The War in the Ukraine

Cult Icon said:

It is evident that in the Kharkiv' direction the Ukrainian forces (including newly inserted reserves with 'elite' titles that spearhead the NATO-Ukraine counteroffensive of 2023) are counterattacking quite a lot- more so than in all other directions combined. So the Ukr command & Zelensky see this as more critical than the other directions.

The Russian main effort appears to be the right wing with the left wing in defense. The grouping towards Vovchansk is using a water barrier to their advantage. The longer this battle continues, the Ukrainian reserves will get more and more degraded until Ukr command will have to send more and more. The Russians have accomplished this without committing too many troops.

In WW2 the classic Soviet tactic was to create 1-2 new active fronts, with at least 1 active front far way from the other 2. The Germans would then be confronted with a dilemma- they did not know where the main effort could be and the Soviets would shift the main effort from place to place. Then when the situation got critical the Germans would throw their reserves in one 'breakthrough' area (reinforced by Soviet military deception)- meanwhile the Soviets would launch the real breakthrough in the weakest front.

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Except NATO will see where the thrust is going to come from and inform Ukrainians, unlike Germany in WW2, Ukraine faces a lot less fog of war compared to Russia. What can work is logistics and manpower limitations but eventually Ukraine can also learn to manage it.

Russians took out a number of Ukrainian ammo depots recently, this video has embedded footage on two.


Ukrainian S-300s and Su-27s taken out in Iskander attack. Cluster warhead was used on the airfield, so a number of the Su-27s would have been damaged plus the one taken out by direct hit.


We haven't seen Storm Shadow/Scalp attacks for a while which points that the missile attacks on the Su-24 airbase might have yielded results. The speculation goes that the Mirage 2000s France was sending were intended as replacements.

Fire in the warehouse in Kiev continues to burn all day even with 226 firemen.


UMPC/UMPB strikes at Ukrainian positions in Zaporozhye. Building targeted said to have a meeting of Ukrainian high ranking officers.


In Zaporozhye, the Valkyrie special unit takes out a Ukrainian field ammo depot, observation posts and a mortar unit with FPV drones. Drones look like VT-40s.


Russians are again in the offense at Volchansk, advancing and taking territory. This points to the Ukrainian counterattack having collapsed.


Dam near Novoselivka Persha gets hit with a FAB or X-38ML.


Krasnopol takes out a site with Ukrainian UAV operators near. Novoolexandrivka.


Lancet takes out an AN/TPQ-36 counterbattery radar near Pyrstin.


Ukrainian ATGM site gets taken out by Russian helicopters.


M113 taken out by the Sudoplatov with their trademark VT-40 FPV drones, which is also shared with other special forces.


LMUR hits Ukrainian position in Tyaninka, Kherson.


Ukrainian troops drive past a burning Ukrainian Urals tow truck.


German Marder APC gets FPV droned. MT-LB came to evacuate it's crew later.


Unfortunately that same MT-LB was hit by an FPV drone.


Ukrainian UAV and EW crews hiding in trenches. Trench gets hit with a Krasnopol shot.


Dutch DAF trucks found destroyed by Ukrainian soldiers.


M109 gets hit by Lancet in the Kharkhiv front. Detonation of ammunition points to total loss. Two Russian UAVs were in the area to record the event which points to total Russian air and UAV dominance over the area.


FABs or UMPBs arrive at Ukrainian positions as seen from a Ukrainian soldier.


Russian missile arrival at Krivoy Rog.

phrozenflame said:

Except NATO will see where the thrust is going to come from and inform Ukrainians, unlike Germany in WW2, Ukraine faces a lot less fog of war compared to Russia. What can work is logistics and manpower limitations but eventually Ukraine can also learn to manage it.

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Actually, it doesn't matter. The biggest problem for Ukraine, from a force generation perspective, is its increasing dependence on a small group of first-line brigades that are constantly transported from the front to fight fires and meet urgent combat tasks. The most notorious example would be the 47th Mechanized Brigade, which was at the center of Ukraine's failed Zaporizhia counteroffensive before being sent to Avdiivka, where it was at the center of Ukraine's fierce but unsuccessful defensive position. Now the 47th is increasingly unable to fight, and a failed attempt to withdraw it from the line for badly needed reform led to disaster at Ocheretyne, where Russian forces exploited a gaping void in the Ukrainian line.

