10:59
This thing about not having supply chains has to be solved later, that’s the latest negative thing right now.
The point is to send everything that exists now with all the ammunition they need and then solve the practical issues on the way.
11:10
For some reason established media have started giving us the Russians’ version of the war again. Severodonetsk was lost yesterday and a key city, Ukraine’s army is dissolving, etc.
—
This has coincided with a huge increase in aggressiveness on pro-Russian forums. I wrote the other day how a discussion on FB about naval mines outside Odessa turned into the word GRAVAR among some users – quite clear that it’s a person using Google Translate and lacking basic knowledge of Swedish.
Maybe they have activated all their channels now?
—
The above and what you write make me believe that the Russians are done for and that they are trying to talk away the loss like a middle school student when he fails a test. We have hard evidence that they are reinforcing the southern front and Kherson with T62s.
There aren’t 1000 tanks left of the better models and the reason for that is that there are a crazy amount of armor behind the Russian front lines with mechanical failures. They had 3500 total according to most analysts and should according to this calculation be able to fully equip all their BTGs one more time but apparently they can’t…
11:34
We have had trouble understanding how the Russians can continue to attack and “go to zero” and have hoped for a collapse in Russia.
May 9 was a real reality check for me and above you have probably described very well how the thinking goes on the ground with the evil side. Very well written at least in my opinion.
—
They have probably reinforced defense along the southern front and at Kherson and they rushed up their panic reserves a day or two before the blog knew what had happened at Dayydiv Bridge. But clearly as you write they are betting everything on red in Donbass (what remains to be taken of Luhansk Oblast in step one one can guess).
—
Point C is interesting and we can hope it’s true that they believe that because they probably have most of their units between Belgorod and down to Popasna. In Donbass proper it’s probably “quite calm” now and on the southern front they are going on defense but (and now I’m running away as usual) if they can lock the bridges over the Dnieper it would open up to push down towards Melitopol from the south Zaporozhye since there would be nothing to plug the holes with. I refuse to believe that the buried T62s can withstand any kind of top-attack ammunition, even a switchblade should be able to do damage there I think or those wing grenades dropped with small commercial drones at night. Ukraine knows where all the targets are now that they are buried.
Yes that was the pathologically positive side’s take on the post which was well written.
12:48
Two things that are constantly shown are videos of destroyed Russian armor and that Russia is losing, it gives a bit of WW2 vibes, and the other is the hope that 4-6 units of some weapon type will make a difference.
We in the thread have been shouting for more weapons all the time and are annoyed that SE doesn’t send down Archer and strf90 and Ukraine themselves demand more weapons almost every day.
The first batch was probably all surplus material but sure you’re right, for it to be possible to get a decisive outcome the West needs to send heavy equipment in very large quantities as the US is doing.
I think F16 is not far off and now the door is open for HIMARS, Patriot and Abrams if the US wants but sure this is so far too little too late.
If Ukraine is to die for the free world they can at least do it with the latest.
12:51
Yep Scholtz ran a double bluff with his deer-in-headlights courting of Ukraine and promises of weapons, they would never be delivered. Now German media is starting to wake up to this which is good but it’s damn boring that Europe’s largest economy can’t help a country in desperate need without playing under the table with the Hitler of our time.
The Leopards are good tanks and Germany is protected by other countries and can thus donate quite a lot.
14:11
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense is also quiet and everyone is hanging their heads.
Now the situation on the ground is far from this bad so could it be that Ukraine is joining Russian psyops with some own double twist on the whole thing?
If you believe Girkin, Ukraine is preparing for a hit at Kherson and there are rumors that Ukraine has reached Tamaryne but those are Twitter rumors so far.
What is not rumors is what Gammelsvenskby says, it’s eyewitness accounts on site and they confirm what firms confirm that there are constant battles. Then that there are battles north of the village which can be anywhere but the choice of words is interesting because Dayydiv Bridge is about 50 km away and Ukraine is pushing south from there.
—
Then the Russians go and evacuate Melitopol a few days ago and rush old T62s up to Kherson which they had intended to have in defense along the southern front. There is quite a lot that speaks for the Russians being under pressure in Kherson.
14:23
We have two Andriivkas but the one in Kharkiv oblast what do we have on that? Just south of that city something is grilled.
