Blue Dawn, 1994

[James G]

Apr 17, 2020 17:56:16 GMT lordroel said:

Apr 17, 2020 17:53:33 GMT James G said:

47 – Target : Leningrad


Operation Pickaxe begins with a massed daylight air attack towards Leningrad and the immediate area surrounding the city. After several days and nights of fighting the Union, much of their air defences – interceptors and strategic-level SAMs – have been knocked out and Coalition air power is now turned to making large-scale attacks like this. Pickaxe will target many different areas with the first being Leningrad. A strike package is put together, over ninety aircraft in combat and support roles, and the first Pickaxe attack takes place.

The Americans (who are providing the bulk of the capacity in the strikes) aren’t messing around when they go after Leningrad. They come at this initial Pickaxe mission with all that they can. There have been selective F-117 night-time bomb runs and cruise missile strikes over previous nights but when they make their first Pickaxe attack, everything is thrown at destroying the allotted targets. The opposition is known to be light but whatever is left is first in the firing line. F-15 Eagles under the control of an AWACS assigned specifically to this strike start by taking long-range shots against Union interceptors climbing out of their scattered airfields when the few operational radars remaining begin to suffer serious jamming. MiG-31s coming out of both Gromovo and Besovets Airbases are blown out of the sky and the wreckages fall to the ground or into water. Their aircrews didn’t even see their enemy. The radar stations begin to go off-line once anti-radar missiles find them. The Union Air Force has mobile stations – the fixed ones are long ago smoking holes in the ground when hit by Tomahawks – and they are hunted down. A couple of shorter range SAMs are lofted and there is the loss of a pair of F-16 Fighting Falcons which fired off those HARMs, but this only draws the fire of others to take out previously unknown missile-launchers also on the move. Ingress routes towards Leningrad are cleared by the opening moves; work already begins on hunting for air defences operational near to where the egress routes will be.

Going along the former are the packages of strike aircraft escorted by close-in electronic jammers with the intention to follow the latter on the way out. F-15E Strike Eagles, F-111F Aardvarks and EF-111A Ravens race towards Leningrad at low-level: low as in not far above the tree-tops. Most come up over the Baltic Republics yet others do fly over the water and above the Gulf of Finland. They can all – and have – ben flown safely in darkness but the daylight attack is preferred by those involved in this Pickaxe strike. It allows for better identification of threats as well as targets. Technology can do plenty but the Mk.1 eyeball has its own special qualities. SAMs are lofted against the strike aircraft. There is some fire from anti-aircraft guns but none of the surviving missile defences, of which they aren’t many, get any shots off without radar coverage. They aren’t impeding the air traffic down the particular flight routes taken by the dozens upon dozens of aircraft tearing across the morning sky towards Leningrad.

There are many targets for the first Pickaxe mission in and around this city. Short-range missiles and bombs falling from above go after them. The skies are clear of enemy aircraft, at least close-in. A flight of Union Air Force interceptors, this time MiG-23s flying from Lodeynoye Pole Airbase on the shores of Lake Ladoga, race towards Leningrad when given urgent orders to try and defend the city. The air picture is very confusing and they soon lose contact with ground controllers. No warning comes to them that there are already some of the F-15s above the Karelian Isthmus, effectively out ahead of all those strike aircraft. Once more, Sparrow missiles are shot off at distance and slam into enemy aircraft who have no idea of what they blundered into. One MiG-23 pilot survives the loss of his comrades around him: wisely, he decides to turn back rather than press on into certain death. There is no impact upon the strike operations by the failed interference of those MiGs. They are busy hitting military sites over a wide area and doing a fantastic job of that.

Leningrad’s civilian airport gets a battering. The several around Moscow have yet to be targeted so far in this war – a political decision – but there are no restrictions on Pulkovo Airport. It is somewhere that has seen military usage in recent days & nights responded to by cruise missile attacks from both submarine-launched Tomahawks and air-launched ALCMs towards it. Those have disrupted flight operations. This Pickaxe strike will see an end to them take place again. Laser-guided bombs explode across the facility and there is the scattering of cluster munitions as well with delayed-action fuses to impede any recovery. Kronstadt naval base out in Neva Bay likewise sees a major attack take place to follow up earlier less-damaging ones. F-111s drop Paveways bang on-target. Road bridges and rail link within the city itself are hit. Again and again, explosions rock Leningrad as bombs fall. These are all being made use of by Union forces supporting the war effort and are thus legitimate targets despite them being built for civilian purposes. The aircraft above make low passes, flashing above the city in bright & clear skies, as their bombs fall away and onto selected targets. The people of the city see and hear them above… and the complete failure to stop them too.

Outside of Leningrad, air attacks are made against more military and dual-use civilian targets spread up through the Karelian Isthmus, both east & south away from the city and then westwards along the shores of the Neva Bay in the direction of Estonia. There are long-established Union military sites along with the transport infrastructure that come under fire. Leningrad may be some distance from where the frontlines are, but from this area the war is being supported directly. Munitions, fuel, other supplies and personnel flow out from Leningrad. The falling bombs aim to put a stop to that. The F-15Es and F-111Fs have come here bringing with them much weaponry and the orders run that they are not to return with any of that. If priority targets cannot be found or otherwise look to already be destroyed, there are secondary ones. Those EF-111s flying about continue their work of jamming radars as best as they can though they are unable to stop every effort being made to take down the aircraft which they are protecting. One F-15E is shot down due to extensive fire from anti-aircraft guns near to Tosno when bombing the rail-links which run through there. There is the loss of two of those F-111F near to Gromovo Airbase too. They are raiding where surviving MiG-31s call home and targeting their hardened aircraft shelters (HAS’) with more Paveways. Dropping a GBU-24 laser-guided 2000lb bomb accurately upon a HAS to destroy it – and hopefully the MiG hidden inside – means taking care and thus exposure to the enemy. A SAM battery some distance away from the airbase itself but with coverage over Gromovo is able to fire missiles under guidance in the face of jamming to bring down that pair of strike aircraft. A late-fired HARM missile gets the enemy missile unit afterwards though its operators have already achieved their kills.

The target list has been run through. The first Operation Pickaxe strike comes to an end. Strike aircraft begin making their egress. There are fighters covering their rear and the E-3 Sentry directs the F-15s towards some further incoming interceptors. Another pair of MiG-31s from out of Besovets (not bombed today due to the distance) head towards Leningrad. They are going to be too late and the chance of them doing anything when there is no ground control for them is minimal. They are enemy aircraft though. Sparrows are fired off at them. One MiG goes down but the other makes at attack towards those who shot first. It manages to get an F-15 before being blown apart. Perhaps the Americans should have left the matter alone yet, as said, they were enemy interceptors: if they weren’t met in combat today, then they’d show up again soon. On the way out, there are a few more SAM fired from late appearing enemy units, and fire returned, though the majority of the American aircraft avoid any that. Their egress routes go above the Gulf of Finland and around Estonia, not overland. There are tankers waiting above the Baltic for the aircraft which need a last-minute top-up of fuel to make it back to their temporary homes in Poland.

In addition to the six aircraft which have been lost to enemy action, another goes down over the Baltic due to battle damage having enough late effect to see the F-16 pilot decide he has no objection to abandon his Wild Weasel rolled strike-fighter. A total loss of seven is a big number to swallow for the Americans. They know though that they have inflicted far greater losses upon Union forces in the air and especially on the ground too. There is also all of that other military damage done too away from Union Air Force aircraft. The aircrews will be told some details later on of the results of their attacks but those with the real knowledge of the hurting put on the enemy will be planning staffs and intelligence officers. They will pour over recorded images of underway strikes and then more gained during post-strike reconnaissance of the Leningrad area. There will be no doubt that choosing this set of targets for the first Pickaxe mission has done what is desired. The Leningrad area and all that was available there to the Union will not anymore be providing support for the fighting at the frontlines.

Tomorrow, there will be a second Pickaxe mission. It won’t be the same target again: the Bryansk-Kursk-Orel Triangle will be getting attention like Leningrad has.

So Leningrad is still called Leningrad and not Saint Petersburg.

St Petersburg for a few months before a reversion back to Leningrad. Done on Moscow orders for historical propaganda reasons against the wishes of the city's government.

[lordroel]

Apr 17, 2020 18:54:28 GMT James G said:

Apr 17, 2020 17:56:16 GMT lordroel said:

So Leningrad is still called Leningrad and not Saint Petersburg.

St Petersburg for a few months before a reversion back to Leningrad. Done on Moscow orders for historical propaganda reasons against the wishes of the city's government.

That would be strange, going from a name that was a symbol of a communist regime to a name that somewhat resembled democracy to back to the previous name in only a couple of months.

[James G]

Apr 17, 2020 21:59:35 GMT lordroel said:

Apr 17, 2020 18:54:28 GMT James G said:

St Petersburg for a few months before a reversion back to Leningrad. Done on Moscow orders for historical propaganda reasons against the wishes of the city's government.

That would be strange, going from a name that was a symbol of a communist regime to a name that somewhat resembled democracy to back to the previous name in only a couple of months.

Many strange things happened in a turbulent period of time. They were building a new country while using symbols of the old one which it replaced.
Leningrad has been a hotbed of resistance since the forging of the Union too. It is where the British Army is heading towards too.

[James G]

48 – Prisoners


The Coalition and the Union are each taking prisoners as the fighting between them continues. Captives end up in their custody through all sorts of various means. The majority are those captured on land though aircrews and even sailors are caught. Official policy followed by each is that enemy personnel captured in legitimate circumstances will be treated correctly as Prisoners of War (POWs). Higher orders are to follow international obligations on such matters. As can be expected, there are deviations from this. Not all POWs survive immediate capture where vengeful enemy soldiers take the opportunity to murder those who have killed their comrades-in-arms. With certain captives, those who take them into custody decide that they broke the laws of war and will not recognise them as legitimate POWs whose rights must be respected. In addition, in certain circumstances, and this is happening on both sides too, particular POWs are moved away from regular custody on higher orders and taken away where those international obligations are ignored under the cover of secrecy. Some very bad things are happening to the unlucky ones. The majority though end up going through the various systems for dealing with POWs which the opposing sides have put in place during this conflict.


Coalition prisoners in Union hands come from the armed forces of the eight Western countries involved in the invasion. American, British, Canadian, Czech, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish and Slovak captives are being held as POWs. The Union moves them further and further into the rear post-capture. They separate them by nationality and into other different groups on the basis of rank and condition. There is medical attention given to badly-injured POWs. It isn’t the best but it is done. The Union is being invaded, attacked from all sides, and has so many of its own who require care: there is only so much they can do even if they went all out. The transfer of captives into the rear sees them gathered and held in one location then moved onto another. Escape attempts are made. Getting away is done by some captives and there are many who will end up back at friendly lines at some point: others aren’t so fortunate and face the very real possibility of not managing to survive with their lives if they run. Hunts for escaped POWs are made with few brought back alive. Escape plots and attempts continue though. Camps are established for the concentration of many captives where there will no longer be onwards movements of them. These are located in Western Russia at out of the way military sites. Conditions aren’t the best. The men and women being held do not find luxury waiting for them. However, there is no forced work for them to be done nor any organised outright murder. Things could be a lot worse for the POWs if this was a decade ago and the nation holding them was the Soviet Union with the KGB allowed to do all that it might. The GRU has a presence at each site though. POWs are being interrogated if it is believed that they hold information of value that was missed early on. Transfers are made and that is something covered up as it goes on. Other prisoners work on escape committees and sit around either waiting for the day that they can make a run for it, are liberated by Coalition forces, or… the Union decides to end the ‘reasonable’ treatment and kill them all for no good reason.

