The end?

Looks like an A-50 and an IL-22 shot down 256k behind the front line, max range of patriot is about 130km, so what did that? The A-50 apparently knew they had incoming before they went for the long sleep, surely Russ AD aren’t still that stupid so……?

Bad week for Putins air force, what’s that nine down?
 
Also talk of an Su-34 going down near Kherson. Good job for the Russians they’ve got the upper hand eh!

Edit: Two 😳
 
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Oh, it got worse than that.

I got a few long posts this evening (from his basement ... taking cover). I'll have to keep some of it off here.

Looks like @zzzzz chose the right time to wake this thread up.

From 11:15pm

"Well, I was supposed to be in bed snoring hours ago after dinner and some Youtube.
But blimey, this evening is insane.
So, report from my basement, I will get back to that...

As you may have noticed the last few days things have changed a lot in Ukraine.
I am not able to say what truly is going on yet in Ukraine.
Let us just say that there are new capacities and abilities in play that is changing the war.
What I am writing below is at the extent of what I can write.

Meteor Shower
Tonight has been by far the darkest night in Russian aviation history.
Yes, they lost more planes on some days during WWII, but it pales if we talk strike capabilities and pure monetary value.
Tonight more monetary value was downed over Ukraine compared to all Russian aircraft losses during WWII.

So far tonight the following aircraft have been downed in strikes ranging from over Kherson, to deep inside Rostov Oblast (Krasnodar Krai).

It began in Krasnodar Krai with 1 A-50 Russian AWACS being dropped together with its escort SU-34.
Russia did not like this and basically sent up everything that they could muster on short notice to deal with the threat.

After that an Iljushin IL-22 flying command post and its protective SU-35 dumped down.
And then a SU-34 with its SU-35 escort was blown out of the sky.

After that Russia pretty much seems to have decided to empty out their entire storage of Shaheeds over Odesa.
Normally I do not bother with going down into the basement, but tonight there was so many that they started to get through and a house near the beach was hit and partially collapsed with people trapped inside, so our overdiligent guards decided that we should get no more Youtube and tea...

As basements go this one is fairly cosy, I am now pondering if I should just curl up and sleep down here.

Sign & Portents
Ukraine is now dismantling the Boarder Guards, and is sending the units from them to the regular army in the East, but worry not, the border is and will remain secure.

In the sky strange voices are saying odd things like "4 o'clock boogey, target lock, target down..."
At the same time glide bombs are falling like autumn snow on Russian positions.
And on backroads long columns are moving with strange unit markers and strangely different equipments, followed by truck convoys trailing that are dosens of kilometres long.
And the entire West is filled with crackling strange radio codes sending chills down the spine all over Russia.
Over on the Russian side transmitters are going silent while Radar installations are detonating in the night like so much confetti.

Tomorrow a New Dawn will begin.
Tomorrow there will be a lot of Sad Russia Noises.
Something is beginning."

I hope this picture helps to allay some of the fears that Ukraine is losing.

Let's remember. Two years ago today, their country was invaded by a superpower, who expected to roll into Kyiv and change the government.
Russian commanders even booked restaurant tables in Kyiv for later in the week, so confident were they that they'd succeed within days.
 
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I think it was MoggasDog upthread who said that we shouldn't view this war as us and them ... Ukraine vs Russia, West ves Russia etc

I actually do think it is us and them in this case. But the them definitely isn't Russians. It's the despotic cabal of power and wealth obsessed mobsters that have a "Putin" as their figurehead (most likely pulling the strings is actually still Patrushev). They are a danger to the planet (and no, I'm not forgetting the West's own despots like Trump ... who is actually in cahoots with them).

We must remember that the likes of Zyrski and Tank Girl are themselves Russians. And many Russians are as keen to be rid of these dangerous despots as we are.

And these guys got busy last night
https://twitter.com/x/status/1761176384670441869
 
An absolutely magnificent speech by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski to the United Nations Security Council:

Madame President,

I associate myself with the words of minister Kuleba and my colleagues from the European Union.

I’m amazed at the tone and the content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador.

And I thought I could be useful by correcting the record. Ambassador Nebenzya has called Kyiv a client of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.

He calls them a criminal Kyiv regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.

