Putin's War Part 2.

Russian troops in the occupied city of Melitopol have stolen all the equipment from a farm equipment dealership -- and shipped it to Chechnya, according to a Ukrainian businessman in the area.

But after a journey of more than 700 miles, the thieves were unable to use any of the equipment -- because it had been locked remotely.
Over the past few weeks there's been a growing number of reports of Russian troops stealing farm equipment, grain and even building materials - beyond widespread looting of residences. But the removal of valuable agricultural equipment from a John Deere dealership in Melitopol speaks to an increasingly organized operation, one that even uses Russian military transport as part of the heist.
CNN has learned that the equipment was removed from an Agrotek dealership in Melitopol, which has been occupied by Russian forces since early March. Altogether it's valued at nearly $5 million. The combine harvesters alone are worth $300,000 each.

Ukraine’s navy, which after scuttling its flagship no longer has a single large vessel, continues to chip away at Russia’s own naval power in the Black Sea. With a big assist from Ukraine’s army, of course.

On Monday, a TB-2 armed drone apparently belonging to the Ukrainian sea service struck two Russian patrol boats with laser-guided missiles, heavily damaging if not destroying both boats.

Add the two 55-foot, gun-armed Raptor-class vessels to the growing list of Russian boats and ships the Ukrainians have sunk or so heavily damaged that they’re no longer relevant to the current conflict.

Moscow’s naval losses of course include the 612-foot missile cruiser Moskva, holed by two Ukrainian navy Neptune coastal anti-ship missiles on April 13. Moskva was the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet with its, at the time, two dozen or so major warships.

Three weeks earlier on March 24, an Alligator-class landing ship belonging to the Black Sea Fleet’s reinforced amphibious flotilla burst into flames while pier-side in Russian-occupied Berdyansk in southern Ukraine. It seems an accurate hit by a Ukrainian army Tochka ballistic missile started the chain reaction.

Down three amphibs as well as Moskva with its long-range air-defense missiles, the Black Sea Fleet no longer can concentrate a large landing force nor protect it from air and missile attack. That means the Russians almost certainly can’t open a littoral front along Ukraine’s western coastline in order to stage an assault on the strategic port of Odessa, Ukraine’s main gateway to the sea.

Moskva, Saratov and the other landing ships are the most significant naval casualties on the Russian side, but they’re not the only ones. On or before March 22, Ukrainian army troops in Mariupol—an historic port on the Sea of Azov, adjacent to the Black Sea—struck a Raptor with at least one Konkurs anti-tank missile as the boat patrolled close to shore.

That makes two big Russian ships sunk plus two damaged, as well as three patrol boats knocked out if not totally destroyed. This out of a regional fleet that, before the war, included just seven large surface combatants—frigates and large corvettes plus Moskva—in addition to a half-dozen landing ships, six or seven Raptors and six or so diesel-electric submarines.

Bear in mind, Turkey controls the Bosphorous Strait, the only waterway connecting the Sea of Azov and Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and thus the open ocean. Ankara is a strong backer of Ukraine’s independence—remember, the TB-2 drone is a Turkish product—and has not allowed the Russian navy to send in fresh ships to make good the Black Sea Fleet’s losses.

The TB-2 strike on Monday underscores the Black Sea Fleet’s dire condition. It’s apparent the Russians no longer can protect their remaining warships from aerial attack.

Moskva with her 200-mile air-search radars and 64 S-300 surface-to-air missiles, each with a 50-mile range, in theory was the fleet’s main air-defender. But the cruiser couldn’t even defend herself.

Now the Black Sea Fleet leans on a trio of 409-foot Admiral Grigorovich-class frigates for aerial protection. The frigates are some of the newest vessels in the Russian fleet—and the biggest surface warships Russian industry can build owing to problems manufacturing or importing large maritime engines.

Am I the only person here thinking of Stalin?

LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) - The Russian Orthodox Church scolded Pope Francis on Wednesday for using the wrong tone after he urged Patriarch Kirill not to become the Kremlin's "altar boy", cautioning the Vatican that such remarks would hurt dialogue between the churches.