The Union hold traitors too. There are prisoners taken from civil war conflicts starting back in February with Primakov’s breakaway originating in Siberia. Central Asian captives are held in many numbers as well including those who refused to fight for the Union when they ended up on the wrong sides of the civil war. Then, there are the recent prisoners taken from ongoing rebellions across the embattled Union. Belorussians, Ukrainians and those from the Caucasus region are held captive. Their captors treat none of them as POWs but instead as illegitimate combatants in a treasonous rebellion. Those who have not been killed on the battlefield are being held in camps where their treatment is terrible. There is no pretence of good treatment and the onus isn’t on the Union to do so because the rules have been interpreted as being different for traitors. Improvised graves fill up with those who give their captors any hint of a problem. There is little effort to hide what is going on with other mistreatments. These people have betrayed their country and are treated as one would expect of those who would do so. From among the ranks, especially ethnic Russians who have fought for the Novosibirsk regime, there is effort made to recruit those who have had a ‘change of heart’ and sent them back to the fight though this time for Gromov and Moscow instead. The numbers aren’t too many and are only chosen from those believed to have never been the most willing of pro-Primakov soldiers, men who just obeyed orders from commanders who were. They are sent to the Western Front too, not back to the Urals. For the others left behind in the camps, their future is bleak.

The Coalition is taking Union POWs aplenty. There are lots of them falling into their hands. Written into the Operation Flaming Phoenix war plan was the matter of what to do with captives and this is being followed as the conflict goes on. Nothing has worked out exactly as planned, as in the nature of things like this, yet there isn’t any sort of major crisis when it comes to POWs. The Coalition expected that they would take many, need to provide for them and mount a major effort in guarding them because they (rightly) expected that resistance would come. Escape attempts are made, coming with violence to allow them to happen. Plenty of POWs are ‘shot while trying to escape’ and in these instances it isn’t just a euphemism. Fellow prisoners are regularly assaulted by their fellow captives for co-operating with Coalition soldiers on guard duty. There is other violence too though. The former Soviet and now Union armed forces has always had difficulties with internal violence among conscripts and while this wasn’t unexpected, it is still no easy thing to deal with. At the very beginning of the war, some POWs were moved back off Union territory into Poland and even Norway. That was right before significant large areas of territory fell to invading Coalition armies though. Those two countries, nor anyone else, wants to have POWs held in their own countries unless there is a good reason too: reasons being such as them needing extensive medical attention or having an intelligence value. Camps for the long-term holding of POWs are active on Union soil. Military Police units are joined by other soldiers – men who should be on the frontlines – in guarding them. On the matter of manpower, there has been an offer made, and subsequently rejected, by Primakov’s regime for them to provide some of that. The proposal was to send some of their personnel to Coalition-held western regions of the Union with this. The question of governance over occupied regions is already becoming a big political headache with the Coalition regarding areas taken as under military rule while Novosibirsk wants to bring in ‘administrators’. What isn’t wanted is for Primakov to be sending armed men into the mix. Manpower shortages are worked around as best as possible and guards are provided for the ever-expanding collection of POWs that the Coalition is operating. They have far more prisoners than the Union has and that number keeps on growing.


The Union is holding many Coalition POWs ‘off the books’. The names of these haven’t been and aren’t going to be provided to the Red Cross. Selected military personnel from the countries at war with the Union are in the custody of special GRU teams who are exploiting them for intelligence purposes. They have aircrews, special forces and military personnel in the fields of intelligence & communications who have valuable information which is being rung out of them. In addition, there are too operatives from civilian intelligence agencies caught and treated as spies too. Bad things happen to these captives. Their POW rights aren’t respected and they suffer grave injustices done to them. Torture and murder is the ultimate outcome for these captives. Justifications are made that these are alleged war criminals and illegal combatants caught fighting in a war which they had no right to be in. That may be the case for those caught as spies but it is certainly not for the military personnel caught in uniform who are recognised as being of much value when the knowledge in their heads is wanted. Deniability is key here for the GRU. They do what they do while covering their tracks and out of the glare of everyone else. What they gain from this is put to use where it can be and the intention is to carry on.

The Coalition has also disappeared many Union captives. They aren’t being held in regular POW camps with others and will not be appearing on any lists to go to any international organisation. The overall intention isn’t to kill them when done with them but deaths are occurring due to certain extreme measures taken with these captives. Intelligence is what is wanted from these prisoners. The same sort of captives that the Union is keeping in secret are those being held at so-called Black Sites by the Coalition: aircrews, Spetsnaz, signals & military intelligence people and GRU operatives too. Willing cooperation is being given by other captives which are being kept in isolation too. The Coalition has been receiving defectors since the war began. They are of several different nationalities, including Russians, who express a desire to help free their country and say that they had no choice but to fight for Moscow before giving themselves up. They are kept in secret so that should they be put into play – i.e. sent off to cause trouble behind enemy lines or maybe to persuade unwilling captives to talk – that can be deniable if it all goes wrong. Some thinking has also gone into the post-war Union, once this is all over: some of those defectors will owe their captors a debt.

[James G]

49 – The CNN effect


Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, cameramen record images of US Navy aviators taking their jets into the sky. F-14 Tomcats fly away first followed by EA-6 Prowlers. A squadron of A-6 Intruders fly next, with these strike aircraft observed as carrying much external ordnance. Public Affairs Officers (PAOs) are with the CNN team on this carrier. Despite the question already being asked, with refusals coming to divulge details, the reporter who watches those aircraft go asks the senior PAO where they are going. He wants to know more than what he has previously been told: ‘south’ doesn’t satisfy him. No one will tell him though. All communications out from the carrier by this media team are controlled by the US Navy and they can – and have – censor anything said, but the CNN reporter nor those with him aboard are told that the destination for the underway strike is Union Army forces in the Kandalaksha area. Those aircraft will fly south across the Kola Peninsula with the EA-6s providing close-in support for the A-6s and the F-14s operating at distance. They’ll be back in a couple of hours… most of them anyway. One A-6 will be lost to enemy action and another will make a hard landing at a Coalition-held airbase in the northwest of the Kola. Even then, with the strike completed and images recorded of returning aircraft, still the journalist will not be informed of what exactly has happened today. Information like that isn’t being shared even with media teams practically on the frontlines of the war.

A journalist with the Daily Telegraph, a London-based newspaper, is killed near to the Lithuanian town of Ukmergė. Ukmergė is at a crossroads with it being a major part of the logistics network supporting British I Corps activities as they push into Latvia. The journalist is with the corps’ assigned media pool – where news stories are shared with other organisations rather than seeing each one have a representative in the same place – and has seen war before. He’s been shot at before, shelled before and bombed before. Despite covering wars all over the world through many long years, none of that has prepared him for today though. Ballistic missiles rain down upon Ukmergė. There is no real warning about these incoming Scuds. A missile fragment, no bigger than a matchbook, strikes him in the neck after spinning across the sky at speed. He bleeds out in the arms of a Royal Transport Corps sergeant who desperately tries to save the journalist’s life but fails to do so. It is a dangerous job being a war correspondent and the journalist knew what he was doing in coming this far forward into it. That said, he naturally didn’t expect to die in such a manner as this.

From out of Moscow’s undamaged Sheremetyevo, a French freelance journalist leaves the Union. She is being deported on a Finnair flight which is removing members of the international media like herself. There are other freelancers as well as those directly working for news agencies. After several days of being locked up in a hotel alongside others – the building had been commandeered by the Union authorities and they were effective prisoners there –, and no access allowed out to cover the war, the decision had been made for a mass deportation. There is no rough treatment given. The freelancer has been fearing the worst but with her country neutral in this conflict, that guarantees her safety. Moscow has been a complete blow out for her career-wise yet she is leaving the city alive. The Finnish airliner flies toward Helsinki on a recognised international air route. The Coalition has been informed of the flight and it is one arranged between the Union Government and the Finnish Government: peacetime flights have been suspended but this is a wartime evacuation flight. No one shoots at the airliner with the freelancer aboard. It is given a ‘look over’ by combatants in the war though, just in case it is a military aircraft taken advantage. Touchdown in Helsinki is made and the freelancer is out of the war-zone which she was unable to report upon.


Recently, the term ‘the CNN effect’ has been coined to describe the modern impact of the twenty-four-hour news broadcasting from around the world on America’s political landscape. Two years ago, when the newly-formed Union of Sovereign States was in its infancy and undergoing immense turmoil with coups and counter-coups, images from Moscow had a direct affect upon national politics. It could be argued that what CNN and others covered led to the electoral victory of Bob Kerrey. In real time, important events from around the world are brought into the living rooms of those in the United States. George Bush was seen as a victim of the CNN effect whereas Kerrey was a winner from the coverage. Kerrey’s assassination wasn’t a CNN exclusive but reaction in Moscow to it was: the American people were presented with the Union attitude that it was only a good thing for their country. Criticism has been made about how this was actually presented, due to translation but more so selective coverage to push out a biased view, yet the decades-long negative view of most Americans towards whatever name for their country those in Moscow had is already deeply ingrained.

The American news media covered the build-up to war extensively. They were joined by others from aboard in this with global organisations often playing catch up to what was coming from CNN and its peers. As the Coalition was formed and mobilisation occurred, there were some secrets hidden from the media. However, so much of what was done was out in the public eye. This was all available to those in Moscow. General Gromov had it repeatedly brought to his attention because news organisations such as CNN were seemingly doing much of the job of the GRU here. The Union’s failure to act was quite something when they were given so much free information on the coming war which Gromov fully believed was nothing more than intimidation. His strategic miscalculation has cost the Union dear. However, it would only be fair to say that no Western media outlet was able to predict that the Coalition would make its attack when it did. There were many ‘talking heads’ – highly-paid commentators – who confidently predicted that the Coalition was far from ready for any form of military action: they were talking about possible air strikes too, not a full-on invasion even when hundreds of thousands of troops were massing on the Union’s borders. In addition, CNN wasn’t able to get a heads-up on what was planned with that ‘running start’ that the Coalition made by attacking like it did in the midst of deployment rather than waiting until everything was set-up perfectly. The media were still thinking in terms of the 1991 Gulf War, a conflict which reinvented war coverage, one fit for the Nineties and satellite television. The beginning of Operation Flaming Phoenix took them by surprise but they have been fast to bring it to a global audience.


