11:45
The Russians have surprised at least me with their willingness to die in eastern Ukraine. It seems like they really want to take Luhansk oblast to the provincial border. That whole arc/pocket is meant for mobile warfare and to give up potato fields for grilled BTGs.
Now it has become some kind of truth that if Putin gets Luhansk Oblast he has won because then Ukraine must agree to a frozen conflict because the West says so, kind of. I have aired those thoughts myself.
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Is it really so? Doesn’t Ukraine say they will retake all their territory and don’t the USA and UK say that too? If the Russians get Luhansk Oblast at these enormous losses and then try to dig in and freeze the conflict, that fits quite well in time with Ukraine announcing that they will go on the offensive. If materiel is stopped today Ukraine has still built up for 1-2 months of offensive and now they have just passed large shipments that are surely ongoing daily, the Globemaster courier runs shuttle traffic.
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The only thing the Russians have here is a vulnerable northern front and southern front and then a crappy situation in the middle since they have really only been interested in a provincial border, not a natural defense line. In exchange for that they have used up their last BTGs with combat value and are trying to dig in with units that should have been pulled back for a longer recovery.
11:57
If I were first with this and the Russians got their information from me it would be really fun but now it is not so, your comment usually comes up from time to time and the answer is usually just that. The Russians have access to the same open sources that I get my information from + their own channels that we do not have access to. Now the Russians themselves have announced that they are waiting for a Ukrainian offensive so I am not exactly breaking any open doors here or crashing the party for Ukraine 🙂
What we probably never write about though is Swedish troop movements and capabilities and as far as I know I have never done that?
12:14
Video three is very unpleasant to watch, unfortunately the rebels get going with a pretty good trench clearing, seems to be a whole group and on two occasions some Ukrainian runs forward to see where they are and gets shot. It’s fire and movement that applies, lob a grenade over every bend, move forward and clear the stretch to the next bend and work forward until it’s over. Now they seem to stop after a while and we probably didn’t see the end but as said horrible video to watch.
14:21
Now you are overestimating both my ability quite a bit and then it is probably not so that when information arising from Ukrainian sources has reached here this is the first place for Russians to look for information on how to conduct war.
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The value is that the rest of us understand what is happening now when defeat doctrines have to coexist with demands that Ukraine should give up its territory for some kind of world peace. It is good to know that Ukraine will beat the Russians within a few months when it has started to take root that the situation is unsustainable.
17:24
There is a reason why the Baltic states and Slovakia are sending their entire arsenal of weapons to Ukraine because they understand that they are next in line and that a crushed Russia is good for them.
Sweden and Finland are joining NATO on similar grounds.
Yes, quite a few are satisfied with this, I also think that, for example, Poland could have taken over the northern front and there would have been a no-fly zone, but now Ukraine has 4-5 maneuver brigades in reserve and Russian air forces have stopped venturing deep into Ukraine, so Ukraine has achieved these goals on its own. I also wonder if there is any national pride here, like we can handle this ourselves, I don’t know.
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The USA, UK, and Ukraine have excellent control over what is happening on the ground, and if all of Ukraine’s brigades had been engaged in combat and started to falter, then they would have had to go over to plan B, whatever that is. Now Ukraine can actually handle this on its own. The world is not fair, and this middle ground is probably the most marketable to each respective country. Think about it this way: three months ago, Russia would have used nuclear weapons if anything bigger than air pistols had come from the Globemasters. Today, tanks, 777s, fighter jets, HIMARS, anti-ship missiles, and everything available in air defense plus Patriots are being delivered 🙂
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You are soon in a position where some countries in the EU will start to ask themselves if they have created something worse than Russia here when Ukraine, politely but firmly, demands its membership in the EU and reminds that they have a million men under arms just a few hours’ drive from Europe’s capitals.
17:30
I’ve been pondering this for a good while now, those who have the energy can check, but 300-450 dead and 40-50 armored used to be the daily toll at the start of the spring offensive?
Now we are down to 100 and something like 25-30 armored per day.
This must almost reflect the intensity of the fighting, or do people think it rather shows that the Russians have started to behave more tactically?
Even a Russian can learn to duck down in a ditch, but they have chosen such a damn poor area to try to conquer now that I refuse to believe the losses are low because the Russians have learned to crawl along ditches. Then you usually read the reports from the different front sections and add them up, and then it is always much more than today’s lottery numbers.
According to rumors, there were real WW1-style assaults over the potato fields the other day, and I imagine 500-1000 men, or do they send a platoon forward or something?
17:34
This one is damn good, when the Russians started wreaking havoc in 2013-2014, the Ukrainian army was in as bad shape as the Russians are today, or even worse.
https://mil.in.ua/en/articles/ukraine-s-armed-forces-on-the-eve-of-the-conflict/
Same there, most brigades managed to scrape together a battalion, there was some brigade that didn’t even manage that, just some company fighting…
Then it went so-so the first years, the entire Ukrainian army had a few hundred tanks, the rest had been exported. The artillery was catastrophic.
In 8 years they have transformed into a Western army because they wanted to, at all levels they have absorbed the training, and Crimea might have been their Pearl Harbor.
