12:26
I was going to write that the Russians are not attacking but liveuamap was full of exciting circles today, both red and blue, so after this reply I have to go on Google Maps and find some place names 🙂
A tank and an armored infantry company are no more at least and that’s fun.
We have the daily report from the different areas on Ukrinform but it is never reflected in the daily lottery line, e.g. below from the Air Force from June 3 where they alone would have taken out 20, and then the different military districts (I guess that’s what they are called) https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3499415-air-force-destroys-more-than-20-enemy-armored-vehicles.html
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Now I know it gets extremely cinematic with these videos when they include artillery targets for a whole company and take them out in two (edited together…) minutes to the latest from the Ukrainian music scene but I always think it was done by an artillery battery and that there are five artillery battalions with 777, 4 artillery brigades at the southern front and Kherson and hundreds of artillery besides 777 that have been delivered so that should happen daily at the different fronts you would think.
Now we do not see that in the daily lottery line and then it probably does not happen but a buried Russian battalion against a Ukrainian artillery brigade with target data in real time from drones has a lifespan like a mayfly roughly.
If you start claiming that the lottery line is wrong and the losses are higher than shown there is a risk you get labeled as a slightly positive thread participant so I don’t do that and stick to the broad middle for the day 🙂
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What I do think is starting to become important to highlight is – how many participate in the attack on a place that flies by in the reporting. If you attack with a BTG and have a bad day then the BTG is lost, if there are 5-10 places to be attacked the losses will be high. Either that means platoon fighting in 10 places or they actually have not attacked all the places in the way we imagine when we read the reporting.
12:38
Somewhat quietly, the Russians have retaken a large part of the forest area in Izyum. It passed by that they sent down 22 BTGs there (status unknown and whether that was in addition to everything already there also unknown) and that they would start offensive operations down there.
It is the deepstate map that updated that a large part of the forest belt SW of Izyum is now contested.
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Logically, the Russians’ position is up to the Siversky Donets river and the only reason Ukraine held the area was the tour-de-777 and then the famous river crossing by presumably something from the heavy elephants but now it seems the Russians have retaken the forest area and that was unfortunate.
12:44
Looking at FIRMS and a best-of the whole week, it is now very lively in Kherson. It is not Izyum-death yet but the front lines are banging hard and the Russian rear is hammering.
It is also burning in new places compared to a few weeks ago when it burned east of the Dnipro except in the forest area as someone pointed out above.
If we had not heard anything else about Kherson until today, I would have interpreted FIRMS as pre-bombardment ahead of an offensive in Kherson and would have dramatically rung the bell for the Kherson offensive. Now it has already started so it won’t even be a symbolic gesture with the kids’ xylophone but just wanted to point that out.
14:35
Camouflage with branches only lasts a little while, in Sweden they used spruce twigs and as long as it was wet it worked fine. Camouflage nets are almost standard in most sensible countries and on some Russian vehicles they have draped the barrel in camouflage net and I’ve seen something else too. The West has fixed installations like “camouflage umbrellas” and frames to attach nets to make the vehicle harder to detect.
In these drone times that should get a huge boost but then drones start using IR cameras as standard and then you are back to zero until the camouflage nets become 100% IR suppressing, etc.
14:47
Yes, my thought has all along been that Ukraine must save its maneuver brigades because the day the country is liberated they must have an intact army to defend their land border against Russia, so they are not inclined to take heavy losses. If you wear out the army now it gives Putin the opening to mobilize for a round 3 that could go better.
A contradiction here is that when Russia digs in they become harder to kill and reinforcements trickle in over time so the longer you wait the greater losses you must take.
What they have in Kherson is a bit of a mystery, 7 BTG + the T62 battalion and the cooks + DNR rebels was the best guess a while ago but since there are +30 Ukrainian BTGs on the other side it is of course a bit strange that they don’t just roll over them and stand and jump for a while on what is left.
You can guess they have rushed in all the reserves they have and exactly where they stand today is of interest because then it is weaker somewhere else.
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Air and artillery have previously been highlighted as a denying factor and they got a breakthrough at Dayydiv Brid which they either did not exploit, which does not seem Ukrainian, or which the Russians managed to plug so they stand and watch each other from different communities. That is also strange because we have seen the video when the artillery opened up on Dayydiv Brid and took out the defense with real-time target data. You should just do the same with the next community etc.
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If you ask me, Kherson is lost for the Russians and they will either have to retreat over the bridges with enormous losses or be trapped west of the Dnipro but we have not seen that yet but then when you start to get a little worried they go and take back Severodonetsk…
16:11
“Disappeared” is such an apt word in this context, I laughed for quite a while 🙂
Yes, it probably had its battalions there along with a few others, by now it’s probably well known in the thread that I believe Izyum was a serious blow to the Russians when it happened there in early May.
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Something quite funny is that the 35th Army only consisted of a number of BTGs, each regiment that was part of the 35th Army’s mobilization to Ukraine probably provided one BTG each, and then there was the regimental, divisional, and army leadership, so when people say an army has been wiped out, it’s less than a brigade that’s gone, roughly. Quite staggering actually.