The broader point here is that Russia's vastly superior force generation allows it to accelerate the depletion of Ukraine's combat power in two ways. First, by widening the front, they can create more and more flashpoints that force the rapid reorganization of Ukraine's key assets; second, simply widening the active front could force Ukraine to more quickly deploy newly mobilized personnel to the front.

Ukraine really doesn't have much of a choice for this, they are forced to react according to Russia's tactical situation across the front line, today Ukraine only has the ability to react to Russian moves and try to contain to maintain territory. With multiple expanded fronts, these types of emergencies result in a simultaneous depletion of the AFU's present and future combat power.

Under extremely reactive conditions like these, it becomes frankly absurd to chart Ukraine's path on the ground. An army that is in a constant state of reacting to emergencies can only continue for so long before it stops reacting, and an army that is constantly forced to mobilize its best brigades and mobilize unprepared units to hold the line can never regain the initiative . It has no ability to accumulate resources (because it is under constant pressure across the board) and remains in a permanent state of reactivity and terrible agitation. Ultimately, this is an army with serious resource constraints and no ability to conserve those resources.

The extension of the Ukrainian counteroffensive into 2023 ended up giving Russia more time. The delayed effect of the mobilization ended up giving Russia more time. There were two situations that would allow the AFU to be in this inert state in the face of the Russian initiative on several lines. The widening of the front in Sumy is a high probability of occurring, so what @Cult Icon states makes sense from Ukraine's strategic perspective.

Sinnavuuty said:

Actually, it doesn't matter. The biggest problem for Ukraine, from a force generation perspective, is its increasing dependence on a small group of first-line brigades that are constantly transported from the front to fight fires and meet urgent combat tasks. The most notorious example would be the 47th Mechanized Brigade, which was at the center of Ukraine's failed Zaporizhia counteroffensive before being sent to Avdiivka, where it was at the center of Ukraine's fierce but unsuccessful defensive position. Now the 47th is increasingly unable to fight, and a failed attempt to withdraw it from the line for badly needed reform led to disaster at Ocheretyne, where Russian forces exploited a gaping void in the Ukrainian line.

The broader point here is that Russia's vastly superior force generation allows it to accelerate the depletion of Ukraine's combat power in two ways. First, by widening the front, they can create more and more flashpoints that force the rapid reorganization of Ukraine's key assets; second, simply widening the active front could force Ukraine to more quickly deploy newly mobilized personnel to the front.

Ukraine really doesn't have much of a choice for this, they are forced to react according to Russia's tactical situation across the front line, today Ukraine only has the ability to react to Russian moves and try to contain to maintain territory. With multiple expanded fronts, these types of emergencies result in a simultaneous depletion of the AFU's present and future combat power.

Under extremely reactive conditions like these, it becomes frankly absurd to chart Ukraine's path on the ground. An army that is in a constant state of reacting to emergencies can only continue for so long before it stops reacting, and an army that is constantly forced to mobilize its best brigades and mobilize unprepared units to hold the line can never regain the initiative . It has no ability to accumulate resources (because it is under constant pressure across the board) and remains in a permanent state of reactivity and terrible agitation. Ultimately, this is an army with serious resource constraints and no ability to conserve those resources.

The extension of the Ukrainian counteroffensive into 2023 ended up giving Russia more time. The delayed effect of the mobilization ended up giving Russia more time. There were two situations that would allow the AFU to be in this inert state in the face of the Russian initiative on several lines. The widening of the front in Sumy is a high probability of occurring, so what @Cult Icon states makes sense from Ukraine's strategic perspective.

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Thanks, I do agree to this hence I mentioned manpower and logistics, and I do see your point why it would be difficult for Ukraine to manage this unless manpower problem is resolved, I suppose that's why they're looking into 'nAtO trOoPs' and recalling the expats.

