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Thursday, March 3, 2016

Google Earth now shows major Russian invasion East of Marinovka

Marinovka has been crucial in the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014 because Ukraine tried to close the porous border with Russia by positioning major army camps along the border, with Marinovka being the 'entrance' for all the other units. Therefore Russia tried to cut Marinovka of in an attempt to isolate all the other units.

For a long time the area east of Marinovka has been a blind spot, because the latest satellite map in Google Earth was from 8-8-2013. Now there is a map from 22-2-2015. This is long after the incident which happened in summer 2014 somewhere between end of July and 15th, but the tracks and even some wrecks are still visible. 

Earlier @finriswolf had published satellite images with a lot of Russian vehicles just before the border. See this article. So we certainly know they were there! Unfortunately these satellite images are not in Google Earth (yet).


First of all, let's have a look at the Ukrainian camps:


Dark blue are the main areas with vehicles.
Blue are the areas with fortified positions, but without vehicles.
Light blue are the area where (a lot of) tracks are visible, indicating it might have been an artillery position.

A lot of tracks can be found in the area:



All the dark blue tracks are only visible on the 2015-image and not on the 2013 image.
The light blue tracks are roads visible on both, but they are obvious connection between the other tracks and therefor must have been used too.
The broad blue line from west to east consists of multiple tracks and is like the aorta along the border that goes to all the other Ukrainian camps as well. It is used to travel and for supplies.
The medium blue line in the middle is the main route from the upper camp to the East.
The small tracks indicate how intensive the area was used/patrolled and these are not even all of them.

In the next images we'll omit the smaller tracks.


Artillery strikes
We can see that the Ukrainian camps have been intensively shelled (purple areas):



We can determine the direction of impact of the craters (yellow lines). Then we can follow the lines until we find an artillery position that may point in the same direction. As such the shellings can be traced back to the following positions:



The most Western one leads to this position:



The size of the burn marks in the field is much larger than from GRAD rockets. The distance is 55 kms. So it must have been a Smerch attack. The direction of the burn marks corresponds.


The middle one is the artillery attack that the US used for publicity, to show that they knew Russia was attacking Ukraine:





On the 2015 Google image, these impacts can hardly be seen anymore:




Also the exact position of the Russian artillery has (unfortunately) faded away:




The Eastern camp has been the largest and most intensely shelled area from multiple directions:



This already removed and geotagged photo shows the destruction in that camp:




Here is another photo in that camp from the LostArmour database:





One of the artillery shellings comes somewhere from the Kuybyshevo area.

Another one can be traced back to a position within the invasion-area on Russian side:



A third direction can not be found on the map (anymore), but we know from a geotagged VK-photo from Ruslan Khafizov that there were GRAD launchers there:






Note how the GRADs are on Kamaz-trucks, instead of the normal Ural-trucks. Kamaz based GRADs are very rare.

The geotagging indeed seems to fit that particular location and the direction the GRADs are pointing to, is towards the Ukrainian camp:



For details on the geolocation, see this InformNapalm article.

The fourth direction comes from the same position where earlier the Zelenopole camp was attacked by Russian GRADs after crossing the border into Ukraine. See this blog.



13 positions can be counted. (The area at the right points towards the Zelenopole camp.) 


Russian camps/positions
On the Russian side we can determine these camps/positions:


Red areas = positions with buildings
Green areas = camps where a lot of cars had been parked.
Dark orange = fortified position with trenches
Light orange = tracks, most often indicating an artillery position
Yellow = GRAD position 


The larger orange area is a bit weird:



There is a 'normal' road/path there crossing the borden (black line), but at the sides there are dozens of tracks. It means it was REALLY busy there at some point...

This location is on the 'official road' with border post into Ukraine.


@finriswolf already showed how vehicles were parked in the Northern green areas, but there are even larger such areas more to the south. This is just a sample of it, to show you the tracks leading into the trees:




So in total there were hundreds of vehicles involved. I estimate that in the lower four camps some 200 vehicles may have been hidden in the trees. 


Russian tracks
When we add the tracks to the areas, we see this:



red lines = unique tracks not seen in the 2013 image
orange line = general roads also seen in 2013 image, but these connect the red tracks.

Here is a sample of these tracks:



A couple of trucks can be seen here, but the tracks are AT THE SIDE of the road, as to spare the road for tracks.

Also at the official border post, the tracks can be seen at the left side of the area, completely bypassing it:




At the border the tracks look like this:



At this point it is not entirely clear anymore if a specific track was used by Ukrainians or Russians, or both. Nevertheless, the tracks originating in Russia leading out of it, MUST have been from Russian vehicles. Furthermore, the vertical tracks most likely are from Russians and the horizontal ones most likely from Ukrainians.
If we add a couple of tracks that are almost certain from Ukrainian vehicles, we get this:




Wrecks
Next thing we can do is show the positions where there are wrecks. These come either from the satellite image itself (yellow marker with ?), or from the lostarmour.info database (a Russian propaganda site; vehicles markers). 



