading, and lies that provoke and inflame.

The story of the Moskva keeps getting more and more interesting.

There is a report that the relic of the “true cross” bought from a Catholic church by Russian Orthodox businessmen and given to Admiral Osipov, until now the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet,  cost $40 million.  The relic was installed in the chapel of the ship in a grand ceremony because the admirals believed that it would make the ship invincible.

The source of the information about the price and the ceremony is a well-connected former Russian MP who is an anti-religion and anti-Putin critic, Alexander Nevzorov.

Nevzorov, 63, lives outside Russia now.

Nevzorov questions if the wooden sliver that was the relic was actually in the 19th century metal cross in which it was supposed to have been embedded or not? If not, the money was just wasted.

According to TASS the relic was given in 2020 February by anonymous donors to Sergiy Khalyuta the Archpriest of Sebastopol who was friendly with Admiral Osipov, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet. Khalyuta claims the Admiral was going to install it in the ship’s chapel, but whether he actually did so or not, is unclear. Although the TASS report is dated 2020, other reports citing it have stated that the relic was actually given on Feb 26, 2022 to the Admiral. I suspect it is just a misreading of the original report, but I could be wrong.

But consider the propaganda value of the true cross failing to protect the flagship, named Moskva [Moscow], and that too during Easter Week in the West.  Consider that the Moskva was the ship made famous by the expletive-laden defiance of the Ukrainians on Snake Island threatened by it, a defiance now memorialized in stamps  with the slogan, “Russian warship go f*** yourself.” The Ukrainian ambassador to the US told Congress all 13 defiant soldiers died rather than surrender,  but the Russians counted 82 Ukrainian servicemen who surrendered and within a few days the Ukrainians themselves confirmed that no one had died.

Snake Island was February 26, 2022. Two years to the day when the relic was delivered to Khalyuta.

Consider that Catholic relics are not supposed to be sold. In fact, it is illegal to do so. Was that the reason for the anonymity of the donors? How then did they buy it?

And how did Alexander Nevzorov get to know about it at the time?

What did Nevzorov also get to know that made him make this video in 2021 in which with a certainty that is startling he says a Russo-Ukrainian war will end with regime change for Russia, led by the military. His lengthy diatribe also predicts fierce Ukrainian resistance,  large Russian casualties, commanders killing themselves, and the hulls of ships disintegrating as though held together only with paint.

Nevzorov a muck-raker, is a veteran media personality whose one-time show “600 seconds” exposed corruption and crime in the early 1990s, especially that brought on by communist apparatchiks. He is a self-described monarchist.

He is also the first major media personality to be probed under new legislation banning spreading false stories about the Russian military operation. Nevzorov was charged on March 23rd for publishing the false story that the Russians had bombed the Mariupol maternity hospital.

The publications were accompanied by inaccurate photographs of civilians affected by the shelling,” investigators said, adding that the pictures had been first published by Ukrainian media.

Nevzorov does not believe there are Nazis in Ukraine

and he is a supporter of Alexander Navalny, another Putin critic who has recently been jailed for fraud.

He confesses that he hates Orthodoxy, especially the conservative beliefs of Dostoevsky, whose ideas he calls Russian Nazism.

An interesting person to know all about how an Orthodox relic got into the Moskva, sank with it, and thereby discredited the “Russian Nazis”…

 Sky.com has comments from former General Staff chief Lord Dannatt:

“I think it’s only a matter of time before Mariupol falls completely under Russian control.

“This is going to be a very gruesome and sad end to a very heroic fight by the Ukrainian soldiers.

“Then, of course, the Russians will have achieved one of their strategic objectives, which is to create that land corridor from Crimea, through Mariupol, to the Donbas region which borders Russia proper.

“Securing a land corridor from Crimea – which it secured in 2014 but hitherto has only been accessible by sea. They will have joined up the dots, if you like.”

Lord Dannatt says “Russia will not want to give that up”, offering a hint on what the future could hold for this war.

“Over time Ukraine may have to accept that it’s lost part of its territory,” he says.

Ukrainians are using US facial-recognition software [Clearview AI] to identify dead Russian soldiers and inform their families.

In all, the Ukrainian government has run over 8,600 facial recognition scans on dead or captured Russian soldiers since the war began. The operation has been carried out by the country’s IT Army, which is made up of “a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government.” The clandestine group says it has used the positive identifications obtained from the US-based technology to harass the families of 582 Russian soldiers.

The Ukrainian communications to the horrified family members included sending them photos of the abandoned corpses.

I am sure at least some of the identifications are going to be erroneous, in which case, there is a strong case of harassment.  As for sending photos of abandoned corpses to Russian families, that is likely- to be a crime. Clearview’s technology has come in for a lot of criticism in its pervasive attack on privacy.  Funds for the company have come from internet billionaire and libertarian, Peter Thiel, co founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook. In other words, the military-intelligence complex.

