Rumor Intelligence: The Tik-Tok Battalion, Wagner Recruiting in Prisons and a Mutiny of Russian Bomber Pilots?

Chechens Stage The Take Down Of An Insulation Factory

According to the Russian TASS news agency, Chechnya’s leader Ramazan Kadyrov reported that his troops took control of the Knauf factory in the town of Soledar.  This report is significant because Russian forces have had little to report in terms of territorial gains.  Soledar is located to the Donetsk Oblast,

The Chechen leader took to his Telegram channel to post that his Akhmat Special Operations Group and the LPR’s militia were successfully liberating territories including several dozen villages and four cities. Photographs seem to show Chechen, Luhansk Militia, Wagner Group, and regular Russian forces in the Knauf plant.

Ukrainian reports do not contain claims of heavy fighting in the area that would support these areas fell during active fighting recently.  In the photo below, the soldiers and their uniforms appear to be as clean as if they recently arrived in the country.

Kadyrov’s Chechen fighters have gained some notoriety as the “Tik-Tok Battalion” for posting videos on the social media app showing staged fights and mock battles displaying their heroism. Video of these forces liberating the plant does not show it to be the location of active fighting, while it has been previously subject to heavy shelling.  They did not capture an intact and functional facility but a bombed-out set of buildings with shattered windows and holes in the roof.  It won’t be producing insulation products for quite a while. Note the digital camera fixed to the helmet of the soldier in the center of the photo.

Wagner Base Hit by HIMARS in Popansa, Recruiting in Prisons

Numerous Telegram channels are claiming that a Wagner Group site in Popansa was hit by a HIMARS strike killing as many as 100 members of the private military company widely regarded as mercenaries in the employ of the Russian government.  There is also a rumor that Wagner’s owner, oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin was present at the time.  We might normally dismiss a rumor like this as wishful thinking, but Russian generals and colonels have been very unlucky in this war, so it isn’t completely implausible. Popansa is just about 15 miles from Soledar and the insulation plant. So this area of Luhansk is by no means secure. Several days before the strike a Telegram user posted photos to his account of a visit to the Wagner HQ in Popansa.  There may have been enough details in the photo for Ukraine to geo-location its position to hit by a missile.

Wagner is said to be recruiting from prisons to fill its ranks. The reports are that they have visited at least 17 prisons in Russia seeking prisoners with military experience they can send to join the fighting. The pay is said to be pretty good by Russian standards if you live long enough to collect.

Are Russian Bomber Crews Goin on Strike?

In recent weeks the Russians had been sending Tu-160 and Tu-22M2 strategic bombers on strike missions with anti-ship cruise missiles like the Kh-22 Raduga and the Kh-101 missiles to strike land targets in Ukraine. Then they suddenly stopped using them.  There was speculation that this meant Russia had run out of these missiles or decided they were expending very expensive ordnance originally built to sink US aircraft carriers on ordinary buildings or targets of much less relative value. Then,  in steps Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence with an alternative explanation.  Ukraine ended up getting the names of the Russian crews of these bombers whose missiles were hitting civilian areas.  The government of Ukraine then issued a public warning to these pilots that their actions constituted war crimes that would someday be punished. Ukraine’s intelligence service claims that Russian bomber pilots started asking for copies of their direct orders to bomb these targets to try to give themselves some cover from being scooped up someday as war criminals.  Other pilots are said to be paying bribes to have their names removed from official records of these attacks to keep their names from ever being known.

The truth may be somewhere in between. Russia has expended some 3,000 cruise missiles in Ukraine so far of various types and currently lacks the ability to replenish them easily because of the way sanctions have disrupted the complex supply chains that are needed to make them.  We have also seen numerous reports and even videos of near-open mutiny by Russian troops refusing to either go to Ukraine or go fight while in Ukraine. So, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Russian pilots might balk at missions that require them to specifically target civilians.  These pilots are not conscripts rounded up in movie theaters and cafes.  They are in the middle-class caste of Russian society and their families have some influence.  There are also passive-aggressive means of resistance to these kinds of missions, like disabling their own aircraft or missiles in order to scrub the missions.  After doing this a few times, the higher headquarters gets the message pretty quickly.