10:56
Melitopol and Kherson are relatively spared total destruction like Mariupol, so there is probably quite a lot of subversive activity there. I also believe that if Russia had presented a sufficiently good case, they would have supported Russia. This was probably the first step in a bloc and a challenge to the West that so far has not gone as planned.
In the book Total War 2000something, Russia receives a huge sum of money to attack in this way so that the West is fully occupied with war at home when China goes all in. Then the good side wins anyway but Israel gets overrun.
10:57
That is, China and maybe India would have supported Russia.
10:59
I got the link below from a kind soul in the thread who had optimized the settings.
Otherwise, I mostly run on default, road network, 24hr and then set the time to 1 week so you can see quite clearly.
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:24hrs;l:noaa20-viirs=%5Btsd%5D,viirs=%5Bfrp-0..200],countries,landsat_human;@38.2,49.6,9z
10:59
Or this one
https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#m:advanced;d:2022-05-16;l:noaa20-viirs=%5Btsd%5D,viirs=%5Bfrp-0..200],modis_a=[tsd],modis_t=[tsd],Suomi_NPP_Orbit_Dsc,NOAA-20_Orbit_Dsc,Aqua_Orbit_Dsc,Terra_Orbit_Asc,Landsat8_Orbit_Dsc,Sentinel_2A_Orbit_Dsc,Sentinel_2B_Orbit_Dsc,countries;@37.7,49.1,8z
11:02
This one is pro-Russian, it’s the clown Lancaster bouncing around in a truck, jumping high from artillery fire and almost falling off the tailgate when he tries to get down on the ground. The purpose is not to spread his nonsense but he has followed an artillery battery in Kherson and I was quite surprised actually.
https://youtu.be/2qaHNioLWp8
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In the covered truck, the tarp is quite torn and the grenades are rolling around on the floor. There are two barrels and they are very nervous about Ukrainian counter-artillery and the close protection is standing with a MANPADS and looks quite alert – Ukrainian air force. They probably fire less than 10 grenades each and then pack up and move to the next place.
No one believes they would work like this if they didn’t have to, right? In Kherson, Russian artillery is apparently a hunted animal. Then there are two barrels and a battery is at least 3?
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I know little about artillery but a bit about surveying and total stations and guess they must know where they are to know where to shoot? Newer systems probably have GPS I guess but how do you know where you are on older systems, do you go by the map like a distinctive point in the terrain that is on the map to set up the system or is there a smarter way than that? On a construction project, you have to find a fixed point that is confirmed first then you know everything else will be correct and here it’s a matter of minutes. GPS also has an error margin. Any error at the starting point causes huge errors in the target area over longer distances.
11:20
Forgot, what I meant by eyes and IR eyes yesterday are the satellites and the US’s eyes from above with various systems.
They have refined this in the Middle East for quite a few years where they followed terrorist leaders until they had a meeting and then took them out. We have probably seen the videos..
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We have seen how many command posts have been taken out for the Russians, can’t keep count, and it’s always when there is a staff meeting so it’s jackpot in grilled officers. It doesn’t really matter that Ukraine has fewer artillery, they have a 100-fold superiority in collecting target data which they fully exploit.
The general in Popasna was not standing on the trench waving his arms until a sniper saw him because now they should be very careful after all the dead senior officers so the US technological advantage could follow him until he was within artillery range and was going to motivate the battalion commanders at Popasna.
Same with the gathering in Lyman probably when the DNR bigwig was taken out.
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If you guess, the order of attack has been – command posts, logistics, artillery, maybe air defense, tanks, infantry.
The air bases would be nice to take out but they are too far away.
For quite a while now, there has been a lot of Russian artillery taken out, a good morning means an artillery battalion gone.
11:22
Logistics then means ammunition depots and small gatherings of ammo trucks.
11:26
Exactly, and then S Dayydiv Bridge. Then you have to check the maps to see who holds which city and if it’s the blue team that’s burning and holding, you switch to something else and if it’s the red team burning, you spam the thread with cheers and thumbs up.
You see the whole picture, now I interpret it as being significantly livelier in Kherson than we are fooled to believe due to fog of war. Then you can see it’s quite calm at the southern front.
12:25
Yes, that has to be the next big delivery, fully trained pilots and F16s. Now they have probably got all the Mig29s and SU25-27s as well as the helicopters that existed so next up are Apaches and F16s.
It’s probably also running out of Eastern Bloc armor, the UK has scoured the world for decent T72s, so you have to give them Abrams and Leopard 2s in large quantities.
Then I really think they should get to drive better vehicles than M113, give them Strf90, it’s incomprehensible that Sweden hasn’t managed to export more of this insanely competent vehicle, it should become NATO standard instead of Bradley, M1133 and whatever they are called.
12:37
According to Liveuamap, there is an air bridge to Rostov-on-Don. Could it be the Syria-Russians who have been flown there?
It was probably a sad 16,000 or something and a fairly capable force so where it is deployed it can get quite intense for a few weeks.