Meanwhile, in Europe, a coalition of digital rights groups filed complaints with data-protection authorities in France, Austria, Italy, Greece, and the United Kingdom, alleging violations of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In November 2021, the UK regulatory body threatened to fine Clearview AI and ordered it to stop processing data of UK citizens. In December, France also ordered the company to stop processing citizens’ data and gave it two months to delete any data it held. Australia has deemed its practices illegal.

Most recently, in March 2022, Italy’s data protection agency announced a 20 million euro penalty against Clearview AI for breaching the GDPR, ordered it to delete any data on Italians and banned it from processing data any further.

 

From the Daily Kos:

 If the Moskva’s command did not consider the possibility of a shore-based cruise missile attack and failed to consistently enforce the highest condition of readiness, this would have been a serious oversight.

Once the missiles struck, depending on their point of impact, major fires and flooding could have resulted.  Fire is the bane of all sailors and the use of fire-fighting water can exacerbate the flooding and resultant degradation of stability.  The reported explosion of ordnance and fires suggest that rocket motors may have ignited.  Rocket motor fires are very difficult to control as they have their own source of oxygen and cannot be extinguished with CO2 or without using copious amounts of water.  A hit near the waterline would cause massive flooding that might not have been able to be controlled.  Maintaining a high condition of readiness, i.e. all hatches and doors shut might have helped control internal flooding but whether it was in place is unknown.

A ship’s hull that is compromised at or below the waterline is very difficult to right or even move without the assistance of other ships.  In stormy weather, that would be near impossible.  Ships seldom go down upright.  At some point, stability is so compromised they list steeply and usually capsize.

Survivability at sea depends on adherence to strict damage control protocols, assistance from other vessels and heroic, professional action by the surviving crew.  I suspect one or more of these was MIA on the Moskva.

And this:

No matter what “tankie” Twitter has to say, the U.S. Department of Defense has now confirmed that the Russian missile cruiser Moskvas (“Moscow”) sank after being struck by Neptune missile fired by Ukrainian coastal defense. Honestly, the U.S. was very likely aware of this from before the moment when the missiles struck home, because even if Ukraine controlled the Bayraktar drone that distracted the Moskva’s single radar, someone with very sophisticated equipment (like *cough* a U.S. AWACS plane *cough*) had to inform Ukraine that the Russians were genuinely directing their attention at the drone. So the whole gee, we’re not sure, could of been … yes, yes, seems like it was Ukraine act from the U.S. side was a bit of theater…….

The Moskva carried a complement of 510, including officers. If 58 is an accurate count of survivors, then 452 men went down with the flagship of the Black Sea fleet….

Update 2:

I tracked down the source of this report/rumor passed on by an ex intelligence chief of EU. It comes from a Ukrainian source and it is based on the movement of a plane, which is not enough. So at this point I would put this down as rumor-mongering by Ukrainian propagandists, with some, possible basis.

The origin is this:

There are rumors about the arrest of Admiral Igor Osipov, commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. There is no confirmation of this, but at 3:30 this morning a special flight RA-61712 left Moscow for Rostov. Fontanka wrote that RA-61712 belongs to a special Air Force unit of the FSB, which provides “operational support for the most high-profile cases. In other words, the plane could have been sent to investigate the sinking of the RSC Moskva or to apprehend the leader of the ship. #Ukrainianmilitary hits #Russiancruiser by #Neptunemissiles #cruiserMoskva“

WELL THAT IS QUITE A LEAP. Good God, the BS never ends and I am sorry I ran with this without checking closely. But obviously there is a strong suspicion of sabotage if the FSB is involved, which seems to be the case. The arrest part appears to be just conjectural. Sorry about that.

Update: I cannot find confirmation of this arrest on any Russian state outlet, so I should put a question mark against it, for now.

ORIGINAL POST

Remember this post yesterday about the archpriest Khalyuta gifting a “relic” from the Catholic church to Vice Admiral Ossipov that I posted  on this blog. I linked that post at  comments on Saker.is and on disqus at Martyanov’s site, where it got a downvote.

Lila Rajiva • a day ago

https://lilarajiva.com/2022…

Seems really obtuse to accept some supposed relic from anonymous donors to place inside a flagship, of all things.
The relic is not Orthodox at best, and they don’t know for sure from where it comes, so why accept it? This was probably just staged, in coordination with the mine attack [or whatever] for maximum propaganda effect, but could there also be some technical angle, as for instance, some kind of gps embedded in the so-called relic or a guide for detonation or even some AI device? 

The gifting suggests, does it not, that this whole incident was planned well before hand. Before even Snake Island. And that maybe there was an internal[onboard] element to it?

Then there is this, today:

From Twitter Eerik N Kross Ex intelligence director, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Iraq

FSB arrests the commander of the  Black Sea fleet vice admiral Igor Ossipov. Obviously for the bad weather and an accidental fire on board of Moskva. 8th general out of commission by  action in this war.