NAFO, an acronym for North Atlantic Fella Organization, is a collective of Twitter posters set on fundraising for the Georgian Legion in Ukraine amidst the Russian invasion of the country, as well as combatting Russian propaganda on the site, largely through memes involving photoshops of the Shiba Inu and meme character Cheems. They post pro-Ukraine memes, or ones mocking Russian war effort and strategy, and “shitposting,”
Ukrainian operational security OPSEC is relatively quiet even as the battles continue and the disinformation war has escalated during the counteroffensive. As has been emphasized, the amount and type of war information will be either sparse or filtered, despite the disproportionate disinformation produced over the coming months.
x
Ukraine consolidates control over liberated territories on Kherson front
The info on this video does not harm Ukrainian’s efforts as it does not reveal their position or gives any secret info
At such a pace (+0.08% a month), Russia would complete seizing the rest of Ukraine’s territory (80.52%) in the year 2105 (in ~84 years). Oh, you can have a lot of fun with numbers!
Over the past day, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has destroyed one Russian helicopter, two unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), platoon and company strong points and armored fighting vehicles.
The relevant statement was made by the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine onFacebook, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
“On August 31, 2022, in the Eastern direction, the air-defense missile units of the Air Force destroyed an enemy helicopter (presumably, Ka-52) of Russian occupiers. In addition, two operational tactical level UAVs were shot down,” the report states.
Over the past day, Ukraine’s air forces have completed more than 70 air missions in different directions. Ukrainian fighters, bombers and attack aircraft launched missile and air strikes on the ground targets of Russian occupation troops, having hit enemy ammunition depots, platoon and company strong points, armored fighting vehicles, air-defense missile system positions, multiple launch rocket systems and personnel.
www.ukrinform.net/…
x
The head of the Odesa administration said two missiles were launched at the Odesa province, one of them (a Yakhont cruise missile) was intercepted, the other landing in an open area #Ukraine
“A substantial, sustained degradation of Russia’s radars with HARMs would be a major set-back to Russia’s already troubled situational awareness.”
Britain, the US, Ukraine and their allies are fighting an information war against Russia so briefings need to be treated with caution, although claims by the Kremlin are often far less believable.
Ukraine’s operational command South said its forces had destroyed a pontoon bridge near the town of Daryivky in the Kherson region, which had been used by the Russian troops to bring in equipment and ammunition.
www.standard.co.uk/…
Click here to see ISW interactive map, updated daily: arcg.is/09O0OS
x
The timing of the start of the counteroffensive is consistent with the observed degradation of #Russian capabilities in western #Kherson Oblast balanced against the need to start liberating occupied #Ukrainian lands and people as soon as possible. /2
Military forces that must conduct offensive operations without the numerical advantages normally required for success in such operations often rely on misdirections and feints to draw the defender away from the sectors of the line on which breakthrough efforts will focus. /4
ISW has been appropriately cautious and circumspect in announcing the culmination or defeat of major Russian offensive operations. ISW will apply the same caution and circumspection to assessing the progress of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and exhorts others to do the same. /6
An expert team from the United Nations nuclear agencyplan to stay at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear plantafter gaining long-awaited access to the site on Thursday. “We are not going anywhere. The IAEA is now there, it is at the plant and it is not moving – it’s going to stay there,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, told reporters after returning to Ukrainian-held territory. He said a group of IAEA experts had stayed behind at the plant in south-eastern Ukraine and would provide an impartial, neutral and technically sound assessment of the situation.
This map from Russian defense commentator Y. Podolyaka allegedly shows Ukraine special ops raid (60 attackers in 7 boats) against Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. 1 Sept.
The physical integrity of the Zaporizhzhia plant had been violated on several occasions, Rafael Grossi said. “It is obvious that the plant and physical integrity of the plant has been violated several times,” he told reporters. “I worried, I worry and I will continue to be worried about the plant until we have a situation which is more stable, which is more predictable.”
Russia’s foreign minister warned Moldova that any actions seen as endangering the security of Russian troops in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack on Russia.Sergei Lavrov said: “Everyone should understand thatany action that would threaten the security of our troops [in Transnistria]would be considered under international law as an attack on Russia.”
Russia and Chinalaunched large-scale military exercisesinvolving several allied nations on Thursday, in a show of growing defence cooperation between Moscow and Beijing and a demonstration of Moscow’s military might. The Russian defence ministry said the Vostok 2022 (East 2022) exercise would be held until Wednesday in Russia’s far east and the Sea of Japan and involve more than 50,000 troops and 5,000 weapons units, including 140 aircraft and 60 warships.
United States federal agents searched properties linked to a billionaire Russian oligarchin Manhattan, the Hamptons and an exclusive Miami island. FBI agents and Homeland Security Investigations personnel searched the properties, linked to Viktor Vekselberg, who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and whose $120m yacht was seized in April, NBC News reported.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency is investigating allegations that two senior civil servantscould have been spying for Russia, according to a local media report. Die Zeit, which first revealed the case, said the officials being investigated had close involvement with energy supply issues and held key positions.
A senior Russian oil executive has died afterfalling from the window of a Moscow hospital, months after his company criticised the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ravil Maganov, the chair of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, “fell from a window at Central clinical hospital”, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday, citing a source. “He died from injuries sustained.” Maganov is the second top Lukoil executive to die in mysterious circumstances in recent months.