Here is a detailed view of what might be wrecks:




Here is another one:



From the satellite image itself it is not very clear that there is a wreck there. But here is a photo from it:




This is a Russian BMD-2 just having crossed the border and being destroyed.

North-east from this one, there is a BMP-2:




Another detail of what might be wrecks:




Ukrainian shelling
Interesting detail is this: one small area that has been shelled, comes from Ukrainian positions south of Marinovka:



It means they have tried to counterattack the incoming invasion. On the larger map we can see that it is on the route from the border crossings to the Ukrainian camps.



All the tracks seem to come from one direction south:



Although it is hard to trace the tracks all the way back, it is clear from what direction they come: Russia's main hub into Ukraine, the huge Golovinka camp.



Russian soldier Ruslan Khafizovs photos.
Ruslan Khafizov has a geotagged photo in his album with the GRADs in Kryukovo, which is a village next to this route:







He has another one more north:






Ruslan Khafizov has a geotagged photo in his album from the Golovinka camp:





Yet another geotagged photo shows Ruslan in another village nearby the invasion area:






These are Ruslan's geotagged photos relative to the invasion route:




Ruslan's photos had been uploaded in sept/okt 2014. Just after the Russian invasion.

Later Kamaz-based GRADs have been seen INSIDE Ukraine, in Donetsk and south of Torez.



 Main route into Ukraine
Let's have a closer look at the smaller 'main road' to and from the Northern Ukrainian camp.

At it's most left/West position, where it enters Dibrivka, it looks like this:



As can be seen an entire new path/road has been made through the field, with sand/debris being pushed to the sides.

This is true for the entire length of this path:





The road ends (or begins) here, where it joins the other tracks going East:



But note this: the main traffic/path goes SOUTHWARDS from here and not EASTWARD (see inset with red path).
South is either the official road to/from Russia, or it connects with the Ukrainian 'aorta', going back West. Why would most traffic drive East just to drive West again after a while?

And also note this: there are four armored vehicles standing there in an obvious way. And it is 22-2-2015. Either these are wrecks, but then why are they not in the LostArmour database? Or they are there because on this date it is STILL an army checkpoint somehow...

Now we must connect the dots...
  1. We know there were hundreds of vehicles.
  2. We have seen that there was massive traffic at the official border crossing. Where did they all go? North, East, or West? 
  3. At the crossing just north of this road, most traffic went eastwards.
Conclusion: the larger part of the invasion force, including supply trucks etcetera, took this route to Dibrivka and then to Dmytrivka:






Conclusion
Another part of the Russian invasions into Ukraine has been clarified more now. Others were the Ilovaisk massacre and the Lugansk Airport attack.
The Ukrainian border camps had not just been destroyed by artillery only. By this invasion the other border camps where cut off and hundreds of Russian vehicles flooded into Ukraine. This lead to the fall and final destruction of these other border camps. And it also was the prelude to and it set the stage for the two other major invasions.

The Golovinka base was the starting point of the operation. From there hundreds of vehicles drove north and set up camp 7 kms from the Ukrainian border. In the previous weeks the Ukrainian camps had already been shelled intensively.
On August 12th the Ukrainian army had established a break-through north of Dmytrivka and had been driving all the way up to Krasnyi Luch, leaving the Marinovka-Dibrivka area vulnerable. See this report.
That must have been the moment the Russians invaded into Ukraine, to take the Ukrainian positions, to chase them and cut them of.

This map was drawn back then:


Some initial battle groups took several points to cross the border simultaneously and remove all resistance. After securing a bridgehead the larger part of the vehicles took the easier route along the road and headed Northwest to Dmytrivka.


Also see: guided tour through Marinovka area after Russian army paid a visit...


UPDATE
This invasion was prepared and happened while Putin was distracting the world with his Humanitarian White Truck Charade. See this blog.

Interesting detail is that during that time a convoy with more than hundred vehicles was spotted on the road to Novoshakhtinsk.

See this videos:



We had never been able to determine whether this convoy indeed crossed the border at the nearest Dolzhanskyi border crossing. But now that we know of the Marinovka-invasion with hundreds of vehicles involved, the convoy might have been headed there.
According to Google it is exactly on the shortest route from the Rostov army camp to the Marinovka-invasion-camp:



That might have been one day of traveling for a convoy like that. The video says to have been filmed on 10-8-214. It was uploaded on 12-8-2014. That was just before the invasion and thus fits the time schedule perfectly.

