10:26
Isn’t that almost impossible I wonder, but I probably haven’t studied in detail where the Russians have advanced in the last week.
It’s completely still in the south and the Kharkov area was just retaken where they drove 20-30km in one day.
To top that, the Russians must then have gained 40-60km in a week with some breadth and we haven’t heard anything about that as far as I know. Is Popasna a big city or something that has been missed here?
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However, since the start of the spring offensive, the Russians have taken quite a bit of potato field in the arc/pocket north of Horlivka which was intended for just that, hectares of potato fields against tank wrecks, and then some communities at the southern front so there you can probably count a larger km2.
10:30
Yes, especially since Medvedev has plainly told us that the Slavic empire shall stretch from Lisbon to Vladivostok so it’s really just about pure self-preservation. The Portuguese probably felt a bit singled out there and immediately started inventorying their weapon stocks while the president prepared a real counter-fire, but when they realized that all the materiel that existed on paper was embezzled, they kept quiet instead.
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If you, as a resident in Europe within the next 10-15 years, start thinking that Russia should be let back into the fold again, you are not thinking about Europe’s children at all. Probably this will end with Russia being in the freezer like Rocketman for quite a long time ahead and then they’ll have to sit and exchange letters of mutual support to each other.
10:45
There is some discussion about whether Ukraine should be satisfied with restoring the front to pre-February 24. As I see it, there is no reason for that, Ukraine has suffered enormous losses in raped, tortured, and murdered civilians and their greatest military losses are now behind them. Now most civilians are either evacuated from front-near sections on the Ukrainian side or kidnapped or cremated on the Russian side, the suffering cannot be greater.
To say at this point that we have suffered enough would be foolish and the Ukrainians are not stupid, they are not the guys who make hand hearts and they are very long-suffering and have had their Pearl Harbour. Of course, they will retake their territory by force and proposals to freeze the lines only benefit one actor – Putin – so we will soon see who in Europe still hasn’t realized that Russia is really seriously on the decline.
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Then it is also part of the picture that Ukraine can retake Donbass and Crimea by force. Up at Izyum it was mostly a big traffic jam and although Gerasimov went in and pointed with the whole hand before he was taken out, it was probably quite chaotic up there and no well-fortified deep defense. Up at Kharkov there were sandbag fortifications which by Russian standards probably means they really went all in and it was quite a hot knife through butter up there.
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However, that gives you the first picture of how it will look everywhere as soon as they have fixed the artillery battalions and the supply chains are running. I wonder if 777 has been on a little tour here 🙂
First it breaks in Kharkov, then it rattles in Izyum and then river crossings are knocked out faster than the Russians can build the bridges, a little string of devastation and now there are probably a couple of artillery tubes in Donbass that the Russians are suspiciously eyeing from their holes.
11:33
Now we shall try to learn the new settings for FIRMS that we got yesterday but one observation if you run a 1 week summary is that there is a very clear correlation between “grass fires” and where there has been fighting, up at Kharkov and along the line Slovyansk – Severedonetsk. It seems a bit easier at the Donbass stalemate line but there has been quite heavy shelling east of the Dnieper at Kherson. Down there we have a forest fire at one of the places now but something ignited it. Most probably understand that after the Russians had their supply cut 19 times at Kherson airport in intervals that were about when they had managed to build a new pyramid, they decided to move the rear to east of the Dnieper. It is this rear, artillery, supply and staffs that are now being fought with indirect fire I guess.
What I’m saying is that it’s burning, it starts with vehicles and then of course vegetation can ignite. Have you seen any MLRS salvo you see that it ignites where vehicles or supply are hit, ground blasts don’t ignite much.
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Personally, I think it was an unfortunate start in the thread when some dismissed FIRMS as grass fires and that got some traction. Over time we have learned to interpret FIRMS and now we have shown that you could get the exact dates for the catastrophic river crossing of Severedonetsk through FIRMS as well as Nathan Ruser’s satellite images which showed the characteristic white smoke plumes from burning vehicles in Izyum when we used FIRMS there.
There are a couple who continue to post FIRMS and it’s really fun to see. In fact, many analysts who post, hobby nerds or a bit more serious, have started to weave FIRMS into their reasoning now.
