10:22
The aftertalk yesterday or the pre-talk this morning in yesterday’s thread, someone posted that forward reconnaissance has eyes on Kherson now, a few kilometers away, so they are approaching. The video with the scout in a balaclava standing in a valley 10km from Kherson a while ago was also precisely forward reconnaissance. The Russians are probably hiding in fixed settlements and can move around in the fields in ditches and natural obstacles at night and then pull the net over themselves during the day and when they run out of bags, they nest 🙂
It might even be that the big explosion near Kherson airport was from their own reconnaissance that had eyes in the area?
10:27
This one has surely been posted, a little insight into the state of Russian workshop capacity and repairing damaged armor. Not so good and it fits well into the general state of illness Russia is in, I think.
The best part is that when a vehicle stops due to a technical fault, the thieving magpies – Russian Imperial Army – are there and steal everything that can be removed with a screwdriver so when the vehicle eventually arrives at the workshop, only the frame remains 🙂
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3520928-russian-factories-refusing-to-repair-military-equipment-damaged-in-ukraine-intel.html
10:43
Ukraine’s focus has been on Polohy, I haven’t quite looked into the value of the city yet but they want it, I only know that it lies at the end of a natural defensive line so maybe they can roll up the whole line?
FIRMS suggests that it is full speed towards Tokmak and that city is quite clear why it is important, both transport and trampoline towards Melitopol, and it lies “between” the two natural defensive lines.
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A Twitter god suggests that Ukraine is approaching Volnovakha and that would be a six-pointer. If nothing else, it pulls the wedge down towards Volnovakha reserves that the Russians would need to send up to the collapsing house of cards Kherson or towards Tokmak. Mariupol feels distant but all attempts have moved the Russians’ focus quite far east, which is probably the idea?
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If nothing else, they are getting pretty good at finding small holes in Ukraine now, getting it right on the first try 🙂
10:51
I’m thinking that the parliamentary party that campaigns on sending CV90 and Archer, and maybe JAS, to Ukraine will get its own parliamentary majority even if it is L 🙂
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When it starts being discussed intensively in the media and opinion polls pour in, everyone will jump over each other to trump that offer and suddenly we will have all three weapon systems in Ukraine already in July. Who stands up for Ukraine that dies for our freedom first.
12:07
Just took them as an example of a small party that could get a parliamentary majority if they push the issue, I don’t vote for them. The fact is that I’m finding it increasingly difficult to justify which party I should vote for.
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Yes, a good idea, start bombarding parliamentarians with demands for CV90, Archer, and JAS, we should always be the best in class so we can be that here too. In 3 months, the USA will have already sent all that and then the wow effect is gone.
12:11
I’m exaggerating for effect HMS R 🙂
I am very frustrated that Sweden is not sending heavy weapons, we have some of the world’s best weapon systems and if you ask me, the CV90 is the best IFV that exists in large numbers. All others either have too high a profile or too weak armament (risking that I have missed some but I will be informed pretty quickly).
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Ukraine was clear that they lacked heavy weapons and that was why they abandoned Lysychansk. That, more than anything, should make the West open the barns, one would think.
12:54
If one may speculate a bit and try to piece things together, the new line Slovyansk – Mykolaivka – Siversk – Bakhmut – Kostiantynivka will be attacked quite soon here along the whole line.
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-WarMonitor reported that Soledar is the next target for the never-ending locust swarm from the Popasna direction.
-The bulge west of Svitlodarsk will probably fall quite soon and give the Russians forward movement south of Bakhmut.
-The “northern front,” that is the line north of Slovyansk – Siversk will continue grinding towards Slovyansk – Mykolaivka – Siversk and Ukraine will probably have to defend river crossings again soon. Siversk will also be attacked from the east.
-At Izyum, the Russians now seem to have taken the mythical forest area where entire armies disappear and will push south as Micke said the other day towards Barvinkove.
