He was supposed to be back a couple of days ago, but the Ukrainians asked him to stay on for a week or two, as thing were getting a bit tasty around Avdiivka.
The end?
- Thread starter borolad259
- Start date
Ingleby_Flash
Well-known member
Is that the world somersault champion at 0:10 and the silver medalist at 1:11
Sadly, this does seem to be how this is being perceived by a lot of Russians, from where we are looking from.
Decent_Left
Well-known member
New word in the English language - to be “Vuhledaring”
Christ. It's like a video game.
Suicide.
SmogOnTheTees
Well-known member
No cover, driving out in the open, sitting ducks. Madness.
I mean, if I was in one of the vehicles behind, I'd be turning round and high tailing it.
A few nights ago our man led a storming operation, using the advantage of night vision, where the cut into they northern pincer at Avdiivka from the north, straight into their rear with bofors 40mm guns blazing ... stormed the trenches and took several kilometres of land back ....sounds like an absolute massacre. And, as the CV90s have loudspeakers, they did it playing Enya, full volume, which was probably a war crime in my book. He thinks that the northern pincer is completely fecked now .... though, Russia being Russia, they'll probably try to counter-attack with meat waves.
A few nights ago our man led a storming operation, using the advantage of night vision, where the cut into they northern pincer at Avdiivka from the north, straight into their rear with bofors 40mm guns blazing ... stormed the trenches and took several kilometres of land back ....sounds like an absolute massacre. And, as the CV90s have loudspeakers, they did it playing Enya, full volume, which was probably a war crime in my book. He thinks that the northern pincer is completely fecked now .... though, Russia being Russia, they'll probably try to counter-attack with meat waves.
SmogOnTheTees
Well-known member
That's why, in the video, you only see a couple vehicles going for it. The other 7 or 8 are thinking "f*ck that! I'd rather be courtmarshalled" and hanging back.
My wife is a distant relative of Enya's, but she'll get a divorce if she tries to play tripe in our house.
A good vid from Artur ... in it you see the clever use of floating islands to get heavy gear across the Dnipro ... plus Putin's doubles.
Defender 4x4
Well-known member
It would appear that the Russians have more than enough munitions left to inflict death and destruction everywhere in Ukraine. Over numerous pages we have been lead to believe that the Russians had very little left to inflict these recent type of hits in Ukraine. The recent news does not look good.
Muttley
Well-known member
Russia has the capability to kill. Militarily in terms of can they win? No, they no longer can. Can they hold what they have stolen then? It looks unlikely. They now seem intent on trying to hold The Donbas to the exclusion of all else.
But, unless the Ukrainians can drive the Russians from their land all that a "peace deal" would achieve is a pause in the killing to allow the Russians breath to replace their equipment train more troops until they are ready to try again.
Ukraine will prevail. The Russians have already lost by any sane measure.
swordtrombonefish
Well-known member
Unfortunately not as long as Putin holds the reins
TeessideCleveland
Well-known member
A Ukrainian military commander has said things are in deadlock/stalemate at the moment
www.theguardian.com
Ukraine reports most extensive Russian shelling of the year
Russia bombards 100 settlements within 24 hours as top Ukrainian commander warns war has become deadlocked
www.theguardian.com
xxlshirts_fit_all
Well-known member
Last edited:
The latest waves of attacks on Ukraine's civilian population have been infrequent and, compared with last autumn, faily anaemic. Yes, damage is done and people have sadly dies, but the last wave was, I believe just 40 odd shaheed drones and one single missile. They are mostly having to use munitions supplied by Iran and North Korea now. Meanwhile they are still systematically losing tanks and BMPs.
Meanwhile, the UAF has just brought on stream some new, home produced missiles with significant range and stealth capabilities. Which is why you're seeing a lot of damage being done i.e Kerch port, Rostov, Siedove and Sevastopol... it will be the bridge soon. RuAF have had to move their command centre to Sochi as a consequence.
Our man is leaving Ukraine later this week. He remains positive about the trajectory of the conflict, ie. Ukraine is still on top, but he is someone pessimistic about the Russian leadership giving up ... and so foresees a protracted conflict with inexorable degrading of Russian forces.
This will be a very long amalgamation of the last few days' news. I'll start with recent "good" news (if war is ever good news).
"The Marine Brigade has moved in from the bridgeheads of Krynky and Pidstepne, at the same time special forces operatives crossed the river and the assault is now ongoing to take this crucial place.
Why is it crucial?
It has a deep river arm leading directly to it, and a good landing area for barges to dock.
If Kozachi Laheri is liberated, the rate of inflow of heavy equipment will quadruple.
I am still repeating the obvious, where did the Russians go?
Avdivka
We fought down a couple of meatwaves where the Russians did not employ any armour.
Instead they used several smaller fot-soldier groups in these waves, perfect for cluster shells.
Why they do this is a bit of a mystery, because it is not still so muddy that tracked vehicles can't operate.
They do still have armoured vehicles and armour in the region, so that could not either be the answer.
Perhaps they are trying to preserve that armour for winter due to low over-all stocks.
But then we have Vuhledar where they are back to their "an armour column a day"-strategy.
There's now been 3 days of this, and none of them reached anywhere before the shells either took them out, or sent them packing.
It is a mystery that they are trying this s***y tactic again, that so clearly did not work in January.
Anyway, these unarmoured meatwaves is not a big threat, so we have been shelling and missiling things all day long, and will continue to do so for as long as the Russians are anemic in this area."
On the new UAF missiles
"So, while we in the army had fun with creating Russian terror by not stating what the new goodies are, a blubbermouth politician outed it.