While we're at it, do we reckon Russia is building up massive reserves / armies / force generations, like they did in WW2 and turned things around or are we seeing them getting stuff ready and sendign to the front. Do we reckon there is enough capacity to start building massive manpower and fighting machine reserves?.

phrozenflame said:

Thanks, I do agree to this hence I mentioned manpower and logistics, and I do see your point why it would be difficult for Ukraine to manage this unless manpower problem is resolved, I suppose that's why they're looking into 'nAtO trOoPs' and recalling the expats.

While we're at it, do we reckon Russia is building up massive reserves / armies / force generations, like they did in WW2 and turned things around or are we seeing them getting stuff ready and sendign to the front. Do we reckon there is enough capacity to start building massive manpower and fighting machine reserves?.

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Yes. The desperation for NATO's "boots on the ground" in Ukraine is clearly a consequence of the bureaucratic and political inertia of mobilization that caused the lack of manpower for the AFU, which is now taking its toll on the ground. The prolongation of the counteroffensive clearly has a role in this too, Ukraine was not supposed to have extended the offensive until November 2023, when it was already quite evident since the end of july that there would no longer be a possibility of achieving any operational objective, this probably meant thousands of lives of experienced Ukrainian soldiers who would now make a difference. It was a domino of wrong decisions taken by the Ukrainian leadership and also by NATO.

Regarding Russia, from what I have seen on Russian and Ukrainian channels, the strategic reserve is not as large as it is supposed, but there are clearly hundreds of thousands who have been hired, sources say around 540 thousand and the Russians continue to hire . The problem is that Russian casualties were high, even if you put in evidence that the Ukrainian numbers are true, at around 500 thousand Russian casualties, the Russians would have already employed a total of 1.2 million in total since the beginning of the war, including professional soldiers from the ground force and VDV, the Russia therefore, in simple terms, would still have 700 thousand personnel in total available between those already in Ukraine and those still undergoing training in Russia.

Sinnavuuty said:

Yes. The desperation for NATO's "boots on the ground" in Ukraine is clearly a consequence of the bureaucratic and political inertia of mobilization that caused the lack of manpower for the AFU, which is now taking its toll on the ground. The prolongation of the counteroffensive clearly has a role in this too, Ukraine was not supposed to have extended the offensive until November 2023, when it was already quite evident since the end of july that there would no longer be a possibility of achieving any operational objective, this probably meant thousands of lives of experienced Ukrainian soldiers who would now make a difference. It was a domino of wrong decisions taken by the Ukrainian leadership and also by NATO.

Regarding Russia, from what I have seen on Russian and Ukrainian channels, the strategic reserve is not as large as it is supposed, but there are clearly hundreds of thousands who have been hired, sources say around 540 thousand and the Russians continue to hire . The problem is that Russian casualties were high, even if you put in evidence that the Ukrainian numbers are true, at around 500 thousand Russian casualties, the Russians would have already employed a total of 1.2 million in total since the beginning of the war, including professional soldiers from the ground force and VDV, the Russia therefore, in simple terms, would still have 700 thousand personnel in total available between those already in Ukraine and those still undergoing training in Russia.

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Would take any numbers from both sides with a grain of salt, maybe a cup ?

Some drone pellets in the bum, a broken hand, light burrns or concussions for example need some time behind the line and count as casualty. Some soldier got pellets in them probably multiple time with all these drones attacks. Casualties is an odd number to rely on.

Russian casualties are probably high, unretrievable loss is probably just a small portion of them (still a large number for sure).

The same for Ukraine, but they got themselves quite a lot of time encircled without means to get wounded out or help in. Receiving drone pellets compared to a fab explosion or TOS rounds is also something completly different... So I tend to think that their ratio of unretrievable loss vs casualties is worse, a lot worse.

Both sides are also using fodder like ''conscript'' for Russia and ''mobilised without training'' for Ukraine. Veterans are probably less hit than these poor guys.

phrozenflame said:

Thanks, I do agree to this hence I mentioned manpower and logistics, and I do see your point why it would be difficult for Ukraine to manage this unless manpower problem is resolved, I suppose that's why they're looking into 'nAtO trOoPs' and recalling the expats.

