10:29
There seems to be recent fighting near Polohy at the southern front, the city is red team.
At Kherson things are in full swing, south and west of Daydiiv Brid there is quite heavy fighting in the communities around the crossing which can perhaps be considered positive, the fires are a few days old so the situation may have worsened as the blog writes. North from M-14 it is unfortunately probably not a burnt BTG as it seems to be within blue team’s area.
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We have been discussing for a while that for the Russians to be able to push back the crossing over Dayydiv Brid, they must get onto the highway and band up to the combat area, they need to pass one of two crossings, and that Ukraine probably has that in their plan. On June 3, the air force announced they had taken out 20 hard targets (likely in Kherson) and today we have this from Liveuamap.
“Ukrainian helicopters conducted airstrikes at gatherings of Russian forces in Kherson region and warplanes at ammunition arsenals in Mykolaiv region, – General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine says in the morning report”.
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I have reconsidered and wonder if a strategy Ukraine is currently applying is to hold terrain the Russians want and let them bleed out? The counterattack at Severedonetsk was exactly that and the strategy they have applied at Dayydiv Brid as well, they knocked out the defense and parked themselves in some villages and let artillery, drones and aircraft strike Russian reserves during their advance. Sure, it would have been damn cool if they were down in Khakovka now but bleeding out the Russians this way is quite smart and something no one really expected they would do.
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In fact, Izyum was the same thing because now the Russians have retaken the forest area southwest of Izyum (according to deepstate) and some village further south. Kharkov is probably not that but an attempt to get rid of Russian artillery that reaches Kharkov and disrupt supply routes from Belgorod. Phase two has therefore not been a local counteroffensive to retake lost communities but an offensive at a front section where you take something the Russians really want and then slowly release the area if needed and strike Russian reinforcements when they are vulnerable on the way with everything you have at hand.
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This is still interpreted as a sign of weakness but is actually incredibly smart, Severedonetsk was absolutely no one saw coming and at Kherson everyone is biting their nails wondering why nothing is happening but it is happening 24/7. Weakening the defense until you can really roll forward without taking too many losses must reasonably be the intention. Otherwise, they could just have sent 700,000 men forward and the last one to the border for dish duty. This also aligns with what we have assumed earlier in the thread that you must have an intact army when the last Russian tank is towed home across the border to defend your border. Ukraine can and must not exhaust its maneuver brigades.
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That said, the critical mass has been in Ukraine’s favor for quite some time now so there will be more offensive attempts soon, Zaporoznye and north of Izyum for example, and if they gain ground they probably won’t stop.
The bubble at Popasna is probably also quite vulnerable but one should probably wait out upcoming river crossings and strike them first since the bubble at Popasna gives the Russians a reason to cross the Seversky Donets again.
10:40
Just EMP, you could sweep it over a country and then all electronics would stop working and then it would be over according to the latest from Hollywood (and LW, there is a whole bunch of books for film now that I would love to see).
If you ask me, anything beyond what we see today is a red line that will not be crossed because there will be a response from the West and Putin/Russia knows that then it’s over. Nuclear weapons have not been used since Hiroshima and Nagasaki and there are many rogue states that would take that card out of the playbook if it were allowed and that would be completely untenable. Even Rocket Man would eventually launch something that wouldn’t explode on his side of the border all the time.
11:06
I am quite curious about the Russian counteroffensive that is bubbling up in pro-Russian forums. We know that BTGs near Kherson have been relatively intact by Russian standards, meaning they were not completely empty shells. At Zaporoznye they had 6-7 BTGs on the front lines that have been in combat and were in varying condition.
Behind the southern front they perhaps have 20 BTGs that were empty shells, are these the ones they topped up with the T72 and T80 tanks we have seen on trains near Melitopol and Rostov na Don and then sent in with new infantry forward, under-manned, poor leadership and completely inexperienced in combat?
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The focus has clearly been Izyum, and the northeast line along Seversky Donets, Severedonetsk and Popasna as well as the need to have reinforcements up near Belgorod now so there can’t be much else for the southern front I think unless they push in DNR and LNR bicycle infantry type but they are getting quite worn out after having gone first for three months.
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Could it be that the Russians are making an offensive attempt at Kherson and Zaporoznye with this reserve?
It is tactical madness and will cost them their only reserves they would have needed to hold the defense and is actually very good. Maybe it also explains why Ukraine is holding back a bit so far.
