The War in the Ukraine

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gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
lolrus said:
It seems that the annexation has not yet been ratified, so as of right now it's little more than a piece of paper. But it seems Russia will probably ratify it by October 4th.
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Russia seems to be going for maximalist claims. i.e. the whole of Zaporizhzhia oblast and districts of Nikolayev oblast which they control near Kherson.

xypher said:
They can already use whatever they want, anti-terrorist operation is a lower tier than special military operation. The latter has less limitations on the type and quantity of military equipment used. So the only avenue for further escalation is war declaration, imposition of wartime laws (restrictions on citizen movement, war economy and taxes, etc.) and full mobilization. Needless to say that if Putin is unable to quickly win after doing that, he is finished, so we will see whether he is ready or he again goes with "partial" stuff & imposes wartime laws only in the border regions, while postponing further mobilization to mid-October/early-November.
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No. If Russia changes the conflict in Ukraine to an anti-terrorist operation then the Ukrainian leadership itself will become a viable target. Russia assassinated all the leaders of Chechnya during the insurgency even the ones which fled to the Gulf ended up dead. That is a big difference.
 
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drowingfish

Junior Member
Registered Member
Anlsvrthng said:
Or try to make a peace agreement prior of facing several times more Russian on the frontlines ?

At the moment they chargin and using up all reserves accumulated in the past half year, sending the NATO stuff into the same hole that consumed all Soviet era military stuff.


At same point the Russians will decide it is time to cut off the Ukrain forces and resuply, and destroy the road and rail network in Ukraine, and make an end to the highly mobile warfare of the Ukrainan units.


They can send freely the NATO units from Poland to Donetsk, easyest way to slow it down is to blow up the bridges and railways.

Not doing it means the Russians doesn't see the current push serious enoguht.
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lol i have been asking the same question since the first month of the war, why not take out the bridges over the dnieper?

it seems now that russia actually cant destroy those bridges, ukraine with all of its long range firepower could not destroy the antonov bridge. but i still think russia could damage the rail bridges enough to disrupt ukraine's logistics.
 
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Virtup

Junior Member
Registered Member
drowingfish said:
lol i have been asking the same question since the first month of the war, why not take out the bridges over the dnieper?

it seems now that russia actually cant destroy those bridges, ukraine with all of its long range firepower could not destroy the antonov bridge. but i still think russia could damage the rail bridges enough to disrupt ukraine's logistics.
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There's a huge difference between being hit by a few rockets and shells and being smashed by a mach 3 cruise missile with 1000 kg warhead. Russia has the ability to barrage those bridges with such missiles and can resort to the kinzhal if they're well defended. That they haven't even tried to do so is what makes me want to wait untill we figure out what's going on in their heads.
 
phrozenflame

phrozenflame

Junior Member
Registered Member
plawolf said:
Do you know what the most interesting aspect of all these Ukrainian deep breakthrough ‘sweeping victories’ are to me? That they have yet to engage and defeat any meaningfully sized Russian formations.

There are heavy engagements at times, but it’s always a case of the Russians withdrawing of their own accord rather than breaking and fleeing as the pro-Ukrainian twitterverse would have you believe.

There are just the same scale of losses of a handful of Russians dead here and abandoned vehicle there that we have seen before. If not for all the tongue-wagging online, and if we were to just look at verifiable Russian battlefield losses, would anyone really see evidence of a significant uptick in Russian losses, as one would expect from the amount of territory they have lost?

The Ukrainians are undoubtedly gaining group, a lot of ground. But they are paying for that ground dearly with blood and equipment and munitions and not being able as yet to pin down and destroy any meaningful Russian strengths. All the while pushing their best forces deeper and deeper into Russian held territory and extending their supply lines and getting far from their trenches, fortifications and civilian human shields. Worst of all, they are doing it at the wrong time of year.

If the Ukrainians are not very careful, they can very easily find themselves in a situation where general mud and frost arrives and bogs down much of their forces along a long and wide exposed front, far from supplies and stripped of the vegetation cover they have thus far replied upon so heavily to escape Russian firepower.

The Russian artillery have a hard time hitting mobile forces on the move, but even they will have no problems pounding columns bogged down in the mud.

With the leaves gone, the current MIA Russian fixed-wing TacAir might at last make an appearance.

This whole ‘collapse’ just screams danger, yet the Ukrainians are going all in. That screams the worst kind of incompetence and desperation to me.

Just think about it, if the Russians are truly hard pressed, they have hundreds of thousands of standing force strengths they can immediately deploy. They have a hell of a lot of top tier aviation and ground forces in Syria they could redeploy. They have a lot of forces that were just doing war games they could redeploy. Yet instead of doing any of that, they are calling up conscripts.

As far as I can see, the greatest value in the Russian partial mobilisation is in silencing the doubters in Ukraine and the west and to convince them that Russia is indeed on the ropes so they continue with their current mass offensives instead to looking to try to consolidate their gains and actually hold onto any of it.

I foresee a couple of months where the worsening weather bogs down the Ukrainian advance and essentially traps them in place for Russian artillery and aviation to work relentlessly on until the weather gets cold enough to freeze the ground and allow tanks and heavy vehicles to pass unimpeded once more. Then the Russians will launch their winter offensives with the professional soldiers spearheading the attack while the freshly raised conscripts are used to bulk up their numbers where needed, and to hold ground behind the front lines.