16:34
I think we have gotten another puzzle piece, Liveuamap has small flight icons at the breakthrough at Inhulets (and further west).
https://liveuamap.com/en/2022/4-june-ukrainian-aviation-conducted-airstrikes-near-ivanivka
On June 3, the Air Force confirmed that they destroyed 20 “armoured vehicles”
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3499415-air-force-destroys-more-than-20-enemy-armored-vehicles.html
And in the blogger’s video above, we have T62s like a little string rolling on a country road in Kherson.
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We’ve been saying this in the thread for a while now, that when the Russians try to bring up reserves to the river crossing at Daydivv Bridge, they have to move openly on the road and are exposed to air, drones, and artillery, and according to the Air Force, they’ve had a lot of fun with Russian armor as recently as Friday. Where else can the Ukrainian Air Force operate and take out 20 targets?
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Inside Kherson, the Russians are dug in but everything they try to do to plug the hole at Inhulets probably ends up with mostly grilled BTGs, and the whole area on the “inside” of Inhulets is just a matter of time before Ukraine has retaken it. It also seems like there are Russian units to the north that got their supplies from the Dayydiv Bridge road and that they are trapped if that’s the case. The other road along the Dnipro is probably also cut off by Ukraine.
17:15
Lots of rumors about knocked-out BTGs in Kherson which I interpret as “inside” Inhulets but it will have to be the same size salt scoop as for the +1000 dead up at Severodonetsk, we’ll have to wait and see.
18:17
Sorry for the long link.
This was the satellite site we were supposed to look at for Izyum, it is a satellite and I really don’t dare to mess with the settings and try anything other than Sentinel 2. It updates quite often and you can see near Kherson but not zoomed in enough. CNN had much better resolution on their images.
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The only thing I see is that it has been lively at Kostromka – Schaslye because there are many tracks over the fields. I can’t interpret the white spots and above all I don’t see any knocked-out armor on the fields. There are also tracks leading to Andriivka.
North of Tokarivka (down by Khakovka) you can see black dots on the road with large gaps.
How the hell Nathan Ruser manages to draw maps of this I don’t understand but maybe he has others with better resolution that he can’t or won’t show in his feed and so this had to do?
https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/?zoom=13&lat=47.12842&lng=33.14002&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=2022-06-03T00%3A00%3A00.000Z&toTime=2022-06-03T23%3A59%3A59.999Z&demSource3D=%22MAPZEN%22#custom-script
18:44
Positive text about the Kherson offensive in line with what the thread guesses.
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3500382-successes-in-south-or-what-does-counteroffensive-of-ukraines-armed-forces-in-kherson-region-mean.html
19:34
I know we were supposed to stick together and not criticize other countries in the EU but it’s a bit difficult when Macron doesn’t give up and keeps demanding that Ukraine should cede territory so that Russia doesn’t get humiliated. Ukraine got really pissed off this time. Now at least Germany has promised to mend its ways so Macron is probably alone with Hungary with a lot of inappropriate behavior from him. He could offer Brest to Putin if he leaves Ukraine, for example?
21:01
Yes, I understand that and how they think but I think it’s so terribly low not to stand up for a country that just wants to survive. I’m old enough to remember the Yugoslav wars and that it was the USA that saved the situation there and now they have been even faster. The EU’s best effort was probably Srebrenica which went so-so.
If I may continue on the theme, Kakabeveh has greatly surprised me, I’ve always had a good eye on her but the first doubt arose when she sold her vote for a few billion to the PKK (or whoever it was) and I suspected she got a big kickback and now she wants to sacrifice our NATO membership for the PKK. If you are a member of parliament in Sweden, you should reasonably have Sweden’s best interests in mind, I think, and she obviously does not.
Then actually SD and M have ended up in my black book because they want to start a government crisis that could end with us not joining NATO, wtf. Drifted off topic but the fact that the UK and USA again defend the free world means we have status quo since the Napoleonic wars or so.
01:00
The fact is that the rest of the free world could have let France bleed out in both WW1 and WW2 but they were saved both times so Macron should damn well have a sufficiently calibrated moral compass not to behave like this. Those damn clowns couldn’t even win at Dien Bien Phu and the Second World War was just one huge fiasco for them, the climax was probably when they sank their own fleet off Africa.
When you think about it, they are a bit like Russia and have a far too glorified self-image of themselves, without the rapes and genocide.
12:05
I’ve gotten hooked on Uawardata for Russian BTG https://www.uawardata.com/, militaryland for the Ukrainian brigades and deepstate, the Finns’ map and liveuamap for borders of areas + Nathan Ruser but his maps come sporadically.
After the big chaos day, it was time for some caution, so when the Wikipedia map changes the color of a city, it is taken.
Then Ukrinform and https://www.mil.gov.ua/en/news/ for official updates on battles.
The flood of Twitter information, of course, right now it says +1000 dead Russians in Severodonetsk and then it has to be the big salt scoop. That is the daily lottery line we have to relate to.
https://www.uawardata.com/
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There is one more, when pro-Russian blogs post something that is fact but in another context, e.g. there was a video of Spetsnaz inside Severodonetsk, so then we know they have been there. This also applies to the Twitter flood, you get small puzzle pieces of facts that fit in and cannot be misinterpreted.