12:47 – MatsExtrude
Thanks for the positive and good overview!
It’s sad that China has started to back the bus. You’re probably right, if they get away with delivering those jeeps (which they will of course claim are ordinary civilian jeeps) there’s a good chance the dam will break and they will start delivering both this and that. Time for the West to speak up firmly.
The Ukrainian soldier at the end.. That is real fighting spirit!!
13:28 – Johan No.1
Incredible that he survived and just keeps fighting.
13:39 – Johan No.1
I have zero knowledge as usual but I think UA has many vehicles that can wade, over 50 AMX-10s as well as all the BMP vehicles for example, T-72 and up probably have wading capability with snorkel to a certain water depth, 5m or something?
Then they have smaller landing craft that can transport ammunition AND hard vehicles.
As soon as you have a pontoon bridge up, it’s a fixed point for artillery and missiles, you probably need several.
The pontoon bridges are coming but UA can expand the bridgehead before they are in place.
13:50 – MatsExtrude
They also have their own BTR-4:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTR-4#/media/File:BTR-4E_in_Kyiv.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTR-4
17:14 – Johan No.1
We probably need PerraG55 for this but I have recently seen Putin starting to campaign at hospitals and factories, a smiling gentleman in his prime.
What is Patrushev up to?
Is it part of the election campaign or are there body doubles campaigning?
GeneralSVR continues with his line that Putin is dead and that even China was a body double.
Maybe the most important thing now is not whether Putin is alive or not but what prompted Patrushev’s speech, any takes on that?
11:11 – Johan No.1
So what is the Marine Corps that stands opposite the Russian category 3 units at the Dnieper and is revving their engines?
See for yourself, mechanized elite units with night combat capability and tank battalions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Marine_Corps
A full-strength brigade is around 2000 men strong and they probably were before they started fighting at Staromaiorske last summer.
They have 90 IFVs or APCs and 30 MBTs per brigade, a mixed assortment reasonably.
The Marine Corps is fully staffed with 8000 men.
They have been trained in the UK and are an elite unit.
So there are hundreds of armored vehicles with the Ukrainian Dnieper group, many of which have night combat capability.
Many want to portray this as just some light infantry paddling across, but when UA has established an air defense screen, artillery umbrella, started bringing in armored vehicles and pooled together a veritable swarm of drones, then it is reasonably serious, right?
This is a big hit and they are supported by several SOF units which presumably have now started infiltrating on a large scale, as well as the 5th Tank Brigade and several Territorial brigades which today are experienced infantry with sometimes armored vehicles and definitely their own reconnaissance units.
What is the 5th Tank Brigade? It is a reserve unit that was activated this spring and is located in the Dnieper area. If one guesses, they have topped it up with quite a few vehicles now and it is definitely an offensive reserve that has rested, been equipped and trained.
https://militaryland.net/ukraine/armed-forces/5th-tank-brigade/
This interview is from September 19 and by then the offensive at Staromaiorske had stalled (I believe), does that sound like a heavily decimated Marine Corps unit?
(Hint, no not at all).
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-counteroffensive-breakthrough-russian-defenses/32599461.html
Now we have gotten Accentman back and if you remember, we usually discuss that UA stands under its own artillery umbrella during their crossings of the Dnieper.
It is better than that, the right bank is much higher than the lowlands on the left (proven by which areas were flooded) so Ukraine’s tanks stand as long-range snipers and the units on the left bank also stand under a direct fire umbrella – very powerful.
When we have summed up the hit on UA, we can guess a bit what the Russian side is?
Numbers vary between 60,000 – 100,000 and the task was 500 tanks and up to three times as many other armored vehicles.
I don’t think that number is correct because if the above numbers existed in ready brigades, these bridgeheads would have been overrun long ago.
It’s enough to see what a reinforcement of 40,000 mechanized troops did at Avdiivka, if they had this capability they would have tried the same trick at Dnipro and then we would have heard about it.
For quite a while it has also been platoon size which later became company size and I don’t know if they have reached battalion size yet?
So these are not large bridgeheads RU has tried to establish for months and failed.
My guess is that they have the worst units on the southern front over by the Dnieper.
They are probably low on night combat equipment.
It is likely quite a bit of infantry without much mobility who have been ordered to lie in a hole and look battle-ready with their ration cans.
There should be an offensive reserve of 4-5 brigades which were the best they had in the area, they should also have attacked for about a month in addition to the attacks since the bridgehead at the Antonovsky Bridge was formed.
All counterattacks have failed in the latest round and all bridgeheads are intact.
We don’t hear much about the Dnieper but remember how aggressive the counterattacks were on the southern front during the summer and then autumn at the Robotyne bulge.
Probably 5-6 brigades we see on the unit maps are in poor condition and then there are a bunch at battalion size – guess.
If UA with existing units at the Dnieper chooses to expand the bridgehead in the area around the Antonovsky Bridge and eastward in the suitable terrain, there is probably very little RU can do about it at this point.
Now we wait for RU strategic reserves or other reserves and we’ll see but that front is now moving until RU replenishes with barbarians, if they exist.
Don’t forget that UA has a large number of SOF in the area, the partisans behind the southern front are like a swarm of hornets and that they can land anywhere between Kinburn Spit – Crimea.
This feels very violent 👍
A bit about UA and the “fiasco” that all pro-Ukrainian Twitter users call the spring offensive. UA has learned since February 2022 how to wage war and today Darwinism has fully played out.