As was the case back in the war against Saddam, the Coalition isn’t allowing the media to wander all over the battlefield doing what they want. The Americans, the British and their allies refuse to give the media free reign to do anything they might wish to during their coverage of the war. Back home in America (and Canada too) there is complete freedom of the media to say as do as they wish. In Britain, Norway and Eastern Europe, there are some restrictions on the activities of journalists though it isn’t really that draconian: these governments have the powers to do more than they are. Things aren’t the same closer to the fighting. Access is granted to those approved for access. Working with their employers, private companies and public organisations, Coalition governments aim to present favourable coverage of the war by those reporting from close to the frontlines. There are security measures imposed upon the media and censorship is in-place. This applies to journalists who wish to see the action up close and those who attend commander’s press briefings. Those who refuse to follow the rules, even when their employers have signed off on that, soon find themselves sent home. This is something easy to do because through areas occupied by Coalition inside the Union, there is military rule.

Members of the media are restricted as to where they can go. Escorted around by military police units and military intelligence staffers in the PAO role (the British and others have similar people to what the US Armed Forces do), there is limited freedom of movement. They aren’t being brought right up to where the frontlines are. The Coalition, especially the Robb Administration in Washington, wants to direct the media to put out the ‘right’ message from the war. There is the direction pushed that this is a just fight to free oppressed people. This concerns those in the Baltics especially but also people in Belarus who rose up a few months ago and those who are now doing so in the Ukraine too. Casualties of anti-guerrilla operations are where the media are directed towards and so too to see the after-effects of chemical weapons attacks. Interviews are allowed to be done with some Coalition POWs rescued from or who have escaped Union custody too. Danger does come to the media when they are in the way of Union counter-strikes made. Those in the field are reminded again and again about the danger posed to them… with some finding out the hard way how true that is.

Where CNN and others attend events held by Coalition senior officers, there is likewise control over them. McCaffrey has so far been holding daily media briefings. He and his staff present to gathered journalists what they wish to. Recorded footage is shown from aircraft dropping laser-guided bombs. Maps are presented giving those who see them a general idea of the progress of the war. Union war crimes are highlighted. Victories are told of though without many details. Questions coming back from the journalists aren’t always answered. There is a refusal to be drawn on casualty numbers nor any operational details including real objectives away from remarks made by politicians. Some troublesome journalists have already had their access revoked for refusing to play along. The Coalition has a media war which it wants to win, with the frontlines being back home, alongside the fight that it is having on the physical battlefields in the Union too.

[James G]

50 – A disgrace


The fighting for the city of Kaliningrad enters its fourth day. Resistance continues from its Union defenders, determined resistance at that. The Poles cannot defeat the dug-in defenders who have barricaded themselves inside the very centre. Artillery and air strikes are flattening Kaliningrad around them but the last remnants of the 1st Guards Motor Rifle Division (joined by personnel from non-combat units and from elsewhere among Union military forces) refuse to give in. Their fight is something that the Union could make a big deal out of in terms of propaganda. Against all the odds, here patriotic soldiers hold out as they fight for their nation against invaders. However, communications from Kaliningrad have been long cut and there is yet to be a real start to any nationwide efforts from the Gromov regime to get the public behind any sort of ‘Second Great Patriotic War’. This is a grave mistake. The public, those in Russia especially, would be receptive to such a thing. The failure to do so is yet another grave error on the part of Gromov’s misrule of the Union. With the 4th & 16th Mechanised Divisions now fully involved in the fruitless effort to try and overcome Kaliningrad’s defenders, the Anglo-American 198th Infantry Brigade pulls away from the fight this morning. New orders have come for this joint force of British Army and US Army troops from out of Berlin to go north. They remain part of the Polish III Corps, which has two further divisions spread across the western reaches of Lithuania and moving into Latvia too. The 198th Infantry Brigade crosses the Neuman River and leaves the Kaliningrad Oblast. There is a wish from the brigade commander for his force to have an important impact in the main Polish advance now that the distraction of Kaliningrad is behind him. He finds out later in the day that he is too late though. The Poles have already begun to run riot as they overrun a significant portion of once enemy-held territory.

The 5th Mechanised Division enters Klaipėda. These Poles reach the sea and find that there are no defenders here ready to make a stand. The port has (deliberately) not been bombed by Coalition aircraft and neither have Union forces undertaken any form of demolitions here. Their British allies will be happy: Klaipėda will solve many logistical issues for the British I Corps who have extensive and complicated supply lines which an intact seaport like this can help to solve. This Polish advance to reach the sea comes with this lower grade Polish Army unit going through the last of the 107th Motor Rifle Division. A couple of days ago, this Union formation inflicted a significant check on the progress of the British when they expanded their area of operations into Lithuania. The Poles fought them yesterday and had a tough time too. However, the 107th Motor Rifle Division is by today all spent. It is a lower grade unit itself and not at full strength: the Americans have also bombed them and bombed them again too. A fresh attack this morning by the 5th Mechanised Division sees them crumble. Polish T-55 tanks escort SKOT armoured personnel carriers deep into the enemy rear once the forward units are dealt with. Large-scale surrenders come. Hundreds upon hundreds of prisoners fall into Polish hands and this includes the acting divisional commander himself. His general is dead after a US Air Force targeted strike on the command post which killed everyone senior to the deputy operations officer. It is a great victory which is won by the Poles. They are moving north by nightfall, heading along the coast aiming to see if there is any more resistance to them grabbing more port facilities on the shoreline of the Baltic Sea.

Advancing towards Riga is the Polish 2nd Mechanised Division. With air support, they stopped an attacking Union division yesterday out in Western Lithuania too and thus held the flank for the British when they beat the Twenty–Eighth Army. What is left of the 45th Guards Motor Rifle Division chooses today to retreat in the face of a fresh attack, not surrender. Some Poles go after them as those Union forces head up into the dead end which is the Courland Peninsula, but the majority of the 2nd Mechanised Division moves on the Latvian capital. There are reported to be Union paratroopers dug-in there and supported by locally recruited militia. The Poles cover significant distance, storming across the northernmost reaches of Lithuania unopposed to then approach Riga. Sticking to the western side of the Daugava River (the British are on the other side), their armoured columns slow down on the approach. T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry carriers and 2S1 self-propelled guns – all Soviet-era equipment but manufactured in Poland – are ready for a major fight on the scale of Kaliningrad. Instead of gunfire, they are met by a party of Union Airborne Troops officers who have come out to seek terms of surrender. The 7th Guards Airborne Division has its 97th Regiment in Riga with the orders to repel an assault coming by air, sea or land. A fight is expected of them by their superiors. The commanding colonel gives in though. He’s overseen demolitions of transportation links and the extensive port facilities. Union Navy commandos have done the latter though they leave Riga ahead of the surrender. His radio equipment is destroyed and paperwork burnt. Militia leaders, recruited from Riga’s majority ethnic Russian population, are under arrest and so too is Latvia’s prime minister: a Russian himself who Lebed had here in Latvia to rule over the nationwide majority Latvians. He doesn’t want to fight and die for what he believes is a lost cause: Latvia forced against its will into the Union led by a political general. The surrender is accepted and another mass detention of Union POWs who fall into Polish hands begins. Riga is entered by the Poles and there are some shooting incidents with militia who refuse to give up though. Polish troops, who know how their country has suffered in recent days under Union missile attack targeting civilian areas, respond harshly to all resistance. Before midnight, the Latvian government-in-exile will have their representatives arriving in Riga. Riga’s airport is a ruin after careful demolitions but a successful landing is made of an aircraft bringing in politicians and officials aiming to restore their nation’s sovereignty. They arrive into a city full of the sounds of gunshots.

Daugavpils is located on the northern bank of the Daugava. Stretching away from the city, through Latvia, Estonia & Russia too, are the supply lines of the Union’s defeated Twenty–Eighth Army. The British advance today across the now exposed rear-areas of the overcome troops which this support network no longer needs to provide for. The RAF and the Army Air Corps aid the British I Corps in this. There are near defenceless enemy forces everywhere. Those who wish to fight are engaged, those who run are chased & bombed and those who surrender have that accepted. The 1st Armoured & 3rd Mechanised Divisions are given the tasks of completing the elimination of all of these Union forces as well as advancing forward. It is no easy feat to undertake. British and Coalition air power has been busy ahead of today and a large area north of Daugavpils was a free-fire zone. Unexploded ordnance and air-dropped mines are encountered. The wreckage of Union combat & non-combat vehicles scattered the roads and countryside for miles in every direction. Union soldiers standing side-by-side either drop their rifles or fire them. Gunners, engineers, signalmen, mechanics, truck drivers and cooks are encountered: they are all soldiers with basic training behind them. In the face of British armour and veteran infantry, there can only be one winner in each fight but the whole thing is one giant mess. Eventually, the Desert Rats break free from all of it. 7th Armoured Brigade units charge northeast and out of this madness. There is a road running in the direction of Rezekne, a crossroads and communications centre, but that paved route is full of smouldering trucks. The course of the transport link is shadowed in a cross-country move instead. It is easy going on a warm summer’s day for the Desert Rats to reach there. The commanding brigadier has orders to keep going past Rezekne though. British Challenger-2 tanks reach the Russian border by nightfall.

In Vilnius, there is another regiment from the 7th Guards Airborne Division. The 119th Regiment spent late yesterday and all through the night holding onto the heart of the Lithuanian capital. They would not be budged from fortified positions even when two brigades of British infantry moved against them. Neither the 5th Airborne nor 24th Airmobile Brigade commanders were willing to destroy Vilnius in the vein of Kaliningrad as the Poles have done (and what was destined to become of Riga before the unexpected surrender there). They’ve spent the hours of darkness methodically clearing enemy resistance by separating firebases from each other and working them over carefully one at a time. Nerve gas and flamethrowers have been used by the 119th Regiment while the British Army has relied upon carefully targeted firepower as well as close-range infantry action. Vilnius is won this morning… and the enemy make a run for it. A rear-guard is left behind, staying here to fight to the very end, while the majority of what is left of the 119th Regiment seeks an escape. They breakout to the southeast, aiming for the forested hills bordering Belarus. Their commander believes that an escape can be made into Belarus, unaware that the Americans are that way in force. The British are taken by surprise at the attempt to make a run for it but respond quickly. They have complete control of the air this far in the rear. The enemy is moving on foot in daylight and cannot get far. Groups of Union paratroopers are spotted from above and taken under fire. The 5th Airborne Brigade’s Paras and Gurkhas are still tied down inside Vilnius but 24th Airmobile Brigade units aren’t as fully committed. Infantrymen from the Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire and the Scots Guards, covered from above by those Army Air Corps helicopters, defeat the attempted breakout. A couple of miles away is all that the largest groups of paratroopers can get. The rear-guard inside Vilnius fights on through the rest of the day though their last stand is for nothing. When they are finally overcome, the city is in British hands. Much damage has been done and there are many lives lost yet, like Riga, Union Airborne Troops have lost another Baltic Republic capital which they were ordered to hold onto until the very end. Coalition propaganda efforts are fast to make the most of Vilnius’ fall.

