Well that was something. I can’t tell if this is a recruitment video, propaganda film, or documentary. It’s well produced with a mix of traditional camera shots, body cam, and drone footage. Very graphic and horrifying at times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken_Regiment
Russian marines have apparently been roughly handled lately, issuing a letter of protest that mentions 300 casualties across four days of fighting.
Paras: never met a fight they didn’t like.
Ukraine has retaken Kherson, essentially without a fight.
The Russian withdrawal may be their most successful operation yet.
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Where do you enjoy reading about war as a connected series of causes and effects? I feel as though war has been a staple of numerous games I’ve played and history I’ve read, and sometimes that gives me a degree of comprehension of what mattered and why things happened as they did. I greatly enjoy that sensation, but find it rare. It seems to matter little to me the particular subject; I found the series of articles which starts here quite satisfying despite being about a fictional battle. Modern, especially Ukraine-focused, analysis would have the advantage that it could make me feel better able to interpret the news, but historical stuff would be of interest, as well. Article-length work would suit me best, but I’m open to books or tweets.
Can be useful, just bear in mind they’re a bunch of neocon warmongers.
Defence of Duffer’s Drift is arguably the classic expounding upon an evolving military response, which continues to spawn many loving imitations, that are also worth reading.
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Some missiles hit completely wrong targets: for example, on the territory of the military unit where we were at the beginning of the invasion, a cruise missile, which costs some million dollars, flew right into the summer canteen. Well, I mean, fuck, of course it’s a very important target to hit it with strategic weapons laughs , but shit happens. So the effectiveness of the missile-bombing strike is assessed as unsatisfactory, extremely low. The task was not accomplished, and, consequently, the enemy faced very fierce resistance.
Could be a Russian missile, could be Ukrainian.
I find it interesting if it ends up from Ukraine.
NATO then work with Russia to obliterate Ukraine? Divide up the remains after?
Heheh
So, I thought with this war that the Plan C for Putin (A being blitz, B being negotiate surrender) was to get to winter and freeze the conflict in place, literally.
Given the amount of ammunition that has been burnt, troops, vehicles etc, how long does this last?
Let’s say Putin holds the line now through winter, draining the morale of Ukraine and the “west”, republicans decide that Europe is not spending enough on military and pull their support.
Could the outcome be the current borders redrawn? Could that actually happen? Or does it simply spark back up again in the spring?
I am fascinated by this, partly because of the media response and the fact that we move on so quick. I read the guardian and I think they are up to, like, day 257 of the war. Seems insane!
I would expect a Ukrainian offensive in the winter, because the Ukrainians have defied expectations every other time, so this should be no exception. They can re-up captured stock from Russia, and Western weaponry will continue to give them a sharp edge, especially in terms of artillery. The qualitative difference in the systems Ukraine has (Panzerhaubitze 2000, GLMRS, M270, TRLG-230, M777 with Excalibur rounds and M1156 PGKs) means they can beat Russian artillery even if the Russians have more guns, reducing their numbers with counter-battery fire and establishing dominance.
Russia has officially activated stocks of T-62s/64s. This is a tacit admission that they have run out of T-72s/80s/90s and is Bad News Bears indeed. Russia doesn’t have enough infantry, and if they carry out attempts to mobilise more men, they will have lots of incompetent infantry with poor kit and little materiel, which means any activated tank units will still be lacking in the sort of infantry cover needed to insulate them from Ukraine’s ATGMs. Russia’s actual, competent infantry units like the VDV have been badly over-stretched and forced to continually stay operational in order to plug gaps and get anything done. The traditional Russian approach in the DPR & LPR was to hold large swathes of ground with local militia, and that’s not happening elsewhere, or if they are trying to do it, it is an utter failure. So, no Russian offensive. Should the Russians reorganise, we might actually see some competent fighting. They won’t.
