10:02
We did see Shoigu on May 9 but otherwise the obvious assumption would have been that there were no more generals left to kill here 🙂
What is the source Erik14 because I’m a bit curious about what prompted that stance, is it party politics in the USA, does Ukraine have that capability themselves like they have been trained and given the passwords to the satellites or do they say one thing and do the opposite? Or has Ukraine acted on information they received and struck targets not approved by the USA?
10:10
Now Snake Island is in no way decisive in battle but I think both sides claim that the other side has taken astronomical losses here, the pro-Russians are completely sure that American and British spec ops reputation together with boats, helicopters and aircraft and Ukraine has roughly the same version. Now I know which side I trust the most…
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Could it have been that Ukraine struck and then there was some kind of fighting around the island for a while?
Anyone know who planted the flag there today or are both sitting on opposite sides of the island sulking?
10:47
Two clear trends on today’s Liveuamap, active front is limited to Siversk – a bit south of Marinka.
Kherson, southern front, Izyum are quiet and one must guess that the Russian Ministry of Defense will eventually confirm that everything there has just been a big maskirovka for the real attack target – a big potato field in the easternmost corner of Ukraine.
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The other is that the Russians seem to be going all in here, the map is packed with red icons. Now it seems to be going so-so in some places and a couple of BTGs went up in smoke at the river crossing but there are obviously units left with offensive power in some places. Considering that they are attacking at five places or more, the combat value of the remaining units with offensive capacity should plummet quite quickly here. Then the offensive attempts are over is my guess.
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One can always think that there might be some dark horse left but otherwise Ukraine has managed to reduce the active frontline since February 24 by 80%-90% (not counting the Belarus front) and according to the ever positive Pasiikivi the initiative has shifted to Ukraine on all other fronts. A somewhat incredible achievement considering that the best-case scenario for Ukraine before the war started was that they would lose all terrain east of the Dnipro.
12:34
I think like this, Mariupol was a combination of bad luck, the Russians got very early momentum on the southern front because that was the only place the FSB didn’t steal the bribes and Mariupol was surrounded before the Russians’ combat value dropped to zero.
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In the pocket/bow north of Horlivka the plan was probably mobile combat until in the worst case the whole bow was taken and to leave potent hedgehogs behind enemy lines, Kramatorsk/Slovyansk were probably prepared too. Now it never happened and currently Ukraine has a pretty good punch down there so if I were to guess an encirclement of Severodonetsk would be quite short-lived. But absolutely the Russians have really put everything on one point here.
12:40
Since the Russians seem to commit their units gradually in bridges and advances it will probably be more of the same until it runs out. The strategic value of Severodonetsk is absolutely nothing but to get a long-lasting encirclement Mariupol style, unfortunate. To be able to hold that encirclement the Russians must then fortify many small communities surrounded by open fields and then drive a truck to them weekly with food and ammunition which will go about as well as everything else they try.
Besides, the willingness to die is quite low in Izyum so a larger scale is unlikely.
12:45
Yes MF that’s how it is, then we have others in ongoing reporting as well as Militaryland and the Wikipedia map, I interpret the latter two as the most conservative really and you can usually declare victory for Ukraine when the dot turns blue on the Wikipedia map. Last comes ISW and then you know that there hasn’t been a Russian there for a week.
I could have written all three + some other sources but it was easiest to write Liveuamap 🙂
13:13
Yes Bitvargen there is probably no doubt that the Russians will dress it up to the max and proclaim a big win.
It is my strong opinion that the Russians cannot hold an encirclement. The terrain is terrible west of Severodonetsk and at Izyum they got stuck right at the forest edge and they still had Gerasimov pointing with the whole hand until he died.
14:07
Saw a geolocation of the failed river crossing at Siversk, 48°57’04.4″N 38°13’37.1″E
Apparently there were three bridges but this is said to have been the one where some vehicles were shot out.
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As an engineer you want to prove things and FIRMS is one such, a personal spy satellite for us keyboard warriors or is it just a bunch of forest fires in Ukraine and they have their annual paper recycling right now through some coincidence.
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So we know the location of the fiasco-like advance attempt and a quick look at FIRMS gives the time for the short and not very intense battle when they only died until May 7 – May 8. I just took the day, not the 24h setting, so it should have happened during these dates. I’m no king at Long/Lat and have gone via map images to pinpoint the right river bend.