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Something that would be the cherry on top of the melting glass cake would be if you saw a fire on FIRMS, wrote down the coordinates and ordered a commercial satellite photo of the area. Every journalist with some self-respect but who doesn’t want to risk stepping on a mine in Donbass has understood this and satellite companies are getting rich right now, someone posted this link a few days ago. We ordinary broke parents have to continue freeloading on stuff that is free.
https://cesium.com/ion/stories/viewer/?id=8be6f99c-0d4c-46ce-91a3-313e3cac62fe
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Now there is a delay of a few days for satellite images (that is civilian…) and other analyses and when ISW writes about it you know that the area has been Russian-free for a week. With what we know today, you sit at the computer one morning and there is a thick red carpet over Kherson in the area west of the Dnieper, then we know that it is pre-bombardment ahead of an offensive. Likewise if a new area lights up such as Izyum, for example towards Kupiansk. There are also exciting little strings north from Izyum and you can guess that natural grass fires do not spontaneously start at regular intervals along an escape route.
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If there are any doubters left in the thread it might be a good idea to wait a few days until Izyum is confirmed by a source you trust and when you read that, then remember that FIRMS gave us this information first, no one else had written about the blast against Izyum when it was first brought up in the thread as far as I know. Of course, it was not ONE blast but over time but the date it started.
12:14
Yes GOERAN63, it is a very narrow thread to try to balance on here with very big boots and I basically agree completely that we should not be sitting and demanding that Ukrainian children should die so we can continue eating at McDonald’s.
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The reason I do it is that if Putin gets any land tongue left in Ukraine, there will never be peace, he (and his successors) will retreat for 10 years and start a WWII mobilization of the country and then everything starts again. The bandage must be ripped off now and that can only be done if the Ukrainians regain all their territory. As soon as proposals come from people who do not quote Zelensky, one should be suspicious and it is in that light that I write.
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Now I have probably mostly echoed what Zelensky himself says and he echoes what the Ukrainian population wants, so I am not in any way going against their will here. I think NATO should have had a no-fly zone and that Poland should have taken over the Belarus border to free up Ukrainian units earlier, but in the case of Poland I see it as a strength because if it had been needed, Zelensky would have gone and asked Poland for it. The EU as a whole has shown an almost distasteful indifference to Ukraine’s suffering and we can once again note that the USA and UK save the free world when needed. Now separate EU countries have acted well but it should not have been the USA and UK who took the baton in this but the EU.
12:39
I have not fully understood the extent of this either but have probably felt that LW exaggerated in his sulfurous analyses before the war started.
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However, I have a very good impression that win-win is some kind of Western European concept that does not exist in large parts of the world. A simple example was when we tried to start a business in a country in Africa and applied our thinking to it. “Hi, you will drive around with a truck and deliver goods, we make 4000 USD/month and you get half.” We calculated 30% shrinkage. The guy stole the truck and all the goods because he assumed he would be fired anyway 🙂
13:41
Tankfri, I don’t remember if you were part of the discussion about FIRMS being more grass fires than destroyed vehicles but wasn’t the goalpost moved a few weeks ago? FIRMS was tipped off at the start of the war but the reporting was lightning fast and it was not so fun to use, it is only now when Ukraine is advancing in the fog of war that it is useful.
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I read your post as if I have overinterpreted the data and blared out FIRMS as a tool that reveals the whole course of the war when it is not (it’s mostly me who runs FIRMS so there aren’t many others to fit your description here 🙂)? We probably have two schools in the thread, those who try to predict in the swamp and those who want to wait until it is stated in sources they trust. I personally think it is fun to predict in the swamp and since I cannot afford a clip account on commercial satellite, FIRMS is a potent tool and I think it bears repeating.
Unit maps, Google Maps, area control maps, daily war reporting and possible strategic decisions based on plausibility analysis are the complements we all use daily and you of course understand that but I clarify because you wrote that other sources are required which can be misinterpreted as other sources are not used.
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When it happened with the first discussion, my claim was that Izyum had been subjected to heavy fighting because the entire forest belt W, SW and SE of Izyum went from isolated fires to being completely lit up. It became a long discussion in the thread where one side thought it was probably mostly forest fires and then I stood on the other side claiming it was grilled BTG 🙂
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Now I get quite curious because you claim that the Russians have not been beaten up near Izyum (do not misinterpret that as completely_all_completely_annihilated or similar 🙂) and that my early assumption was wrong? If not, then I must have been right here and not overinterpreted the data as you say, please feel free to elaborate on that reasoning.