19:07
As soon as Putin wants to freeze the conflict, he will definitely call Ukraine the aggressor and claim that they are killing Russian children, Shoigu will stand and cry on state TV. They will activate everyone they can in Europe, and Swedish peace activists and JanG will claim that Ukraine is dragging the EU into war and is completely unreasonable. It will be somewhat surreal and has worked well before, but this time Western PR is warmed up and shadowboxing, so it won’t work.
19:16
Don’t know if this has been posted, but there is a little Irish guy with ITV news who visited a Ukrainian artillery battery. Now there are a hundred of these by the dozen, but I liked his style.
https://youtu.be/2v1vrxbk9EE
19:22
That encirclement the Russians are doing north of Popasna which is supposed to become this war’s big cauldron. The 4th Tank Brigade is probably a fire brigade force and is on the western flank of that encirclement. I find it incredibly hard to see how the Russians can succeed. They are attacking with Wagner, VDV, and marine infantry who are light on tanks, and the BTGs behind probably lack them as well. They have to cross open fields, and there is a tank brigade on the flank with quite a lot of firepower.
20:22
I agree, the videos of Ukrainians dying and the gore videos that the pro-Russians triumphantly post on rotting Ukrainian corpses hit incredibly hard, and the stories about how they treat children drive you completely crazy. I understand, however, that it is a bandage that must be ripped off, and the world is not fair, but I do agree with you that more should have been done earlier, especially earlier because Ukrainians die every day so that the free world can be saved.
22:05
Apparently formed a tank battalion with them. The only sensible thing is probably in defense and spread out along the front; if they try to attack with them, that would actually be quite amusing, but I don’t think we will see that.
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1 is basically the same as 2, they don’t have enough tanks. Of all the signs of weakness we have seen, this is the biggest because when it comes to tanks, that is almost synonymous with the very soul of the Russian army. If you don’t have them, you damn well don’t have anything else either 🙂
22:13
Can you imagine the spontaneous vodka party that must have erupted in the Ukrainian command when some major comes running with his mobile phone held high shouting T62 in Melitopoooool… the ultimate proof that the Russians have really messed up here.
11:22
I’m joining in on yesterday’s post about the situation with the Russians behind the southern front. There were 5-6 BTGs there that had partly been in defense and partly pressed towards Huliapole, Vuhledar, and the provincial border of Donetsk Oblast (fun task…) so one can guess that over time most BTGs have seen combat since there are several points of attack, their condition is unclear but they probably function well in defense. This is the front line.
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In the second line (and 3,4,5 I thought) 18-19 BTGs had been pressed in and I interpreted that the window for a quick decision was now closed, the Russians went on the defense along the southern front and have established their version of deep defense. We have also discussed the possibility that they rotated in knocked-out BTGs to the southern front and then something about the window not being closed.
I took a look at the 58th combined arms army, 19th Motorized rifle, 810th Naval infantry, 42nd & 71st guards motor and they have all suffered epic losses on other front sections, just google it. My interpretation of this is that along the southern front there is a front line that has been in combat since the start of the spring offensive which is now in defense. The second line consists of 18-19 shattered BTGs where one can assume the spearhead is almost wiped out.
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We now have proof that the Russians have brought T62s to the southern front to reinforce the defense with something like Centurion tanks. This is huge because it means the shelves are EMPTY. The undersigned thought there were 1000 tanks left in the depots but they would never have deployed T62s if there were easily accessible T72s, it’s that simple. Why waste transport capacity on T62s otherwise. The condition of the Russian army is therefore even worse than the most conservative guesses that have almost been laughed at. The Russians were supposed to have 8,000 tanks in the reserves, fueled and ready to deploy in the next wave, just a matter of moving them forward. Consider here that all rubber and moving parts are ancient, steel becomes brittle over time, etc., so the vehicles you get running have a fairly limited lifespan when they are that old.
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If these BTGs have lost their tank companies, they have also lost their IFV companies but those are not replaced first. So there are maybe +10,000 men in the trenches low on armor high on combat trauma.
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Along the southern front near Zaporoznye now stands a Ukrainian artillery brigade and a rocket artillery brigade, and we know that their cousin west of the Dnepr, the 55th Artillery Brigade, has received new barrels. One can guess that these also have some fine equipment. Now Ukraine’s indirect fire is not particularly intense, absolutely not as if they had grouped and opened up so one can guess they are stockpiling ammunition.
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Right at the front stands the 59th motorized which has been in combat and the 128th mountain which has been behind and behind them an NG brigade that is supposed to be capable. In the pool that Ukraine has managed to build up there are at least 4 brigades directly available that probably have night fighting capability. Then you can rotate around a bit and would then have 4 maneuver brigades more that have not been in the front lines. If you choose to weaken Kherson you have 5 brigades in that front line to pick from.
Adding up the night capability, the artillery, that it is free war on steroids behind the front line and the number of available brigades there is no chance the Russians can hold out between say Kamyanske – Huliapole when they have 2-3 BTGs along this stretch in the front line and Ukraine can without sweating set up 3:1 or 4:1 and artillery.
The fact is there is enough to press towards Kherson at the same time.
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I am now starting to wonder if the Russians have emptied Kherson of some units as well, apparently Spetsnaz were up at Lyman and they are marked in Kherson and then they have reconnaissance, VDV and marines there who all should be wanted for dying in Popasna and Severodonetsk. They have probably rotated in at least 2 BTGs that have been smashed elsewhere. We’ll see.