10:08
Frost causes ground blasts to produce more shrapnel, if nothing else some frozen soil and ice as well.
What you get as shrapnel is probably soil chunks that bury an entire trench.
Air blasts/zone tubes should be able to “bounce around” a bit more and also create new shrapnel in the form of ice and frozen soil?
I remember building a fortification out of stones early in the military service and after two seconds of great pride over the group’s best protection, I was explained the difference between logs and stones and that stones only created shrapnel, and then I had to build a new one.
12:23
Good post MRF and this quote is interesting “remember all the Iranians who wanted to become dentists in the 80s while there was reportedly a great shortage of that profession in Iran and many, according to what I have heard, returned home after completing their studies”
Because until very recently, anyone could study in Sweden for free, you got in based on grades.
In a country like Iran, you can buy an official grade and if it was state-sanctioned, even easier presumably.
The history is that it pushed out Swedish students who wanted to become dentists but had lower grades.
Medical education and dental programs are big consumers of tax money per student.
Giving it away for free to non-Swedish citizens who also never worked here was very strange but apparently that has changed now.
14:29
If you follow the blog post, there have been many reports that the VDV is reinforcing in northern Luhansk. Exactly where is not clear to me but it signals a will to defend and that it was necessary to rotate units from Kherson up there to replenish.
After Svatove, we have Starobilsk and then the next defense is probably a W-E line somewhere around, or north of, the city of Luhansk. That line is definitely manned by VDV.
Someone wrote yesterday that both sides are preparing for when the frost sets in the ground, Ukraine is absolutely poised for continued offensive operations – northern Luhansk and the chess move and maybe something in Donetsk if the opportunity arises.
What will the Russian side come up with – I have for quite some time expected a “disruption operation” down from Belarus that ties up Ukrainian troops or a disruption operation somewhere on the Kharkov front. It would be illogical not to present any threat on this stretch at all.
The defense of northern Luhansk and the southern front is being prepared. At the southern front, I don’t know how many layers of defense there are now but it goes all the way down to northern Crimea, at least.
The high-knee attacks have gone, to say the least, catastrophically, now we have seen videos of fields full of fallen Russian soldiers.
Continued isolated offensive operations between Vuhledar – Siversk are probably reasonable to assume but I still find it hard to understand what they want to achieve with this?
This war is very much about dominating terrain and a city like Bakhmut I see value in, I haven’t scouted all the other holes well enough.
However, we know they are wasting the last usable resources they have here.
Instead of working their way to a Horlivka-Bakhmut-Siversk line which they then cannot hold, they might as well fall back to Horlivka-Popasna-Lysychansk?
Either these attacks are to buy time for preparations for a defensive line to fall back to or they have a political purpose – we attack somewhere and therefore we don’t commit suicide. But that is contradicted by the retreat from Kherson. Don’t know.
The Winter War will in many ways be the game between Ukrainian offensive attempts and the Russian team’s parrying defensive operations.
It will also be the fight against the cold and wet that will almost dominate over actual combat.
Again – nothing screams target like a smoke plume and the Russian team must start warming up. Then they will bunch up and SOF can wreak havoc on groups rather than scattered in many foxholes. You simply can’t get a Russian soldier to sit in his hole without heat when a fire is lit a bit away and the foul vodka becomes drinkable, he is sucked in by the vodka vortex and can’t do much about it.
Some concern that the amount of guided ammunition in deliveries seems to be decreasing but as said we have 2000 kamikaze drones in a city near you soon that can create chaos.
Pro-Russian forums are starting to talk about Russian artillery having recovered, we see no direct indication of that except that we hear talk about artillery duels a bit more often than before.
Finally, the Winter War will also be the struggle to supply frontline units. Here Ukraine has already decimated the Russian team so hard that it is probably impossible. UA is already looking outward towards Rostov-na-Don and the darkest Donbass.
Overall, the condition of Russian frontline units should be incredibly poor when spring knocks.
If one were to guess – the Russians hope to go into such a tough defense that Ukraine makes no major territorial gains during the winter and then they have mobilized the next round after Christmas + Belarus army to launch a renewed offensive in spring 2023 when the ground and weather permit. We can be confident that there is material for that since Belarus has opened its depots and we now have several months where Russia can service old equipment, they have had almost a year to get the repair chain in order.
Now that we have figured this out, one can assume that Ukraine’s battle plan is to do as much damage as possible before the spring offensives start – preferably large territorial gains and something decisive if possible, but at the same time build up a defense to meet the Rostov Storm come spring. Good defense to the north and in all other places where offensive operations are not planned as well as rotating frontline units for longer rests.
If they can get access to further maintenance, it is probably a priority and we have long thought that the NS maintenance route outside Ukraine’s eastern border should heat up soon.
A bit simplified perhaps but now during the winter you can let the weather do the work so there is probably some capability for Ukraine to build up stocks of smart ammunition again.
One does, however, sympathize with civilians in occupied areas, to everything else is added that the Russians will plunder them of the little they have. Survival chances low.
10:03
09:22 – that is pleasing to see because it is almost common knowledge that you either put something on the tent fabric, fill up with soil against the tent, or snow.
If they fail to do that, they will probably have a hard time staying dry and intact in that regard, and then the Winter War 2.0 begins.