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#t:adv;d:2022-05-07;l:noaa20-viirs,viirs,modis_a,modis_t;@38.2,48.9,14z
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blue sauron commented on it May 11, i.e. on the blog yesterday but we have to try to pinpoint the right days and I think I succeeded.
https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-05-09-22/h_d4d9764bcf4de307da2dfe1f6a63e2b0
The link is from May 9 and states that there are bridges near Belahorivka and on May 9 CNN writes ”But images reviewed by CNN indicate that at least one pontoon bridge has already been destroyed, with ruined tanks and other equipment half-submerged in the river”.
(one might wonder which images CNN got to see already on May 9…)
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FIRMS shows red dots over an area limited to May 7-8 and Ukraine has already knocked out vehicles at that location May 9. It does not burn before or after and it is forest and what has been guessed to be a forest fire in Izyum has been going on for over a week (and then it moves to the next place when the Russians have moved there and dug in 🙂 ).
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For my part this is enough, I think you can draw quite far-reaching conclusions from fires within a geographically limited area where you know there is fighting, and know which side holds the terrain. Also quite convinced that Izyum was a bigger hit than just a forest fire. So far I have ignored contested areas in Donbass because everything burns there all the time but if it lights up in Kherson or Zaporozny suddenly it is an early indication that something is going on and the increasing fires east of the Dnipro near Kherson I interpret as pre-strike of rear areas except for some real forest fire probably initiated by an exploding rear. When it moves over to red dots in Kherson it is pre-strike ahead of an offensive.
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Holding the thesis? I think so anyway. Nathan Ruser’s satellite images alone were enough but this turned out quite well since it was possible to pinpoint the dates.
15:25
If you look at FIRMS, they continue to shell targets up by Izyum. The red dots have moved from the large forest belt SW and SE of Izyum to NW and W of the city and follow the forest belt quite exactly, which quite exactly follows where the Russians can be expected to lie low and think about when they should suggest to their neighbor that it’s time to steal a truck and roll north.
It is marked a bit differently on different maps.
The 25th Airborne seems to have moved north together with the 93rd Mechanized and they have something sneaky going on here.
It almost seems like they are trying to take the forest area NW of Izyum and then they have the N-S road to Izyum under direct fire. But if they can get the next road junction under direct or indirect fire, the Russians are denied retreat north at Izyum because then there is no road towards Borova or up to any of the other bridges.
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Something that struck me here with the river crossing is that 1500 Russians are said to have died, which is significantly more than the number of destroyed vehicles. I think here that a Russian can also be sober between times and if they have less than 0.2 per mille in their blood, they probably don’t ignite on impact, so the red dots are signs of indirect fire but many more than just ignited vehicles may have been lost because the whole area has been shelled and not all ammunition is precision-guided but they probably also cover the area with area mortar barrages?
15:46
What they are doing, all BTGs that are supposed to attack from the north and encircle Severodonetsk will within less than a week be shot to pieces around broken pontoon bridges when they drive 2-3 per pontoon bridge at a time.
They could have still set up all of them the same day and achieved some kind of target saturation for Ukraine so they could have rolled a few kilometers south before it was over. Imagine the planning that preceded this with engineers, bridges, moving forward the last BTGs that can still fight and then poof.
16:39
This one is a bit funny because IntelSlava (pro-Russian of the worst kind) has marked up a small map about the campaign against Lyzchyansk and there is a red arrow and X exactly where the bridge was blown up and 40 armored vehicles were blown away. He was completely right but not in the way he thought.
https://t.me/intelslava/28651
20:09
Angola I can vouch for, they have an enormous number of oil-powered generators/open fires, slash-and-burn agriculture and other bits and pieces that burn. It is a country with a lot of open fire, in other words. No war at all. Interesting country 🙂
If there are forest fires, there is not really any firefighting so it can probably smolder here and there but now it is not the dry season down there so probably the dots are some form of fire.
There is the same kind of battlefield as in Ukraine where you can drive around with old Russian equipment since one side used Soviet materiel in the war and then the Cubans came and operated for a while. The “western” side, mainly supported by South Africa, lost much less materiel but lost the war.
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Yes, TESS checked the Walpurgis Night bonfires.
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I have also been around trying to figure that out and thought the same and it is absolutely as you say, interpret it the right way. For example Izyum – Ukraine announces an attack, it does not burn before, it does not burn after, then you have a fairly safe place for the barbecue. Then if you suspect there will be an offensive somewhere, now Pasiikiivi for example has said that Ukraine is also going on the offensive at Zaporoznye and Kherson, so I keep an eye on FIRMS and when it lights up you can assume it is a bit lively at that place. It becomes a lot of snooping on unit maps, other maps, Google to figure out what is happening. Then there seemed to be a forest fire east of the Dnieper on the small peninsula at the mouth so the assumption there that it was a huge rear area burning was probably wrong, maybe something ignited, who knows.