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Then I get genuinely curious about what conservative approach means to you because the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense did after all announce an offensive against Izyum at the same time as there was a flash on FIRMS. Are Ukrainian sources not reliable and we have to wait for something more conservative, I thought the probability that it was a Ukrainian offensive in the area was high enough to ring the bell.
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Now the area maps show that a wedge has been pushed in by Ukraine at Izyum so your answer can really only be one here. My highly personal opinion is that an overly conservative mindset and dismissal of sources means that we do not sufficiently discuss, and above all ridicule, the monumental Russian fiasco that is currently unfolding and that would be a bit unfortunate. It is enough to look at how the discussion about NATO is going to understand that some are still afraid of Russia, that there even is a discussion about security guarantees when there is nothing left to back up the threats with is somewhat absurd but now we are joining despite these small bumps in the curve and becoming an active party in defending the free world against purely criminal nations like Russia.
13:52
Yes, I started pushing it because I thought the Russians would get better propulsion in the Horlivka bow/pocket and that the only front section for offensive could be Zaporozhye and Kherson, lower density of Russian units.
Now Ukraine surprised properly by striking at Izyum which was the focal point for the entire Russian spring offensive and then the Russians also surprised by starting to go and drown in the best of stampedes.
Kharkov was a cleanup operation earlier than that but it was only towards the end that it started to go really fast.
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What I probably somewhat unclearly intended to write is that the day it blows up at Kherson or Zaporozhye we can see it early but I am probably not really writing that it will happen tomorrow. Tactically smart move to press there and I can only conclude that Ukraine has such a large numerical advantage there that the outcome is given. Maybe they are waiting for tour-de-777 or it is something else we do not know about because now they are starting to prepare deep defense behind the southern front, the window for something quick is closing fast. Then, as I said, we probably have not yet seen the full effect of all the new artillery tubes and it could get sweaty if you are a Russian in defense. Ukraine is dropping small wing grenades from drones right in the head of some group of Russians eating meat soup so everything that is buried and not camouflaged is open season. Now that the Russians have started to learn to dig a hole somewhat properly, they probably still have a long way to go to camouflage nets 🙂
It is actually quite surprising because as we lay there pressing in the forest with spruce twigs and camo nets, all soldiers with basic training should act but apparently that is not the case, the focus is on mobile crematoria and rapes instead.
14:04
The entire area up to Kupiansk/the border and west of the Oskil river is really just a cleanup operation now, provided that the Russians don’t empty Belgorod and send everything they have towards Kupiansk and southwards, but we haven’t seen that yet.
When the last bodies north of Kharkiv west of the Sieveretsky Donets river have been cleared away, one should reasonably continue eastwards while fortifying the border to the north (one must defend at a suitable location and the border post is probably not a suitable place!)
East of the Sievertsky Donetsk river and up to Kupiansk there are quite a few west-east flowing rivers and I see them as natural obstacles which have now clearly proven to be insurmountable obstacles for the Russians 🙂
Kupiansk is defended and so is the west of Izyum offensive but now Ukraine is probably starting to nibble at Balakliia and Savyntsi.
You will probably see a slow advance up to the Oskil river in the first phase.
Now one hardly dares to write this but the second phase should be all the terrain east of the Oskil river and north of the defense line Slovyansk – Severodonetsk. The Russians will give up that terrain themselves if Ukraine puts pressure on Donbass proper or towards Crimea and they need to plug the holes. Otherwise, Ukraine moves forward from the west and south so the “corner” will always be a two-front war.
14:30
The lack of any kind of emotions in the Russian command and unit leaders is terrible to see, they are driving forward to zero. Now Russian soldiers have a choice here and Ukraine does not. We have all felt bad about the five-year-old who was raped, tortured and murdered in front of his mother’s eyes who was then released, and Ukraine has even started prosecuting prisoners of war so it seems they do take the occasional prisoner – that self-restraint is somewhat incredible.
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I believe that Ukraine has the moral right with unconditional standing orders and shots to the back of the head in place but they behave humanely under the circumstances. To be able to take back their territory they need to kill the Russians who stand in the way and they do that and right now a good Russian in Ukraine is a dead Russian.