I know the place name has flown by but I have always interpreted it as Andriivka down in Donbass or the southern front.
—
If there has been a Russian attack there then the losses are probably quite large.
14:51
Just with the railways I got the impression that all sabotage in Belarus led to the Russians fleeing from Kiev but we haven’t seen such sabotage for a while now. The fires also seem to have calmed down a bit, unfortunately.
Yes, long-range artillery can probably do the trick, the air force won’t be able to strike deep as one would like but rather more on the front lines as now up at Kherson. Long-range artillery can’t be taken out by the Russians in the same way as aircraft.
It’s almost mobile warfare on the flanks but the center will always be a big lump that you have to push into no matter how you twist and turn it. If you can choke the supply as you write then you starve out Donbass. You also have remote patrols and the further east Ukraine gets the further east they can infiltrate and start disrupting supply routes. No battles are needed to make a railway line or road in the forest unusable directly, small pesky patrols work fine too.
15:49
There is too little talk about maintenance and vehicles put back into combat here. I get the feeling that the Russians did not have/have workshops on site to the extent they should, and that much of their armor is unusable along the roads waiting for repair, as well as lacking spare parts since new production has stopped.
The point is not that the T62 would be an okay infantry fighting vehicle, the point is that in the defensive lines there are T62s and not T80s or even T72s. If Ukraine had started sending T34-85s to the front, we would have seen that as a huge sign of weakness, but if the Russians do it “it’s a great cannon with fragmentation protection, wonderful.” The truth is that if they had better vehicles than the T62, they would have mobilized them to defend the southern front.
—
Ukraine has its own workshops as well as half of Eastern Europe’s repair capacity, and according to Oryx, they have captured hundreds of armored vehicles. Vehicles are constantly returning to combat besides those delivered. The same applies to the air force; they have managed to get 20-30 fighter jets or so operational after receiving spare parts from the old Eastern Bloc countries in addition to the planes delivered.
—
Soldiers are clearly not a problem here at all, not at all. The other day we learned that the USA has now finished training 23,000 men, and the blogger has firsthand information that Ukrainians are trying to bribe their way into combat units because the competition is fierce. Ukraine does not just throw them in as live targets like the Russians should but builds command structures, but you can be absolutely sure that the maneuver brigades have been reinforced over time and that they are not empty shells.
—
The bottleneck is probably ammunition for Eastern Bloc weapons and eventually ammunition for Western weapons, but if you have access to the entire Western weapons depots, the starting point is not that bad, right?
Rich Western countries are buying up everything they can in developing countries that have had Russian materiel and donating it to Ukraine.
Eastern Europe is donating everything they have, and Western weapons are starting to be delivered.
On the other side stands Russia completely alone with WW1 ammunition and T62s.
That said, the free West needs to send more weapons now.
—
What is going on right now I really do not understand other than it is a huge PR campaign from the Russians that Western media have fallen for. Why Ukraine plays along, they probably have their reasons – more weapons probably or to cover up an offensive in Kherson maybe. Today the arc/pocket north of Horlivka is intact; if Ukraine were to withdraw to new defensive lines, that would be completely according to plan, but so far they have not needed to because the Russians are so bad at waging war.
Tomorrow is the deadline for the Russians to take Severodonetsk.
—
We get good clues all the time, the number of armored vehicles fired is one; the Russians do not have full-strength BTGs that they send into combat, they are quite frugal with what they have now. If they had unlimited armor, they would have pushed on as before. The Russians have adapted their tactics because they have to; they are currently abandoning their doctrine because they cannot fight according to their doctrine. They don’t care about losses, the problem is that they have nothing more to throw in.
—
Another clue is that Ukraine CAN go on the offensive in Kherson and Kharkiv SIMULTANEOUSLY while defending the eastern front. The Russians clearly cannot do that because they still have Mykolaiv as an attack target but have to deprioritize it, and they want the whole Donetsk Oblast as well.
Another is that Ukraine still has maneuver brigades in reserve; if it were a critical situation, every brigade would be on the front lines.
—
There is nothing in the swamp that suggests a frozen conflict, which is probably Macron’s highest dream. Nothing either that suggests a Ukrainian loss. Ukraine is almost done warming up and can start boxing for real. Things are moving quite a bit in some places, and that is probably exactly why Russian psyops/PR want to try to confuse the cards now by spreading the defeat doctrine in Western media. It’s unfortunate that the media fall for it, but it changes nothing in essence.