The news was that two new Ukrainian produced missiles have gone into serial production.
These are the 700km Hrim-2 that is finally coming in numbers, and hit a target 700km in the rear yesterday.
The other is the 300km Khorsun Cruise Missile.
This was made possible by construction of several new factories inside Ukraine built with EU-money, and with key electronics parts built outside of Ukraine for safety reasons.
They are now churning those out at a rate of 14 Khorsun and one Hrim a day.
Both of them have been seriously upgraded due to Ukraine learning a lot from other donated systems.
So, technically it is Khorsun II and Hrim-3."
Long one
"Factories
The war was always gonna be won by factories.
This is where the EU truly shone in this war.
They saw that they did not have enough productions capacity, not even remotely.
So, they made money available for companies to borrow money to build new factories, they placed gigantic orders with existing factories, and the new unbuilt factories.
These orders are both for Ukraine and for EU and its member states.
Basically, the EU started to fix the problem from the bottom up, while at the same time ad hocing solutions for how to give weapons to Ukraine as much as possible.
And it is paying off, now most of the weapons are coming from existing factories that have been extended, upgraded, and with new equipment and production lines, and that are running on 5 shift instead of 1 shift.
But the true billions have gone to building oodles of new gigantic factories all over Europe, just Sweden is building 12 factories on a scale not seen since WWII, across Europe there are more than 100 factories being built to produce everything needed.
Building factories takes time, but with the amount of money available, and the political will to do it things have gone insanely fast, we have basically done it in the same time that the US did during WWII...
During 2024 a whopping 75 percent of the ordered factories will come online, with the remaining onlining in 2025.
There's stiff penalties for factories failing their key-deadlines, so the companies are very motivated.
On time and they will make insane amounts of money, not on time and they will make losses and loose contracts, and yes there is a surplus of ordered factories taking into account the slackers.
This has obviously pumped enormous amounts of money into the system, so parts of the inflation is due to this massive lubrication of the economy.
This is why I am saying that it is not the end of the world if the US withdraws its support for Ukraine, EU has bought more factories than the US has in operation for weapons production, all it means is that in the end EU weapons industries will surpass the US as the main source of weapons in the world.
How much political will is there in the EU?
Enough for the EU to extend those credits and contracts to the UK with no questions asked, it is ironic that the UK is receiving more EU money now compared to when it was a member state.
In the quiet of the night there are post-Brexit deals being made left and right as EU goes for being EU + Friend with the UK, something that is making me happy.
We need our insane bothersome UKians.
Heck, even Serbia is playing ball delivering weapons and arms, and getting in on the action.
They have even played ball so hard that they are all of a sudden a serious candidate for membership down the line.
Serbia early on picked a side in practice, if not always in words.
In a way they saw who would come out on top before even we did as they got behind the line of EU policy, and with them sniffing that Golden Ticket in the air for membership... they have truly moved mountains to supply Ukraine with hard to get weaponry and shells.
Remember those GRADs? 70 percent of the missiles for them is rolling out of Serbia as new makes.
My point is to remember this if there are dark news coming, there is indeed a massive factory-zoo of light coming in the end of the tunnel.
The US division and dithering forced us to wake up and make our own light, finally I would say.
After all, it will be up to us to hold the fort while the US is solving its problems.
Frontlines
Russia is trying to make nipples all along the front now that the focus is on Avdivka, it is not going well for them.
Problem is that we sort of let go of the initiative, and when you do not push forward the enemy will try to push.
Obviously Russia does not have the resources for this, so the nipples are crushed, and in places we fall into gaps.
But, it is time to retake the initiative again, well after the Avdivka hubbub is over, one way or another.
This is what I wanted to prove with my attack on the Northern side of that pincer, the point was that it is time to switch to rapid manouvre attacks.
Not big massive breakthroughs, those are impossible for now, but series of "small" attacks punching holes down the line.
Why do I write that it is impossible to do a big breakthrough?
Because of the minefields being between 15 and 20km deep.
We need new technology to overcome that insanity, otherwise we will have to slowly grind through them, demining as we go.
This leads me to North Korea.
What did Russia buy for food shipments and a surveillance satelite?
Everyone is talking hysterically about Russia getting 1 million shells.
The real number is about 300K, what they really wanted was mines... oodles of more mines.
Russia has lost the artillery war, and even 1 million shells would just be a couple of months of shells.
No, what they for now has won is the mine part of the war.
And this insanity of mining is something neither we, nor our partners understood as the new weapons was delivered.
There is just not enough of demining equipment, and we also need new tech to demine that is faster and far more efficient.
Solutions, technology, and volume is coming.
Heck, there are literally entire factories being constructed to deal with mines, and how to demine safely and remotely.
I know a bit about what is coming, and it is "interesting", and the boffins are coming up with more **** by the day.
Kherson, this is the only interesting part for now on the frontline beside Avdivka.
Avdivka is surprisingly sleepy, with the exception that we just got 8 more Archers of the Mark II make thanks to the new factory for them that just got onlined and is spooling up production and delivery.
8 more might not sound much, but at peak-firing they can lob 1200 shells per 24 hours, they are true Monsters & Masters of artillery.
Booms
We have now started to clear the deep rear of the Russian army inside Russia itself, as evidenced by attacks in Rostov-na-Donu and other spots.
This has been enabled by a new capacity (technological) that Ukraine has gotten.
Since it is not publically known what it is, I will not say exactly what it is.
But, it is now available in numbers high enough for daily mass-attacks on Russian installations inside Russia.