The Western Front is the operational command for Union forces fighting in the Baltics, Belarus, and the Ukraine (not Crimea). On Gromov’s instructions, STAVKA created the headquarters for an army group and issued orders to a rapidly-appointed commander on the war’s first day. He’s already been replaced. No one shot him for failure – this isn’t the time of Stalin after all – but that general was relieved of command and a new man appointed. This is nothing more than, as the saying goes, ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’: at this stage nothing can be done to avert the absolute disaster unfolding from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Defeat after defeat after defeat has been seen. Today’s series of Coalition victories on the Western Front’s right flank are a continuation of that. Union forces in the Baltic were the strongest in the formed army group’s inventory. They’d lost many sub-units to the Urals Front ahead of Operation Flaming Phoenix starting but were still on alert to face any (what was meant to be unlikely) Coalition action to try to ‘liberate’ the Baltics. There were also a lot of them. Kaliningrad’s last stand is unknown but also immaterial. First the Eleventh Guards Army and then the Twenty–Eighth Army have been wiped out. Paratroopers dug into cities that the Coalition would want to take have lost Riga and Vilnius. The 7th Guards Airborne Division has its third regiment up in Tallinn – therefore still ready to fight – but the divisional commander is relived of his duties by the Western Front’s commander. The performance of his men is ‘a disgrace’, he is told, for the failures shown today. That Airborne Troops general is a scapegoat though. Orders from the Western Front had the Twenty–Eighth Army charge head-on into battle, driving south into the face of Coalition air power, rather than holding where they were in defensive position to await on reinforcements. This army group commander is fighting the Coalition’s war for them, doing everything that they hope he will. He isn’t trading space for time as has been seen in the Kola and will be today in the Crimea. And, as said, it isn’t just Union forces in the Baltic under the command of the Western Front but those in Belarus and the Ukraine too. Irresponsible, foolish errors are being repeated today with the fighting today in both of them too. If anyone is a disgrace, it isn’t the commander of that division of paratroopers.

[lordroel]

Apr 20, 2020 19:04:42 GMT James G said:

50 – A disgrace


The fighting for the city of Kaliningrad enters its fourth day. Resistance continues from its Union defenders, determined resistance at that. The Poles cannot defeat the dug-in defenders who have barricaded themselves inside the very centre. Artillery and air strikes are flattening Kaliningrad around them but the last remnants of the 1st Guards Motor Rifle Division (joined by personnel from non-combat units and from elsewhere among Union military forces) refuse to give in. Their fight is something that the Union could make a big deal out of in terms of propaganda. Against all the odds, here patriotic soldiers hold out as they fight for their nation against invaders. However, communications from Kaliningrad have been long cut and there is yet to be a real start to any nationwide efforts from the Gromov regime to get the public behind any sort of ‘Second Great Patriotic War’. This is a grave mistake. The public, those in Russia especially, would be receptive to such a thing. The failure to do so is yet another grave error on the part of Gromov’s misrule of the Union. With the 4th & 16th Mechanised Divisions now fully involved in the fruitless effort to try and overcome Kaliningrad’s defenders, the Anglo-American 198th Infantry Brigade pulls away from the fight this morning. New orders have come for this joint force of British Army and US Army troops from out of Berlin to go north. They remain part of the Polish III Corps, which has two further divisions spread across the western reaches of Lithuania and moving into Latvia too. The 198th Infantry Brigade crosses the Neuman River and leaves the Kaliningrad Oblast. There is a wish from the brigade commander for his force to have an important impact in the main Polish advance now that the distraction of Kaliningrad is behind him. He finds out later in the day that he is too late though. The Poles have already begun to run riot as they overrun a significant portion of once enemy-held territory.

The 5th Mechanised Division enters Klaipėda. These Poles reach the sea and find that there are no defenders here ready to make a stand. The port has (deliberately) not been bombed by Coalition aircraft and neither have Union forces undertaken any form of demolitions here. Their British allies will be happy: Klaipėda will solve many logistical issues for the British I Corps who have extensive and complicated supply lines which an intact seaport like this can help to solve. This Polish advance to reach the sea comes with this lower grade Polish Army unit going through the last of the 107th Motor Rifle Division. A couple of days ago, this Union formation inflicted a significant check on the progress of the British when they expanded their area of operations into Lithuania. The Poles fought them yesterday and had a tough time too. However, the 107th Motor Rifle Division is by today all spent. It is a lower grade unit itself and not at full strength: the Americans have also bombed them and bombed them again too. A fresh attack this morning by the 5th Mechanised Division sees them crumble. Polish T-55 tanks escort SKOT armoured personnel carriers deep into the enemy rear once the forward units are dealt with. Large-scale surrenders come. Hundreds upon hundreds of prisoners fall into Polish hands and this includes the acting divisional commander himself. His general is dead after a US Air Force targeted strike on the command post which killed everyone senior to the deputy operations officer. It is a great victory which is won by the Poles. They are moving north by nightfall, heading along the coast aiming to see if there is any more resistance to them grabbing more port facilities on the shoreline of the Baltic Sea.

Advancing towards Riga is the Polish 2nd Mechanised Division. With air support, they stopped an attacking Union division yesterday out in Western Lithuania too and thus held the flank for the British when they beat the Twenty–Eighth Army. What is left of the 45th Guards Motor Rifle Division chooses today to retreat in the face of a fresh attack, not surrender. Some Poles go after them as those Union forces head up into the dead end which is the Courland Peninsula, but the majority of the 2nd Mechanised Division moves on the Latvian capital. There are reported to be Union paratroopers dug-in there and supported by locally recruited militia. The Poles cover significant distance, storming across the northernmost reaches of Lithuania unopposed to then approach Riga. Sticking to the western side of the Daugava River (the British are on the other side), their armoured columns slow down on the approach. T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry carriers and 2S1 self-propelled guns – all Soviet-era equipment but manufactured in Poland – are ready for a major fight on the scale of Kaliningrad. Instead of gunfire, they are met by a party of Union Airborne Troops officers who have come out to seek terms of surrender. The 7th Guards Airborne Division has its 97th Regiment in Riga with the orders to repel an assault coming by air, sea or land. A fight is expected of them by their superiors. The commanding colonel gives in though. He’s overseen demolitions of transportation links and the extensive port facilities. Union Navy commandos have done the latter though they leave Riga ahead of the surrender. His radio equipment is destroyed and paperwork burnt. Militia leaders, recruited from Riga’s majority ethnic Russian population, are under arrest and so too is Latvia’s prime minister: a Russian himself who Lebed had here in Latvia to rule over the nationwide majority Latvians. He doesn’t want to fight and die for what he believes is a lost cause: Latvia forced against its will into the Union led by a political general. The surrender is accepted and another mass detention of Union POWs who fall into Polish hands begins. Riga is entered by the Poles and there are some shooting incidents with militia who refuse to give up though. Polish troops, who know how their country has suffered in recent days under Union missile attack targeting civilian areas, respond harshly to all resistance. Before midnight, the Latvian government-in-exile will have their representatives arriving in Riga. Riga’s airport is a ruin after careful demolitions but a successful landing is made of an aircraft bringing in politicians and officials aiming to restore their nation’s sovereignty. They arrive into a city full of the sounds of gunshots.

Daugavpils is located on the northern bank of the Daugava. Stretching away from the city, through Latvia, Estonia & Russia too, are the supply lines of the Union’s defeated Twenty–Eighth Army. The British advance today across the now exposed rear-areas of the overcome troops which this support network no longer needs to provide for. The RAF and the Army Air Corps aid the British I Corps in this. There are near defenceless enemy forces everywhere. Those who wish to fight are engaged, those who run are chased & bombed and those who surrender have that accepted. The 1st Armoured & 3rd Mechanised Divisions are given the tasks of completing the elimination of all of these Union forces as well as advancing forward. It is no easy feat to undertake. British and Coalition air power has been busy ahead of today and a large area north of Daugavpils was a free-fire zone. Unexploded ordnance and air-dropped mines are encountered. The wreckage of Union combat & non-combat vehicles scattered the roads and countryside for miles in every direction. Union soldiers standing side-by-side either drop their rifles or fire them. Gunners, engineers, signalmen, mechanics, truck drivers and cooks are encountered: they are all soldiers with basic training behind them. In the face of British armour and veteran infantry, there can only be one winner in each fight but the whole thing is one giant mess. Eventually, the Desert Rats break free from all of it. 7th Armoured Brigade units charge northeast and out of this madness. There is a road running in the direction of Rezekne, a crossroads and communications centre, but that paved route is full of smouldering trucks. The course of the transport link is shadowed in a cross-country move instead. It is easy going on a warm summer’s day for the Desert Rats to reach there. The commanding brigadier has orders to keep going past Rezekne though. British Challenger-2 tanks reach the Russian border by nightfall.

In Vilnius, there is another regiment from the 7th Guards Airborne Division. The 119th Regiment spent late yesterday and all through the night holding onto the heart of the Lithuanian capital. They would not be budged from fortified positions even when two brigades of British infantry moved against them. Neither the 5th Airborne nor 24th Airmobile Brigade commanders were willing to destroy Vilnius in the vein of Kaliningrad as the Poles have done (and what was destined to become of Riga before the unexpected surrender there). They’ve spent the hours of darkness methodically clearing enemy resistance by separating firebases from each other and working them over carefully one at a time. Nerve gas and flamethrowers have been used by the 119th Regiment while the British Army has relied upon carefully targeted firepower as well as close-range infantry action. Vilnius is won this morning… and the enemy make a run for it. A rear-guard is left behind, staying here to fight to the very end, while the majority of what is left of the 119th Regiment seeks an escape. They breakout to the southeast, aiming for the forested hills bordering Belarus. Their commander believes that an escape can be made into Belarus, unaware that the Americans are that way in force. The British are taken by surprise at the attempt to make a run for it but respond quickly. They have complete control of the air this far in the rear. The enemy is moving on foot in daylight and cannot get far. Groups of Union paratroopers are spotted from above and taken under fire. The 5th Airborne Brigade’s Paras and Gurkhas are still tied down inside Vilnius but 24th Airmobile Brigade units aren’t as fully committed. Infantrymen from the Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire and the Scots Guards, covered from above by those Army Air Corps helicopters, defeat the attempted breakout. A couple of miles away is all that the largest groups of paratroopers can get. The rear-guard inside Vilnius fights on through the rest of the day though their last stand is for nothing. When they are finally overcome, the city is in British hands. Much damage has been done and there are many lives lost yet, like Riga, Union Airborne Troops have lost another Baltic Republic capital which they were ordered to hold onto until the very end. Coalition propaganda efforts are fast to make the most of Vilnius’ fall.

