The War in the Ukraine

Temstar said:

Time for that diagram again:
View attachment 92020
Right now we're very nearly at the Novorossiya outcome, just missing a bit of Donetsk Oblast and Zaporizhzhia Oblast, but with bonus land gain in Kharkiv Oblast. Landlocked was my original estimate for a maximum goal for the campaign. Note both Landlocked and Split in Half calls for gaining both Nikolaev and Odessa. Given the recent withdraw from Snake Island I'm thinking Kharkiv will be in the crosshair soon, maybe after all of Donetsk Oblast is taken.

Belarus involvement would take this further than even Split in Half. I thus don't think it will happen until at the minimum the Split in Half outcome looks to be certain and Ukrainian forces are no longer capable of putting up much organized defense. When that happens Lukashenko will probably sweep in to take some land and say "look, I'm helping!" and cover himself in glory and all that.

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I agree 100% with your chart for gauging "short-term" victories.

But in the "long-term", it's arbitrary to defined victory based on land gains, because Russia didn't enter the war to gain more land, it entered the war to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine (i.e., formalized neutrality, via treaty or practicality). Now with Finland/Sweden certainly acceding to NATO, the long-term conditions for victory is different.

Yes, technically, a landlocked and militarily-weakened Western Ukraine satisfies the condition for defacto neutralization, but only in the narrow military sense, not in the political sense.



Russia can still salvage this with regime change (not necessarily full-annexation), just place a pro-Russia successor regime in Kiev. That would offset the accession of Finland/Sweden and make it a Russian-leaning mixed victory.

Footage has emerged of the Russian helicopter KA-52 pursuing and destroying a vehicle of the Ukrainian armed forces. The video at the end is changed, because after the destruction of the car, the footage is too hard.


The Russian Ministry of Defense showed the combat work of the T-80BV tank and the BTR-82A armored personnel carrier of the Marine Corps in Ukraine. The crew of the T-80BV uses a complex tactical element - "flank shooting" and suppresses the strongholds of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with fire.


Former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, who is now in the UK, bought used DAF military trucks for the Ukrainian army with the money of his foundation

Soldier30 said:

Footage has emerged of the Russian helicopter KA-52 pursuing and destroying a vehicle of the Ukrainian armed forces. The video at the end is changed, because after the destruction of the car, the footage is too hard.

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Editor did a pretty poor job at censoring the last bit. It’s not full of gore but not conformable to watch either.

Yommie said:

203 mm howitzers and 240 mm mortars

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I thought Russia didn't have that many Pions to begin with...yet that's a lot them right there.

The amount of equipment and ammo the USSR built to fight WW3 is staggering seeing how much of it its still left despite scrappings and retirements

SlothmanAllen said:

I wonder? Is this the most destructive war in terms of equipment lost since the Vietnam War?

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You'd have to define destructive for whom. Iraq, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama or Yugoslavia might not have been destructive for US forces but they were indeed for the countries.

Phead128 said:

I agree 100% with your chart for gauging "short-term" victories.

But in the "long-term", it's arbitrary to defined victory based on land gains, because Russia didn't enter the war to gain more land, it entered the war to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine (i.e., formalized neutrality, via treaty or practicality). Now with Finland/Sweden certainly acceding to NATO, the long-term conditions for victory is different.

Yes, technically, a landlocked and militarily-weakened Western Ukraine satisfies the condition for defacto neutralization, but only in the narrow military sense, not in the political sense.

View attachment 92083

Russia can still salvage this with regime change (not necessarily full-annexation), just place a pro-Russia successor regime in Kiev. That would offset the accession of Finland/Sweden and make it a Russian-leaning mixed victory.

Click to expand...

A landlocked Ukraine is just a huge liability for the side (NATO) who gets it, it's almost better than if Russia annexes the whole thing.

Sweden, although not Finland as much, has always been informal member of NATO. They had a brief stint with neutral foreign policy, then Olof Palme, an outspoken critic of the American regime, was murdered under mysterious circumstances, and since then Sweden has toed Washington's line. The main reason they weren't in NATO is because Turkey doesn't like them.

If Russia can land lock Ukraine and keep the economy running like how it is right now, this would be a total victory.

As much as Putin's oligarchy doesn't sit right with me politically, it is infinitely preferable over a far right oligarchy. And I don't read this special military operation as a wholly Russian initiative. This was done with consultation together with China.

