The War in the Ukraine

[Anlsvrthng]

Since their aim changed! At the beginning I’m convinced they believed after about three to five days they would have conquered Kiew, all Ukrainians would have cheered them as the brothers who liberated them from the evil Western influence. Now, after desperately failing on this objective and learning the hard way, most Ukrainians have no intention to be liberated under a Russian boot, their aim is to destroy as much as possible in order to rise the price the West has to pay for the upcoming decades in order to restore Ukraine to a country worth living in.

Or Russia following a simple, common sense juridical process, regards of Ukraine/ EU / NATO.
First notice, afterwards low level , suspended sentence, prison term, full life sentence, finally death penalty.


It can be interpreted as Ukriane didn't respected the request of Russia, now getting the more and more punitive measures.

Like Germany, EU a,NATO and USA .

This was the logic allways the the Russian Federation followed regards of any matter. Predictable, common sense logic.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

This 100km from border does not mean that people and material are arriving from 100km. it could be 10,000km in circular way. this in addition to enormous logistic effort Russia put in shifting trade away from West.

I think this is very evident both in my comment and in the others who are talking about the terrible logistics of the Russians 100 km from the border, when the RuGF manages to use tens of thousands of artillery shells more than 6 months of high war intensity.

As for the tyranny of distance in logistics, I agree with you, but the rail modal greatly mitigates the distances traveled by trucks, the Russian logistics brigade that performs rail functions manages to mitigate any influence of the long distance of Russian logistics.

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This article is interesting.

Keeping the rate of fire at 50,000 as some sources claim, say the 152mm which weighs an average of 50kg is very difficult for most, if not all, armies. For the Russians, 50,000 shells a day is therefore 2,500 tons a day. Ukraine mentioned 5,000-6,000 shells a day. Assuming M107 shells, this translates to 250-300 tons per day. Using standard 5-ton trucks, that's 50-60 trucks per trip. Highly visible. It might decrease the number if the HEMTT is packed, but the logistic train is obvious. The US will not risk direct flights to Ukraine, most are being shipped to Poland, meaning longer transport distances double or triple the trucks (and fuel) needed. The difficulty is that most Ukrainian artillery is old, for example 122mm/152mm. Ammunition factories, for example, transmobiles in Bulgaria can manufacture, but in limited volume (probably at most hundreds per day) due to lack of demand. It makes no sense to expand the construction of 122/152 mm shells only to Ukraine, but this is an option because Ukraine already has hundreds of such artillery.

50,000 to 60,000 Russian shells a day - that's a staggering number if you need to. Russia may have huge stockpiles of ammunition, but even that would mean 350,000 rounds a week. There's no way to maintain that long-term burn rate without having decent logistics.

For example:
50,000 a day in 10 days is 500,000
In 100 days there are 5,000,000 projectiles
In 120 days, there are 6,000,000 projectiles.
Assuming an average load weighing 50 kg and you have 300,000,000 million kilograms, or if you prefer, 300,000 tons. It would take 15,000 large trucks (20 t) to carry all this ammunition. And we didn't even take into account the projection load. Obviously, if you transport in 1 day, you shoot 50,000 a day, you transport 2,500 tons a day with trucks that carry 20 tons, you need 125 trucks, with trucks with a capacity of 5 tons you will need 500 trucks. If the distance traveled takes more than 1 day, you will need more trucks. Moving 125 super-heavy trucks per day or even more, say, 200 or 300 is perfectly attainable, as long as you have the necessary stocks, qualified personnel and well-planned logistics. But the problem is that this is only for the logistics of the artillery units, this would be a logistics only for the ammunition, replenishing the stock of ammunition for the units of the front line, it would still be necessary a whole logistics for the spares for the artillery pieces, parts for vehicles, fuel for vehicles, food supplies among many other things that demand even more trucks. Due to the distance, I would say that each trip takes less than 1 day, therefore, reducing the number of trucks needed for logistics, but it will still be a huge amount of trucks needed to supply ground forces, which demands planned logistics and totally viable.

VKS performance is very effective thats why Ukraine need so much mobilization and more air defense system.

It's not effective, its terrible.