The Western Front is the operational command for Union forces fighting in the Baltics, Belarus, and the Ukraine (not Crimea). On Gromov’s instructions, STAVKA created the headquarters for an army group and issued orders to a rapidly-appointed commander on the war’s first day. He’s already been replaced. No one shot him for failure – this isn’t the time of Stalin after all – but that general was relieved of command and a new man appointed. This is nothing more than, as the saying goes, ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’: at this stage nothing can be done to avert the absolute disaster unfolding from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Defeat after defeat after defeat has been seen. Today’s series of Coalition victories on the Western Front’s right flank are a continuation of that. Union forces in the Baltic were the strongest in the formed army group’s inventory. They’d lost many sub-units to the Urals Front ahead of Operation Flaming Phoenix starting but were still on alert to face any (what was meant to be unlikely) Coalition action to try to ‘liberate’ the Baltics. There were also a lot of them. Kaliningrad’s last stand is unknown but also immaterial. First the Eleventh Guards Army and then the Twenty–Eighth Army have been wiped out. Paratroopers dug into cities that the Coalition would want to take have lost Riga and Vilnius. The 7th Guards Airborne Division has its third regiment up in Tallinn – therefore still ready to fight – but the divisional commander is relived of his duties by the Western Front’s commander. The performance of his men is ‘a disgrace’, he is told, for the failures shown today. That Airborne Troops general is a scapegoat though. Orders from the Western Front had the Twenty–Eighth Army charge head-on into battle, driving south into the face of Coalition air power, rather than holding where they were in defensive position to await on reinforcements. This army group commander is fighting the Coalition’s war for them, doing everything that they hope he will. He isn’t trading space for time as has been seen in the Kola and will be today in the Crimea. And, as said, it isn’t just Union forces in the Baltic under the command of the Western Front but those in Belarus and the Ukraine too. Irresponsible, foolish errors are being repeated today with the fighting today in both of them too. If anyone is a disgrace, it isn’t the commander of that division of paratroopers.

I wonder if in the end Kaliningrad will become part of Poland when the war is over.

[James G]

Apr 21, 2020 17:30:56 GMT lordroel said:

Apr 20, 2020 19:04:42 GMT James G said:

50 – A disgrace


The fighting for the city of Kaliningrad enters its fourth day. Resistance continues from its Union defenders, determined resistance at that. The Poles cannot defeat the dug-in defenders who have barricaded themselves inside the very centre. Artillery and air strikes are flattening Kaliningrad around them but the last remnants of the 1st Guards Motor Rifle Division (joined by personnel from non-combat units and from elsewhere among Union military forces) refuse to give in. Their fight is something that the Union could make a big deal out of in terms of propaganda. Against all the odds, here patriotic soldiers hold out as they fight for their nation against invaders. However, communications from Kaliningrad have been long cut and there is yet to be a real start to any nationwide efforts from the Gromov regime to get the public behind any sort of ‘Second Great Patriotic War’. This is a grave mistake. The public, those in Russia especially, would be receptive to such a thing. The failure to do so is yet another grave error on the part of Gromov’s misrule of the Union. With the 4th & 16th Mechanised Divisions now fully involved in the fruitless effort to try and overcome Kaliningrad’s defenders, the Anglo-American 198th Infantry Brigade pulls away from the fight this morning. New orders have come for this joint force of British Army and US Army troops from out of Berlin to go north. They remain part of the Polish III Corps, which has two further divisions spread across the western reaches of Lithuania and moving into Latvia too. The 198th Infantry Brigade crosses the Neuman River and leaves the Kaliningrad Oblast. There is a wish from the brigade commander for his force to have an important impact in the main Polish advance now that the distraction of Kaliningrad is behind him. He finds out later in the day that he is too late though. The Poles have already begun to run riot as they overrun a significant portion of once enemy-held territory.

The 5th Mechanised Division enters Klaipėda. These Poles reach the sea and find that there are no defenders here ready to make a stand. The port has (deliberately) not been bombed by Coalition aircraft and neither have Union forces undertaken any form of demolitions here. Their British allies will be happy: Klaipėda will solve many logistical issues for the British I Corps who have extensive and complicated supply lines which an intact seaport like this can help to solve. This Polish advance to reach the sea comes with this lower grade Polish Army unit going through the last of the 107th Motor Rifle Division. A couple of days ago, this Union formation inflicted a significant check on the progress of the British when they expanded their area of operations into Lithuania. The Poles fought them yesterday and had a tough time too. However, the 107th Motor Rifle Division is by today all spent. It is a lower grade unit itself and not at full strength: the Americans have also bombed them and bombed them again too. A fresh attack this morning by the 5th Mechanised Division sees them crumble. Polish T-55 tanks escort SKOT armoured personnel carriers deep into the enemy rear once the forward units are dealt with. Large-scale surrenders come. Hundreds upon hundreds of prisoners fall into Polish hands and this includes the acting divisional commander himself. His general is dead after a US Air Force targeted strike on the command post which killed everyone senior to the deputy operations officer. It is a great victory which is won by the Poles. They are moving north by nightfall, heading along the coast aiming to see if there is any more resistance to them grabbing more port facilities on the shoreline of the Baltic Sea.

Advancing towards Riga is the Polish 2nd Mechanised Division. With air support, they stopped an attacking Union division yesterday out in Western Lithuania too and thus held the flank for the British when they beat the Twenty–Eighth Army. What is left of the 45th Guards Motor Rifle Division chooses today to retreat in the face of a fresh attack, not surrender. Some Poles go after them as those Union forces head up into the dead end which is the Courland Peninsula, but the majority of the 2nd Mechanised Division moves on the Latvian capital. There are reported to be Union paratroopers dug-in there and supported by locally recruited militia. The Poles cover significant distance, storming across the northernmost reaches of Lithuania unopposed to then approach Riga. Sticking to the western side of the Daugava River (the British are on the other side), their armoured columns slow down on the approach. T-72 tanks, BMP-1 infantry carriers and 2S1 self-propelled guns – all Soviet-era equipment but manufactured in Poland – are ready for a major fight on the scale of Kaliningrad. Instead of gunfire, they are met by a party of Union Airborne Troops officers who have come out to seek terms of surrender. The 7th Guards Airborne Division has its 97th Regiment in Riga with the orders to repel an assault coming by air, sea or land. A fight is expected of them by their superiors. The commanding colonel gives in though. He’s overseen demolitions of transportation links and the extensive port facilities. Union Navy commandos have done the latter though they leave Riga ahead of the surrender. His radio equipment is destroyed and paperwork burnt. Militia leaders, recruited from Riga’s majority ethnic Russian population, are under arrest and so too is Latvia’s prime minister: a Russian himself who Lebed had here in Latvia to rule over the nationwide majority Latvians. He doesn’t want to fight and die for what he believes is a lost cause: Latvia forced against its will into the Union led by a political general. The surrender is accepted and another mass detention of Union POWs who fall into Polish hands begins. Riga is entered by the Poles and there are some shooting incidents with militia who refuse to give up though. Polish troops, who know how their country has suffered in recent days under Union missile attack targeting civilian areas, respond harshly to all resistance. Before midnight, the Latvian government-in-exile will have their representatives arriving in Riga. Riga’s airport is a ruin after careful demolitions but a successful landing is made of an aircraft bringing in politicians and officials aiming to restore their nation’s sovereignty. They arrive into a city full of the sounds of gunshots.

Daugavpils is located on the northern bank of the Daugava. Stretching away from the city, through Latvia, Estonia & Russia too, are the supply lines of the Union’s defeated Twenty–Eighth Army. The British advance today across the now exposed rear-areas of the overcome troops which this support network no longer needs to provide for. The RAF and the Army Air Corps aid the British I Corps in this. There are near defenceless enemy forces everywhere. Those who wish to fight are engaged, those who run are chased & bombed and those who surrender have that accepted. The 1st Armoured & 3rd Mechanised Divisions are given the tasks of completing the elimination of all of these Union forces as well as advancing forward. It is no easy feat to undertake. British and Coalition air power has been busy ahead of today and a large area north of Daugavpils was a free-fire zone. Unexploded ordnance and air-dropped mines are encountered. The wreckage of Union combat & non-combat vehicles scattered the roads and countryside for miles in every direction. Union soldiers standing side-by-side either drop their rifles or fire them. Gunners, engineers, signalmen, mechanics, truck drivers and cooks are encountered: they are all soldiers with basic training behind them. In the face of British armour and veteran infantry, there can only be one winner in each fight but the whole thing is one giant mess. Eventually, the Desert Rats break free from all of it. 7th Armoured Brigade units charge northeast and out of this madness. There is a road running in the direction of Rezekne, a crossroads and communications centre, but that paved route is full of smouldering trucks. The course of the transport link is shadowed in a cross-country move instead. It is easy going on a warm summer’s day for the Desert Rats to reach there. The commanding brigadier has orders to keep going past Rezekne though. British Challenger-2 tanks reach the Russian border by nightfall.

In Vilnius, there is another regiment from the 7th Guards Airborne Division. The 119th Regiment spent late yesterday and all through the night holding onto the heart of the Lithuanian capital. They would not be budged from fortified positions even when two brigades of British infantry moved against them. Neither the 5th Airborne nor 24th Airmobile Brigade commanders were willing to destroy Vilnius in the vein of Kaliningrad as the Poles have done (and what was destined to become of Riga before the unexpected surrender there). They’ve spent the hours of darkness methodically clearing enemy resistance by separating firebases from each other and working them over carefully one at a time. Nerve gas and flamethrowers have been used by the 119th Regiment while the British Army has relied upon carefully targeted firepower as well as close-range infantry action. Vilnius is won this morning… and the enemy make a run for it. A rear-guard is left behind, staying here to fight to the very end, while the majority of what is left of the 119th Regiment seeks an escape. They breakout to the southeast, aiming for the forested hills bordering Belarus. Their commander believes that an escape can be made into Belarus, unaware that the Americans are that way in force. The British are taken by surprise at the attempt to make a run for it but respond quickly. They have complete control of the air this far in the rear. The enemy is moving on foot in daylight and cannot get far. Groups of Union paratroopers are spotted from above and taken under fire. The 5th Airborne Brigade’s Paras and Gurkhas are still tied down inside Vilnius but 24th Airmobile Brigade units aren’t as fully committed. Infantrymen from the Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire and the Scots Guards, covered from above by those Army Air Corps helicopters, defeat the attempted breakout. A couple of miles away is all that the largest groups of paratroopers can get. The rear-guard inside Vilnius fights on through the rest of the day though their last stand is for nothing. When they are finally overcome, the city is in British hands. Much damage has been done and there are many lives lost yet, like Riga, Union Airborne Troops have lost another Baltic Republic capital which they were ordered to hold onto until the very end. Coalition propaganda efforts are fast to make the most of Vilnius’ fall.