He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defence minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.

He said that Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.

He blamed the war on US neo-colonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under Bolsheviks, and now it is the third attempt.

He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. “Phobia” means irrational fear. Yet, we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that it is not irrational – when Russia threatens us, we trust them.

He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbours.

He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on the 17th of September 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on the 27th of September.

He says that Russia has always only beaten back aggression. Well, what were then Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographic excursion? The truth is that for every time Russia was invaded, she has invaded ten times.

He says that it is a perfidious proxy war by the West. My advice is – don’t fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your troops to international borders and avoid this Western plot.

He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered a hundred of his compatriots and was removed from office by a democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including by his own party, the Party of Regions.

And finally he is saying that we the West are somehow trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese war, it didn’t win the World War I, it didn’t win the battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan and it didn’t win the Cold War.

But there’s good news. After each failure there were reforms.

Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member on a permanent basis of the Security Council. But what the ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.

They failed to subjugate us then. They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now.

Thank you very much.
Click to expand...
 
RUSI analysis

..... a very long read, including industrial issues ..

The Russian theory of victory is plausible if Ukraine's international partners fail to properly resource the AFU.

 
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masquesmog said:
RUSI analysis

..... a very long read, including industrial issues ..

The Russian theory of victory is plausible if Ukraine's international partners fail to properly resource the AFU.
Click to expand...

Wow, that article starts with basic errors and then just adds to them almost line by line.

Forensic counting of equipment, barrels etc goes on continuously.
They produce nowhere near what the article states.... they can't. That's why you don't see loads of T90s and modernised T72s. They have, however, managed to refurb much older tanks. But zero new carcasses have been produced. The ability to produce more was hit this week by the disabling of the largest metallurgical plant.

The numbers claimed for attack helicopters might have held true a year ago (but I doubt even then).
And, for instance, they only have one remaining AWACs.
Troops aren't being rotated (you only have to see the endless numbers of videos from Russian front line troops saying that they have never been rotated).
Anyway, there isn't much in there that holds up to much scrutiny.
 
borolad259 said:
Wow, that article starts with basic errors and then just adds to them almost line
Click to expand...
It's an analysis from a body which has been analysing military related conflicts for almost 200 years. Often with input from senior and experienced military people. For sure pro- US/UK, but not always. But always serious and trying to be objective. Of course, not always correct.

But a view which is creditable, and worthy of serious consideration.

Naturally, there are other analyses from diferent perspectives.
 
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masquesmog said:
It's an analysis from a body which has been analysing military related conflicts for almost 200 years. Often with input from senior and experienced military people. For sure pro- US/UK, but not always. But always serious and trying to be objective. Of course, not always correct.

But a view which is creditable, and worthy of serious consideration.
Click to expand...
It seems to be pulling the figures from Russian sources. Some interesting observations/speculation about the use of officers, which smacks of trying to put a positive spin on something that is profoundly negative (the lack of experienced officers). To be fair it sets out how Russia believe they are going to win so it will concentrate on positives from that perspective. It should however be required reading for any arrsehole playing politics with the supply of ordnance and other necessities to Ukraine. If Ukraine falls Putin/Russia will not stop there.
 
Muttley said:
It seems to be pulling the figures from Russian sources.
Click to expand...

In my corporate life I worked with them a couple of times (not about military per se, more about formulating strategies). Contact them. They are usually more than happy to discuss anything which is in the public domain, and where they are sourcing their information.
 
masquesmog said:
In my corporate life I worked with them a couple of times (not about military per se, more about formulating strategies). Contact them. They are usually more than happy to discuss anything which is in the public domain, and where they are sourcing their information.
Click to expand...

Clearly I wouldn't be contacting them, as my info is somewhat privileged. I think that what they write about Russia's intent is correct. The issue is that their numbers, and how those numbers apply to the front, are considerably off beam. Attack helicopters for instance. Tank manufacturing etc.

One of the other problems is that, as is alluded to by a lot of the Russian Milbloggers and Russian front line sources (ie from War translated on xitter), the reporting to the Chief of staff by the commanders on the front is fanatsy stuff. In turn, it is likely that the Shoigu is reporting upwards a version of reality somewhat removed from that which troops on the ground see.