A platoon is part of a company which is part of a battalion which is part of a brigade which is part of an army corps.
At all levels there are leaders who now know what failure looks like and who have survived because they lead their units sensibly.
They have something the rest of Europe lacks – work experience.
Until Lysychansk it was just about survival, after that they have been able to actively start building their offensive capability and experiment with it.
They have taken in training from the West and believed it would work but it requires a number of capabilities and advantages Ukraine does not have.
It is rumored that NATO commanders demanded they fight according to NATO doctrine, rumor as said.
Zalizhny in a rare outburst said they have studied NATO doctrine to death and according to it they should have broken through after four months or so, resigned and thrown their hands up in the air.
They themselves thought they would be able to achieve breakthroughs because they fought as they had been trained – and then reality knocked and what the trainers missed was probably adapting the battle plan to the situation on the ground?
What distinguishes Ukraine from many other previous defenders is that they don’t give up. Now they have moved offensive units from the southern front to the Dnieper and are trying there instead and you understand just like I do that they will do the same on another front, there are weak points left you know exactly which ones – Erik14 raised the most obvious one yesterday for example.z
The list of logged targets is miles long, priorities ready and as soon as the rockets arrive it’s firing by day.
UA has deliberately knocked out logistics, artillery, navy, air force, air defense, and all special equipment and locally they may have superiority in all capabilities we know.
We have a threat dangling in front of us which is a Russian psyops – Russia will soon flood in with a barbaric horde of new well-trained elite units that Ukraine simply cannot break through – and then Ukraine has lost.
Ukraine is after all completely shattered after the spring offensive and has run out of everything.
As medicine against that depressing trip down the deepest Russian psyops rabbit hole one should read about the Marine Corps above and then think about how many destroyed Western vehicles one has seen since spring – not very many is probably the answer reasonably?
If one doesn’t do that and becomes further marinated in the tale that the West is starting to falter then one starts to get really worried and apparently ends up in grief even though the EU has just approved Ukraine as a candidate country.
Ukraine still has an offensive reserve left, but they are street-smart and understand, and understood, that they could have lost it all already in June if they hadn’t been careful.
Again – in every exercise there was a battalion of juice mixers on the training fields and a major with a sweaty forehead, darting eyes smelling of anxiety trying to explain himself.
Ukraine made a couple of attempts on the southern front, more than the single one we actually saw, and all brigade commanders and army commanders came to the same conclusion quite quickly.
Yes, it’s damn incomprehensible that the West is still dragging its feet with heavy materiel from the top shelf, and now there was probably a collective attempt to paint the devil on the wall to speed up deliveries, which is brilliant.
But that doesn’t mean Ukraine is losing, Ukraine has just crossed the Dnieper River and the Russian team can’t manage to take the crossings, plus Teplinsky’s wife has been unfaithful so he’s probably a bit out of shape if you ask me 😀
Then everyone writes that there are no Wunderwaffen – I think that is completely wrong. Ukraine has received a few hundred of +1000 Storm Shadow missiles and the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been chased away and a large number of ammunition depots have been knocked out along with staffs and barracks. You remember that one where they had all the ammunition in the basement for maximum effect.
Then they managed with about 20 ATACMS to take out just under 30 AHKP and other targets, probably also cruise missiles and there were about a thousand of those too (from memory).
If Ukraine got everything, the Black Sea Fleet, army aviation and air force would be wiped out along with most major staffs and remaining ammunition depots – doesn’t that feel like a wunderwaffe?
Ukraine has its list in Excel with names and coordinates and is just waiting for the ammunition.
Ukraine is grinding on and this is going just as well as we guess, right now Russian psyops are in full swing and they have banned negative opinion in the country so we have a positive bias from the Russian side right now.
On top of this, I see no signs of global escalation and it has been over a month since H…s struck. We’ll see, right now all rogue regimes are watching what happens with H…s, right, and they are dying in tunnels.
Tulsi G@bbard has come out as pro-Kremlin, I’ve long wondered 😀 Simply put, all the “fresh breezes” in politics who were supposed to make the world better and smoke out the corrupt establishment have turned out to be pro-Russian.
https://twitter.com/randymot4/status/1722565422501765315?s=46&t=cJuc6xAVBDZ8Ru16bU64Kg
If the West hasn’t woken up yet, it’s about time because here comes China’s first test balloon – 1500 jeeps to Russia.
If there is no reaction, IFVs, MBTs and artillery will follow.
The low point is now!
https://twitter.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1722830500383887652?s=46&t=X5Wa4enBRNh_gTQcAFzGdg
A very high-ranking FSB officer has come to his end.
https://twitter.com/killedinukraine/status/1722887351356039500?s=46&t=X5Wa4enBRNh_gTQcAFzGdg
The usual Russian war crimes are raining down over Avdiivka.
https://twitter.com/jayinkyiv/status/1722874434833572083?s=46&t=X5Wa4enBRNh_gTQcAFzGdg
This soldier has miraculously survived and is fighting his way back. It’s all on Putin and the dictatorship Russia but the West has a huge commitment after this war to treat all injuries, both physical and psychological, because it is a national trauma.
WARNING, Ukrainian soldier training after amputation.
https://twitter.com/helphealukraine/status/1722706993259979044?s=46&t=X5Wa4enBRNh_gTQcAFzGdg
The Dnieper front is very interesting and it’s likely that Ukraine has a few more cards up its sleeve.