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Then someone posted this today, was it Surtruten who should get credit?, they seem pretty quick on what is happening. They probably have a subscription to a good commercial satellite or get decent images from some contact, who knows, but it confirms after a day or two if something has happened. Notably, they also coordinate with FIRMS in their analyses.
https://cesium.com/ion/stories/viewer/?id=8be6f99c-0d4c-46ce-91a3-313e3cac62fe
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Many analyses on YouTube I think also use FIRMS, for example, up by Kharkov they followed the red dots and had moving graphics.
20:09
Angola I can vouch for, they have an enormous number of oil-powered generators/open fires, slash-and-burn agriculture and other bits and pieces that burn. It is a country with a lot of open fire, in other words. No war at all. Interesting country 🙂
If there are forest fires, there is not really any firefighting so it can probably smolder here and there but now it is not the dry season down there so probably the dots are some form of fire.
There is the same kind of battlefield as in Ukraine where you can drive around with old Russian equipment since one side used Soviet materiel in the war and then the Cubans came and operated for a while. The “western” side, mainly supported by South Africa, lost much less materiel but lost the war.
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Yes, TESS checked the Walpurgis Night bonfires.
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I have also been around trying to figure that out and thought the same and it is absolutely as you say, interpret it the right way. For example Izyum – Ukraine announces an attack, it does not burn before, it does not burn after, then you have a fairly safe place for the barbecue. Then if you suspect there will be an offensive somewhere, now Pasiikiivi for example has said that Ukraine is also going on the offensive at Zaporoznye and Kherson, so I keep an eye on FIRMS and when it lights up you can assume it is a bit lively at that place. It becomes a lot of snooping on unit maps, other maps, Google to figure out what is happening. Then there seemed to be a forest fire east of the Dnieper on the small peninsula at the mouth so the assumption there that it was a huge rear area burning was probably wrong, maybe something ignited, who knows.
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Then someone posted this today, was it Surtruten who should get credit?, they seem pretty quick on what is happening. They probably have a subscription to a good commercial satellite or get decent images from some contact, who knows, but it confirms after a day or two if something has happened. Notably, they also coordinate with FIRMS in their analyses.
https://cesium.com/ion/stories/viewer/?id=8be6f99c-0d4c-46ce-91a3-313e3cac62fe
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Many analyses on YouTube I think also use FIRMS, for example, up by Kharkov they followed the red dots and had moving graphics.
20:10
Met a Cuban in Sweden who had been a soldier in Angola, the world is small.
20:23
Last in the thread regarding combat footage with sound and edited together. Now every brigade has found the guys who have decent cameras, know some editing software, and know where the Vikings soundtrack is, and there will be many more going forward which will be educational.
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What I take away from the offensive at Kharkov is that this was a well-prepared enemy in defense. Sandbags and a somewhat strategic position on the fortifications. They had planned to hold the terrain north of Kharkov.
Ukraine is not exactly conducting mechanized warfare but they manage offensive operations with infantry at company size supported by armor and also advance with armor. It is not clear to me how much the artillery decided up here but they have definitely crashed into an opponent who has dug in to the earlobes and planned defense and it went very fast to throw them out. Signals that they have taken to heart what the American instructors have tried to teach them over 8 years.
20:28
It is very strange that they did not go on the defense there as soon as they got over the bridge but stand in some kind of heap until they are knocked out. Any damn home guard unit would have gone on the defense in a sunshade in front of the bridge and let the infantry protect the armor.
It’s almost cheating to kill them and the Ukrainians probably argue about whether they get to scratch a line on the stock or not, does it really count or was it too easy.
20:51
Thought a bit after Surtrutn’s link with pretty good satellite images which are probably two zoom-ins more than Google Maps and they have next day images. Could it be that the slightly smarter news agencies have bought clip cards on commercial satellites and get daily updates?
21:23
strategic position on the fortifications was probably a strange mix of words 🙂
09:18
Any take in the thread on why the Russians used medevac by helicopter from Izyum?
Considering that they usually pile up the dead and sit eating breakfast next to them, one might guess that it is a senior officer who made the mistake of trying to lead from the front again?
Or have they finally managed to scrape together Gerasimov and planned to fly him home.
Liveuamap.
”Russians MEDEVACing wounded from Izyum with an Mi-8AMTSh”