While we're at it, do we reckon Russia is building up massive reserves / armies / force generations, like they did in WW2 and turned things around or are we seeing them getting stuff ready and sendign to the front. Do we reckon there is enough capacity to start building massive manpower and fighting machine reserves?.

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Both the top command of Russia & Ukraine were schooled in the Russian way of war and even in the same classrooms- no surprises here.

The Kharkiv' operation has been pretty successful and known Russian ORBAT is really modest for the results they obtained. It is the Ukrainians that outnumber them. They've already lost round 1 by having to commit a bunch of named reserves.

They can only claim that they 'won' if they didn't have to commit any serious reserves and just contained and threw back the break-in. Now the Russians are lodged into their defenses and they can't politically withdraw- they must find a way to push them back.

Fixing operations (especially when the attacker has firepower superiority) do not necessarily require a lot of infantry troops. It requires the ability to securely hold the frontline while generate continuous lower level pressure (positional warfare). This can either come through continuous small unit action - recon probes and/or artillery + aviation programs.

This was the case in WW2 as well. Montgomery's approach of the 21st Army Group in Normandy was to attrite with positional warfare & daily artillery fire. After the British appraised that the Germans were weakened enough, then maneuver with planned main effort offensive operations (eg. EPSOM, CHARNWOOD, etc.) with reserves.

This war has been characterized by fixing operations/positional warfare rather than operational maneuver past the Russian invasion of 2022. This s what the Russians have been doing for most of this war. Ukraine was doing this prior to the 2023 Counteroffensive but they burned out and can only do static defense for the most part.

As far as your earlier comment on "ISR" the Russians did operational manuever in 2022 a few times, including the retreats and redeployment of assault units to the Donbass. Modern means did inflict some painful losses in-transit but that's war.

The Russian political top appear to be terrified of announcing mobilizations, and is still relying on the 2022 partial mobilization and volunteers. This screwed them bad in 2022 and is the main reason why they currently don't have a lot of units on the field.

SolarWarden said:

Dude fog of war. Shall we bring up pro Russian channel and their far-out tweets beginning of war?

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Where's all the shot-down Su-34s that the Ukranians claimed? Didn't they claim they shot down 9 Su-34s back in March?

Kich said:

A defeated Russia might possible lead to Russia's breakup into multiple countries and then the Russia problem will be miniaturized.

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Notwithstanding the fact of how unlikely this is, I'm sure multiple warring rump states with nuclear weapons is going to be great for world. Or the West's track record with the "miniaturization of problems" in general.

Kich said:

They are slow to adapt and are not properly organized.

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I don't know, we have seen plenty of instances and articles by western media of how most western wunderwaffens and tactics were render largely ineffective pretty quickly, which has forced Ukraine and NATO to pretty much brute force things, as they do with ATACMS.

Also I'm not sure what timeframes of adaptability you expect or how realistic they are for -any- fighting force in the world in a near-peer conflict. Korea and Vietnam being case in point.

Kich said:

The small propeller drone situation can easily be solved by simply doing CAP missions. Have air defense in one certain known corridors and then assigned CAP missions to fill the holes not covered by air defense.

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I think you overstimate how detectable these things are in low level flight. If it was that easy, even in peace time, there wouldn't even be a narco plane problem all along the US southern border.

Let alone with even smaller drones.

Kich said:

Their jets should be capable of flying high with their radars turned on and doing rotation flights to constantly monitor that air space.

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Not even such a thing was possible in Serbia, Iraq or even in Gaza and Lebanon, let alone a far larger border and theater. Then there is the whole risk of incursions of drone teams behind the coverage.

This isn't a video game. Radar performance and coverages varies wildly from day to day for any number of reasons.

Kich said:

Simple, simple plan. [US showed the world how this is done with its defense of Israel]

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Lol, you should ask Coalition pilots during Desert Storm and OIF what they feared the most, if Saddam's SAMs or their own Patriot batteries. Case in point a jet got locked on by a Patriot battery because for whatever reason it mistook it for a ballistic missile, with the jet firing back into the battery as self-defense.