Yesterday it was time to hit Rostov-na-Donu again.
The City was hit 15 times.
The day before it was Kersh that was hit 15 times.
The day before that it was the airfield in Rostov that was hit 15 times (plus those big radars).
This is obviously extremely popular inside the Russian command since it made it possible for them to move the command of the Ukrainian invasion from Rostov-na-Donu to Sochii.
Yup, they are now legging it all the way back there.
We have now reached the Impressively Sad Russia Noises state of things.
Russia is now desperately trying to figure out what the heck is hitting them, and what the true range is.
And they are terrified, because obviously this new capacity is free to fire into Russia.
Does this mean that The West has ok'd usage of Western weapons inside Russia, or does Ukraine all of a sudden produce Hell Class-weapons on their own in impressive numbers?
Either of them spells out as Mundo Bad News for the Russians.
Remember that they had constructed the hardest Air Defence Nut in history, and The New Capacity just waltzed through it like hot butter against a Jewish Space Laser.
(We still do not have sat confirmation of the actual damage)
But, judging from the photage of the Kersh attack it should be spectacular.
And knowing that even the Super-center of S-400s did not work is sending terror and loosening bowels in Russia.
How important is this?
Think about it like this, in the middle of the war Russia has discovered that they must at all cost develop an entire new class of air defence, and produce that, and get it out in sufficient numbers, fast enough to not lose the war due to half of Russia being blown up.
That requires high tech that they can't get due to sanctions.
Oops.
Having a couple of Parabollic medium-range hypersonic missiles slam into a powerplant in St Petersburg is obviously not a good thing, but Russia knows that those take time to build since they build them themselves, so they know that they will get hit a maximum of a few dozen times a year, and they can soak up that damage.
But a bulk missile with an unknown range and make that is all of a sudden doing unspeakable things to them at a rate of 15 a day...
That they can't soak up.
And it is range that scares them more than anything else.
If it is above 550km Moscow is in the firing range.
Obviously they already know that the payload is big enough to make serious damage.
Terror... they guess, we know.
Nothing is scarier.
15 a day means an entire base or installation.
Per day.
And when they run out of bases they know that individual targets will get hit.
Knowing that, and knowing that there is nothing they can do about it... terror.
Looking back
On the 24th of February 2022 I did not think that Ukraine would make it, I was wrong.
After that I for a month thought that Ukraine would lose in the end, but cost Russia a lot of arms, and that at least we would fight a weakened Russia inside of Europe.
After that I thought, heck Ukraine might stop them, or even reverse the war.
And across the year I looked on as that happened.
Ukraine achieved a lot in that year together with their partners, things miraculous.
During my time here Ukraine and partners have further turned the tide and achieved parity in many things, or even surpassed Russia.
If we extend this trajectory, and we should really do that, we can see victory coming, heck we can even roughly calculate when it will happen.
I did two mistakes, and let us be honest here, everyone did the same mistake up to and including every western general on the planet and every Ukrainian general made this mistake, so I am in good company.
The first one was scale.
My brain could just not grasp the scale of things, and the size and amount of what Russia threw into taking Ukraine.
Yes, I knew the numbers, but numbers on a paper does not equate in a human brain to it being used on 100s of kilometres of frontline.
It was not until I arrived the scale, and the following timescale that it takes to grind down that much crap.
Obviously the Ukrainian generals grasped that far before me.
The second mistake I made was to grasp how much pain, blood and death that the Russian army can take.
It is almost like they revel in their own misery and blood.
Any other army suffering these numbers of dead and wounded would have given up, especially if on attack on foreign soil.
Let us take Avdivka and the Northern Pincer.
In that area Russia suffered a lossrate greater than 50 percent in 36 hours.
In all military literature that is a total defeat that is unrecoverable.
But, the Russians are already shaking it off, and reconstituting with new units and untrained mobiks.
It honestly feels like I fought an army of zombies that is just respawning whatever we do to them.
This is why I say that we can't win by defeating their soldiers, we can only win by disarming them through destroying their equipment.
Soldiers they replace far more easily, and they do not care about their soldiers one iota.
But the equipment can't be replaced, and they do care about the equipment since they can't replace it.
And in the end a Russia without equipment can be defeated since their soldiers would be defenceless and all of them can be killed.
Yes, I am open to the necessity of having to kill every single Russian soldier in Ukraine, or even beyond, to win the war.
It is not something I like, but one has to be realistic about it when fighting an enemy that totally disregard the lives of their own soldiers.
And the Russian equipment at the current rate is gone around October/November next year.
At least there is so little left that it does not matter in the greater scheme of things.
What I hope is that this rate of attrition can be raised further and we can shave off a few months until Russia is effectively demilitarised.
What is Victory?
Unless something changes in Russia this is a tricky question.
I will here disregard a coup, change in political will, or Russia breaking up.
Instead I will talk about what is a pure military victory.
Christmas 2024, the Russian army has been cleared out of Ukraine.
Most would state that this example equates a victory.
It is likely that it would not be that and that Russian zombie hordes would amble across the border in meatwaves being moved down as they cross it.
Okay, so let us create a deep security zone inside of Russia, let us say 1 Oblast deep in all directions.
That would surely be a win?
Nope, you probably have just moved the problem further away, but the zombie meatwaves would still shuffle forth looking for brains to eat.
No, in a military victory scenario you would need to cut off the head, because in a Zombie-state only the brain counts, and you need to remove the brain.
"In Russia only Moscow counts, and in Moscow only Kremlin counts, and in Kremlin only the Government counts, and the Government is Putin".
Konstantin is spot on saying this.