The Western Front is the operational command for Union forces fighting in the Baltics, Belarus, and the Ukraine (not Crimea). On Gromov’s instructions, STAVKA created the headquarters for an army group and issued orders to a rapidly-appointed commander on the war’s first day. He’s already been replaced. No one shot him for failure – this isn’t the time of Stalin after all – but that general was relieved of command and a new man appointed. This is nothing more than, as the saying goes, ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic’: at this stage nothing can be done to avert the absolute disaster unfolding from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Defeat after defeat after defeat has been seen. Today’s series of Coalition victories on the Western Front’s right flank are a continuation of that. Union forces in the Baltic were the strongest in the formed army group’s inventory. They’d lost many sub-units to the Urals Front ahead of Operation Flaming Phoenix starting but were still on alert to face any (what was meant to be unlikely) Coalition action to try to ‘liberate’ the Baltics. There were also a lot of them. Kaliningrad’s last stand is unknown but also immaterial. First the Eleventh Guards Army and then the Twenty–Eighth Army have been wiped out. Paratroopers dug into cities that the Coalition would want to take have lost Riga and Vilnius. The 7th Guards Airborne Division has its third regiment up in Tallinn – therefore still ready to fight – but the divisional commander is relived of his duties by the Western Front’s commander. The performance of his men is ‘a disgrace’, he is told, for the failures shown today. That Airborne Troops general is a scapegoat though. Orders from the Western Front had the Twenty–Eighth Army charge head-on into battle, driving south into the face of Coalition air power, rather than holding where they were in defensive position to await on reinforcements. This army group commander is fighting the Coalition’s war for them, doing everything that they hope he will. He isn’t trading space for time as has been seen in the Kola and will be today in the Crimea. And, as said, it isn’t just Union forces in the Baltic under the command of the Western Front but those in Belarus and the Ukraine too. Irresponsible, foolish errors are being repeated today with the fighting today in both of them too. If anyone is a disgrace, it isn’t the commander of that division of paratroopers.

I wonder if in the end Kaliningrad will become part of Poland when the war is over.

Poland has signed up to an agreement with allies not to make external territorial changes to what emerges from the fight with the Union. Maybe that might be something ignored, but if it is, it won't be Kaliningrad. I cannot see Poland wanting it. There is no reason - economically or people wise. The city and oblast have been blasted to ruin too!

[James G]

51 – No Such Agency


Coalition tanks are advancing into Union territory with their destination being Moscow. Laser-guided bombs fall from attacking aircraft all across the Rodina. Nuclear weapons have been seized with more soon to end up in Coalition custody too. Fightback attempts ordered from Gromov in his Ryazan bunker, desperate acts of resistance, are failing miserably. The Union is losing this war in spectacular fashion. There are many reasons why defeat after defeat is being inflicted upon the successor state of the USSR – military cutbacks in the preceding years, ongoing civil war and shocking incompetence too – but one of the most important ones is the lead that the American-led Coalition has in terms of the intelligence war which how they are employing that.

Moscow was duped into not believing any invasion was coming. Gromov’s regime was outwitted then and continues now to be a victim of the success that the Coalition is having in using all means at their disposal to be winning this war. There are spooks and paramilitary operatives on the ground where they work with rebels but also cut into enemy communications. Aircraft and ships some distance back from the frontlines of the war employ all sorts of surveillance and information-gathering means to be shared with those doing the actual fighting. From satellites above and distant communications interception facilities, Coalition intelligence organisations are (where they can) watching and listening to everything that the Union is up to. This is an intelligence driven war. The Coalition, primarily elements of the British and US secret state services, have got the drop on those of their opponents through defectors and technology. The Union cannot effectively respond. Military commanders in the field aren’t aware of the scale of Coalition victories being won in this arena. Like Gromov, it is incomprehensible to them as to how far ahead of them their opponents are in making use of gathered intelligence in this conflict. Traditionally, this has long been seen as a ‘Russian’ military trait. The Union is doing its own thing with the use of intelligence but their current means of information exploitation is far behind what the Coalition is doing. They have no real overseas active military spying network up and running in any effective form beyond a few lonely covert agents. Only a very few spy flights of their own and long-range forward reconnaissance by Spetsnaz teams are managing to bring back anything of value… with that being nearly always out of date by the time it comes back. The difficulties which they are having aren’t shared by those of the Coalition. What American and British intelligence efforts gain is something that is fast being made use of. It is being shared too, in a timely fashion. That is why the Coalition is winning in this field of conflict, allowing them to win overall. They can make use of what is learnt and put it into play to shape the battlefield. The Union cannot do this and such is one of those important factors on why this war is not going Gromov’s way.


The Seventh United States Army continues its advance towards the Russian border today. The US V Corps, US XVIII Airborne Corps & Polish II Corps take more ground in Belarus and defeat opposition to their eastward drives. Minsk is taken. The city is in the hands of rebels, Belorussians rising up for the second time in three months, when the US Army moves in. 3rd Infantry Division columns enter with agreements with rebel leaders made ahead of time. This has been brokered by the CIA: if not, there is a good chance that American forces making an entry would have been fired upon with captured weapons or faced other attacks. What few hundred Union defenders are left, scattered across the city where they are pinned down by thousands of locals armed with an assortment of rebels, M-1A1 Abrams’ cover attacks made by infantry units (bringing their own firepower too) to eliminate that last resistance. Minsk is finally clear, with only one brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division used in that. The rest of the US V Corps is busy meanwhile away to the east of the city. The 25th Guards Motor Rifle Division is between Minsk and Russia. It is spread out over a huge area and on the attack. Battered from above overnight by air attacks, the best option would be for them to dig in and defend where they can. The orders for them are to attack though, to run head on into Coalition firepower. The Canadians with the V Corps, their 1st Division, get their second taste of action alongside the rest of the 3rd Infantry Division. Between them, they hold off the enemy attack and launch a counterstrike soon enough. Another tremendous defeat is inflicted upon a capable Union force used in all the wrong ways. It was one known about ahead of time by communications intercepts and overhead surveillance too. With the loss of the 25th Guards Motor Rifle Division, the Union Army has no divisional-sized force left this side of Moscow. The 1st Armored & 1st Infantry Divisions, along with the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, avoid that fight. They take a step aside, wait until the rest of the V Corps has brought the enemy to a halt, and then go forward. Highway-1 – one of the best roads in the Union, which runs from Moscow through Minsk to Poland – is blocked by wrecked military vehicles caught in what any enterprising journalist who would want to make a name for him/herself would love to refer to as a ‘Second Highway of Death’. V Corps engineering units will soon get to work clearing vehicle wrecks from there because a clear road is needed due to Highway-1 being more of the Main Supply Route cleared elsewhere in Belarus in recent days. Despite all the devastation, there aren’t that many bodies there though after drivers abandoned their vehicles (seen in Iraq in February 1991 too), but for now the attacks made by the US Army in this area of Belarus bordering Russia is to remove any further sign of the enemy. That division is only the biggest. There are smaller combat and numerous non-combat forces across a wide area stretching east from Minsk. Near to Orsha, a small city off Highway-1, 2nd Cav’ units engage a tank battalion from a training unit. Their own tanks and armoured vehicles are joined by helicopter gunships. AH-64 Apaches have another excellent day in Belarus. This fight is the biggest engagement. It does nothing at all to impede tanks from the Big Red One being the ‘first into Russia’. TF 1/34 ARM with the 1st Infantry Division cross into Russia before nightfall. Smolensk is right up ahead with Moscow further up Highway-1.

The 24th Infantry Division fights scattered Union opposition near to Mogilev. They’ve taken over the lead for the XVIII Airborne Corps once again though operating with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. East-central Belarus is fully in American hands. Both the 82nd & 101st Airborne Divisions are ready to follow them when they go into Russia too. There is nothing standing in the way. The corps commander has been told that in several intelligence briefings from his own staff and also from above where information comes down from intelligence agencies operating from afar. Cautious, as he should be, his fighting men do find that to be true. They are meeting transport units and supply troops, sometimes the odd company or two of Union riflemen from mobilised reserves. That’s it. Air opposition is almost non-existent too. If the Union Air Force is still flying, it doesn’t have any aircraft attacking the XVIII Airborne Corps. From airheads seized inside Belarus by a first parachute assault (Baranovichi) and then an airmobile assault (Babruysk), there is plenty of friendly air support. The US Air Force is starting to call Belarus their own and air strikes from friendly air cover on-call takes care of most opposition before the ground units get there. It will be just before midnight, but there will be the first entry made over the border into Russia made today here from XVIII Corps units as well: they don’t know the V Corps has beat them to it. As to the Poles, their II Corps isn’t as far forward as the rest of the Seventh US Army yet that doesn’t mean they don’t also spend the day charging forward through Belarus. Detection equipment sounds the alarm for Polish Army units when background radiation from Chernobyl fallout is picked up. The southernmost reaches of Belarus have warm-zones everywhere: they stay out of those previously identified hot-zones. There is a defector, a colonel of NBC troops, with the Seventh US Army intelligence staff. He didn’t want to fight for Gromov anymore and has gone over to the Americans. Information from him, channelled down to the Polish II Corps, tells them more than any open source intelligence gained from the International Atomic Energy Agency (who are supposed to know everything) about where not to go. When facing an enemy which they can see, the Poles are no longer meeting anything serious in terms of opposition either. There’s some scattered fighting but that is about it. Their only hold up, where they fail to get as far as Mazyr today as projected, only comes from logistical difficulties. Their strained supply lines stretch a long way back. Only one of three assigned divisions is out front with the others held up. If only the Union could take advantage… but they cannot because capable forces have been wasted in previous days in foolish frontal attacks. The Polish keep moving.


Far away in distant Maryland, there is a military post known as Fort Meade located between Baltimore and Washington. It isn’t home to conventional military units but instead the US Army facility is where various intelligence agencies have their headquarters. The largest one on post is oft referred to in jest as ‘No Such Agency’. That is a play on the initials: NSA equals the National Security Agency. The NSA is concerned with electronic intelligence rather than human espionage as practised by the CIA. While their work is secret, their existence isn’t something denied. The issue though with the name others refer to them by comes about by how the product of their work when delivered isn’t acknowledged as coming from the NSA. Intelligence product delivered isn’t stamped ‘from the NSA’. The NSA is sharing with the US Armed Forces plentiful intelligence with regards to the Union as the war against Gromov’s regime, the killers of an American president, goes on. Of course, they only send what they deem necessary – and the NSA is picky on that – but it is still a wealth of information. Coming from No Such Agency sources, McCaffrey and his field commanders raging war against the Union are being supplied with immense amounts of intercepts and analysis. Union communications have been significantly compromised by the NSA. What comes in sanitised form (scrubbed of identifiers) to Coalition commanders is priceless.

At the direction of the Fifth United States Army – in command of Coalition operations in the Ukraine including Crimea –, the US III Corps receives a change in mission orders today due to information originating from Fort Meade. The exact orders given to the Union’s Eighth Guards Army have been read. That three-division force, full of capable units too, is coming towards the Eastern Ukraine. They are out of Kazakhstan and coming over the Volga & Don Rivers in the face of Coalition missile attacks to try and halt that. The assigned mission for the Eighth Guards Army is to attack the III Corps on the right flank. They are to move north on both sides of the Dnieper (a big ask) and defeat the III Corps. Whether the Eighth Guards Army can do this isn’t something that McCaffrey believes can be done but he instructs the Fifth US Army to have the III Corps stop that from starting. The Union has this large and effective force on the move with the aim in them to strike a moral blow. Knowing what their orders are means that the Eighth Guards Army can be taken apart ahead of this. Those instructions to the III Corps are to detach a significant chunk of their own assigned units – close to a third in fact – to combat this threatened flank attack. Once the Eighth Guards Army moves into the Ukraine, it will come into effective range of air attacks on a significant scale to stretch it out and bash it up. There will be survivors though. They will be met by the 5th Infantry Division and the 194th Armored Brigade. Numbering half of their opponents on paper, it is thought that they can handle such a threat once Coalition air power has gone to work and it will still be known exactly what the Eighth Guards Army are doing. The Americans will fight on the defensive too, on terrain best chosen for their mission. Neither of these two US Army units have yet to see action but they are inside the Ukraine at the rear of the III Corps and start moving to where they will meet their enemy in the coming days.