Anyway.... this is just a brief snippet from yesterday's news

"Chasiv Yar
Russia is currently attacking the village infront of Chasiv yar named Ivanivske from 3 directions at the same time.
They have the village pincered from the North and from just North of Klichivka they have Ivanivske pincered from the South.
At the same time they are sending waves of armour and soldiers in frontal assaults in between the pincers.

It is here good to understand that in Robotyne Russia made two waves of attack in one day.
At Chasiv Yar they performed ten attacks in a single day.
It was so hectic that Ukraine was forced to use their new drone weapon, AI-controlled swarming attack-drones, you see them on some images from the battle as they swarm around attacking numerous targets at the same time.

Over the last 48 hours Russia has taken losses here comparable with peak Avdivka, and at least 40 vehicles of various types have been destroyed in the last 36 hours."

My initial walkthrough of what was likely to become the main offencive vector is partially based on political impetus in Russia.
The other targets are mostly militarily important, but Russia is driven by political will, and the Political Will ("Putin") is to take big cities.
The political will is to take Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, not unknown small villages.
"Putin" wants big cities that Russians know what the heck it is without having to grab a detailed road map to find them.

Chasiv Yar can be explained as a step towards Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, and those two can be explained to Russians as the most important cities to be occupied in Donetsk.

Anyway, there is now ongoing fighting in the Eastern third of Ivanivske, and it is only a question of time about when it will fall.

How hard will Chasiv Yar be for the Russians?
It will not be a new Avdivka, at least not for months, since it is not even remotely close to be in a pocket, and it will be far harder for Russia to take it into a pocket.
No, it will be more like Vuhledar.

There is though a difference, a big difference.
Unlike both Avdivka and Vuhledar Chasiv Yar is riddled with roads in and out, and there's main arteries feeding into the town.
Almost directly behind it you have Kostyantynivka, the beginning of an unbroken elongated conurbation leading all the way to Kramatorsk.
And each of these towns and major villages will be a Vuhledar or Avdivka to take."
 
And speaking of our man, almost as though he had read all this...
He wrote this today

"Russian Arms Production
Western Pundits in cahoots with Russian Propagandists are waxing about Russia spending 30 percent of its entire economy on weapons production this year, and how Russia is now outproducing what West can deliver, and that Russia somehow will have their entire army reequipped within 3-8 years.
At the same time they claim that Europe has failed in producing enough arms for Ukraine.

Let us look a bit at this.
Yes, Europe has been slow in ramping up, or at least sort of.
We did have large weapons production companies at our disposal, but for 30 years we had starved those from their cold war glory (also true for the US).
But through the last 2 years they have received huge orders, and been given loans and direct money to expand themselves.
The real problem is that it takes years to plan and build huge complex factories, you just simply do not just sneeze and out falls factories.

It is a headache, but slowly production is ramping up to levels not seen in Europe since WWII.
And we are now starting to see that effect, and in 2025 we will get pretty much a ketchup bottle effect.
Problem has more been that politicians have overpromised how fast it would go.
I as always repeat that things are going fast in the real world.
Todays factories are far more complex and hard to build than the factories was back in WWII, and still we are matching the US rampup of production from that war, and we are doing it without having gone into partial wartime economy.

Russia on the other hand started at a worse place.
They had lost the ability to produce tank hulls all together, the hulls for the T-14 Armata was cast in Kharkiv.
Yes, they had to order the hulls from Ukraine.

Before the war they produced about 50 BMP/BRT/BTRs per year.
Artillery pieces was produced at around 20 per year.
No shell production was being done.
Around 10 planes was produced, and 1 ship on average, and 10 AD systems.

There are two reasons for this, the first is that they had all that Soviet junk, so they did not need a heck of a lot of new stuff as long as they did not start World War III, after all nobody was ever gonna attack them.
Second reason was that out of the money spent on new weapons around 90 percent was stolen.

Now we need to talk about Russia not being a producing country.
Russia basically lived off its oil, very little complex machinery and no electronics was produced in Russia.
Beyond oil, minerals, diamonds and simple steel Russia was not producing products for its domestic market, nor for export.
Now everyone is waxing about the old legacy factories.
Problem is that most of those had been closed down for 30 years, and quite a bit of it was in the other post-soviet states.
1 of its 3 tank factories was in Ukraine, same goes for almost all factories.