I would though say that "Putin" is replacable in that equation.
Victory will come when we roll down Kutuzovzkyy Prospect, blow up Kremlin, and start to haul out Putin after Putin for trial in Hague.
I am now totally convinced of this.
At least for a time Zelenzkyy or his successor will end up being the President of Russia.
Unless obviously there is a coup, a change of political will (unlikely), or Russia breaks up.
Put together this is likely to happen, but for the time being and until that happens we need to be open with the idea of storming Kremlin and grabbing Putins by the scruff of their scrawny necks."
The latter portion is obviously just his view, as he sees it after 6 months at the front, experiencing just how "expendable" the Russian regime sees its population.
Meanwhile, the UAF has just brought on stream some new, home produced missiles with significant range and stealth capabilities. Which is why you're seeing a lot of damage being done i.e Kerch port, Rostov, Siedove and Sevastopol... it will be the bridge soon. RuAF have had to move their command centre to Sochi as a consequence.
Our man is leaving Ukraine later this week. He remains positive about the trajectory of the conflict, ie. Ukraine is still on top, but he is someone pessimistic about the Russian leadership giving up ... and so foresees a protracted conflict with inexorable degrading of Russian forces.
This will be a very long amalgamation of the last few days' news. I'll start with recent "good" news (if war is ever good news).
"The Marine Brigade has moved in from the bridgeheads of Krynky and Pidstepne, at the same time special forces operatives crossed the river and the assault is now ongoing to take this crucial place.
Why is it crucial?
It has a deep river arm leading directly to it, and a good landing area for barges to dock.
If Kozachi Laheri is liberated, the rate of inflow of heavy equipment will quadruple.
I am still repeating the obvious, where did the Russians go?
Avdivka
We fought down a couple of meatwaves where the Russians did not employ any armour.
Instead they used several smaller fot-soldier groups in these waves, perfect for cluster shells.
Why they do this is a bit of a mystery, because it is not still so muddy that tracked vehicles can't operate.
They do still have armoured vehicles and armour in the region, so that could not either be the answer.
Perhaps they are trying to preserve that armour for winter due to low over-all stocks.
But then we have Vuhledar where they are back to their "an armour column a day"-strategy.
There's now been 3 days of this, and none of them reached anywhere before the shells either took them out, or sent them packing.
It is a mystery that they are trying this s***y tactic again, that so clearly did not work in January.
Anyway, these unarmoured meatwaves is not a big threat, so we have been shelling and missiling things all day long, and will continue to do so for as long as the Russians are anemic in this area."
On the new UAF missiles
"So, while we in the army had fun with creating Russian terror by not stating what the new goodies are, a blubbermouth politician outed it.
The news was that two new Ukrainian produced missiles have gone into serial production.
These are the 700km Hrim-2 that is finally coming in numbers, and hit a target 700km in the rear yesterday.
The other is the 300km Khorsun Cruise Missile.
This was made possible by construction of several new factories inside Ukraine built with EU-money, and with key electronics parts built outside of Ukraine for safety reasons.
They are now churning those out at a rate of 14 Khorsun and one Hrim a day.
Both of them have been seriously upgraded due to Ukraine learning a lot from other donated systems.
So, technically it is Khorsun II and Hrim-3."
Long one
"Factories
The war was always gonna be won by factories.
This is where the EU truly shone in this war.
They saw that they did not have enough productions capacity, not even remotely.
So, they made money available for companies to borrow money to build new factories, they placed gigantic orders with existing factories, and the new unbuilt factories.
These orders are both for Ukraine and for EU and its member states.
Basically, the EU started to fix the problem from the bottom up, while at the same time ad hocing solutions for how to give weapons to Ukraine as much as possible.
And it is paying off, now most of the weapons are coming from existing factories that have been extended, upgraded, and with new equipment and production lines, and that are running on 5 shift instead of 1 shift.
But the true billions have gone to building oodles of new gigantic factories all over Europe, just Sweden is building 12 factories on a scale not seen since WWII, across Europe there are more than 100 factories being built to produce everything needed.
Building factories takes time, but with the amount of money available, and the political will to do it things have gone insanely fast, we have basically done it in the same time that the US did during WWII...
During 2024 a whopping 75 percent of the ordered factories will come online, with the remaining onlining in 2025.
There's stiff penalties for factories failing their key-deadlines, so the companies are very motivated.
On time and they will make insane amounts of money, not on time and they will make losses and loose contracts, and yes there is a surplus of ordered factories taking into account the slackers.
This has obviously pumped enormous amounts of money into the system, so parts of the inflation is due to this massive lubrication of the economy.
This is why I am saying that it is not the end of the world if the US withdraws its support for Ukraine, EU has bought more factories than the US has in operation for weapons production, all it means is that in the end EU weapons industries will surpass the US as the main source of weapons in the world.
How much political will is there in the EU?
Enough for the EU to extend those credits and contracts to the UK with no questions asked, it is ironic that the UK is receiving more EU money now compared to when it was a member state.
In the quiet of the night there are post-Brexit deals being made left and right as EU goes for being EU + Friend with the UK, something that is making me happy.
We need our insane bothersome UKians.
Heck, even Serbia is playing ball delivering weapons and arms, and getting in on the action.
They have even played ball so hard that they are all of a sudden a serious candidate for membership down the line.
Serbia early on picked a side in practice, if not always in words.
In a way they saw who would come out on top before even we did as they got behind the line of EU policy, and with them sniffing that Golden Ticket in the air for membership... they have truly moved mountains to supply Ukraine with hard to get weaponry and shells.