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It doesn’t seem like there will be much of a ceasefire here but the Russians will push on for a while longer, of course hoping to push Ukraine out of that defensive line as well while they are weak (they think), partly encompassing Siversk – Bakhmut but also the wider extent of Slovyansk. Putin seems really Christmas-Eve-anticipation excited about possibly getting the whole Donetsk Oblast too, which is excellent. One begins to suspect that the overarching goal is to hold Kherson and the southern front, take Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts and have a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory up near Kharkiv. Somewhere around there the operation to freeze the war will start and all those we suspected to be Kremlinists will demand peace in our time and that we must stop killing children.
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Simply put, now is the time, if the West has delayed deliveries and Ukraine is low on armor, air defense, artillery ammunition and NLAW, this is when it will show and if they have sent in rested maneuver units in the defensive line that barely manage to move with all the armor shots, it will stop at this defensive line with a big bang and it will be renamed BTG – grills where this year’s Russian conscripts get their first and only combat contact before FIRMS lights up like a Christmas tree.
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The depots that explode are very good but Ukraine must also take out the artillery preferably on the way now as they advance to reach this new defensive line. In a week or so, all the barrels will have grouped and have bearings on this line and it will get sweaty again.
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The advantage of the line is that it has no weak point (yet), if the Russians get over the Seversky Donets at the right place or get a breakthrough in the south this will have to be revised, and that it has better supply lines as the area behind is larger.
At Lysychansk, there was only one road that the Russians had under indirect fire, sort of. If I were Ukraine, I would make sure this defensive line holds, i.e. I would push in enough units for it to do so and account for the unknown. A couple of fire brigades behind the battle line and plenty of artillery and an air defense umbrella that causes loud quarrels even before the daily briefing for the air force has started about who should fly towards Bakhmut.
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The Russians will also at some point try to push forward again between Horlivka – Donetsk but there it is still the old ceasefire line they haven’t managed to cross in four months and currently a weak point for them because they prioritize up north. They will also come up with some mischief with the 15,000 + 4,000 soldiers they have north of Kyiv we read about a while ago, if they haven’t been moved. Up near Kharkiv it is basically just noise, if Ukraine wants they can fall back to the defense of the city and let the Russians die outside it instead.
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It will be a lively summer is probably the conclusion and then we have Kherson and the southern front on top of that which is developing positively. Now Slovakia seems to have had enough and is giving Ukraine advanced aircraft and heavy armor and with a bit of luck that will be what opens the sluice gates, one hopes.
14:10
What we have mainly seen here is that Russia has brought forward reserves that few have reported on and has managed to get more armor operational that no one thought they had. They will now send these 10:1 straight towards the Siversk – Bakhmut line to see if it breaks. After the initial shock at the start of the war, which they had to retreat from, Russia has actually suddenly captured a significant area and is moving straight towards the next defense without taking a breath.
19:36
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Girkin is right.
“At the moment, advancing forces of RF AF and LDPR AF are attempting to move forward in the Seversk area “on the shoulders of the retreating enemy”. However the enemy prepared here in advance and occupied the new defensive lines with fresh forces, and continues entrenching. Prediction: unfortunately, I am not expecting substantial successes and the breakthrough of the UAF frontline in this area. A gradual fading of the fighting here is probable.”
19:41
I have started to think about how to evaluate Girkin here, the text below is almost suggesting that the Russians will have lost by September. He has been very accurate so far and I think he was the earliest to pinpoint Lysychansk.
https://wartranslated.com/igor-girkin-doom-frontline-update-for-the-4-july-2022/
21:47
Yes, I did not have this as scenario 1, but there was some concern that the Russians would stop in the north and move everything down to the south instead. The boredom factor would be quite high if they did exactly what Gregg writes.