Childrenreturned to Ukrainian schoolstrashed by occupying Russian forceson Thursday. Only schools that are fit for use, are in areas that do not face a regular threat of shelling and that have enough students opt for in-person teaching will reopen. School administrations have been preparing for the new academic year by outfitting basements as shelters and training teachers on what to do in case of an attack. All children who attend are told to carry an emergency bag with a change of clothes, any medicine they may need, a note from their parents and, for the younger children, a favourite toy.
www.theguardian.com/…
x
A map of the approximate situation on the ground in Ukraine as of 00:00 UTC 02/09/22.
The history goes back some way. Writing in Slate earlier this year, Charles Shaw, an assistant professor of Soviet history at Central European University in Vienna, argued that Ukraine was repurposing an old Soviet tactic against Russia. Kyiv was “consciously deploying laughter to define its position on the correct side of a just war, which is a playbook the Soviets used to great effect versus Nazi Germany,” Shaw wrote.
It may all seem frivolous. It’s anything but.
NAFO, for example, have served as fundraisers for the Ukraine military, even raising money so Ukraine would paint their memes on a tank, artfully dubbed “Super Bonker 9000.” Indirectly, the largely English-language memes have kept Western attention on Ukraine’s war — attention that is vital given the importance of Western arms to Ukrainian forces.
The group has also undercut both Russia’s somber justifications for the war, as well as accounts from Russian state allies that had attempted to show the conflict going in a better light than it actually was. It’s noteworthy that many of NAFO’s supporters come from the OSINT community.
Eliot Higgins, the founder the best-known OSINT website Bellingcat, tweeted this week that he would be talking about NAFO in a conference “as an example of online communities organically responding to disinformation from governments and counterfactual communities,” adding that it was “good for morale.”
But there are risks to the tactic, too. The surreal nature of the memes shouldn’t mask the bloody reality on the ground nor become dehumanizing, as Soviet propaganda against Germany did during World War II, according to Shaw. It’s notable that the Ukraine Defense Ministry has moved to embrace NAFO the same week that it banned reporters from traveling to parts of the country, sparking speculation that a counterattack is imminent.
Is a counterattack actually happening? Ukraine’s response so far has been to not answer, but to do what it knows best: Troll the Russians, once again.
www.stripes.com/…
x
Russia has lost 67 military pilots in Ukraine
A single sniper pilot has 15-17 years of training at a cost of $12-14 million. Irreparable losses for the Russian war effort.
More than six months in, the war in Ukraine has become a little surreal.This past weekend, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry shared a doctored photograph of a Shiba Inu dog wearing a military uniform, apparently gushing over the site of a missile launch.
“Today we want to give a shout-out to a unique entity,” the tweet read, before pointing to an unusually named group — the North Atlantic Fellas Organization.
If you are the sort of person who gets your news from, say, a newspaper website, you may have little idea what NAFO is. But if you’re the sort of person who has spent the last six months scouring Twitter for news about the war in Ukraine, signing up for obscure Telegram accounts and reading accounts of the latest Ukrainian strikes on Russia on blogs devoted to open-source intelligence (OSINT) … well, it’s quite likely you’re already a fella yourself.
For the former, let’s explain. Over recent months, Ukraine-sympathetic internet users have come together to support Kyiv’s war effort. The Shiba Inu is a distinctive dog breed from Japan, which for over a decade, has been a recurrent motif in internet culture. You may recognize it as a“doge,” beloved of Elon Muskand millions of other internet users.
Vice’s Motherboarddates the use of Shiba Inu as a “fella” fighting the war in Ukraine to May, when an artist named Kama began creating custom images of the “fellas” for those who donated money to the Georgian Legion — a volunteer military unit in Ukraine that took on board many foreigners. “Out of boredom, I started making other Fellas and imprinting them on random images from Ukraine,” Kama told Motherboard earlier this summer.
![NAFO, or the North Atlantic Fellas Organization (a play on NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), is an Internet meme and an online phenomenon dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[1][2]
In addition to posting pro-Ukraine memes, or ones mocking Russian war effort and strategy, and "shitposting," the group also raises funds for the Ukrainian military and other pro-Ukrainian causes.[2][3] The representation of a NAFO "Fella" is a Shiba Inu dog, often used as an avatar and sometimes described as a “cartoon dog.”[3][4] According to The Economist, “NAFO’s flippancy obscures its role as a remarkably successful form of information warfare.”[5]](https://images.dailykos.com/images/1108251/story_image/NAFO_OFAN_brain_damaged_cartoon_dogs1.jpeg?1662011877 "NAFO, or the North Atlantic Fellas Organization (a play on NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), is an Internet meme and an online phenomenon dedicated to countering Russian propaganda and disinformation about the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[1][2]
In addition to posting pro-Ukraine memes, or ones mocking Russian war effort and strategy, and \"shitposting,\" the group also raises funds for the Ukrainian military and other pro-Ukrainian causes.[2][3] The representation of a NAFO \"Fella\" is a Shiba Inu dog, often used as an avatar and sometimes described as a “cartoon dog.”[3][4] According to The Economist, “NAFO’s flippancy obscures its role as a remarkably successful form of information warfare.”[5]")