Remember those GRADs? 70 percent of the missiles for them is rolling out of Serbia as new makes.
My point is to remember this if there are dark news coming, there is indeed a massive factory-zoo of light coming in the end of the tunnel.
The US division and dithering forced us to wake up and make our own light, finally I would say.
After all, it will be up to us to hold the fort while the US is solving its problems.
Frontlines
Russia is trying to make nipples all along the front now that the focus is on Avdivka, it is not going well for them.
Problem is that we sort of let go of the initiative, and when you do not push forward the enemy will try to push.
Obviously Russia does not have the resources for this, so the nipples are crushed, and in places we fall into gaps.
But, it is time to retake the initiative again, well after the Avdivka hubbub is over, one way or another.
This is what I wanted to prove with my attack on the Northern side of that pincer, the point was that it is time to switch to rapid manouvre attacks.
Not big massive breakthroughs, those are impossible for now, but series of "small" attacks punching holes down the line.
Why do I write that it is impossible to do a big breakthrough?
Because of the minefields being between 15 and 20km deep.
We need new technology to overcome that insanity, otherwise we will have to slowly grind through them, demining as we go.
This leads me to North Korea.
What did Russia buy for food shipments and a surveillance satelite?
Everyone is talking hysterically about Russia getting 1 million shells.
The real number is about 300K, what they really wanted was mines... oodles of more mines.
Russia has lost the artillery war, and even 1 million shells would just be a couple of months of shells.
No, what they for now has won is the mine part of the war.
And this insanity of mining is something neither we, nor our partners understood as the new weapons was delivered.
There is just not enough of demining equipment, and we also need new tech to demine that is faster and far more efficient.
Solutions, technology, and volume is coming.
Heck, there are literally entire factories being constructed to deal with mines, and how to demine safely and remotely.
I know a bit about what is coming, and it is "interesting", and the boffins are coming up with more **** by the day.
Kherson, this is the only interesting part for now on the frontline beside Avdivka.
Avdivka is surprisingly sleepy, with the exception that we just got 8 more Archers of the Mark II make thanks to the new factory for them that just got onlined and is spooling up production and delivery.
8 more might not sound much, but at peak-firing they can lob 1200 shells per 24 hours, they are true Monsters & Masters of artillery.
Booms
We have now started to clear the deep rear of the Russian army inside Russia itself, as evidenced by attacks in Rostov-na-Donu and other spots.
This has been enabled by a new capacity (technological) that Ukraine has gotten.
Since it is not publically known what it is, I will not say exactly what it is.
But, it is now available in numbers high enough for daily mass-attacks on Russian installations inside Russia.
Yesterday it was time to hit Rostov-na-Donu again.
The City was hit 15 times.
The day before it was Kersh that was hit 15 times.
The day before that it was the airfield in Rostov that was hit 15 times (plus those big radars).
This is obviously extremely popular inside the Russian command since it made it possible for them to move the command of the Ukrainian invasion from Rostov-na-Donu to Sochii.
Yup, they are now legging it all the way back there.
We have now reached the Impressively Sad Russia Noises state of things.
Russia is now desperately trying to figure out what the heck is hitting them, and what the true range is.
And they are terrified, because obviously this new capacity is free to fire into Russia.
Does this mean that The West has ok'd usage of Western weapons inside Russia, or does Ukraine all of a sudden produce Hell Class-weapons on their own in impressive numbers?
Either of them spells out as Mundo Bad News for the Russians.
Remember that they had constructed the hardest Air Defence Nut in history, and The New Capacity just waltzed through it like hot butter against a Jewish Space Laser.
(We still do not have sat confirmation of the actual damage)
But, judging from the photage of the Kersh attack it should be spectacular.
And knowing that even the Super-center of S-400s did not work is sending terror and loosening bowels in Russia.
How important is this?
Think about it like this, in the middle of the war Russia has discovered that they must at all cost develop an entire new class of air defence, and produce that, and get it out in sufficient numbers, fast enough to not lose the war due to half of Russia being blown up.
That requires high tech that they can't get due to sanctions.
Oops.
Having a couple of Parabollic medium-range hypersonic missiles slam into a powerplant in St Petersburg is obviously not a good thing, but Russia knows that those take time to build since they build them themselves, so they know that they will get hit a maximum of a few dozen times a year, and they can soak up that damage.
But a bulk missile with an unknown range and make that is all of a sudden doing unspeakable things to them at a rate of 15 a day...
That they can't soak up.
And it is range that scares them more than anything else.
If it is above 550km Moscow is in the firing range.
Obviously they already know that the payload is big enough to make serious damage.
Terror... they guess, we know.
Nothing is scarier.
15 a day means an entire base or installation.
Per day.
And when they run out of bases they know that individual targets will get hit.
Knowing that, and knowing that there is nothing they can do about it... terror.
Looking back
On the 24th of February 2022 I did not think that Ukraine would make it, I was wrong.
After that I for a month thought that Ukraine would lose in the end, but cost Russia a lot of arms, and that at least we would fight a weakened Russia inside of Europe.
After that I thought, heck Ukraine might stop them, or even reverse the war.
And across the year I looked on as that happened.
Ukraine achieved a lot in that year together with their partners, things miraculous.
During my time here Ukraine and partners have further turned the tide and achieved parity in many things, or even surpassed Russia.
If we extend this trajectory, and we should really do that, we can see victory coming, heck we can even roughly calculate when it will happen.
I did two mistakes, and let us be honest here, everyone did the same mistake up to and including every western general on the planet and every Ukrainian general made this mistake, so I am in good company.