I am very surprised by the Russians’ unyielding will to die here, I was quite sure they would give up offensive attempts around May 9 and go on defense and then Ukraine would start but now it is a month later and the Russians are still creating chaos. They are supposed to swim across the Seversky Donets again, at Izyum they are pressing, Severedonetsk and now possibly at Zaporoznye and Kherson. The feeling here is that they have bet the whole stack on red but haven’t realized the game board is rigged, Zelensky is sitting and grinning in his vest and bow tie with his left foot on the pedal.
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This also says oceans about Russian leadership because this is the very definition of going to zero while Ukraine has built a formidable defense. What do they really hope to achieve here?
Luhansk Oblast I could somehow understand, it was an out for Putin to try to freeze the conflict.
But attacking at Izyum, Kherson, Zaporoznye is completely illogical unless it is Hitler’s map gaming and the whip is cracking very hard throughout the command chain which one must assume it is.
11:27
But does it?
If the Russians have now mobilized T62s and are going to send this year’s conscript class to Ukraine, then later also means that they are not attacking Spetsnaz and T80 in defense but conscripts and T62 in defense. It also means that they have new toys to lob guided ammunition with.
Now, I had actually thought that Ukraine could exploit the vacuum between the Russian offensive and until they managed to go on the defense in a sensible way, but that hasn’t happened, perhaps mostly because the Russians went on the defense at Kherson and the southern front too early.
13:13
If we consider that Ukraine, according to its own sources, has 700,000 men in defense (yes, not all are combatants), then one way to fight according to their conditions would be to jump on the Russians and kick them out screaming at high own losses. Another quite Eastern way to fight is to die in your trench. Now Ukraine is not doing that; they conduct fire and movement every day everywhere and save lives. At Severodonetsk, they rotated out territorial troops and probably hid capable units in the industrial area if one may guess. Territorial troops actually have zero value, and the Russians’ equivalents, DNR and LNR, sacrifice theirs as soon as possible.
We know that at Kherson there is the 5th Tank Brigade, but it seems they have chosen to cross at Dayydiv Bridge with about a mechanized battalion from one of the mech brigades (it seems so).
Just as we assume that the Russian BTGs defending the Kherson front are in reasonably intact condition, we must also assume that the Ukrainian brigades along the front are in okay shape or have the Russians succeeded better there?
Militaryland usually reviews where the brigades are a couple of times a month, and many have changed places, so he tries (whose side is he on…) to place them in the correct geographic area.
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To that, you have a geographically limited area and three river crossings over the Dnieper, and if you can block these BTGs from retreating, it seems quite attractive to do so. We know there are artillery brigades in the area with new barrels and that the air force and army aviation are active, and that new equipment has been delivered to at least the 5th Tank Brigade, which has received a full refit. Their surplus armor and IFVs should probably have been distributed to the other brigades in the area reasonably?
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Now, there are two schools of thought in the thread, and I seem to be constantly on the defensive 🙂 but I want to take the opportunity to remind that some of the less positive were quite convinced that Severodonetsk was minutes from falling a week ago. It is also the constant – it is approaching a draw (your deadlock/stalemate) – and I find it very hard to see when the Russians have deployed T62s in combat now and Ukraine is going to get Leopard 2s. Sure, I always jump ahead of events when counteroffensives start, but I also write that. Just because the Russians are going to zero in their attacks does not mean they are winning, and just because Ukraine has not retaken its land already does not mean we have a deadlock. The Croats bided their time for 4 years before Operation Storm swept the playing field clean, and we probably don’t need to wait that long this time since the US, instead of a few years later, has been eight years ahead.
13:56
If they have chosen Morgan Johansson over NATO, or if the result of the Social Democrats’ actions is that Sweden does not get to join NATO, then it will probably get quite lively. First, Turkey would then have to flat-out refuse, and I don’t think they will do that, but if someone has chosen a very short and terrible minister’s salary for the next three months over what is good for Sweden, it is a minor atomic bomb. The USA, UK, etc., will not look kindly on that because this is geopolitics and not buddy-backslapping.
Then the opposition should not have done this now; when they understood the possible consequences, they should have backed down and said they did what was best for Sweden. Kakabeveh should not have done this either; she is a Swedish member of parliament and must reasonably do what is best for Sweden (not Morgan then but NATO)?
14:03
11:03 The Russians are completely hopeless; that works because they break down and operate in the forest edge.
You can get at shooters by burning straight through the forest where they have not cleared firing lanes, preferably felling some trees to create panic and shorten shooting distances while opening up with everything you have on the target.