 

[Sinnavuuty]

I have never understood why Pro Nato circles keep trying to push this narrative. We know that the Northern Force was no more than 50K (maybe only 30K) strong and that no one would plan to try and storm a Capital City with such a small force. Why people push the notion that any country, especially one with a very formidable intelligence community, would launch an operation using a strategy based on the notion of the enemy running away is a mystery to me and simply risible.

My belief has always that the Russians expected the Ukrainians to do the sensible thing on day one, which is to pull back to the best defensive line they had, which was the West Bank of the Dnieper. This is why I have always believed that the Northern Force was sent, to hold the two banks of the Northern part of the River, just as in the South in Kherson, they took the Southern Banks.

Sure, if in the unlikely event that the Ukrainians had abandoned Kiev, obviously they would have taken it as a target of opportunity.
As a opening gambit? No, not outside of a Tom Clancy novel.

Polish media spoke of 70,000 before Russia invaded.

The narrative is that the SVR failed because they expected Russians to walk the red carpet in Kiev, being applauded as liberators by Zelensky, Klitschko and the entire population of the capital.

To be fair, the SVR really failed, they expected less resistance from the AFU, so they invaded with few to the north, remembering that also through Belarus, the invasion took place by Chernihiv, which divided the forces, but the objective was never to capture Kiev , the Russians know the cost of an urban war and would never do this with few troops to invade the capital of Ukraine, but rather arrest the AFU in the cities while advancing in the east and south, this is very true when you follow the various liberated settlements during the first phase, mainly in the east. The Russian MoD's own briefing released at the end of March makes this strategy clear, but the narrative wants to impose that they wanted to capture Zelensky, conquer Kiev and then annex all of Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1507461226162532363

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By the way, about this strategy in Ukraine, reading some posts before the invasion, there was a banned member here who claimed exactly that before the Russians invaded, he claimed that 1 month before the briefing was published. Congratulations.

 

[sheogorath]

. Now, after desperately failing on this objective and learning the hard way, most Ukrainians have no intention to be liberated under a Russian boot, their aim is to destroy as much as possible in order to rise the price the West has to pay for the upcoming decades in order to restore Ukraine to a country worth living in.

On one hand, the west should have factored that as a possibility when they decided to use Ukraine against Russia and if the west didn't, then thats on them and it's just part of their increasingly common lack of foresight and long term planning.

But I really suspect the west didn't have any intention of investing or rebuilding Ukraine as evidenced by the fact they also lied to Ukraine about their possibilties of joining NATO.

Also kind of silly to complain about targeting infrastructure as thats a go-to NATO strategy. That's said, outside of the Marshall Plan, western "rebuilding" efforts whenever they have been involved have been lackluster and haven't improved anyones lives, ever.

 

[Phead128]

then why not April, May, June, July, August?

Igor Strelkov and former Donbass fighters were calling for partial mobilization as early as middle March, 2022, only 3 weeks after the invasion. These comments by @Aegis21 were particular prescient.

[March 14, 2022] I think Russia should do a partial mobilization and call up reservists and other troops. It was echoed by some former Donbas fighters.

[April 1, 2022] Russia doesn’t really need the pro-war gestures now as much as mobilization. The manpower limitations have severely restricted the Russian advance on Kiev and Kharkov. Now they pull out of Kiev, which they could’ve taken if they they had sufficient troops to both attack and guard the rear.

[April 30, 2022] I have seen Strelkov refer to the need for a “national mobilization” or “partial mobilization” quite often. What does this entail and would it have any significant effect on the conflict?

So the need for partial mobilization (and arguably infrastructure targeting and full-scale war) was readily apparent as early as middle March 2022 to former Donbass fighters and Strelkov...

It's anyone's guess why it took so long to partially mobilize and target infrastructure. Perhaps Putin thought a scorched earth policy was unacceptable to Ukrainians, which are essentially ethnic Russians misled by Western influence (i.e. "Brotherly war" rose-tinted glasses)... As has been alluded to before, war is a matter of life and death, and why Russia takes it so non-chalantly instead of going for full-scale war with Kiev regime change is beyond me...

 

[tabu]

Then why did the Soviets develop T-64/72/80 if T-62 was sufficient?

What if the т-64/72/80/90 were to be used on the cutting edge of the attack, and the T62s for support on strongholds and roadblocks, to escort columns and on the flanks.
The Russians are not replacing tanks, but decisively saving their money.