The Rostov satellite images indeed show hundreds of vehicles disappear in that timeframe:




And this is interesting... North of Dmytrivka BTR-82 had been spotted (among other sophisticated Russian equipment by the way):



These BTR-82s had never seen before in Ukraine at that date.

It turns out the Novoshakhtinsk-convoy had BTR-82s among them too:



More on the differences between BTR-80 and BTR-82, see this article.
Posted by Ukraine@war at No comments:

Monday, November 30, 2015

Determining the crash site of Russian SU-24 shot down by Turkey

On November 24th 2015 Turkey shot down a Russian SU-24, because it had violated Turkey's airspace.
On the same day a video was released of rebels destroying a Russian MI8 helicopter with a TOW.

In this blog we'll geolocate the videos and crash sites.

This video from the Russian ANNA News explains what happened (beware of propaganda/lies):



In the footage a bridge can be seen with a road on the background:



The bridge is likely for a train. A highway-bridge would be much larger.

On Google Maps it shows there is only one railway in that area (red line):


Following that railway in Google Earth, we can see there are two bridges that look like the one in the video. Bridge #2 matches the situation seen in the video.

Now we determine the approximate angle and direction of the camera in that shot. We can simply draw a line in GE starting at the bridge at an angle and look down that line to see when and where the shot matches.
It turns out they are on this hill, with the roof of a house just in front of them:



From here we can determine most of the other shots and directions and we get this situation map:



There is a fire on the opposite hillside (and quite far from the helicopter position too):



The helicopter is parked outside a fenced terrain with a house:



There is another camera/crew filming from another hill:



Red circle = parked helicopter.

Now that we know the position of the helicopter, we can go to the footage of the rebels shooting the helicopter with a TOW:



This shot shows the helicopter:



We look at the backside of the heli and on the right side we can see the wall almost in line with the view.
It means we can draw a line on GE again into that direction. Along that line the TOW-position must be found.
Furthermore the sound of the TOW starts at 1:22 and the hit comes at 1:33. That's after 11 seconds. From wikipedia we can learn that a TOW travels at max 278-320 meters per second. So the distance should be max 3-3,5 kms.

Along that line and within the max distance we can see a hill with houses as we saw in the video too:



These house can indeed be matched:



A small path, as seen in the video can also be seen, so it must have been positioned on this path:



Since this point of view is EXACTLY in the opposite direction of camera two in the ANNA video, it might very well have been possible that they filmed this location.
And it turns out they did:





In the beginning ANNA News filmed the smoke plume of the crashed SU-24:



This was filmed from a slightly higher position. But in GE we can match the view with the video like this:



Then we draw a line starting from the camera position towards the smoke plume (blue line). It simply means the SU-24 must have crashed somewhere along that line.


Turkey has released a map with the alleged route of the SU-24. In Google Earth we can make an overlay and put this map to it's right position:



IF... the Turkeys data is correct, we now have a rather narrow area where the SU-24 might have crashed.
Maybe now we can match any of the other videos...

This one seems to have been shot quite close:



So, in GE we turn in 3D view around the probable crash site until we find something that looks like this:



It is not even THAT difficult, because most point of views don't look like this AT all. One hint that helps to narrow it down is that the smoke plume seems to drift to the right, whereas in the ANNA video it drifted to the left. It means this was filmed from opposite direction.

Here we find a match:



At first I thought the shot was taken from the Turkish-Syrian border. But then 'Samir' pointed out there is a popular spot where photographer come to shoot, which turned out to be EXACTLY in the same line of sight:



Now that we have a second direction, we can see where these two lines cross and THAT will be the crash site (within some margins of error):



This happens to match with the Turkish data:



All this means the pilots must have ejected somewhere in this (red) area:



And also the rebels firing at them and capturing (at least) one, must have been somewhere around there.


Ejected pilots
This video shows rebels shooting at the ejected pilots:


The jet appears on the left:




It flies almost overhead and then to the right:



It falls down at the right side:




Behind this tree:



It seems as if they are on a road and looking at the treeline left of the road. And they are on a slope that's going upwards facing the jet path.

Since we know the flightpath and the crash site of the jet, the cameraman must have been north of it (somewhere in red ellipse):



GE shows that the roads in this area are indeed on a similar upward slope:




In the next shot we see the parachutes coming down. The tree is the same one as the tree just visible on the right in the previous shot:



That gives us the right orientation, and it means the camera is facing Westward:


But now we can see that there is a road at the RIGHT side of this tree.Could there be double parallel roads?

In this screenshot something not natural is visible, what could be the roof of a building:


This screenshot shows the parked cars are at an angle with the road:



Either they are on a turn there, or at some crossing.

This screenshot shows they are on an asphalt road, so we can exclude dirt roads and paths:



The only building downhill in the selected area is here:



If this would be the right spot, their position would have to be here:



At that location, we find find all the elements we have seen in the video and discussed:



We see the parallel 'roads/lanes, the 'crossing', the trees etc. So this must be the spot.

