16:34
If I understand correctly, the film should be from the drowning attempts but I don’t know exactly where.
On FIRMS we saw red dots on the dates the extermination took place.
Looking at the trees, there are no big fires directly but a bunch of burnt wrecks and some trees that look a bit scorched.
This is the first time we have ground footage from an area where we saw red dots on FIRMS.
We’ll see from Izyum when they start filming there but I do think FIRMS isn’t so bad.
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Observation two, fighting with MTLB, BMP-1 and quite few tanks nowadays, the warehouses are starting to get empty 🙂
https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1527269072118992896?t=bMmjU0LKozNNMQ1q4w4-IA&s=19
18:07
According to the Russians themselves, there are a few hundred left in Azovstal and one must assume that they do not intend to give up. When it comes to information, I usually think about who benefits. It does not benefit the Russians in the least that there are defenders in Azovstal, so that part of the information is probably true. Maybe more than what has been reported.
20:07
I think the fighting has been too tough for the Russians so that reverse Darwinism has applied, the tip has lost proportionally the most and the best units have been the tip of the spear. What remains is second-rate and rear units. VDV, Spetznaz, Marine infantry, Guards and reconnaissance are not something you build up in fifteen minutes. There is surely a screaming shortage of battalion commanders in armor and motorized, tank drivers, gunners, etc.
There are probably a couple of generals left but it is likely a full fight over who will be next to have the honor to lead from the front. Everyone has probably seen Gerasimov limping around completely gray in the face rubbing his backside.
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Ukraine has managed its units in a completely different way and I think Darwinism has applied a bit more there even if a war like this is very much luck. With the European volunteers, the combat capable have stayed and those who thought it was an adventure have left. The Ukrainians who quickly learned to dive for cover survived longer than those who took a smoke behind the trench, etc. but a lot of luck as I said. Over a couple of months even a second-rate brigade in the national guard becomes quite driven in infantry combat and can learn to protect a platoon of tanks. I think you can see on the unit maps how more and more NG brigades are at the front lines and that can only mean that they are starting to get a grip on them (yes I understand that someone will write that it is because Ukraine is stretched to the max and has to send them in).
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The point is that I think Ukraine’s capability is increasing while the Russians are plummeting but then even a Russian field cook can fire a weapon from his foxhole and happen to get a hit after a few magazines. It is more and more now on pro-Russian sites how our shining Russian warriors have defeated yet another Ukrainian offensive which is exciting rhetoric and quite a few videos of the Polish T72s which presumably all should have night fighting equipment? If artillery is such a WOW moment then you can guess how it will look when a mech battalion with full night fighting capability cuts through a tired Russian BTG in defense at 01:00 after having kept them awake for a couple of days.
20:18
Now the thread should watch the whole film because these are constructed defenses with an excavator and they have pretty much followed the manual except for the camouflage nets, quite deep but you could have had a few more reinforced defenses. A 777 hit though you need a pretty well-built defense to survive a hit in the middle. The soldiers interviewed, who of course want to shine a bit, claim that the artillery knocked out most of it so it was not difficult to take the positions (there was the shine). That was probably Kharkov and the first stop on the tour-de-777?
Russian BTGs in defense will have a hard time ahead, damn now I’m positive again that was all that was needed 🙂
20:19
So the defenses are quite deep, some of the tank defenses looked a bit shallow.
21:47
Ok, Russian rifle trenches are better than what we’ve seen then, yes the reinforced defense is usually reinforced with logs on both sides I think you can see that in the videos. Now I’m not an artilleryman but there is quite a big difference in effect on target between the Russians’ and Ukraine’s artillery and then the new Ukrainian artillery. We have seen quite a lot of guided Ukrainian ammunition in the beginning and then when we saw the first from 777 there were somewhat apocalyptic detonations, I’ve always thought that 777 has a blast that is such that you can hardly survive if you are around it but maybe I’m wrong. The Russians just create an enormous lunar landscape while the Ukrainians stand and smoke in the trench and faint at the drone. Now maybe 777 is some kind of collective term for the heavier calibers delivered, Ukraine had Uragan and some Archer-like piece in prototype as well as their +200mm so they were not completely without artillery, or they had a hell of a lot of artillery that has done quite well since day 1.
12:20
Now it seems like most have surrendered in Azovstal, the higher number comes from the Russians but if everyone has surrendered there is no Ukrainian channel left to communicate outwards, if it is silent it is probably true. It could be that 400-500 stayed behind and tried to sneak out at night with bare weapons and then we will hear about it in a few days. I may have missed something in the thread as I wrote without reading. Immediately you read quotes from state media on pro-Russian forums about how the heroes will be prosecuted in show trials on May 19-20. This is so endlessly damn sad because the Russians are a notch better than animals and now we will sit upset in the thread while the Russians torture and execute (murder fits better) the defenders of Azovstal and no one can do anything, the Red Cross and the UN who were supposed to oversee have made “visits” and those bunglers will only be able to state that the number of accidents on stairs has skyrocketed since the last visit, they have blood on their hands. The only bright spot is that it could have been the case with all of Ukraine but we escaped that.