Francis told Italy's Corriere Della Sera newspaper that Kirill, who has given the Ukraine war his backing, "cannot become [President Vladimir] Putin's altar boy". read more

The Russian Orthodox Church said it was regrettable that a month and a half after Francis and Kirill, the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, had spoken directly, the pope had adopted such a tone.

"Pope Francis chose an incorrect tone to convey the content of this conversation," the Moscow Patriarchy said, though it did not explicitly mention the "altar boy" comment.

"Such statements are unlikely to contribute to the establishment of a constructive dialogue between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, which is especially necessary at the present time."

Kirill, 75, a close ally of Putin, sees the war as a bulwark against a West he considers decadent, particularly over the acceptance of homosexuality. read more

The Russian Orthodox Church is by far the biggest of the churches in the Eastern Orthodox communion, which split with Western Christianity in the Great Schism of 1054. Today it has about 100 million followers within Russia and more outside.

Ukraine has about 30 million Orthodox believers, divided between the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and two other Orthodox Churches, one of which is the autocephalous, or self-governing, Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Francis, 85, has asked for a meeting in Moscow with Putin about Ukraine but the Kremlin said on Wednesday there was no agreement on this.

Russia and the West frame the conflict in Ukraine very differently.

Moscow calls its actions a "special military operation" to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Kyiv and its Western backers say the fascism claim is absurd and say Russia is waging an unprovoked war that threatens Ukraine's continued existence as a sovereign, democratic state.

The Moscow Patriarchy quoted Kirill as telling Pope Francis on March 16 that the Western media had failed to accurately report the situation in Ukraine - a frequent Russian complaint.

Kirill said the conflict in Ukraine had begun in 2014 when protests toppled a pro-Russian president. Kirill noted what he said was the persecution of Russian speakers in Ukraine's port city of Odesa. Ukraine denies any such persecution.

But Kirill also expressed sorrow over the conflict.

"Of course, this situation is associated with great pain for me. My flock is on both sides of the confrontation, they are mostly Orthodox people," the Patriarchy quoted him as saying.

"How can we foster the pacification of those fighting with the single goal of achieving the consolidation of peace and justice?"

Putin has also cited NATO enlargement to Russia's borders as a reason for the conflict in Ukraine despite what he says were assurances given as the Soviet Union collapsed that the alliance would not expand - an issue Kirill touched on.

"Patriarch Kirill further recalled that at the end of the Soviet era, Russia received an assurance that NATO would not move one inch in the eastern direction," the Moscow Patriarchy said. "However, this promise was broken."

The United States and NATO deny such assurances were given but say countries are free to apply to join an alliance they say is purely defensive and poses no threat to Russia.

Moskva’s sinking, along with the earlier destruction of the Black Sea Fleet landing ship Saratov following an apparent hit by a Ukrainian ballistic missile, spooked fleet commanders. They pulled back the surviving surface ships.

Many, including one Admiral Grigorovich-class frigate—it’s not clear which—were moored in Sevastopol as recently as Thursday. When the warships do sail from Crimea, they tend to stay 100 miles or so from the Ukrainian coast, potentially keeping them beyond the range of Kyiv’s Neptunes.

Keeping at a safe distance meant the frigates apparently were in no position to help when the Ukrainian navy last week mounted a furious drone assault on the Russian garrison on Snake Island. The tiny hunk of rock, 25 miles off the coast of southwestern Ukraine, helped Kyiv assert some control over the western Black Sea—until the Russians captured it on the first full day of the current war on Feb. 24.

Ukrainian TB-2 drones knocked out Russian air-defenses on the island then went hunting deeper at sea. On Monday, a TB-2 struck two Russian Raptor-class patrol boats with laser-guided missiles, heavily damaging if not destroying both of the 55-foot boats as they motored toward Snake Island.

Without the protection of a frigate, the Raptors were sitting ducks. In that sense, sinking Moskva—and scaring off the rest of the Black Sea Fleet’s major combatants—was as good as sinking the frigates, too. It doesn’t matter that Russia still has three powerful warships in the Black Sea if those ships can’t, or won’t, risk approaching the Ukrainian coast.