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Something that actually surprises me is why the Russians do not surrender in larger numbers and ask for asylum in Ukraine, Ukraine has tried that but mass surrenders have not happened yet. But… a recently retreating unit was denied re-entry to Russian territory and then you don’t have many options left other than to give up I think, we’ll see.
14:46
Mickeuppsala, exactly that and that is why I think Ukraine wants to retake Donbass proper and Crimea as soon as they can because the turncoats in the EU can be like an oiled lightning bolt when it comes to doing nothing.
Ukraine is now completely dependent on equipment, money and the West’s goodwill and I am worried whether Putin will succeed in driving a neat turnaround in opinion but of course I hope that it does not happen.
We’ll see but I think one can assume that the longer time goes on the harder it becomes to retake Donbass proper and Crimea.
Putin’s last dirty trick will be to demand peace and accuse Ukraine of killing children when he tries to freeze the conflict to Donbass and Crimea.
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A reservation here is that Ukraine has no intention of retaking Donbass and Crimea but I don’t want to air that yet but it is gnawing a bit.
15:23
Avanti, it took a while to work through the settings for FIRMS but if you follow your steps the fires get different colors depending on how new they are which is great. Then you can click on a fire I discovered to see the date.
20:26
Now the reply got a bit late MRF, Propotopivka has been in Ukrainian hands the whole time and you remember Ukraine’s pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donets river east or northeast of Propotopivka, the one the Russians shot away or which was washed away after a while. I have interpreted the entire forest belt east of the river as being under Russian control and at the furthest the Russians got down and sniffed the main road Barvinkove – Slovyansk when they failed to advance towards Barvinkove. They never really managed to cut the main road as far as I understand.
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Zavody became contested around May 5-7. Zavody lies south of the Seversky Donets river, it is an interesting place to be contested, was in connection with Ukraine’s counteroffensive, but of course it could also be an error from Wikipedia maps. We know from reports that Balakliia and Savyntsi are Russian.
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Nathan the day after we discussed FIRMS I want to remember?
https://twitter.com/Nrg8000/status/1522871820487372800?s=20&t=owom75NMs1gCPkyMLT-NkA
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If we take the start of the spring offensive from Liveuamap it looks like this, it is a fairly even “bubble” around Izyum.
https://liveuamap.com/en/time/18.04.2022
Today
https://liveuamap.com/en/time/15.05.2022
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You have posted about Militaryland and now this became a question of interpretation and how we should evaluate sources so then it gets stuck. For my part, I have thought that the Militaryland map has been the one updated but I see the same as you that half of that forest belt has been marked as belonging to Ukraine the whole time. Unfortunately there are no communities to go by on the Wikipedia map.
20:46
You can get archive images cheaply or for free, Nathan has some, I’ll post that last because I can’t clean up the link 🙂
We used to order images at specific coordinates with high resolution for projects in Africa, they cost a few thousand dollars and you had to wait a while, about a week or so. CNN has high-resolution images a few days after an event occurred, first a plan and then very high resolution where you can see the condition of combat vehicles and I think that is quite expensive but I don’t know the price. In an article I posted from May 9 CNN wrote that they had seen images of a blown-up bridge and burnt vehicles, those were these satellite images and the event was May 7-8.
https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/?zoom=13&lat=49.23568&lng=36.95938&themeId=DEFAULT-THEME&visualizationUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fservices.sentinel-hub.com%2Fogc%2Fwms%2Fbd86bcc0-f318-402b-a145-015f85b9427e&evalscript=Ly9WRVJTSU9OPTMKZnVuY3Rpb24gc2V0dXAoKSB7CiAgcmV0dXJuIHsKICAgIGlucHV0OiBbIkIwNCIsIkIwMyIsIkIwMiIsICJkYXRhTWFzayJdLAogICAgb3V0cHV0OiB7IGJhbmRzOiA0IH0KICB9Owp9CgpmdW5jdGlvbiBldmFsdWF0ZVBpeGVsKHNhbXBsZSkgewogIAogIHJldHVybiBbNSAqIHNhbXBsZS5CMDQsIDUgKiBzYW1wbGUuQjAzLCA1ICogc2FtcGxlLkIwMiwgc2FtcGxlLmRhdGFNYXNrXTsKfQ%3D%3D&datasetId=S2L2A&fromTime=2022-05-06T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&toTime=2022-05-06T23%3A59%3A59.999Z#custom-script
21:30
This reply got a bit late, yes it was probably you and me in that discussion, I am terrible with names and there are at least three others who have a three-letter name starting with M, the really tricky ones are the sunflowers.