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There are still some scattered Russian attacks, Severodonetsk is to be taken after all so that they control Luhansk Oblast (everything else was maskirovka…) and the offensive from the south is starting to pick up speed. I haven’t studied Severodonetsk in detail but I have the impression that there is a river to the west and north of the city, fields to the east and forest to the south so probably quite easy to defend and now it seems the Russians are pressing from the north so more drowning attempts will come. All this will of course fail in epic fiascos and veritable suicides as usual. I am surprised that the Russians are still trying to carry out offensive operations because these are really the last units with offensive capability that are being used here. You still have about 7 BTGs near Kherson that are in somewhat decent shape but otherwise it is becoming difficult to find a battalion that could do damage if they went on the attack. It’s probably getting short on tanks and I’ll bet five hundred that the infantry has some unwilling cooks and drivers mixed in with motorized/armored infantry now.
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Defense is defense and defense of one’s country is probably the height of defense and Ukraine has delivered absolute world-class here. They have had the help that the Russians are a notch better than a kindergarten class at waging war but they have been prepared to die for their country and stood against 5:1 (maybe 10:1) where the Russians concentrated their forces and they have won – there isn’t much to say about it, they have taken heavy losses but stood against what can best be likened to WWII battles on the Eastern Front (for some reason they are always the worst in all wars, common denominator…). I often think about the first group/platoon standing right in the way of a Russian attack. At some point either you die or try to run like crazy along a ditch to manage to slip away when you get overrun. There is nothing beautiful in a tactical retreat.
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Now the window is probably closed for a quick decision, Ukraine has had its reasons for not relieving Mariupol and not attempting anything big and I am of the opinion that it is because they need a somewhat intact army when the territory is retaken in order to win the war and that they are waiting for the artillery tubes. Unfortunately, we have now seen a couple of attempts where they have not used artillery in a devastating pre-battle bombardment and then Ukraine has taken quite heavy losses. Then we have seen examples where they have used artillery as they should and there it is quite quiet in the trenches when they are done, pure Iraq War (I mean the highway up from Kuwait). The first thing when the computer is up and running is to check FIRMS if it has lit up in Kherson yet…
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This is what gnaws at you, however Ukraine acts now they will take heavy losses and if Putin keeps a foothold in Ukraine it will be a forever war so Ukraine must defend its border. We know that the Russians basically don’t care about this so a revolution, coup or civil refusal will probably not happen in the near future (hope hope hope) and the BTGs that refuse war are sent away and new ones come in who don’t yet know what it feels like to die. The Russians’ game is to wear down Ukraine and they will continue as long as the bubbles coup/revolution or refusal to fight do not occur.
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You always feel just as bad about the rotting mutilated Ukrainian corpses in some field outside a village no one can name and go completely crazy from the Russians’ torture videos of Ukrainian prisoners but we can stand and condemn it as much as we want, the Russians don’t stop. Just yesterday a Russian sat on a Ukrainian prisoner of war, pulled a knife and put it to his throat then got up and everyone stood and laughed at the sobbing Ukrainian. You almost get the schoolyard feeling that it is unfair to gang up on someone weaker. And the world can complain as much as it wants because the Russians keep going until they are stopped.
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If one may guess, Ukraine is still waiting for artillery tubes and equipment for night fighting and is trying to hurry slowly, the 777 that have arrived we have seen the effect of near Kharkov, Izyum and towards Severodonetsk I think. I think we have seen a devastating effect of the artillery so far and several videos are of trenches so they have the capacity to start hitting infantry now and they are last on the target list. The war is won with infiltrated units on a large scale, artillery, air defense and brigades that hurry slowly preferably night fighting. But it will not be an American sunshine story, it will cost Ukraine to go on the offensive even if the Russians will lose infinitely more and every fallen Ukrainian soldier is after all someone’s father, brother or sibling.
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For my part it is starting to be time for the West to borrow a page from the playbook from Eastern Europe and start calling Putin and Russia what they really are. France and Germany really need to get their act together here and the EU should be swept for smart ammunition and the best artillery tubes, send down a bunch of Archers and Strf-90s, they can be manned by volunteers until Ukraine has learned to operate them? There is zero reason to tiptoe around Russia any longer and if one can politically persuade the Russians to leave Ukraine many Ukrainian lives will be saved.
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Now no one benefits from digging in on all this but if Ukraine has declared that they will retake their country by force we should cheer them on as loudly as we can until they have done so. We should also ridicule the Russians as often and well-written as we can and not attribute anything of value to them (now they have almost failed at exactly everything so even if you want to be nice it will be difficult…). For my part I would prefer not to read in the thread that one should not be too mean to the Russians because there are children there too after all. We can deal with all that later, right now a dead Russian is a good Russian and a little Russophobia has killed no one (with one exception, the Russian heroes fighting on Ukraine’s side, we like them strongly).