The demands of denazification are valid, who can forget back when NATO backed pro-fascist terrorists tried to overthrow the HK local government, Ukrainian fascists were right there, goose stepping along side them and attacking locals, acting like an invading Banderite SS-legion? Now, Russia is repaying these scum the bullets which China owed them in 2019.

Russia challenging NATO and winning is huge because it exposes how useless they will be against China, and it completely distracts America from their territorial ambitions in Asia.

So this fight is not just Russia's but of great interest to China as well. Should the situation ever seem to turn against Russia, China must provide limitless support as well.

This is what liberation looks like.

Ill Prepared for Combat, Volunteers Die in Battles Far From Home​

Volunteers to the country’s territorial defense forces, reserve units of Ukraine’s armed forces, were initially assigned unglamorous but safe tasks in relatively tranquil regions like western Ukraine, where the Russians did not invade. But severe losses of manpower in the Donbas region, where Russia is grinding forward with ferocious bombing and shelling, has forced Ukraine’s military to draw reinforcements from the West.

Many of the fighters had no previous military experience, are simply unprepared for that escalated level of fighting. And the training they receive is limited — sometimes two weeks or less.

One territorial defense company, made up of 100 soldiers from around Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, suffered 30 percent losses on its first day on the eastern front.

Territorial defense soldiers did not expect that kind of fierce engagement, said one soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive topics. “And here we ended up on the front line, as infantry that sit in the trenches,” he said.

Accounts from a half-dozen territorial defense soldiers interviewed for this article have been largely the same: They were trained as glorified guards during the war’s early months and then, as casualties mounted, were sent to the front.

The territorial defense soldiers said they only had rifles, machine guns and a few Western-supplied anti-tank weapons.

They were lacking the one weapon that has defined the war in recent months — artillery. They also had few ways to communicate with the units that had those heavy weapons.

In short, the soldiers said, they were mostly on their own.
“We are being torn to pieces, people falling down like flies, and why are we here?” the soldier said. “It’s unclear.”

The New York Times

SlothmanAllen said:

I wonder? Is this the most destructive war in terms of equipment lost since the Vietnam War? Trying to think of another modern conflict that would match-up to Vietnam.

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US lost 3000+ planes in Vietnam, there's quite a ways to go.

Phead128 said:

I agree 100% with your chart for gauging "short-term" victories.

But in the "long-term", it's arbitrary to defined victory based on land gains, because Russia didn't enter the war to gain more land, it entered the war to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine (i.e., formalized neutrality, via treaty or practicality). Now with Finland/Sweden certainly acceding to NATO, the long-term conditions for victory is different.

Yes, technically, a landlocked and militarily-weakened Western Ukraine satisfies the condition for defacto neutralization, but only in the narrow military sense, not in the political sense.

View attachment 92083

Russia can still salvage this with regime change (not necessarily full-annexation), just place a pro-Russia successor regime in Kiev. That would offset the accession of Finland/Sweden and make it a Russian-leaning mixed victory.

Click to expand...

The situation with Sweden and Finland needs careful examination of the small print.
There is more than an element of PR stunt in the announcement and it looks as though what we really had was an Agreement in Principle or Memorandum of Understanding to ensure that NATO could claim unity at its summit.

The reality however, as I understand it, is that in order to satisfy the demands of Turkey to permit accession, Sweden and Finland will need to de-register three Kurdish Organisations as promoting Freedom and Democracy and Relabel them as Terrorist Organisations.
Likewise, there are about ninety individuals who will need to be stripped of their official Asylum Seeker status and re-categorised as Terrorists, prior to their extradition back to Turkey to stand trial in a Turkish court.

Well, maybe they will, but then maybe this is easier said than done and the criteria will never be met to any level sufficient for Turkey to agree.

Biscuits said:

A landlocked Ukraine is just a huge liability for the side (NATO) who gets it, it's almost better than if Russia annexes the whole thing.

Sweden, although not Finland as much, has always been informal member of NATO. They had a brief stint with neutral foreign policy, then Olof Palme, an outspoken critic of the American regime, was murdered under mysterious circumstances, and since then Sweden has toed Washington's line. The main reason they weren't in NATO is because Turkey doesn't like them.

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Russian problem with Ukraine is its capability to station USA IRBMs.


Landlocked Ukraine still has the capability to station USA weapons. Means simply landlocking Ukraine, without satisfactory Russian security gurantees is a failure.


Same for Finland/Sweeden, no one care about few USA meatball lingering around , but to station USA IRBMs , ABM and so on it will be different story.