 

[FriedButter]

It's anyone's guess why it took so long to partially mobilize and target infrastructure. Perhaps Putin thought a scorched earth policy was unacceptable to Ukrainians, which are essentially ethnic Russians misled by Western influence (i.e. "Brotherly war" rose-tinted glasses)... As has been alluded to before, war is a matter of life and death, and why Russia takes it so non-chalantly instead of going for full-scale war with Kiev regime change is beyond me...

Maybe he was hoping that negotiations would continue. Alex Mer. said something after or before the Kharkiv offensive that Putin seems to follow the original plan and is slow to any changes to it.

He uses Syria as an example with Aleppo. Putin had received a lot of criticism over insisting on negotiations and humanitarian aid, which delayed recapturing it by months. That criticism disappeared after the insurgents withdrew from the city.

 

[gelgoog]

the rail modal greatly mitigates the distances traveled by trucks, the Russian logistics brigade that performs rail functions manages to mitigate any influence of the long distance of Russian logistics.

It is not that the Russians lack trucks. It is just that Ukrainian road infrastructure is quite poor. Most of it is dirt roads which turn into slush in Spring and late Autumn. Without using the rail infrastructure it is quite hard to provide decent enough logistics. Compare this with Iraq which had multi-lane asphalt roads courtesy of Saddam. In a country with much less population.

So the need for partial mobilization (and arguably infrastructure targeting and full-scale war) was readily apparent as early as middle March 2022 to former Donbass fighters and Strelkov...

Yeah I agree that they should have started the mobilization way earlier. But I think the main issue they had was they forgot they would be losing 50k soldiers once their 6 month contracts expired. They should have issued a stop loss order way before they did.

It's anyone's guess why it took so long to partially mobilize and target infrastructure. Perhaps Putin thought a scorched earth policy was unacceptable to Ukrainians, which are essentially ethnic Russians misled by Western influence (i.e. "Brotherly war" rose-tinted glasses)... As has been alluded to before, war is a matter of life and death, and why Russia takes it so non-chalantly instead of going for full-scale war with Kiev regime change is beyond me...

Yes. For political reasons Putin has had to slowly escalate the means they use in the operation. Due to long standing good relations Russia had with Ukraine some of the measures you would see used in other conflicts straight away simply cannot be applied here like that. But as time passes limitations on operations get relaxed.

 

[Abominable]

Or Russia following a simple, common sense juridical process, regards of Ukraine/ EU / NATO.
First notice, afterwards low level , suspended sentence, prison term, full life sentence, finally death penalty.


It can be interpreted as Ukriane didn't respected the request of Russia, now getting the more and more punitive measures.

Like Germany, EU a,NATO and USA .

This was the logic allways the the Russian Federation followed regards of any matter. Predictable, common sense logic.

Wonder how many Russian soldiers need to die before bureaucrats in Moscow realise what the only logical solution to the Ukrainian war is.

Right now Ukraine hasn't even got a prison sentence yet.

Maybe he was hoping that negotiations would continue. Alex Mer. said something after or before the Kharkiv offensive that Putin seems to follow the original plan and is slow to any changes to it.

He uses Syria as an example with Aleppo. Putin had received a lot of criticism over insisting on negotiations and humanitarian aid, which delayed recapturing it by months. That criticism disappeared after the insurgents withdrew from the city.

Syria is a good example of the differences in strategy between America and Russia. We know how long Russia drew out the capture of Aleppo. Compare that to the American campaign against Raqqa, where they carpet bombed the city.

 

[Abominable]

So the need for partial mobilization (and arguably infrastructure targeting and full-scale war) was readily apparent as early as middle March 2022 to former Donbass fighters and Strelkov...

It's anyone's guess why it took so long to partially mobilize and target infrastructure. Perhaps Putin thought a scorched earth policy was unacceptable to Ukrainians, which are essentially ethnic Russians misled by Western influence (i.e. "Brotherly war" rose-tinted glasses)... As has been alluded to before, war is a matter of life and death, and why Russia takes it so non-chalantly instead of going for full-scale war with Kiev regime change is beyond me...

The irony is had Russia used a firm hand on Ukraine from the start Ukrainians would have surrendered already and there would be less deaths on both sides.

The Russian army pussyfooting and showing incompetence has given Ukrainians false hope and will only prolong their agony and has meant far more people will have to die.