20:39
This might get repetitive and boring now but we saw the video with Humvees, earlier it was the Turkish APCs, then M113s and the French APCs. Also many videos of BMP-1s with their special cannon.
I understand that the Ukrainians are doing wonders right now with what they have and they have infantry of world-class quality, it is oceans harder to clear a building than to rush across a field but it stings to see them in these vehicles when there are IFVs from the top shelf and heavy tanks that could have been delivered but they are just a blocked decision away.
Regarding the Polish T72s, M91s and a few other tanks now scattered across all fronts, one should be grateful if one gets a tank company in the attack. Then many pickups and soft vehicles follow the spearhead.
If Ukraine runs out of momentum here it will get sadder and the worse equipment you have, the greater the risk, I cannot logically grasp why all of Europe has refused to send armor and better fragmentation protection ahead of this offensive.
It is no escalation since HIMARS and 777 are pulverizing the Russians 24/7 and you can spare the equipment without problems, Russia is no longer a threat.
09:13
Completely cloudy in Ukraine so FIRMS is misleading but one thing you can probably say is that if it looks like this when it’s cloudy then it’s probably Armageddon on the ground.
Ukraine is pouring everything towards Kherson, the southern front, the Mariupol front and has set fire to some areas up in Kharkiv.
What is also very notable is that the red dots are almost exclusively in the red team’s area.
09:30
We’ll see during the day, the first piece of information was that 100 VDV tried to make a stand and that reserves were rushed down from Russian territory.
The roads straight down from Belgorod are probably impassable now so you have to go around – takes time, and the reinforcements are thrown straight into battle without further preparations so there is quite a big chance to break through them.
Then there isn’t that much north of Kharkiv now that the 3rd Army Corps has been lured down to Crimea and if you press simultaneously north of Kharkiv the Russians have to hold back defense of Belgorod, anything else is unreasonable.
The conclusion is that Kupiansk will probably fall quite soon.
10:54
All new types of weapons bring a shift in the battles, I think I sense that artillery radar has now been delivered in sufficient quantities 🙂 The only thing missing is armor, but Ukraine is using what they have managed to scrape together well. I am very disappointed that the West has not delivered MBTs in large numbers.
Throughout the war, Ukraine has held its positions with few exceptions, and the only major retreat was Lysychansk; they did this while simultaneously building up an offensive reserve. Lysychansk had no impact at all as the Russians just threw themselves over the next line Bakhmut – Siversk. During the big sour day, there was concern that they would completely ignore it and go for the flanks instead, but that did not happen.
Now that Ukraine is going on the offensive, the Russians can’t even stabilize the front where they are strongest – in Kherson. Some other front sections have been completely depopulated – no defense at all. The only real offensive reserve they have managed to muster is the retirement home on tracks that is on the move.
Out of sheer arrogance, they have neglected to fortify certain areas at all; it is likely a combination of the chain of command and top-down control where the top gets a completely misleading picture and then a lack of soldiers and materiel so that it is not enough. We knew early on that they were pulling units from Izyum and east of it, so Ukraine obviously knew that too. One thinks here that solid minefields in depth could have put a wrench in the Ukrainian offensive, for example.
Ukraine has pressed on Izyum from the south for about a month until it became completely empty further up when the Russians sent down reinforcements and then sneaked units a bit up into the forest belt and unleashed them – that’s what we see now. The barrier against Malynivka has been completely bypassed.
There was once a video of Polish T72s in the forest and I declared in acute positive triumph that now Ukraine had sneaked armored units into that forest area and then the total disappointment when it was a training area in western Ukraine… It is the same forest area that starts with a national park and you have probably been able to move quite large units forward without detection quite close to Balakliia. Directly east lies the crossing at Borova.
Kupiansk was fortified with a VDV battalion that is probably sulking in Kherson now; with a bit of luck, that place is poorly defended and if Ukraine presses north of Kharkiv and soon near Lyman, there probably isn’t much more to send to plug the holes.