Now I didn’t think we had seen that yet but maybe that was the attack Gregg was talking about that played out and then it ends…
If Ukraine fails to lock the bridges over the Dnipro and doesn’t come up with something clever in Melitopol before the Russians push in reinforcements, then it’s really a long game. Then they have to defeat Russia in a deep defense on all fronts where they don’t need to attack anymore but just defend themselves.
21:57
That was a rather dull update from Gregg because if the Russians settle for Luhansk Oblast and completely change focus, the defense line Siversk-Bakhmut is pretty useless as a BTG grill if no Russians jump on it. If, for example, they decide to move all focus to between Donetsk – Horlivka, the southern front, or Kherson, that would be unfortunate.
This is the window I was nagging about a while ago when the Kherson offensive never got started. It looks promising that they started probing Siversk – Bakhmut and it would be a shame if it ended there.
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Now Warmonitor has released a map of Kherson, he has marked 28 Russian what?
Is it BTG?
00:09
Well, that locust swarm was heavily thinned out, to use a Gregg expression.
00:23
When you read that the Russians took 7,000 casualties to capture Severodonetsk and Lysychansk (unconfirmed), you get one of those waves of the abyss Putin has pushed Russia and Ukraine into. Why is there even a war at all? Putin’s hubris and megalomania. Then comes the feeling that now it matters, if the West acts wrongly it will become a bigger conflict and a longer war.
One hopes every day that this will be a short war and not the new Syria type. The video someone posted the other day with the two Ukrainians slowly dying from a sniper was the same feeling, everything is Putin’s doing and there is nothing harder than watching people fight and then die slowly.
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Now my faith in wunderwaffe is quite low but HIMARS seems to be hitting high-value targets quite well. I think they brought the range to the party and Ukraine/USA already had target data. According to WarMonitor (starting to be a bit too much of him I know…) they knocked out 12 targets during the day. I like the military bases, cut a whole battalion in a rain of millions of tungsten bullets. We also got a ticker there, there are 4 military bases around Melitopol and Ukraine wiped out one of them.
00:33
I wonder if Ukraine has gotten more than 4 HIMARS now or if they have one at Kherson and one at Zaporizhzhia because now this came, “Combat work of HIMARS. Zaporizhzhia direction. Beautiful, fast, accurate,” the report reads.”
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They have sent two over to the eastern front.
Then I have thought like this: when the Russians finally manage to move all depots beyond HIMARS and it’s damn not easy, they have to get thousands of truck trips to a larger depot and then it’s an ant-march to the next depot which the US naturally logs by following the ants in the sandbox. Yeah, that train in Myrne is probably in danger by the way.
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The next factor we probably should raise a few notches on the scale is that the Russians are quite worn out and when it starts to get autumn, rain and +2 degrees, I think combat value will plummet in some places. If Ukraine can maintain combat value they probably have a good chance to come up with something clever because combat value as a factor is quite important. So far the Russians have surprised quite a lot but that they would get rotations, food and winter clothes across the entire front just in time for October, we can probably assume they will not succeed with.
00:45
I have thought a lot about it, the West made deals with their colonies a long time ago but since the Soviet Union and China had some kind of socialist revolution, it never came up on the table that they are colonial powers oppressing provinces incredibly. Russia is huge in area. China a bit smaller but population-wise it’s significant and both oppress entire provinces as much as they can. Now Russia will fall and with a bit of luck China will follow and then maybe we can move towards something better.
10:01
We have been discussing for a couple of days now that Ukraine will make an attempt at Davyidiv Brid again when they are done over in the northeast below Kryvyi Rih. If nothing else, they have started pre-fighting the red team quite hard and if you go to FIRMS and look at the fires on a small beet field south of Bryschynske, you will see something really interesting 🙂
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This is the first time I have seen something like this, presumably vehicles lined up knocked out? There are no fires in the forest areas that Ukraine should still hold, so definitely the red team is getting grilled here. VDV, Reconnaissance, and Marine infantry are around Davyidiv Brid so IFV and artillery going up in smoke can be guessed.