On the other hand, you are also trying to compare apples and oranges scenario, in complexity and the fact that Iran telephoned the attack for weeks ahead of time, so there was already a level of readiness and expectations.

Hizbollah keeps striking the north unimpeded with drones and missiles.

Kich said:

For instance, it took about 20+ Russian jets being shot by their own air defense units before they assigned the air force to be in charge of air defense batteries.

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It is all especulation if that happened and why.

Kich said:

They are persecuting this war so badly it's baffling. They could easily turn off the power to Ukraine but they are not doing it.

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At this point it should be kinda evident thats not their goal and has never been. For x number of reasons including it makes rebuilding difficult, expensive and just sows even more hatred in the population.

Funny thing is the Russians get criticized if they pull a Grozny and get criticized if they don't.

Kich said:

Power alone will render so many things useless for the Ukrainians like military bases and even specific power hungry gears like radar stations

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Radars tend to have their own generators, specially mobile radars.

Kich said:

NATO would have turned Ukraine into the stone ages by now.

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Yeah, NATO. And a fat load of good is has done them considering all the messes they have left behind.

On the other hand, NATO doesn't care about nation building just neutralizing "threats". That gives you far more leeway and how much wanton destruction you can cause. Russia is not waging that kind of war.

Kich said:

This is what this war is. Russia is ineptitude, incompetent, and at the same time not serious about winning, while Ukraine just doesn't give up and keeps punching above it weight thanks to its adoring fans.

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You say that if Ukraine wasn't one of the largest armies in Europe with training and equipment supplied by NATO since 2014.

And since we are on the point of incopentece and attacks, people seems to have memoryholed how the US lost 8 Harriers, 1 C-130 and the commander of the Harrier squadron to the fucking Taliban.

SlothmanAllen said:

Assuming the reporting is correct, why is the ATACMS suddenly (I don't remember many strikes like this in the past) having success against modern Russian surface to air missile systems?

I though the ATACMS was outdated from US perspective and thus wouldn't be as effective against modern Russian surface to air missile systems?

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Saturation. Is not just a massive load of ATACMS but also accompained or preceded by a large wave of Grads and drones.

Thing is, ATACMS aren't that plenty to begin with and aren't manufacturer anymore, but they decided to waste a lot of them against targets that have little impact strategically.

supersnoop said:

Again, my point is not about pro-Russian or pro-Ukraine, just that Visegrad 24 are a bunch of liars

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At the end of the day, Visegrad isn't even a real news site, just a news aggregator.

Gsh-23-2 used successfully taking out Ukrainian Magura sea drones. The Gsh-23-2 are attached to naval helicopters in pods.


Ukrainian ground drone trying to deliver fresh water to the front line got intercepted by Russian drone bombers.


The target of the missile strike near Kiev is a large fuel facility used on a military airfield. Fire continues to burn through the day and into the night.


The Russians have captured the northern Volchansk 'citadel'.


Russians took Novopokrovskoe.


Iskander arrival in Dnepropetrovsk. We like to find out what exactly this target is.


Rostov un Don to Mariupol railway almost completed.


Su-30SM fires missile at Ukrainian UAV in Vladimir region.


Ukrainian UAV intercepted over Yaroslav region.


Ukrainian artillery unit hit by Russian artillery in the Kharkhiv region.


Ukrainian D-30 howitzer spotted and targeted in the Kharkhiv region.


Ukrainian UAV crew spotted using a house as a hiding point. The site was hit by Russian artillery.


Muslims and Orthodox Christians dare not attack a church so Ukrainian forces are storing ammunition in the Volchansk church and attached a firing point. (Waiting to verify report that the church may already have been stormed already.)


Argentina plans to transfer Super Etendards to Ukraine. Should be no thank you if the planes aren't working.


Grad MLRS saturating Ukrainian positions in Kremenaya forests. We haven't heard much of this area lately.


BMPT Terminator spotted in the frontline. This one looks like it's peppering Ukrainian fortifications.