The first one was scale.
My brain could just not grasp the scale of things, and the size and amount of what Russia threw into taking Ukraine.
Yes, I knew the numbers, but numbers on a paper does not equate in a human brain to it being used on 100s of kilometres of frontline.
It was not until I arrived the scale, and the following timescale that it takes to grind down that much crap.
Obviously the Ukrainian generals grasped that far before me.
The second mistake I made was to grasp how much pain, blood and death that the Russian army can take.
It is almost like they revel in their own misery and blood.
Any other army suffering these numbers of dead and wounded would have given up, especially if on attack on foreign soil.
Let us take Avdivka and the Northern Pincer.
In that area Russia suffered a lossrate greater than 50 percent in 36 hours.
In all military literature that is a total defeat that is unrecoverable.
But, the Russians are already shaking it off, and reconstituting with new units and untrained mobiks.
It honestly feels like I fought an army of zombies that is just respawning whatever we do to them.
This is why I say that we can't win by defeating their soldiers, we can only win by disarming them through destroying their equipment.
Soldiers they replace far more easily, and they do not care about their soldiers one iota.
But the equipment can't be replaced, and they do care about the equipment since they can't replace it.
And in the end a Russia without equipment can be defeated since their soldiers would be defenceless and all of them can be killed.
Yes, I am open to the necessity of having to kill every single Russian soldier in Ukraine, or even beyond, to win the war.
It is not something I like, but one has to be realistic about it when fighting an enemy that totally disregard the lives of their own soldiers.
And the Russian equipment at the current rate is gone around October/November next year.
At least there is so little left that it does not matter in the greater scheme of things.
What I hope is that this rate of attrition can be raised further and we can shave off a few months until Russia is effectively demilitarised.
What is Victory?
Unless something changes in Russia this is a tricky question.
I will here disregard a coup, change in political will, or Russia breaking up.
Instead I will talk about what is a pure military victory.
Christmas 2024, the Russian army has been cleared out of Ukraine.
Most would state that this example equates a victory.
It is likely that it would not be that and that Russian zombie hordes would amble across the border in meatwaves being moved down as they cross it.
Okay, so let us create a deep security zone inside of Russia, let us say 1 Oblast deep in all directions.
That would surely be a win?
Nope, you probably have just moved the problem further away, but the zombie meatwaves would still shuffle forth looking for brains to eat.
No, in a military victory scenario you would need to cut off the head, because in a Zombie-state only the brain counts, and you need to remove the brain.
"In Russia only Moscow counts, and in Moscow only Kremlin counts, and in Kremlin only the Government counts, and the Government is Putin".
Konstantin is spot on saying this.
I would though say that "Putin" is replacable in that equation.
Victory will come when we roll down Kutuzovzkyy Prospect, blow up Kremlin, and start to haul out Putin after Putin for trial in Hague.
I am now totally convinced of this.
At least for a time Zelenzkyy or his successor will end up being the President of Russia.
Unless obviously there is a coup, a change of political will (unlikely), or Russia breaks up.
Put together this is likely to happen, but for the time being and until that happens we need to be open with the idea of storming Kremlin and grabbing Putins by the scruff of their scrawny necks."
The latter portion is obviously just his view, as he sees it after 6 months at the front, experiencing just how "expendable" the Russian regime sees its population.
Fattyfoggon
Well-known member
That's quite a depressing read tbh
It is, but bear in mind, that scenario is if there is not a coup/regime change. There will be some rich and powerful people in Russia who are losing more wealth and lifestyle benefits as this goes on. It's not impossible. Also, he is a little downbeat because he is leaving behind people and a cause that he has been 100% committed to for 6 months. By nature he does have major swings in mood.
Frontlines in brief
"Avdivka
The Russians are still in dissarray in the Northern pincer and not making any progress there.
The railroad is holding fast, and there is no progress from the Russian side towards the chemical plant that is one huge massive fortress, think Azov Stahl, but more fortified.
Also a pointer, there are large areas that are grey that Deep State shows as red.
For some reason if there is a single Russian photographed in an area they switch it to red.
And even if we put up a flag, it at best becomes grey...
We hold sizeable chunks since we weeks, that are still solidly red.
300 metres before the railroad is a true nomans land, the terrakon is nomansland, etcetera.
On the Southern side there is surprisingly little activity, we though they would attack from this direction a long time ago on a more massive scale, instead we get the usual unarmoured, or lightly armoured, meatwave down here to.
So, for now there's only 2 to 4 mostly infantry meatwaves that are rather easy to swat down.
There was though a single little armoured attack directly due West from the Northern pincer, we broke it up fast as the ran into a hail of shells early on.
Vuhledarish
First, note how Deep State Maps does not show the Ramparts?
We are having a lot of fun with that, we even intercepted two Russians wondering what Deep State is smoking...
For once we agreed with the Russians.
The armoured column attacks East of Vuhledar is continuing, we are right now tracking another 10 tanks and 10 BTRs trundling into position, and the artillery is happily getting ready to help them to pass on to the afterlife.
And guess what, Deep State have placed two of the paths of destroyed columns in red, and given an entire field to the Russians.
So, now even spectacular failures are counted as successes, note that there's oodles of videos of how they got totally destroyed, but still noted as a victory.
Sigh...
ISW is a tad better, but I am noticing the same general trend there.
Russia does something and gets whacked, and it is still given more weight than it should.
Oddly enough, right now Rhybar is far more accurate and dutifully notes Ukrainian successes.
It is weird, it is like ISW and Deep State are trying to build a narrative that Ukraine is somehow losing the war.