—
Just looking at Liveuamap is enough to understand how badly off the Russians are; basically, their only offensive operations are in the easternmost Ukraine now, and even there, they are half-hearted attempts because they have to. Firms do not lie, and it is very lively near Kherson. I always seem to be on the defensive, but right now the whining is at a deafening level. The West can do more absolutely, but beyond that, Ukraine is proceeding in a balanced and mature way against the special education class Russian army that barely manages to take a small sh*t town in the easternmost corner of Ukraine.
—
There is a film I will never forget and am annoyed that I did not save. A Russian mechanic company gets artillery fire and starts taking losses. Six vehicles bunch up in a small cluster, and behind them 20 meters away stands an MTLB driving back and forth for a minute. The association to something like the living room in The Shining was total.
16:05
Unfortunately, you probably have another problem here that is spoken about quietly. Will the EU demilitarize their countries and make Ukraine the world’s second strongest army? After all, they are quite a bit closer to Europe’s capitals than Russia is/was.
I think one should give Ukraine all the new equipment available so they at least die for us in the latest, but you can be pretty sure that my reasoning above has been aired here and there in Europe.
17:48
Now Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense woke up live, quite encouraging reading. Ammunition for 155mm is now 10% more than what they had for their Soviet artillery pre-24 February.
https://www.mil.gov.ua/en/news/2022/06/09/initial-request-of-the-armed-forces-regarding-155-mm-artillery-units-has-been-90-fulfilled-by-the-ministry-of-defence-%E2%80%93-oleksii-reznikov/
17:50
Aha, that was the one MRF posted, the lower part of the article, now I’m with you and everything is as usual, always second place.
17:59
It was a big forest fire according to Liveuamap, sad.
18:42
Yes, we usually have this discussion from time to time, especially when everyone starts thinking things are going badly and I cannot see it. There was a lot about Lysychansk and Severodonetsk being encircled and Severodonetsk falling two weeks ago, and the Russians are not a step closer than they were then; Ukraine surprised everyone, and it is a defense fight of absolute world class.
—
In Kherson, I do not see that the Russians have air superiority and high artillery superiority since Ukraine has moved artillery brigades there. The Russians have concentrated everything roughly between Belgorod and Popasna. We get quite a lot of information that something is happening in Kherson, but we know little due to the fog of war. What we do know, however, is that the Russians cannot reinforce with good materiel; they have had to dust off T62s and bring up reserves from other branches from Crimea.
If we had seen trains with hundreds of T80s reinforcing the southern front and at Kherson and the airports bulging with alligators and fighter jets, then even I would have given up, but now it is not that; they are trying to fortify the southern front with 30 old T62s, a model introduced in the early 60s. Across the field from these 30 buried T62s stand two artillery brigades.
—
Sure, it is really bad at the eastern front, but if it were an acute situation, the last maneuver brigades would have been sent there. The whole arc/pocket that Ukraine has managed to hold throughout this second offensive is an area for delaying action that Ukraine has not had to give up yet. If they fall back to the next line, which is Siversk, that is nothing other than a tactical retreat. If they fall back to the Slovyansk – Bakhmut line, that is nothing to raise eyebrows about either.
10:57
Yes, the Poles who go in and take over along the border with Belarus would release 2-3 army brigades and a hell of a lot of territorial and volunteer battalions to the eastern front.
—
The losses in the east are largely NG and Territorial, now the army brigades are taking their hits but many are home guard units that have ended up on the front line and then you have army brigades as fire brigade forces or on the really tough front sections.
—
Deny the Russian navy the Black Sea because of the wheat deliveries – yes preferably yesterday…
—
No fly zone over Ukraine, gladly but maybe politically difficult?
Now my bet is that there will be F-16s with Ukrainian pilots in Ukraine before the summer ends and that might solve the problem.
—
More heavy weapons, yes! Why doesn’t Sweden send strf90 and Archer? The Germans are apparently delaying their shipments now but everything must come as soon as possible. Norway has sent 40 band howitzers or something now where the first 20 are already in Ukraine. Finland is not in NATO and probably can’t take the chance.