In one of the screenshots above, a rebel is lying on the road, shooting at the pilot. He is in line with the road. That gives us the direction of one of the pilots.
The other one can be seen here:



He is more to the left.

The pilots should have landed somewhere along these two blue lines:




Captured Pilot
This video shows one of the captured and dead pilots:



This screenshot shows a rebel on the road with a very clear shadow:


The time the jet was shot down, was at 9:25 am. With suncalc.org we can see how at that time the direction of the shadows would be (the yellow line):


We need to find a piece of road where the direction of the yellow line falls at an angle as seen in the screenshot.

Furthermore in this screenshot we can see what could be a house:


Since there is only one house downhill in that area, this must be the location:


This location matches all the features seen in the video.
Whether the pilot landed at that location, or if he was brought there is not clear.


Conclusion
With a very high degree of certainty we have determined the SU-24 crash site. This is in line with the Turkish data. It shows the Russians have been lying about their route. The Russian crash site is nowhere in sight here.
With the Turkish data being correct, it also shows the Russian planes INDEED have been violating Turkish airspace.

Posted by Ukraine@war at 2 comments:

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Russia/Assad NEEDS ISIS to survive

Without ISIS, the world would simply want to take out/remove Assad. And it might have done so already.
But because of ISIS, it is not that simple. Basically ISIS is a Russian/Assad created enemy to prevent the world from picking on Assad. To understand this, please see this excellent video explaining the complex situation in Syria:



These screenshots tell my point:







It says: "Extremists from Syria and from around the region start travelling to Syria to join the rebels. Assad actually encourages this by releasing jihadist prisoners to tinge the rebellion with extremism and make it harder for foreigners to back them."

Despite his extensive atrocities, Assad was not winning and he was losing ground. Putin jumps in and assists. But he is NOT targeting ISIS as he said he wanted to do:

Why not?
Russia & Assad do not want to take out ISIS. It is a divide-and-conquer-strategy. Keep the parties divided and thus you can rule all of them, including the West.



 Now get this: the KGB invented International Islamic Terrorism...

If that's too much for you to read, read this:

Understand that Putin has been a KGB-officer for 16 years. It was also during HIS service that the KGB invented/promoted International Islamic Terrorism.
As a president he has learned from Chechnya that you can better pay terrorists to work for you than to fight them yourself. In Donbas Ukraine he has sent thousands of Chechen Islam Terrorists/mercenaries to fight his battles and die for him. All sent by his ally Kadyrov.

Now with the Paris Attacks, Putin's lies that he is in Syria to fight ISIS, suddenly find fertile ground:
It is really incomprehensible that Western political leaders want to do 'business' with Putin. The Kremlin is mafia. Russia benefits from conflicts in the world. Selling oil and weapons are their main source of income. They invaded Ukraine and annexed parts of it and they are not finished yet. They do the same with other neighbours. They keep butcher-Assad in the saddle so the Syria-conflict cannot come to an end. Russia is the State Sponsor of International Terrorism. How can you ally with this man?

 His air raids in Syria are targeting markets, hospitals, schools, a bread factory... all this to make the population flee to Europe. He uses refugees as a weapon in a hybrid war against Europe/America. 



And now Hollande wants us to work with him against ISIS?

 ISIS is a monster created, fed and manipulated by Assad/Putin to fight the West. Putin does not want it to get killed.

(But Turkey is feeding the ISIS-monster too, to fight the Kurds. See this article for instance.)
That this monster can also turn AGAINST Russia/Putin, is what Putin experienced with the A321 full of Russians being brought down by a bomb in Sinai/Egypt. (Although it is not even clear yet that ISIS had been doing this.)
This caught him off-guard. In any other situation (such as TU154 with Polish government - "it was the pilot" , MH17 - "it was Ukraine", Total CEO Margerie - "it was drunk driver") Putin/the Kremlin had immediate/solid answers to what caused these tragedies, whereas the Dutch took a year with thorough investigation before coming to conclusions regarding MH17. With the A321, it took Putin two weeks before he gave a response. It means it must have caught him by surprise.
Now, with the Paris-attacks Putin suddenly knows: it was ISIS. The French and Russia have common enemies now. Hollande falls for this trick. And possibly a lot of other Western politicians too.
What Putin would really want, is to draw the West into a larger conflict with Islam. He wants the conflict in Syria to grow faaaaaar beyond its borders... meanwhile manipulating behind the scenes and having Russian territory itself staying out of the conflict zone or even growing by taking more pieces of its neighbours, all unattended by the West who is busy dealing with 'their own' (Putin created) problems. 

Posted by Ukraine@war at No comments:
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