The rest of the III Corps starts today in the Kiev area. The 4th Infantry Division has come up behind the 1st Cavalry & 2nd Armored Divisions with a brigade from the former given orders to go into Kiev. The Thunder Run yesterday with a battalion task force from the latter met opposition and was turned back. Defectors and deserters coming out of the Ukrainian capital, in addition to much surveillance and communications intercepts from sources near and far, provide a means of going in successfully today. The US Army enters Kiev and begins to fight those who want to make a heroic but doomed last stand. As to everyone else, they move east and northeast away from Kiev led by the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. The objective for the III Corps is to reach the Russian frontier by the end of the day. They don’t manage it. The distance is significant and there is opposition to the projected lightning progress. Advances are made, big ones as multiple small fights are won, but it is not enough to get even the far-ranging 3rd Cav’ up to that internal Union border by the end of the day. There is a lot of opposition encountered. All the intelligence in the world cannot stop scattered and lethal enemy units from fighting. Between Kiev and Russia, up in the very northeast of the Ukraine, there are training units, security units and reservists encountered. A two-battalion training regiment of tanks and infantry carriers is the largest opponent encountered but there are single battalions, companies and platoons all over the place. Much of their weaponry is dated, their training not very good and they have no higher orders. They are massacred by the III Corps in a wholly uneven series of fights. Still, they cause that delay. It seems like every man has a shoulder-mounted SAM too: hundreds of them are shot off towards friendly air cover for the III Corps above. Aircraft and helicopters are brought down by a few of them with every loss really mattering. The border is not that far off, just not quite reached yet. The days of a near unimpeded dash across the north of the Ukraine all the way to Kiev are behind the III Corps. From what can be seen up ahead, across over in Russia there will be plenty more opposition. They are ready for that though. The Americans intend to turn north, going up towards Moscow, and are expecting to have to fight their way there, even if that includes all that the Union Army can manage to pull out of the Urals too to try and stop them. Such is why no threat coming from the flank can be something that distracts the III Corps from its primary mission of the Union capital.

[lordroel]

Apr 21, 2020 19:14:38 GMT James G said:

Apr 21, 2020 17:30:56 GMT lordroel said:

I wonder if in the end Kaliningrad will become part of Poland when the war is over.

Poland has signed up to an agreement with allies not to make external territorial changes to what emerges from the fight with the Union. Maybe that might be something ignored, but if it is, it won't be Kaliningrad. I cannot see Poland wanting it. There is no reason - economically or people wise. The city and oblast have been blasted to ruin too!

So either a independent country ore returned to what is left of Russia then.

[stevep]

Apr 21, 2020 19:14:38 GMT James G said:

Apr 21, 2020 17:30:56 GMT lordroel said:

I wonder if in the end Kaliningrad will become part of Poland when the war is over.

Poland has signed up to an agreement with allies not to make external territorial changes to what emerges from the fight with the Union. Maybe that might be something ignored, but if it is, it won't be Kaliningrad. I cannot see Poland wanting it. There is no reason - economically or people wise. The city and oblast have been blasted to ruin too!

  James G,lordroel,

  You may be assuming too much logic here.   True Germany has a claim to the region as well but that would be politically too sensitive.  However I would expect any such move by Poland to be blocked by the allies, especially the US if they have any sense.  Keeping the war aims as defeating the Union to remove the man [they think is] responsible for the murder of a US President and liberating the Baltics and other areas held in the Union against their will makes things fairly simple.  Seeking to take a region which is overwhelmingly Russian in population away from the rump Russian state, whether it means having it ruled by Poland say but still ethnically Russian or having the population deported is likely to cause more resentment than is worthwhile and given whoever ends up in power in Russia a big propaganda boost.  Even if it stays an isolated Russian enclave, possibly strictly disarmed is simpler.  Plus it could be presented as a way of influencing Russia - you can keep it for now but misbehave again and that might not be the case.

  Of course this is ignoring the big secret that is likely to change a hell of a lot but then apart from a few intelligence people who have doubts no one in the west knows this yet.

  Steve

[James G]

Apr 22, 2020 3:01:44 GMT lordroel said:

Apr 21, 2020 19:14:38 GMT James G said:

Poland has signed up to an agreement with allies not to make external territorial changes to what emerges from the fight with the Union. Maybe that might be something ignored, but if it is, it won't be Kaliningrad. I cannot see Poland wanting it. There is no reason - economically or people wise. The city and oblast have been blasted to ruin too!

So either a independent country ore returned to what is left of Russia then.

I have yet to decide. I just couldn't see a territorial transfer, for many of eth reasons which Steve points out below too.

Apr 22, 2020 10:21:05 GMT stevep said:

  James G,lordroel,

  You may be assuming too much logic here.   True Germany has a claim to the region as well but that would be politically too sensitive.  However I would expect any such move by Poland to be blocked by the allies, especially the US if they have any sense.  Keeping the war aims as defeating the Union to remove the man [they think is] responsible for the murder of a US President and liberating the Baltics and other areas held in the Union against their will makes things fairly simple.  Seeking to take a region which is overwhelmingly Russian in population away from the rump Russian state, whether it means having it ruled by Poland say but still ethnically Russian or having the population deported is likely to cause more resentment than is worthwhile and given whoever ends up in power in Russia a big propaganda boost.  Even if it stays an isolated Russian enclave, possibly strictly disarmed is simpler.  Plus it could be presented as a way of influencing Russia - you can keep it for now but misbehave again and that might not be the case.

  Of course this is ignoring the big secret that is likely to change a hell of a lot but then apart from a few intelligence people who have doubts no one in the west knows this yet.

  Steve

That's true but I just cannot see anyone sensible in DC saying 'let us give this to Poland' and in Warsaw it being said 'geez, thank for this disaster zone'.
I agree fully with your reasoning there.
We are going back to the issue of what caused this war in the update after the one below. So, tomorrow, we will be back looking at the growing uncovering of the truth. Meanwhile... the battlefield of the Crimea sees a conclusion.

[James G]

52 – Operation Shuriken


A flight of four A-10 Thunderbolts attacks Baherove Airbase. This large facility on the Kerch Peninsula, over on the eastern side of the Crimea, comes under fire from the low flying attack-fighters which circle like vultures around it. Missiles and rockets have already been fired and now it is the turn of the cannons that the A-10s mount. Their GAU-8 Avengers are seven-barrelled beasts firing 30mm shells at a ferocious rate. Those shells are tank killers but this afternoon they strike aircraft, helicopters, buildings and people too. Each aircraft makes just the one past. Anti-aircraft fire is directed at them but no one manages to loft a SAM: the rocket barrage has done its worst to anyone out in the open. Once done with their passes, the A-10s depart. Two have battle damage but fly away unimpeded: these are tough aircraft! They increase speed and fly away to the north, back out over the Sea of Azov from the direction that they came. Enemy attention was directed both west and south before they arrived, not looking north. There is another turn made by them once they are far clear of the Kerch Peninsula where they now head back over to the other side of the Crimea where they are calling a captured airbase near Simferopol home. Some distance away, battle controllers aboard one of the E-2 Hawkeye AWACS aircraft flying from the carrier USS America directs their egress away from here while controlling the activities of others over the Kerch Peninsula. Those US Air Force jets are in the skies alongside land-based ones in US Marine Corps colours and others from the US Navy who are flying from the America. Baherove is just one of many targets for American air strikes through this region today. There is close air support being given to US Marines fighting to enter the Kerch Peninsula at its narrow base where it joins with the rest of the Crimea. Over the Kerch Strait, the twisting stretch of water between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, air strikes are hitting any shipping sighted while bombing targets on the mainland too. There are a couple of US Navy destroyers near there who are joining in with the attacks being made while also requiring friendly air cover to protect them too. However, the skies have been clear of enemy aircraft all day. Union Air Force fighters now longer have a presence here like they have had in the past few days when they sought to contest control of the air. There are wrecks on the ground and on the sea floor to attest to that failure to win. Orders have come to those based outside of the Crimea, over on the mainland in the North Caucasus, to no longer make any more flights out over there. Baherove had MiG-29s operating from it before they were shot down or blown up on the ground. The aircraft destroyed at the airbase in the A-10 attack aren’t fighters but instead transports of various sorts. An evacuation is underway from the Kerch Peninsula and it is one that the Americans are putting a stop to.

There are reservists and militia on the frontlines who have no idea that the Crimea is being abandoned. They are a rear-guard though haven’t been told that. In the way of a major attack involving the 6th Marine Regiment, they are blasted to ruin. The US Marines have tanks, artillery and that close air support. The men left to their fate unaware of the sacrifice which has been decided that they must make had been supposed to hold out through all of today. In the early afternoon though, their positions are broken open. The Americans push forward and interfere with the evacuation from the Crimea now on land too. A company of M-1A1 Abrams tanks along with another of LAV-25s light armoured vehicles mounting weapons & carrying US Marines races towards Kerch itself. That port town is some distance away but there is no one is a position to stop their cross-country advance. AH-1 Cobra helicopters gunships sweep the way ahead of those on the ground, blasting anything in sight which looks like opposition. In under an hour and a half, Kerch is entered. More air support is called in when the US Marines get here. They find themselves in a viper’s nest. Bullets bounce off their tanks and armoured vehicles while they fire back at men armed with RPGs before they can get a shot off. More helicopters show up above, clearing the way with their own released firepower for the harbour to be reached. That is the end of the line for this dash across the Kerch Peninsula. Once there, the tanks and infantry vehicles send a few shells into damaged ships tied alongside. It never hurts to make sure that they won’t be sailing. Elsewhere, they bring an end to the firing against them by finishing off blasting everyone and everything in-sight. Kerch was already a ruin before they got here: they just finish the job.

Ahead of the order to make an evacuation, the Kerch Peninsula was full of supporting assets for the doomed Union effort to hold onto the Crimea. In reversing the ‘hold fast’ order, the aim is now to get as many of them out of here as possible. Those falling back towards Kerch, and Baherove too before it was closed, were told to get across the Kerch Strait. Many have done so. There has been the escape of more than a thousand rear-area personnel, including many key people that the Union wouldn’t want to see ending up as POWs. Others have died in the attempt though in the face of American aircraft and warships. Now, all that comes to an end. There no longer is a way out of the Crimea. Everyone left here will either become a prisoner soon enough or die trying to defend a lost cause. More of the 6th Marine Regiment comes forward. They have fire support too and a collapsing enemy at the frontlines. All across the Kerch Peninsula, there are countless firefights throughout the rest of the day. Last stands are made everywhere by doomed enemy personnel who don’t have the training nor weaponry to go up against veteran US Marines. These are those who stormed Sevastopol and then defeated the Cossacks outside of Simferopol who they are trying to fight. Unorganised, ill-prepared non-combat troops, as well as airmen and sailors too, can’t win. The 6th Marine Regiment is able to declare the Kerch Peninsula clear before the end of the day. The regimental commander comes up to the shoreline of the Kerch Strait. With his field glasses he can see Tuzla Island to the right and Port Kavkaz on the left. They are the gateways to the North Caucasus. Each is a smouldering ruin with enemy forces, Union Naval Infantry home-based in the Crimea which was on the Caspian shore of Kazakhstan when the war began a few days ago, sure to be soon heading towards them ready to set up a defence against a cross-Strait landing. The 6th Marine Regiment isn’t going over the there though, nor is the rest of the American force in the Crimea. There are no plans to make a full-on assault into the North Caucasus. They’re going elsewhere.