The biggest questions are just how much of Ukraine’s best forces they can pin and destroy before to make that offensive as easy and cheap as possible for them.
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Russian losses arent just token ignorable losses when they do retreat from narrow vectors of exit, surrounded from 2-3 direction.

We heard the same 'banzai charge in Kharkhiv', going to run out of steam anytime now, then it was Izyium, then Lyman, now it's Kherson. Ukraine is now building up resources in Zaporizhzhya sector as well as per Russian intel. I recall how arrogantly many said mobilization is not needed up to less than a month ago too. Now we are at soon (tm) Russia will unleash total war. Anytime now.

With winter coming, Ukrainians will find it difficult to supply, but Russians will find it even harder with Iziyum and Lyman train networks out of reach, Kherson depending on choke points across river etc.

If Russians deployed 200k men to fight 500-900k Ukrainians backed by West in all manners, then it's Russia's miscalculation.

All of this, either its gross incompetence or corruption, in reality, it's probably a mix of both.

Many here count on the 'winter', so? Then there is summer again, just more months for Ukraine to train and equip more troops, they practically have access to unlimited credit line for the war. US has made that much clear. Americans will arm Ukrainians just enough to make it a grind and wear out Russians. They wont supply enough to end the war in a month's time, no, they'll keep the wound bleeding. This is becoming Iraq/Afghanistan on steroids for Russia.

Remember, people joked about 'haha Ukraine training sekrit big army for big offensive', that did eventually materialize.

Now I'm not saying Russians cant react and evolve, they did do that. I think it's a coin-toss a moment.
 
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plawolf

plawolf

Lieutenant General
tankphobia said:
You can't engage what doesn't exist. The Ukranian side can only fight what Russian forces choose to stand and fight when at risk of encirclement. Instead, they're doing the withdrawal thing that they have been doing for the last month.

Once again, it is not up to Ukraine to decide what forces Russia choose to commit, if Russia decides to put paper thin defenses on their fronts, why is that suddenly the fault of Ukraine to exploit their weakness?

Concentrating your forces and punching through at the weakest point does not mean that Ukraine is "suicide charging" whatever that means. This is a war, there's no sitting behind computer screens waiting for it all to blow over, why would they not spend available manpower to expel the enemy? This the weakest point for the Russian armed forces until mobilized reserves join in a month or two, why would Ukraine not seek to gain as much defensible ground as possible?
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Do you understand anything about how basic warfare works?

Territory only has value if it confers strategic or tactical value.

You don’t just advance for the sake of advancing because the enemy has put weak defences there to allow you to advance there. That’s literally falling for the most basic rouse there is to send your forces where the enemy want them to go!

You talk of Russians doing the ‘withdrawal thing’ like they are cheating and just calling time-out whenever the Ukrainians are about to land a telling blow.

The very fact that the Russians can casually and consistently do their ‘withdrawal thing’ when the Ukrainians are pressing them as hard as they can should be setting of all sorts of alarm bells in the mind of any half competent commander. Because that shows significant capabilities and competence and is not the sign of an enemy on the ropes and his last legs like western social media would have you believe.

In this war, indeed, almost all wars, territory matter a lot less than men and material. If you have men and hardware, you can retake lost territory. Loose all your men and war machines and how are you going to keep all the territory you took?

The Russians have never forgotten this principle and have been focusing on destroying the fighting strength of Ukraine while preserving their own as much as possible.

Giving up territory to buy time and wear down the enemy is as Russian a tactic as there is. Napoleon and Hitler advanced to Moscow and Stalingrad and what did all that captured Russian territory count for when the Russian counter-offensives rolled forwards?

The Ukrainians are paying a steep butchers’ bill for all their advances but they are not able to destroy much in the way of Russian troops.

This is the boxing equivalent of someone swinging and missing all his big blows while chasing the other guy all round the ring, taking jabs to the face all the while and thinking he is winning because the other guy is ‘withdrawing’.
 
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Pmichael

Junior Member
It's somewhat remarkable that somehow Russia didn't lose tons of equipment and also many soldiers in the past month. Just the amount of aircraft lost in their desperate attempt of providing air support is basically not recoverable in any reasonable time frame.
 
phrozenflame

phrozenflame

Junior Member
Registered Member
Anlsvrthng said:
Or try to make a peace agreement prior of facing several times more Russian on the frontlines ?

At the moment they chargin and using up all reserves accumulated in the past half year, sending the NATO stuff into the same hole that consumed all Soviet era military stuff.


At same point the Russians will decide it is time to cut off the Ukrain forces and resuply, and destroy the road and rail network in Ukraine, and make an end to the highly mobile warfare of the Ukrainan units.


They can send freely the NATO units from Poland to Donetsk, easyest way to slow it down is to blow up the bridges and railways.

Not doing it means the Russians doesn't see the current push serious enoguht.
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'At some points Russians will decide'. If you dont make decisions, you enemies will make it for you.

'Not doing it means the Russians doesn't see the current push serious enoguht.' Serious enough to mobilize 300,000 men at the least, change of command, pulling out more soviet stocks, etc. But sure, 'not serious enough'. Anyway, 300k is a good move for Russia, about 2 months late. They should anticipate there will be a response and just mad max this to 500-600k.
 
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