Now, that was probably a reconnaissance vehicle, one might guess, but the patrol could have been anywhere in that forest with an open firing lane, so there was a bit of suicide habit in that, right?
15:26
If you think like this, all tracked vehicles are quite worn after three months, so you have many vehicles behind the Russians’ front line that cannot be pushed forward, workshops, or just standing still. In the group of non-combatant soldiers, you must count in refusal-to-fight, traumatized, and that the spearhead takes the highest losses, reverse Darwinism for the Russians.
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My guess is that if we think about capability reduction compared to what they started with, Ukraine’s numbers are probably almost on the low side. The consensus is that the Russians would have 3,500 tanks in okay condition, but damn it, we have T62s at the front now.
15:59
This video came from some talent in the thread, so I’m not trying to steal anyone’s glory here but want to bump it again for those who haven’t seen it. Absolutely bone dry with the classic telescopic pointer and pedagogy of the higher school, here it is about explaining to stone-deaf politicians what is going on with big arrows and short sentences. Now it was last week but very good and there is more. A legend in the making with his all-allo broken English 🙂
https://youtu.be/RpC1kXhW2Lw
17:43
How big is Ukraine’s state behind/free war and especially in Kherson and Melitopol and behind the southern front.
We don’t know, but there has been an incredible amount of explosions on the eastern side of the Dnieper outside artillery range for about a month now, then Melitopol’s airport, the bomb today, the 100 missing Russians, the blown-up train, etc., endlessly.
That it is the free war on steroids has been guessed, but can they come up with something really fun, like retaking Melitopol on a given signal and awaiting a Ukrainian offensive or blocking roads that make reinforcements to the front impossible?
This feels like a nice ace up their sleeve because they are already infiltrated and impossible to defend against.
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I am thinking here mainly that the Russians have abandoned Melitopol, which really is a small spider in the road network, and if Ukraine can lock it down, they have come very far. You don’t need to get there with an armored wedge; two thousand infiltrated, whatever it is, fortified the city, and you have come quite far along the way.
17:48
Yes, that was in the works for a while, pro-Russian forums were completely hysterical on May 1st and Poland started a large military exercise but nothing happened. I thought it was Ukraine that didn’t want to, but then it came out that it was NATO’s leash.
You have to give the Poles credit for showing great restraint here.
If Lukas gets a feeling late in the game, they probably already have a free pass signed by Biden, but that probably won’t happen because Lukas doesn’t seem that suicidal.
21:14
We have to find the rays of sunshine in what you write that break through the wet blanket. It can’t become a WW1 trench war because today’s ammunition hits right on target every time – buried armor is a turret cast in waiting and infantry in trenches we’ve seen how they rush into the reinforced fortification and then someone puts one right in it and takes them all out in one blow.
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You’re probably completely right that Russia will not collapse, the army will not revolt, or Putin will be removed, so it’s up to Ukraine to reclaim their country. Like Shalalai, I believe the biggest danger is weak EU leaders who see Chamberlain as a rockstar. For my part, I’ve given up those hopes, just seeing May 9th was enough to understand that.
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Then it’s probably the case that as long as not all maneuver brigades are on the front lines, they have reserves, they’ve thrown territorial troops into the bow/pocket north of Horlivka to be able to build up an offensive reserve of maneuver brigades, and just today we learned that the US has trained 23,000 Ukrainian soldiers for three months + EU training on top of that. The joker is what the Russians can bring up in reserves, but the T62 is not a sign of strength and neither are this year’s conscripts.
22:46
Now that intelslava has slowed down to half speed due to some Interpol arrests, I browsed a bit in the flashb thread and imagine my surprise when a couple of users started talking about mines. It was a discussion about mines at the entrances to Odessa which in the translation program became mines. No one who knows even basic Swedish or English makes such a mistake. Proof as good as any that active psyops are out there doing Putin’s bidding. If they bother with a flashb thread, they’ve probably already covered other more important sites one can guess.
23:07
Aren’t we forgetting one thing in the thread – that Ukraine has access to US signals intelligence or whatever it’s called and all the eyes they have IR and high-resolution. They are still knocking out headquarters.
That means they can fight despite artillery inferiority because they have superior targeting data.
09:38
The world should step in and forcibly open up wheat exports if necessary, a few Arleigh Burke destroyers here and there would be enough and then it would be protected.
It suits Putin perfectly if there is famine in the third world with new refugee flows towards the EU, refugees are also a weapon from his side as we have already seen.
A PR campaign with malnourished children has worked every time so how could it reasonably fail now if (the USA…) goes big with the message that they will save the world from famine?