The War in the Ukraine

FairAndUnbiased said:

this is one of the few good things they're doing. There is some critical land in Ukraine but having the conquered people is a goal, if implicit, in a way that it wasn't for any other war except maybe Sino-Japanese WW2.

The problem with losing Izyum is that it controls a major bridgehead, refer to map:

Izyum is at the confluence of the Oskil and Siversky Donets rivers, a highly strategic position. Control it and control a bridgehead over the Oskil and Siversky Donets into Luhansk oblast. Bad. If Russians lose Izyum with no corresponding gains elsewhere despite Ukrainian reserves being redeployed away from the southern axis, it is a loss for nothing. But if the Russians manage to make gains near Mykolaiv or Zaporizhia then it will be a trade. A bad trade for Russia, but still a trade rather than nothing. Losing Izyum, while not as devastating as losing Kherson, is a loss of a very important location.

I have to hand it to the Ukrainians on this one. They had the courage to sacrifice a huge amount of troops in Kherson and special forces at Zaporizhia to make gains at Kharkiv. Turns out the Kherson offensive was indeed a feint. A huge, expensive feint, but a feint nonetheless.

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if russia wanted to make gains to offset izyum they needed to mobilize like yesterday. clearly there is no other way to win this now for them. this is what happens when you want to avoid hard decisions. Putin seems to be making a lot of mistake here, lucky for China i guess.

best thing russia can do now is mobilize and hopefully double its army's size by next february, that would allow it to not only threaten sumy, but also zaprozhia and dnipropetrovsk.

drowingfish said:

if russia wanted to make gains to offset izyum they needed to mobilize like yesterday. clearly there is no other way to win this now for them. this is what happens when you want to avoid hard decisions. Putin seems to be making a lot of mistake here, lucky for China i guess.

best thing russia can do now is mobilize and hopefully double its army's size by next february, that would allow it to not only threaten sumy, but also zaprozhia and dnipropetrovsk.

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if they mobilized they wouldn't lose Izyum in the first place as there'd be nowhere for Ukrainian technicals to break through. Wonder what their reserves look like.

Broccoli said:

I read your message but didn't see the part where you explain why alleged superpower Russia is getting pummeled by Ukrainians.

And please... don't compare modern Russia with Soviet Union as the latter was actually superpower.

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do you think soldiers who barely has APC to drive around and due to effectiveness of Ruaf can only walk on foot can surround any one?
think harder you will get the answer.

Janiz said:

We've seen some vehicles from this formation destroyed by Ukrainians on the way to Kup'yans'k yesterday. But they're mainly sitting on the left bank of the Dnieper securing the forces fighting on the other bank of the river near Kherson.

I think that's how they might portray the collapse to the tzar in Moscow. They should take notes because even Russian MoD could learn a few things from you on how to make official statements.

And we've already seen in the past few months that Russians aren't gods of war and they have a lot of problems with maneuvering the forces and advancing.

New heights. What's the bait here?

lol. Many of you don't know about that but there wasn't too much committed by the AFU in the area. In reality the offensive is being conducted by the troops that were fighting in the area since February. No, they aren't using reserves there. The effort is minimal there. It was around Kherson where they indeed got some more reinforcements but those weren't really that big in reality. That's why no one took it seriously (especially Russians it seems).

What potential? Because the only potential left seems like nukes if anything.

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I am really not going to go point for point, but if you want to come crowing every time the Ukrainians actually manage to hit something, that is your prerogative.
I don't buy this thing about the forces being involved only being small, because a lot of chatter has been saying otherwise for weeks and if that was not the case, then the Ukrainians could have done this ages ago.

As for what potential, The Ukraine is fully mobilsed and totally leveraged with NATO support. Russia has not even sent in more than a part of its Armed Forces and have not started any serious form of mobilisation. In short the Russians are still at the bottom of the escalatory ladder while the Ukraine is already at the top.

Even as things are, the Ukrainian armed forces are taking a terrific pounding while the Russians are just pulling back with minimal loss, doing the land for men trade that Kiev seems impossible to understand.
For someone who lambasts the Russians for believing their own propaganda, you seem to drink the Western Koolaid by the bucket.
Personally I am more than happy to just sit back and get a clearer picture over the coming days.
I still think that this counter offensive will go the same way as the Kherson and do so pretty quickly.

Biscuits said:

Disagree on winter necessarily favoring Russia.

If Ukraine had waited with the current large offensives (where likely the backbone is NATO volunteers) until winter, it could have been far more devastating. AFU struggles heavily with river crossings, but during the winter, such areas will freeze over and Ukrainian trucks and leg infantry can just go over the rivers to keep proving through the underequipped and understaffed LDPR forces. In other words, Oskil would not have been the dead end for them like in the current offensive.

If Russia is to draw advantage of the winter, they need to start pumping men into Ukraine in earnest. Without mobilisation, the most Russians can do is to find chokepoints and hold ground with no way of advancing.

In a way, AFU has exposed its capability and the uselessness of Wagner + LDPR proxy war strategy without incurring a devastating loss of men on the Allied side. Losing territory is bad, but for currently manpower starved Russia, losing soldiers is much much worse. Hence why Russians were in a hurry to get out instead of doing heroic last stands like the Azov.

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yes mobilization is the obvious move here i have stated that many times before.

but river crossing is just one aspect of warfare, not even the prime factor here. like i said there is a huge difference between operations in summer and winter, and i dont think the majority of the current ukr forces, who were all raised in the summer, are primed for that. to give you some example, in summer you can live off of what ever you pack and carry. at night you sleep in the sleeping bag with a foam mattress. if you do that in the winter you and your whole company will all freeze to death. so what do you need? you need winter tents, and lanterns for heating, stoves for cooking, you need more people to lose sleep on firewatch because that lantern needs to stay on all night to heat the tent etc. if your soldiers are doing this for the first time it will be a huge drain on morale. this is why i am telling people to look at more than just the map, there are these technical aspects that people without military background fail to consider, but those will make a huge difference.