It speaks oodles about how the US is changing the narrative to suit quiting support for Ukraine.
I hope that the Russians keep up the attacks on Vuhledar, it is waisting a lot of resources, and I am even pondering if the Russian generals are trying to attack here since they have given up on Avdivka.
We will see.
Kherson
So, welcome to the main show.
Krynky has now fallen and is in Green in reality, the other maps have them as grey at best.
Krynky is stretched out along the river bank, and follow the coastal road, this gives the opportunity to strike inland at many places.
From Krynky attacks are made on Korsunka, another drawn out coastal road village, and in the other direction Ukraine is storming Kozachi Laheri that is just a few hundred meters from the end of Krynky.
Another attack vector is following the coastal road from Pidstepne towards Kozachi Laheri and is also on the outskirts.
The attack from across the water is the third axis.
Fighting here is really hard.
From Krynky to Pidstepne and inland towards the T2206 main road it is grey area with ongoing fighting.
If Kozachi Laheri falls this will rapidly turn into Green area.
The T2206 road is currently under Ukrainian fire control.
Even though Russia has a massive advantage in manpower still in Kherson, and an equipment advantage, their defence and counter-attacks are decidedly ineffective.
This is due to them suffering from extreme shell hunger.
Some days the do not even fire any artillery, and when they do they mainly fire on the Northern side of Dnipro on civilians.
So, in their desperation they have turned to the airforce.
Daily there are between 20 and 50 glidebombs dropped.
A risky tactic to say the least, if Ukraine had more fighters it would be a very deadly prospect to do aerial bombardments.
For now air defence systems into the Southern area is a priority, but not a lot can be transfered right now due to the risk of losing hard to replace expensive systems.
But, what has gone over has been effective, and Russia is now losing attack-platforms about every third day, and it is not about to stop there."
"Avdivka
The Russians are still in dissarray in the Northern pincer and not making any progress there.
The railroad is holding fast, and there is no progress from the Russian side towards the chemical plant that is one huge massive fortress, think Azov Stahl, but more fortified.
Also a pointer, there are large areas that are grey that Deep State shows as red.
For some reason if there is a single Russian photographed in an area they switch it to red.
And even if we put up a flag, it at best becomes grey...
We hold sizeable chunks since we weeks, that are still solidly red.
300 metres before the railroad is a true nomans land, the terrakon is nomansland, etcetera.
On the Southern side there is surprisingly little activity, we though they would attack from this direction a long time ago on a more massive scale, instead we get the usual unarmoured, or lightly armoured, meatwave down here to.
So, for now there's only 2 to 4 mostly infantry meatwaves that are rather easy to swat down.
There was though a single little armoured attack directly due West from the Northern pincer, we broke it up fast as the ran into a hail of shells early on.
Vuhledarish
First, note how Deep State Maps does not show the Ramparts?
We are having a lot of fun with that, we even intercepted two Russians wondering what Deep State is smoking...
For once we agreed with the Russians.
The armoured column attacks East of Vuhledar is continuing, we are right now tracking another 10 tanks and 10 BTRs trundling into position, and the artillery is happily getting ready to help them to pass on to the afterlife.
And guess what, Deep State have placed two of the paths of destroyed columns in red, and given an entire field to the Russians.
So, now even spectacular failures are counted as successes, note that there's oodles of videos of how they got totally destroyed, but still noted as a victory.
Sigh...
ISW is a tad better, but I am noticing the same general trend there.
Russia does something and gets whacked, and it is still given more weight than it should.
Oddly enough, right now Rhybar is far more accurate and dutifully notes Ukrainian successes.
It is weird, it is like ISW and Deep State are trying to build a narrative that Ukraine is somehow losing the war.
It speaks oodles about how the US is changing the narrative to suit quiting support for Ukraine.
I hope that the Russians keep up the attacks on Vuhledar, it is waisting a lot of resources, and I am even pondering if the Russian generals are trying to attack here since they have given up on Avdivka.
We will see.
Kherson
So, welcome to the main show.
Krynky has now fallen and is in Green in reality, the other maps have them as grey at best.
Krynky is stretched out along the river bank, and follow the coastal road, this gives the opportunity to strike inland at many places.
From Krynky attacks are made on Korsunka, another drawn out coastal road village, and in the other direction Ukraine is storming Kozachi Laheri that is just a few hundred meters from the end of Krynky.
Another attack vector is following the coastal road from Pidstepne towards Kozachi Laheri and is also on the outskirts.
The attack from across the water is the third axis.
Fighting here is really hard.
From Krynky to Pidstepne and inland towards the T2206 main road it is grey area with ongoing fighting.
If Kozachi Laheri falls this will rapidly turn into Green area.
The T2206 road is currently under Ukrainian fire control.
Even though Russia has a massive advantage in manpower still in Kherson, and an equipment advantage, their defence and counter-attacks are decidedly ineffective.
This is due to them suffering from extreme shell hunger.
Some days the do not even fire any artillery, and when they do they mainly fire on the Northern side of Dnipro on civilians.
So, in their desperation they have turned to the airforce.
Daily there are between 20 and 50 glidebombs dropped.
A risky tactic to say the least, if Ukraine had more fighters it would be a very deadly prospect to do aerial bombardments.
For now air defence systems into the Southern area is a priority, but not a lot can be transfered right now due to the risk of losing hard to replace expensive systems.
But, what has gone over has been effective, and Russia is now losing attack-platforms about every third day, and it is not about to stop there."
