Might be what Pakistan doing with it's bad ammo too.
The War in the Ukraine
- Thread starter SampanViking
- Start date
Might be what Pakistan doing with it's bad ammo too.
I also think it isn't bad ammo, just the Ukrainian and its backers shoving things into guns without a second thought because the Chinese only copied the Soviets, so its all the same. That must be their train of thought.
plawolf
Lieutenant General
I think we are approaching a moment of truth period once the weather improves enough for general spring offensives. The timing, scale and scope of the Russian offensive will offer significant insight into their broader strategic plans.
I personally think the Russian offensive will be smaller and much more limited in scale than many might expect/hope for. The primary strategic objective of the Russian offensive would be to push Ukraine out of artillery range of population centres in the captured territories; to try to secure favourable positions to limit the locations of possible major Ukrainian counter offensives; and to create more Bakhmuts.
The reason is that it should be abundantly clear to the Russians by now that a conventional military win, while emotionally satisfying, will be extremely costly in lives, treasure and time; and be very risky in terms of triggering NATO direct involvement and/or nuclear escalation.
With the way the war has progressed thus far, it’s hard to see how Russia can delivery a decisive knock-out blow to be able to end the war quickly. Any breakthroughs will be limited in scale and depth, with it being one giant slow grind where villages, towns and cities are slowly taken through being pounded to piles of smoking rubble. And as the Russians push further westwards, the logistics will become less favourable to them, as would the risks of Ukrainian counterattacks being able to punch through their overstretched Russian lines and rapidly roll back a lot of gains quickly, as has already happened.
Basically, Russia not doing more mobilisation should have already spelt out that their intentions are not to win this war through conventional battlefield victories.
Instead, I think the Russian strategy is to target the well established American and western weakness of staying power and resolve. Why beat your fists bloody trying to punch your way through an ice wall when you can just sit back and watch it melt under the heat of the summer sun all by itself?
The big strategic struggle right now is Russian seeking to lock the war into a slow grind stalemate that minimises Russian losses while maximising the costs to Ukraine’s foreign NATO backers (Bakhmut and periodic infrastructure hits); and the US and NATO pushing Ukraine to break that deadlock and end the war quickly on the battlefield by going on the offensive themselves, or by trying to goad the Russians into unwise overstretched assaults (shelling civilian city centres).
I personally think the Russian offensive will be smaller and much more limited in scale than many might expect/hope for. The primary strategic objective of the Russian offensive would be to push Ukraine out of artillery range of population centres in the captured territories; to try to secure favourable positions to limit the locations of possible major Ukrainian counter offensives; and to create more Bakhmuts.
The reason is that it should be abundantly clear to the Russians by now that a conventional military win, while emotionally satisfying, will be extremely costly in lives, treasure and time; and be very risky in terms of triggering NATO direct involvement and/or nuclear escalation.
With the way the war has progressed thus far, it’s hard to see how Russia can delivery a decisive knock-out blow to be able to end the war quickly. Any breakthroughs will be limited in scale and depth, with it being one giant slow grind where villages, towns and cities are slowly taken through being pounded to piles of smoking rubble. And as the Russians push further westwards, the logistics will become less favourable to them, as would the risks of Ukrainian counterattacks being able to punch through their overstretched Russian lines and rapidly roll back a lot of gains quickly, as has already happened.
Basically, Russia not doing more mobilisation should have already spelt out that their intentions are not to win this war through conventional battlefield victories.
Instead, I think the Russian strategy is to target the well established American and western weakness of staying power and resolve. Why beat your fists bloody trying to punch your way through an ice wall when you can just sit back and watch it melt under the heat of the summer sun all by itself?
The big strategic struggle right now is Russian seeking to lock the war into a slow grind stalemate that minimises Russian losses while maximising the costs to Ukraine’s foreign NATO backers (Bakhmut and periodic infrastructure hits); and the US and NATO pushing Ukraine to break that deadlock and end the war quickly on the battlefield by going on the offensive themselves, or by trying to goad the Russians into unwise overstretched assaults (shelling civilian city centres).
I have read an extensive analysis of the leaked documents. The author himself is not sure if the documents are real or not, he focuses on the actual content about equipment, shells, brigades and military training.
In his opinion, if these documents are real, they present the Ukrainian army in a bad light right now.
In his opinion, if these documents are real, they present the Ukrainian army in a bad light right now.
A Polish-made 155-mm self-propelled gun Krab, delivered earlier to the Ukrainian army, came under attack from a Russian Lancet kamikaze drone. To be precise, the drone hit the Ukrainian army support vehicle, from which ammunition was being loaded into the self-propelled guns at that moment. As a result of the drone strike, shells detonated and the truck and Krab self-propelled guns were destroyed by the explosion. The explosion was so powerful that nothing was left of the truck at all.
So Prigozhin thinks that the release of intelligence documents is an elaborate deception then? Toss in enough legitimate info, get 'lazy' about intel gathering, careless about security (leave the door open) and all that to distract?
Even if they managed to collected 200k troops, how are they going to be armed? The leaked documents showed that the offensive force would be ~60k in strength. Even then, some of the tank numbers and other vehicles are labeled TBD so as of last month they weren’t completely sure how they would fix the shortfalls.