13:12
I don’t dare jump on this one yet but if they are in Chornobaivka then they have a foothold in Kherson proper. Now the risk is imminent that it’s another small hole further away that doesn’t show up on Google Maps when you search…
They are probably inside Snigurivka now.
A week ago it was posted that the Russians had retreated from Chornobaivka but it disappeared in the noise and Deepstatemaps’ infamous offensive along M14 that disappeared in one day just when everyone started to get happy.
So what has really happened, have the Russians thinned out the line at Kherson to plug the hole at Dayydiv Bridge and Ukraine hits there instead, or at both places?
They seem to have moved the Spetsnaz battalion to Severodonetsk and Lyman at least.
If you are in Chornobaivka you probably have the bridges at Kherson under indirect fire if you want.
16:19
There are more pathologically positive out there, ISW for example;
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The fight for Severodonetsk is a Russian information operation in the form of a battle. One of its main purposes for Moscow is to create the impression that Russia has regained its strength and will now overwhelm Ukraine. That impression is false. The Russian military in Ukraine is increasingly a spent force that cannot achieve a decisive victory if Ukrainians hold on.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin is therefore trying to turn his invasion of Ukraine into a brutal contest of wills. He’s betting his army on breaking Ukrainians’ collective will to fight on in their country. His own won’t likely break. Fortunately, Ukraine doesn’t need it to. If Ukrainians can weather the current Russian storm and then counterattack the exhausted Russian forces they still have every chance to free their people and all their land.
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Putin amassed the wreckage of Russian combat forces into a lethal amalgam around the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk Oblast. That amalgam is crawling forward using massive artillery barrages to obliterate everything in its path allowing Russia’s demoralized and frightened soldiers to walk into the rubble.
16:53
According to highly unconfirmed Twitter reports, the Russians failed to retake the river crossings and had to retreat with losses. If Ukraine advances where it is easy and then goes on the defense and the Russians fail in their counterattacks, is that then a Ukrainian loss?
https://mobile.twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1534508338947448833
Don’t we actually have very high expectations of Ukraine, if they don’t advance 200 km in one day then it’s a loss and capitulation. Shouldn’t we really compare them to the Russians who haven’t advanced anywhere since the first week of the war?
We’ll see.
16:58
Probably depends on what sources you read, Zelensky said this the other day.
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3501702-zelensky-we-are-gradually-driving-invaders-out-of-ukraine.html
However, I have noticed a huge uptick in pro-Russian discussions in the past week and that makes me suspect that the Russians are approaching collapse and are trying to talk it away.
17:39
Now Western media is starting to report that Severodonetsk has fallen, they seem to be quoting Russian sources.
Do we have any indication that Ukraine has left Azot and the industrial area?
There is forest between the industrial area and the river and Ukraine has high ground behind so they can always retreat. Feels like terrain too good for them to give up.
The only reason would be if the encirclement of Popasna – Seversk was seriously underway and then you move to the next defensive line.
18:17
This thing about fighter jets seems to have been floated as a trial balloon now, there was a discussion earlier in the thread,
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3502614-us-senator-says-washington-should-supply-fighter-jets-air-defenses-to-ukraine.html
19:54
Yes, it feels like everyone has now quoted Russian sources who shamelessly say the city is taken?
Source criticism is zero after three months of lies.
The only thing that will get Ukraine out of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk is if there is a tactical retreat due to threat of encirclement and we haven’t seen that yet, have we?
23:19
Looking at firms, it has completely died out in Donbass, that is south of Horlivka, but the southern front and Kherson have lit up considerably.
Now we have fires right at the entrance to Crimea and along the southern front where one can guess an attack will come between Vasylivka – Polohy it’s quite lively and in Kherson it’s mostly red everywhere now.
Still wet in Ukraine if I understand correctly so no spontaneous grass fires directly.
Then unfortunately not everything that’s burning is grilled BTG.
23:50
From Gammelsvenskby (someone else in the thread posted the link of course, full glory to them).
Arrived today and Dayydiv Brid is 50 km away.
“It is calm in the village under the circumstances. The villagers have electricity, water, and food. Fighting is constantly heard, but does not occur directly in the village.
Fighting is ongoing north of the village, which means the village is currently isolated.”
10:18
It seems that Kherson is being reinforced because Ukraine is keeping up the pressure. Right now we have a few too many versions for anyone to dare to commit, but something is definitely happening, a Russian offensive in Kherson and Zaporozhye or that the Russians are starting to get squeezed in Kherson. According to earlier reports, Russian BTGs are on the move, which is very good because then they will soon be grilled BTGs.
In Kherson, Ukraine’s air force is active and the Russians do not really have artillery superiority.
”As in Kherson, new units are being deployed there to restrain our actions,” Zelensky said”.
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3502101-invaders-deploying-more-units-in-donetsk-kherson-regions-zelensky.html
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Some place names also fly by but no one dares to go all in on anything that looks exciting after a big chaotic day, but it’s probably anything but calm in Kherson. Firms suggest that it’s quite lively there as well.
Today’s lottery line was good too, they have shot down almost an artillery battalion.