Fattyfoggon
Well-known member
Dunno seems like he is a even more in control especially since the whole Wagner attempted coup business was squashed and it's leaders dealt with afterwards, and it also seems like the majority of russians still support the Kunt
This one's more fun.
"It all started yesterday when the Russian MOD published a list of Ukrainian destroyed equipment that was so obviously insane that at first we laughed.
Among those figures was so many airplanes that it was 12 times the amount that the Ukrainian airforce had at the start of the war.
As we were reading them out to each other at yesterdays meeting I quipped that it looked more like their own losses than ours, and everyone stopped laughing.
Because the figures are damn close to that.
So, we asked ourselves, "had Russia just given out their own loss figures and claimed it was hours?
So, we sent out the list and requested confirmation of our suspicion from our partners.
Last evening a Finn had Vodka with a Russian in Moo's-Cow, and out came the same list, but now clearly marked as the Russian losses up to 2023-10-31.
Story goes that Vera Nabiulina, the head of the Russian National Bank required a list of the lost Russian equipment to clear a loan to order more equipment.
She flat out refused to sign it to beginn with stating that the Russian army should still have oodles of gear left according to the "official MOD-reports".
So, for a month the Russian army had to count destroyed equipment together with auditors from the national bank.
When Vera Nabiulina wants answers she will get them, after all she is the one signing every single paycheck in Russia, and most of all the others.
Not a single kopek in Russia is left unacounted by her, and in this regards she is probably the most powerful person in Russia.
She is no friend of the war at all, and when the war started she handed in her resignation letter.
It is said that the real Putin had to go to her house and beg for her to return and to tripple her salary.
I can actually believe that story.
So, to recap, hardcore national bank boss orders an audit of Russias lost equipment, or no tosh for Shoigu, and she sent her feared auditors to make certain that it was done correctly.
It is not overly itemized into specific types, but it is for each main category of arms in the army and the airforce.
Here is the list.
517 Aircraft
257 Helicopters
8 397 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones)
441 Anti Aircraft Missile Systems
13 006 tanks & other armoured vehicles
6 902 Field artillery & Heavy Mortar systems
14 607 Other specialized military vehicles
Note how close that list pairs with the Ukrainian list of destroyed Russian equipment.
The biggest difference is actually in aircraft, Russia seems to have lost many more than we thought, probably due to them crashing where we can't count them.
We are fairly certain that the Tank & Armour category is far higher than in this report, but that may be on tecnical grounds, it makes more sense if it is the ones in the official inventory, for tanks that is T-72 and later, and the same for BTRs/BMPs.
Russia has hauled out a lot of old crap that was not on the official inventory at the beginning of the war.
It is after all how a very tecnocratic economist like Vera Nabiulina would count things, to her that never existed in the balance sheets to begin with.
Questions...
Why on Earth Shoigu published these numbers claiming that those are what the Russian army destroyed is anyones guess.
This is from Vera's copy of it, obtained by vodka.
Oops."
"It all started yesterday when the Russian MOD published a list of Ukrainian destroyed equipment that was so obviously insane that at first we laughed.
Among those figures was so many airplanes that it was 12 times the amount that the Ukrainian airforce had at the start of the war.
As we were reading them out to each other at yesterdays meeting I quipped that it looked more like their own losses than ours, and everyone stopped laughing.
Because the figures are damn close to that.
So, we asked ourselves, "had Russia just given out their own loss figures and claimed it was hours?
So, we sent out the list and requested confirmation of our suspicion from our partners.
Last evening a Finn had Vodka with a Russian in Moo's-Cow, and out came the same list, but now clearly marked as the Russian losses up to 2023-10-31.
Story goes that Vera Nabiulina, the head of the Russian National Bank required a list of the lost Russian equipment to clear a loan to order more equipment.
She flat out refused to sign it to beginn with stating that the Russian army should still have oodles of gear left according to the "official MOD-reports".
So, for a month the Russian army had to count destroyed equipment together with auditors from the national bank.
When Vera Nabiulina wants answers she will get them, after all she is the one signing every single paycheck in Russia, and most of all the others.
Not a single kopek in Russia is left unacounted by her, and in this regards she is probably the most powerful person in Russia.
She is no friend of the war at all, and when the war started she handed in her resignation letter.
It is said that the real Putin had to go to her house and beg for her to return and to tripple her salary.
I can actually believe that story.
So, to recap, hardcore national bank boss orders an audit of Russias lost equipment, or no tosh for Shoigu, and she sent her feared auditors to make certain that it was done correctly.
It is not overly itemized into specific types, but it is for each main category of arms in the army and the airforce.
Here is the list.
517 Aircraft
257 Helicopters
8 397 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones)
441 Anti Aircraft Missile Systems
13 006 tanks & other armoured vehicles
6 902 Field artillery & Heavy Mortar systems
14 607 Other specialized military vehicles
Note how close that list pairs with the Ukrainian list of destroyed Russian equipment.
The biggest difference is actually in aircraft, Russia seems to have lost many more than we thought, probably due to them crashing where we can't count them.
We are fairly certain that the Tank & Armour category is far higher than in this report, but that may be on tecnical grounds, it makes more sense if it is the ones in the official inventory, for tanks that is T-72 and later, and the same for BTRs/BMPs.
Russia has hauled out a lot of old crap that was not on the official inventory at the beginning of the war.
It is after all how a very tecnocratic economist like Vera Nabiulina would count things, to her that never existed in the balance sheets to begin with.
Questions...
Why on Earth Shoigu published these numbers claiming that those are what the Russian army destroyed is anyones guess.
This is from Vera's copy of it, obtained by vodka.
Oops."