If I was Ukraine, I would hold everywhere else, push south towards Mariupol, and then slowly roll west and squash the Russians against the Black Sea. Assaulting across the Dnieper should be difficult, Russian incompetence notwithstanding, so I would expect Ukraine to avoid that, and push all the way to Berdansk and then Melitopol, and threaten Crimea. The Russians can’t hold the bank of the Dnieper if the Ukrainians are on their flank, and will withdraw to the Crimea. Forces holding the DPR/LPR will have everything to lose, being rightly viewed as traitors, and resistance there will be fierce barring some sort of amnesty and armistice, which will probably be offered in light of imminent Russian failure. The Ukrainians will chew on them some other time.
I do not expect Ukraine to quit. This one, as they say, could run and run.
It is one thing to tough out the attacks on infrastructure (especially electricity) in the coming winter months but I doubt it will go that well for Ukraine forever. They may be blessed with western hardware imports but Russia can play the human wave game longer than Ukraine can…meaning Partisan/Guerilla units may be “un”-limited supply but they cannot replace fully trained units (at least I think that).
The media is full of reports of ill-equipped and ill-trained Russian recruits right now, but what will happen when Ukraine has to scrape the bottom of the barrel as well? If both start scraping the bigger barrel wins (equipment and other factors non-withstanding).
I don’t claim to be very knowledgeable in all matters considered warfare, but I have (or better “had”) at least some first-hand experience reports on the Finland winter war and the eastern front in WW2 in regard to the “meat in the grinder”…
All things considered, I really hope Russia will press for a “status quo” peace with or without annexation of the eastern parts of Ukraine and spins it as a "moral victory (de-nacification of Ukraine (lolwtf)) for its own populace sometime soon and doesn’t go batshit with the “limited” or indiscriminate nuclear option…
but Russia can play the human wave game longer than Ukraine can
They recently carried out another wave of mobilisation. They achieved nothing with it, and couldn’t even hold ground.
but what will happen when Ukraine has to scrape the bottom of the barrel as well?
That may take a while. Ukraine has something like 400,000 men reaching military age annually (not counting women, who make up only about 50,000 of the current forces), and I’m fairly sure loss ratios are very imbalanced in Ukraine’s favour, meaning their units gain in quality over time, whereas Russian ones…do not. Alternative training pieplines have been set up for Ukrainians, so there is less of a bottleneck there.
Mass alone isn’t getting it done for Russia, it hasn’t from the start, and that’s not going to change. You need competent troops to use any kind of doctrine successfully. There is no magic wand Russia can wave to turn their troops into competent fighters. They lack basics (the Russian army doesn’t even issue socks), their motivation is minimal, and typically, Russian success in any war you care to name (Winter War, WWII) comes after a big reorganisation which only happens because of an expensive series of defeats. Russia’s last attempt at military reform was carried out under Serdyukov in 2010, and was supposed to take 15 years. It was aborted in 2012 because he annoyed too many people.
Literally the best operation the Russians have carried out so far, in this entire war, has been the withdrawal from Kherson, which at least left behind a minimal amount of equipment and men. Their attacking of the power grid with missiles and drones has been successful, and hopefully Western anti-air systems are granted in much larger numbers, but Russian missile stocks are running low (they’re using missiles they made this year, and military practice is to use oldest stocks first) and they cannot sustain those strikes.
Russian forces have been digging trench lines and concentration areas in eastern Kherson since early October 2022 in obvious preparation for the withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River and Kherson City.[1] Russian troops are preparing either to defend in depth or to conduct operational or strategic delay operations. Russian forces clearly do not expect to be able to prevent Ukrainian forces from getting across the river, nor are the Russians prioritizing defensive positions to stop such a crossing. The Russian military is setting conditions for a protracted defense in eastern Kherson Oblast that could allow the establishment of a solid Ukrainian lodgment on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.
Ukrainians using a drone to give a gunner real-time fall of shot info for more accurate indirect fire.
Russia planned to invade Ukraine over a 10-day period and thereafter occupy the country to enable annexation by August 2022. The Russian plan presupposed that speed, and the use of deception to keep Ukrainian forces away from Kyiv, could enable the rapid seizure of the capital. The Russian deception plan largely succeeded, and the Russians achieved a 12:1 force ratio advantage north of Kyiv. The very operational security that enabled the successful deception, however, also led Russian forces to be unprepared at the tactical level to execute the plan effectively.
Kursk is fairly close to Ukraine, but Engels and Dyagilevo are not.