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I had thought I would tone down the positive a couple of notches but I couldn’t because now the Russians have started to go and drown, however I probably should be a bit clearer when I paint broadly for effect and make months sound like days.
21:35
Adding that there are satellites they use for atrocities around the world NGOs etc. that provide image banks to work with. I don’t know exactly under whose direction but surely Ukraine has access to them to log the genocide.
21:51
MickeUppsala, I have somewhere decided to focus on the war, that Ukraine will regain its territory, but May 9 shocked me when I realized that the Ukraine war is just a bit of dirt on Russia’s windshield, nothing more.
And in Ukraine, they are ethnically cleansing the country.
It has been hard for me to accept, but Russia must be contained within NATO and then sanctioned so they can never do this again, ever. That is the only reasonable line to pursue.
22:29
We need some good news, so I’m jumping on Izyum 🙂
Ukraine seems to be pushing on the western flank down from Izyum all the way up towards Kupiansk (so where they stand west of Kupiansk, Malynivka I think they stopped at before).
Let’s hope for some more terrible defense like up near Kharkiv.
If they take Kupiansk, they have a fairly large area to clear out that the Russians can’t do anything about.
I think Ukraine is already today denying the Russians retreat over the bridge at Borova with indirect fire.
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I also think I see that the Russians blinked first here and there is some probing going on.
22:32
One more piece of good news, according to pro-Russian sites Ukraine has made a serious attempt to break through at Malynivka (I think).
We can take losses with an extremely large grain of salt since it’s pro-Russian as said, but they describe an event where the Russians are on the defense and Ukraine attacks, and it’s back to pushing towards Kupiansk.
”From the ground they report on the results of yesterday’s attempts by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to penetrate the positions of our troops in the Malinovka area:
Yesterday, from 09:00, the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried to hit the flank of our group in the direction of Gulyaipole-Malinovka.
Several groups came out with the support of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles. They could not enter the joints between our units. Active actions continued until the evening.
The enemy had no tactical success. Enemy losses confirmed: 30 tanks, 11 infantry fighting vehicles, 2 armored personnel carriers, 2 Grad MLRS, irretrievable losses of the enemy – more than 300. The numbers are very serious, but nonetheless.
There are losses on our side too – irretrievable 15, injured – 11. There are no data on technology”.
10:17
Considering that Russia has limited its offensive operations to 10%-20% of the original front, the available units for the operation are probably very few. What they would rather have done than go and drown in the Severedonetsk was to embrace Kramatorsk-Slovyansk, but they have pulled back eastwards for a final (Ardennes) offensive due to a lack of maneuver units.
My take on this is that a BTG in combat loses disproportionately more at the front than in the rear (stole that word from someone in the thread) and that there are a very large number of Russian BTGs that on paper appear to have the numbers but lack key personnel and infantry, and then they are only good for sitting in a hole waiting to die. There is also definitely a shortage of armor because we see many videos now that are overweight in terms of IFV/splinter protection and some tanks leading.
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We can be completely sure that the Russians are throwing in what they have now around Severedonetsk and they will gain some ground on a wedge which, when it thunders across open fields with the red hammer and sickle fluttering in the wind, has a life cycle about that of a mayfly. Then it’s over. I think, by the way, that the spring offensive has already been over for a while because it’s almost embarrassing to call a few hectares of potato fields in eastern Ukraine a combat objective but sure, they will go on and die for a while longer.
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After that, the initiative passes to Ukraine also on the remaining front sections and Russia can only retake it locally on some front section where they get reserves. Now it is more likely that Ukraine will start pressing all along the front and that these reserves will be used to protect Belgorod against trolling and plugging holes rather than trying to build bridges and drown, so it is quite possible that we can soon ring the gong for when the Russians went fully on the defensive, which is probably not at the top of the bunker dwarf’s list.