SampanViking said:

I am really not going to go point for point, but if you want to come crowing every time the Ukrainians actually manage to hit something, that is your prerogative.
I don't buy this thing about the forces being involved only being small, because a lot of chatter has been saying otherwise for weeks and if that was not the case, then the Ukrainians could have done this ages ago.

As for what potential, The Ukraine is fully mobilsed and totally leveraged with NATO support. Russia has not even sent in more than a part of its Armed Forces and have not started any serious form of mobilisation. In short the Russians are still at the bottom of the escalatory ladder while the Ukraine is already at the top.

Even as things are, the Ukrainian armed forces are taking a terrific pounding while the Russians are just pulling back with minimal loss, doing the land for men trade that Kiev seems impossible to understand.
For someone who lambasts the Russians for believing their own propaganda, you seem to drink the Western Koolaid by the bucket.
Personally I am more than happy to just sit back and get a clearer picture over the coming days.
I still think that this counter offensive will go the same way as the Kherson and do so pretty quickly.

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yes russia for sure made the right decision, there are no good decision here when the other side has the initiative, but preserving its forces is definitely more important than land. even if you want to mobilize, you need these experienced men to lead the incoming draftees.

it is hard to overstate the loss here because like i said it is also a loss of initiative, but if russia mobilizes it can easily turn the tide early next year.

BoraTas said:

- Lack of a counter to Javelin. Javelin's development was started in 1985. So even the Soviet Union probably knew of it. But we have Russia lacking a counter to it 37 years later. The Soviet Union used to come up with reliable counters to new Western ATGMs in 10 years at maximum.

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The Soviets started developing ERA and APS before the West did. So I don't know what you are talking about.

BoraTas said:

- Complete lack of SEAD. They weren't planning to wage a war of conquest against a country with Soviet AA legacy. They completely ignored it. We are at the 7th month and the Russian Air Force is still confined to low altitudes.

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BS. We have seen the Su-34 in SEAD missions with Kh-31P since start of the war. Most of the Ukr S-300 systems seem to be gone at this point. The Buk is easy to hide inside buildings and the like. You can just fire it, and then hide inside a barn.

BoraTas said:

- Inadequate communications equipment. We know a lot of Russian soldiers are using radios that you can buy from a supermarket.

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Ukrainian comms are even worse with a lot of people using smartphones to talk. At least Russia is forcing everyone to use HF.

BoraTas said:

- Artillery use methods are backward. I wrote a dedicated message about this in past. Little to no smoke, guided or cluster munitions. Little mechanization in ammo handling. Artillery pieces that are mostly been left unmodernized since the 1980s. No shoot and scoot. No MRSI. Bad communications with ISR assets and front line units. Lack of proximity fuses in shells. Considering how much they plan their military around their artillery, this is very consequential.

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Cluster munitions have been banned. Russia has modernized artillery it is just that it is not available in the numbers required for this campaign.

BoraTas said:

- Not enough infantry for a country as big as Ukraine. This could be corrected between 2014 and 2022. Instead we had scaledowns and partial commitment.

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It was. Russia raised lots of divisions between 2012 and 2022. Basically everything you see with T-72B3 and T-72B3M.

Intrepid said:

Putin made the wrong assumptions. His war was planned as just a quick, short attack. Now he is confronted with a costly, long-lasting war (a second Afghanistan, so to speak).

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There is no evidence for this. If it was planned as a short attack then it wouldn't be focused on the Donbass region. They would have gone for a decapitation attack.

Overbom said:

Delusional copium
How many NATO aircraft, ships, divisions, brigades, tanks, is Russia fighting against?
This is a war between Russia and a NATO-supported Ukraine. That's it.
Russia can't even handle a NATO proxy war lol

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Poland sent Ukraine 200x T-72M1 tanks and the Czechs, etc sent another 100x T-72M1 tanks. Then you have NATO "volunteers". But sure just ignore this. I know who lost their own terrain thus far and it wasn't Russia.

TongHua said:

The fact that Russia has no combat MALE drones the entire war speaks volumes about failure of Russian high command. You are not a power if you don't have combat MALE drones. Indeed. even a small number of TB2 showed important impact in the war. Imagine if Russia had hundreds of Mohajer 6. This is a small scale war. The entire Ukrainian army only has low hundreds tanks / BMP / BTR to begin with. Even a few squadrons of combat MALE drones would decisively shift the balance of power to Russians and they refuse to use combat MALE drones. If there is a anyone who deserve to lose, it's Russians, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

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Bollocks. Russia has the Orion drone. And it has been used in the conflict. It is just not available in enough quantity since they only expanded the factory to build it this year.

Better to preserve fighting forces than lose them to hold onto non vital/non strategic territories. Chinese Civil War lessons.

FairAndUnbiased said:

if they mobilized they wouldn't lose Izyum in the first place as there'd be nowhere for Ukrainian technicals to break through. Wonder what their reserves look like.

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lol true, i think the general agreement here is that putin shouldve mobilized as soon as it was clear that ukraine wasnt gonna collapse overnight. but better late than never i guess. for putin mobilization is akin to going "all in", i understand the reluctance, but if you chose war then you have to make a hard decision at some point.

i also wonder about the possibility of the military keeping the bulk of its forces from the frontline to pressure kremlin into mobilizing.

Ukrainian troops entering and leaving Russian territory with impunity, according to Russian sources... This has gotten out of control!!


The Russian command used to say that the Russian territory was untouchable, but the attacks are frequent... If there is no new phase in this conflict, Russia will have an embarrassing military and political defeat...