There continues to be the arrival of additional units into the Crimea even as the last battles finish with the completion of full occupation. Today, the 25th Marine Regiment arrives. Marine Reservists fly in from their staging base on Cyprus at the British base at RAF Akrotiri. It is US Air Force transports, big C-141 Starlifters, which fly them into the bases near Sevastopol. The 2nd & 6th Marine Regiments came in by sea (landing craft and helicopters off amphibious assault ships), but this third regiment of the 2nd Marine Division arrives in this manner. The flights of those transports took them over supposedly neutral Turkey with the full cooperation of the government in Ankara. Other military transport aircraft join with civilian airliners requisitioned for use in bringing into the Crimea more equipment & supplies for the 2nd Marine Division and additional elements attached to the II Marine Expeditionary Force. They overfly Turkey on the way but also come via Romanian airspace out of Europe too. Above Romania have likewise flown combat aircraft redeploying from European staging sites to be based in the Crimea too. Those A-10s which struck at Baherove made the Hungary-Crimea transfer across Romania. An agreement with the post-communist Bucharest Government allows for flights to be made of a ‘non-combat nature’ over their country by Coalition aircraft. As long as aircraft aren’t on attack missions into the Union, they can make those flights unmolested. Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (the latter country ridden by conflict) aren’t allowing such a thing but with access above Romania and Turkey, there are many aircraft coming into the Crimea to be based here or make drop-offs via open air routes.

Belbek, Gvardeyskoye, Kacha, Saki and Simferopol are each now functioning American-held airbases in the southwestern corner of the Crimea. Baherove and the recently-captured Dzhankoy in the north are soon to join them in being open to use as well. All of these facilities have seen war damage done to them with some of that inflicted by retreating Union forces too. None have suffered enough to see the incapable of flight operations with a little work though. There are many plans for their use. The taking of the ones closest to Sevastopol when the first US Marines arrived were done to establish airheads for incoming reinforcements and to allow for them to be used for close air support missions for aircraft transferred from ships offshore. In the past few days, as the fighting across the Crimea has seen eventual full victory come today, those initial seized ones and the others taken afterwards have seen more combat aircraft sent to them. The US Air Force (the Air Force Reserve too) has brought in F-16 Fighting Falcons as well as A-10s. F-15s are on their way next. Engineers have been busy and their work has been made possible due to the ceasing of Union air activity. No one has chosen to fire Scuds or even Spider ballistic missiles their way too, not yet at least. This building air presence of theirs isn’t just about supporting the US Marines finishing off Union resistance on the Crimea. Instead, they are getting ready for Operation Shuriken.

The next mission for the II MEF, supported by extensive land-based air cover alongside what the America can provide, is to go north. Operation Shuriken will take those here in the Crimea up into the southern Ukraine in the coming days. It isn’t going to be easy, certainly not, but then taking the Crimea was no walkover despite the final success after four days. Staring tomorrow, US Marines will begin their new attack deep into Union territory from what is sure to be another unexpected direction of attack. Who’s going to stop them?


End of Part Three

[James G]

Interlude


53 – Conspiracy theory nonsense


Upon his election, Bob Kerrey had been the first president in the modern era to enter the White House as an unmarried man. He had been married before but was divorced with two children. This all made for adverse comment during his run for the presidency from self-appointed moral crusaders. In addition, his relationship with an actress and then their engagement during the first months of his presidency directed towards the new president hostility from many. The Kerrey Administration was focused throughout its time on other matters though, things that were supposed to be more important than the president’s personal life. With his assumption of the presidency in July 1994, after Kerrey’s assassination, Chuck Robb brought with him his wife and three daughters to the White House. An unproven allegation of an extramarital affair was there in Robb’s recent past but to many who had been outraged at the idea of Kerrey being their nation’s president, a married man was better than an unmarried one. Kerrey’s fiancée was someone who faced the full barrage of unwelcome portrayal and media intrusion during their relationship, especially in lead-up to the November 1992 election. She’d previously stared in that film with that Hollywood actor and caused that stir. Her career was on hiatus while Kerrey was in the last stages of that election campaign of his and during his time in the White House. This brought with it a break with her former Hollywood agent in a manner which he hadn’t taken very well: he’d been a pain in the backside for some time with comments made to the media that did neither his former client nor the president well.

When Kerrey is murdered on Independence Day, that particular minor public figure is fast to make himself a major public figure. He becomes one of the many people seen as spouting – in the words of Robb’s press secretary – ‘conspiracy theory nonsense’. There is a lot of that soon in the media. That one man mad at a former client and now talking rubbish about government conspiracies which make no sense is only the first off the mark though. There are plenty of other people doing just that too after him. The ‘theories’ which people have about the Kerrey assassination that made it into print and on the airwaves are many. They are always complicated too, with titillating details for public consumption that are laughable. The White House tries to take the moral high ground and dismiss such ideas by trying to drown them out with silence. This fails. Claims come that the Robb Administration has something to hide by not addressing them. The silliness goes on and on. Kerrey’s fiancée leaves the country after his state funeral to get away from it all. The hurtful allegations made that she was behind his murder to kickstart her career are outrageous and hurtful. Who could make up such things!? Her former agent is one of them but there are some far more normally serious people promoting ideas just like that. Everyone is a named suspect to those who push these conspiracies, from Robb to little green men.


Alongside all of this nonsense, there is a real investigation with a proper outcome to that soon had. That is one led by the Secret Service and, ultimately, they provide the outcome of their investigation to the Robb Administration that points the finger of blame for the murder of Kerrey direct at Moscow. The Secret Service is aided in their efforts by elements of the US Intelligence Community but it is their investigation and conclusion. They have plentiful evidence and that is enough to convince the new president of the truth of the matter. There was a conspiracy, but it was one directed from abroad in a state-sanctioned assassination done for political reasons: there is no domestic link at all to what GRU agents acting on behalf of Gromov did regardless of what idiots say to any journalist willing to listen. That is enough for Robb and also satisfies enough important people in Washington to see the war against the Union launched. Those on the outside still won’t shut though. Some say that there was a rush to judgement with a hasty investigation with a predetermined outcome. Conversely, others counter that the investigation took too long to complete: everyone is a critic of the way which the Secret Service did things. These arguments here don’t come from the crazy people but from Washington figures instead. Unlike the CIA or the FBI, the Secret Service isn’t usually a political football. It is a closed organisation, a secretive body. They complete their investigation without any ‘helpful assistance’ from those who want to stick their nose in. That rubs some up the wrong way, those who don’t like being left out of things. It is none of their business though. The Secret Service was tasked to find out who killed Kerrey and did just that based upon all the evidence presented to them where there appears to be no hint of doubt.

This all aside, there are those with legitimate worries about the whole matter. A few members of Congress and officials in the Intelligence Community express their concerns during and after the investigation. The point made is that Union intelligence operatives were able to successfully assassinate the most protected man in the world at an extremely well-guarded site – quite the feat – but then at once were captured with their complete network rolled up within a few days. The backslapping congratulations of those who have caught those involved in the plot is done whereas no one involved in the investigation is openly wondering how easy that all ended up being. The participants, all known Union intelligence operatives with histories which checked out, were practically gift-wrapped for those who ended up capturing them when it would have been expected that that might have been harder to do. The professionalism from the assassins contrasts sharply with the sloppiness in a way which bothers those pointing this out. When the matter is raised, done so behind the scenes and not out in public, their doubts are still seen as more conspiracy theory nonsense. The dismissals of them are a little more polite but that is the treatment of those who express worries and concerns. The Secret Service and the White House consider the matter closed. The vast majority of the American people, on July 31st being close to a staggering ninety-five per cent of the public according to polling, are in support of a war with the Union to make them pay the price for Moscow being responsible for killing their president. Some of that can be factored into the attitude of Gromov and his cohorts to the whole thing in how that is portrayed to the American people by the media, but, still, the nation is behind the war in terms of the public and the institutions of government. Anyone speaking up is shouted down. In the face of all of this, it takes a brave – or foolish; it depends upon your point of view – senior official within the Intelligence Community to keep on questioning the whole thing though.


The Deputy Director of the DIA is one of those long-standing existing critics of the whole matter, someone who posed those difficult questions behind the scenes and has faced the wrath of other’s opposition to the established narrative. The war starts and soon enough his organisation has two of its own people murdered out in Siberia when working with Gromov’s enemies. Naturally, that got his attention and then now an intelligence bundle arrives back at the Defence Intelligence Agency’s headquarters which was sent before they were killed. It tells him that the deceased officers were working with information that there was a Novosibirsk link to the Kerrey assassination and that Moscow was framed.

This was never going to be ignored. The Director DIA is one of those who considers the Kerrey assassination undoubtably to be the work of Gromov’s GRU and it was under his direction that the DIA aided the Secret Service in coming to that conclusion. However, when two officers on active duty are murdered and it is known that they were involved in the uncovering of allegations that pointed the finger elsewhere, he makes sure his deputy is in-charge of finding out the truth of this matter. Such a thing requires the supervision of someone so high up in an organisation like the DIA: bureaucratic inertia and fights with other agencies within the Intelligence Community would forestall an investigation headed by someone lower down the hierarchy. With the Deputy being ‘a believer’ too, that matters. Right before what arrives from Siberia does, there was pressure being directed towards the DIA from outside for the firing of the organisation’s deputy for being on the wrong side of the argument. Now there is the opportunity to turn that around.

The DIA launches its own investigation, one focused on what was received from a now missing FSB officer from the Primakov Government in Novosibirsk – an ally of the United States and a regime which American forces are fighting to put in power in Moscow – before he was murdered. He said that the FSB falsified evidence to incriminate the GRU, that Primakov framed Gromov for Kerrey’s murder. Those involved in the investigation are well aware that the questions which they are going to ask are going to upset many. They are going to be accused of spouting more ‘conspiracy theory nonsense’. But… they’re going to look into this and seek what, if true, is going to be a very uncomfortable truth. It will be earth-shattering if genuine and if proved correct, the outcome will be quite something indeed. Among the DIA personnel involved, that is well understood with some not sharing their superior’s views and fearful of being lumped in with the apparent crazies.

One of them talks to a Congressman he knows. Another confides in a journalist. The leaks begin and with that will come all sorts of drama.

[forcon]

Interesting updates. One thing I recently learned is that the USMC has two reserve tank battalions - the 4th & 8th - so if my info is correct, there would be enough for each RCT in Crimea to have not only a tank company but a full battalion assigned.