The ability of Russian propagandists to influence the battlefield is phenomenal. They film the ammunition depots and the frontline positions of terrorist groups so closely that they burst into flames and burn to the ground. Perhaps it is a "lens effect" or a "safety violation" – we'll leave these excuses to the Russians. The truth is that the attentive eyes of Ukrainian defenders saw the enemy's depots. And then they destroyed them, skillfully and precisely. Now we will tell you how it all happened.
Previous publications in the series:
Molfar in social networks 👉 Molfar Global
Russian propagandists seek a faster end to the war and a change of government in Russia
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the OSINT community Molfar has received dozens of requests for cooperation from Russian propagandists. Most of them are locally well-known journalists who have a Russian audience and name, but secretly help the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The scheme of cooperation is very simple: propagandists send out videos and photos in a massive way, and among the recipients are email addresses of the SSU, the GUR, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Molfar and other Ukrainian OSINT investigators.
It is interesting to note that some propagandists list identical email addresses among the recipients of the emails, written in the same order as in the emails from other propagandists. Most of the recipients refuse to communicate, while some propagandists contact us personally. Among them is former agent Petr Lundstrem.
Then the same videos, only cropped and partially edited (blurring, framing, adding a logo), appear on the channels of titled Kremlin propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov.
We cannot confirm whether major Kremlin figures are directly sabotaging Russia's "special military operation in Ukraine," but we do know that some war correspondents and local propagandists are openly helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces to launch artillery and missile strikes against troop and equipment concentrations, ammunition depots, command posts, and other important targets.
What objects were damaged?
At first glance, the two marked squares do not look different from other sectors, but fortunately, we have enough video evidence to accurately identify enemy fortifications and supply depots. All thanks to the work of Russian propagandists!
Next, we will describe step-by-step how the terrorists' combat positions and warehouses were identified.
How were found the warehouses of the 185th "dpr" battalion?
At the end of July, on 27-28.07.2022, a series of videos were posted on the Solovyov Telegram channel: the first, second, and third. In these videos, Russian war correspondent Sergei Makarenko filmed his experience at the military location of the 185th "dpr" battalion.
👉 The Molfar OSINT community received these and other videos by email 3–4 days before they appeared on the Solovyov channel.
1️⃣ Video #1, posted at 21:18, shows the launch of a quadcopter from the battalion's stronghold.
Under video #1 it is written: "The village of Spartak (a satellite of Donetsk) is the real gateway to Avdiivka for us. For the enemy, it is the gateway to Donetsk. From here, the allied forces will break into the city. The 185th rifle battalion of the DPR army is holding the defense in this section of the front."
Thanks to this video, it was possible to identify the strongholds, trenches and blindages used by the militants of the "dpr" terrorist group as advanced positions during battles with the Ukrainian Defense Forces.
2️⃣ Video #2, published at 17:32, shows the path to the positions through a forest zone along a stone fence.
In this video, typical fences were seen, which helped to identify the route followed by the "dpr" militants and the war correspondent from the building with the ammunition depot (from the third video) to the frontline positions from the first video.
3️⃣ In video #3, published at 15:05, one of the battalion's soldiers shows a military commander a homemade grenade launcher.
The location of this video is a long brick room, similar to a basement or hangar, with no light. In the background of the video, light is coming in either through a doorway or through basement windows at the bottom of the building. This location could be used as a weapons and ammunition storage facility.
In this video, we identified the filmed basement as a weapons storage facility. The events that followed fully confirmed our guess. Let's take a closer look at the evidence.
Step-by-step location identification by photos
❗️ Next, we need to assess how close the identified objects are to civilian buildings. Usually, Russian troops try to hide behind civilian buildings from shelling, so we should carefully calculate all the risks even if we use precision weapons.
On the right: the distance from the objects to civilian buildings is ~100 meters, the risk of damage to civilian objects is medium.
👀 We also offer you to see what the terrorists from the 185th battalion of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" look like.
Evidence of destruction to identified objects
After the successful identification of the terrorists' positions and warehouses, we wait long enough for two full packages of HIMARS rockets (6 rockets in one salvo) to do their precision work! After this happened, the Molfar OSINT community ordered a medium-resolution satellite image of the identified square at our own expense.
In the previous article, we also used the phrase "additional reconnaissance of the area". Now, we would like to provide more explanation: additional reconnaissance of identified objects is carried out by regular operational and tactical UAVs. With the help of drones, the military observes objects for some time to confirm, for example, a specific room or even a part of it being used as an ammunition depot. Firing precision-guided missiles is an expensive and responsible business. That is why a multi-stage reconnaissance is carried out. To ensure that the target found fully justifies the resources used.
In this case, everything ended happily: the warehouse was destroyed, the buildings were destroyed, and the 185th battalion soldiers were never seen in propaganda videos again. We hope that the terrorists were eliminated along with the ammunition.
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