Russia will be thrown out of Ukraine feet first, that is probably what most agree on now and the experts have started calibrating their models and are soon ready to jump in again, but like everything else, it will take its time. Therefore, trying to shock them into a quick humiliating defeat with something like Kherson or Izyum is quite smart, I think; if it works, it works, if not, you have to take the long road and stomp down every Russian in the black earth.
The area east of the Oskil River, I thought in a cloud of bubbling optimism, would be passed through like a revolving door already when the May 4th attack on Izyum started, and the reason for that is that it has always been poorly fortified because they relied on Izyum as a western anchor (probably). If you trap 10 BTGs down there, it is probably a long way between the trenches in that area afterwards and the big depot in Svatove is a nice target.
What we should see now is that Ukraine takes back terrain up to its national border where they can, up in Kharkiv right now, and then fortifies the border with territorial/volunteers and some maneuver brigade rotation battalion as a task force behind. Then I hope they forcibly maintain a demilitarized zone of about 30 km with artillery into Russian territory. Now they have swept in Belgorod, so there seems to be some willingness to shoot into Russian territory.
The darkest Donbass should be isolated logistically by starting to cut railway tracks and carry out ambushes against convoys and then it becomes an isolated island without supplies. When they reach the area northeast of Severodonetsk (which is poorly defended), their long-range patrols have closer access to the NS supply routes and railway tracks that supply the entire remaining special operation.
Now it’s the Twitter gods again, so some caution should be exercised, but it is hinted that the Kerch Bridge is in danger. That obviously means that all reserves have been driven into Crimea and now they don’t want them to return over the bridge – they can stand idling down in Crimea for a while.
In Donetsk, Russian units are moving north – expect an attack on the Donetsk area fairly soon, Ukraine is strong there with mechanized brigades.
Then Lyman… the Russians should force Ukraine back over the river but instead are sending reinforcements towards Borova to try to stop the north-of-Izyum offensive, you have to choose, it’s that bad right now.
We have declared Game Over, It Has Begun, and Kuwait Highway 2.0 more times in this war than I can count, but this time all are fitting expressions 🙂
– You can guess what it looks like at the ferry camps over the Dnipro and the roads to/from Davydiv Brid and Kryvyi Rih.
– The Russians have to redistribute units from one defense to another defense, there is no operational reserve – or there is, but it is trapped in Crimea or unloading at the southern front and consists of pensioners.
– This is a major Ukrainian offensive on all fronts where newly equipped units held in reserve are being deployed, offensive operations at Kherson, southern front, Kharkiv, Izyum, and soon also in Donbass.
Then there was a video yesterday with 20-year-old prisoners of war – there you have this year’s conscripts. Now I have seen about twenty videos of prisoners of war and they are all well treated as they should be. I understand that we don’t see everything but compared to the Russians who post about torture and castration instead, there is a clear difference. Partly because there are many prisoners of war, probably a few thousand or two now, but Ukraine also follows the Geneva Convention – you have to give them credit for having a discipline that is somewhat incredible.
And this was the country everyone thought would throw in the towel after three days and would be forced to give up territory, now it is Russia that will take the full hit instead, a geopolitical atomic bomb and hopefully the beginning of the end of the Russian empire.
As the cherry on the rather battered imperialist Russian salmon, it seems the Russians have been ordered to go on the defensive in Izyum while Ukraine is pushing towards Borova from the west, the day certainly starts well. Soon we will have three mottin (I’m jumping on that word, it works), Kozatske, the city of Kherson, and Izyum.
Now Kharkiv has started to move, so we can probably expect an advance towards Tokmak – Melitopol or Volnovakha – Mariupol as well as towards the Donetsk area. Especially since the Russians are pulling units from the southern front towards Kherson and maybe also towards the northern collapse.
All counterattack modes – Crimea + all terrain west of Mariupol is just a quick blitzkrieg away.
Getting all elite units into Kherson and then the 3rd Army Corps to Crimea probably made this possible, so a very clever plan whether it was reacting to how things developed or controlling everything.
Sad that there was time to post a message saying we wouldn’t see a mechanized offensive in this war and even sadder that the thread has the memory of an elephant.
Only 200 CV90s missing now.