So, for all points and purposes Russia started with almost nothing.
They quickly discovered that they lacked the knowhow and tools to build and equip modern factories, and smuggling in that much of equipment is just somewhat beyond them for now.
So, they mainly turned to their soviet legacy plants and started to revamp those.
And the few that was up and running was increasing production.

It is though slow going, and why people think Russia would be lightning fast at this compared to the EU is odd.
We are good at producing, planning and operating production facilities of extremely high tech scale, Russia is not good at all at this.
But, according to the pundits Russia is lightyears ahead of EU now.
So, where's all those Russian weapons and consumables?
Not at the battlefield, let me tell you that.

The exception is drones, for a while Russia kept up with Ukraine and EU on drones, but the tech level was not the same, just the numbers, but now the production rate has dropped as China has cut payment methods to Russia and further limited export of drone-engines.

What EU learned is that if you are increasing arms production by either ramping up production in a factory, you need to ramp up production in at least 5 factories down stream.
And if you build a new factory, you need to build 5 factories downstream.
If not you end up with unexpected bottlenecks downstream.
In the end you need to open up new mines to keap up...
This is where EU got into delays all the time, the arms factories was built on time, but not the downstream factories, so we ran into shortages of almost everything.

Same goes for Russians, but worse.
Russia did have weapons factories mostly, but they relied on external suppliers for the bulk of the components that required for their manufacturing.
So, instead of being this fast relentless machine that Western Pundits and Russian propagandists try to make it look, it is moving at glacial speed, if at all.

Then we have the sabotages, this are by now endemic on both sides, and both sides are engaged in this asymetric warfare, and it is not limited to Ukraine on our side, no EU countries are also performing it, or backing organsiations doing it.
Russia is obviously getting it harder than we do, but we still feel the sting of it.

In the end it is though economics and population size that is deciding things.
EU can without breaking out into sweat outfinance Russia, and with a population several times larger we also have a larger population to draw upon for workforce.
Russia is in both regards in a bad spot with a shrinking economy and a rapidly shrinking population.
More than 5 million highly educated Russians have left the country, and 1,35 million have died or been wounded, plus another million are locked into the Russian military.
That is 7.5 million people lost to the Russian workforce, most of them forever.
EU does not have that problem, nor will it ever have it due to the high level of automation of production.

Foreign Deliveries
The Pundits claim that the higher shell rate is due to Russia being able to outproduce the West on both shells, but also for everything else.
This is a fallacy, most of the shells currently fired by Russia originate in North Korea and Iran.
Russia buys those in large volumes from them, and Russia has to pay top dollar for it, the prices are exorbitant to say the least.
Regardless of the prices Russia has bought every inch of what it could from them to keep the war running, the prices have been so high that it is actually questionable if anything remains for build actual factories in Russia for later use.

For both Iran it was well worth it to begin with, a load of cash plus design drawings for aircraft, missiles, AD, and so on and so forth.
Well worth it since they would just tide Russia over untill they had gotten their new factories up and running.
Instead the Russians just demanded more and more shells and other goods.
So much so that both Iran and NK is risking running dry, and they are not gonna allow that.
We are now seeing clear signs of Russia receiving less and less from their "allies".

On the Ukrainian side we are still smarting from the US leaving us at the wayside, but we are getting more and more by the day from EU, membership countries and other western allies.
Our allies are struggling, but every day we see the trickle increasing, and we know that in the end through investments, pain and blood, EU will deliver everything we need, that is definitely not true for Russia.

In fact on shells we are definitely seeing the end of the tunnel as large packages are being promised on an almost daily basis, and deliveries are definitly going up now, same goes for new weapons systems deliveries."

And, as a seperate but connected issue, Sweden was accepted into NATO today. Which means that Sweden's "gift" of Gripens and trained pilots/support crews can be formally announced. This being sneaky Sweden, you might know that the Gripens have been "busy" on "training" missions for the last couple of weeks. This may just have coincided with a sudden deterioration of airworthiness of some Russian planes. Draw your own conclusions.
 
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