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Warfare Russia/Ukraine War
- Thread starter morris
- Start date
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Typical ruskie rubish and S**t - ruskies have destroyed vz. 77 DANA M2 supposedly, but any vz. 77 DANA M2 not exist, but DANA M2... and more, no DANA M2 has been delivered to Ukraine... ehhh so ruskies have destroyed what? And more, vz. 77 is still in service with Czech Army, and there was not any scandal about DANA M2 and Ukraine in Czechia... So what ruskie idiot is talking in the video about?
Andrei Leonov, Vice President of the Russian Steel Association:"....Russian steel mills employing 200,000 people are shutting down blast furnaces and rolling mills one after the other due to sanctions. Production of steel and steel alloys fell by 20-50% in June 2022. Of the 76 million tonnes of steel produced in 2021 in Oo, 43.5 million went for export - markets now closed to the Russians.
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works shuts down 2 of its 8 blast furnaces and cuts pig iron production by 30%, with total output down more than 40%. Seversstal will shut down 20-25% of its capacity for the time being...."
Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works shuts down 2 of its 8 blast furnaces and cuts pig iron production by 30%, with total output down more than 40%. Seversstal will shut down 20-25% of its capacity for the time being...."
The front lines of the war in Ukraine have frozen over the past week. There has been no substantial movement anywhere, with positional fighting and reconnaissance operations.
After the capture of Lysychansk, Putin ordered a pause in operations, so the Russians essentially stopped on the line where the Ukrainian retreat had ended. This was a huge brake, we expected the momentum to take the Russians at least as far as the Siversk - Soledar - Bakhmut line, but they haven't got that far yet, the front is now about 10 kilometres east of that.
According to the official communication, Russian units need rest and recharge to regain their combat capability. The retreating army is one of the most vulnerable targets in a war, and by putting pressure on it, it is easy to achieve breakthroughs and even strategic defeat of the enemy. The Russians' immediate halt indicates that they suffered losses during Severodonetsk and Lyshchansk of a magnitude that did not even allow them to maintain pressure. The other possible reason is more political, more on that later (of course, the two together are also possible).
Beyond all this, however, is the arrival of Western missile artillery systems in the war. Every day for the past week, Russian munitions depots have been destroyed in 2-3-4 locations far behind the front line. The Ukrainians clearly see the system as a strategic asset and are targeting Russian logistics. We wrote a long post on the impact of this yesterday morning, it is worth a read.
Taking out key points of the Russian supply system on the eastern front could mean in the medium term that the Russians are stuck in a "pause in operations". The Russian success around Severodonetsk and Lyshchansk came from weeks of continuous shelling of everything in their path, and the infantry eventually succeeded in pushing the Ukrainian defenders out of the rubble. During the four months of the war, this was the only tactical element that brought the Russians tangible success, but it will no longer be sustainable if ammunition supplies begin to falter.
In Donbass, the sieges of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk will be the next high point of the war, but the Russians are still a long way from that. They have been trying to gain the upper hand north of the two cities for weeks and troops have been arriving steadily. Their deployment has so far been uninterrupted, but in recent days Ukrainian rocket attacks have hit Russian transport routes and warehouses on both the north and east banks of the Donetsk River, as well as an Izium command centre.
From the east, the Russians would have to peel through on the aforementioned Siversk - Soledar - Bakhmut line, which is about 30 kilometres from the twin cities. The pace of the Russians has not been fast so far (remember, the operation to take the Donbass after the abandonment of the Kiev and Kharkiv fronts is almost 90 days old and they have managed to take an area the size of Budapest in that time), but so far at least their artillery-based tactics have worked.
On the southern front, the Ukrainians are also taking out Russian depots one by one. The situation is a bit different in this area than in Donbass. The transport routes here are longer and do not reach them in their full depth, but the railway network is not so dense, essentially limited to 2-3 lines. Part of the Herszon warehouses have been destroyed, but Melitopol and the railway bridge to the east of it were also attacked.
Collapsing the Hershon supply would require even longer-range rockets to give the Ukrainians better firepower on the Crimean lines, but there could already be problems, especially as there are only three bridges across the Dnieper at Herszon - two in the town of Herszon and one at Nova Kakhovka - and two of these are now accessible by tube artillery.
On the basis of the above, it is expected that in the medium term the Russians will not be able to regain momentum on the Donbas front, or will do so only very slowly, and that they may be forced to retreat gradually at Herson if Ukrainian pressure, which has been maintained for weeks, intensifies.
Serious changes are unlikely in the next 1-2 weeks, after which we may see the real impact of the HIMARS systems on Russian logistics. I wrote above about the political implications, but it's already a longer post than I thought, so I'll leave the diplomatic war to another post.
-hp
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After the capture of Lysychansk, Putin ordered a pause in operations, so the Russians essentially stopped on the line where the Ukrainian retreat had ended. This was a huge brake, we expected the momentum to take the Russians at least as far as the Siversk - Soledar - Bakhmut line, but they haven't got that far yet, the front is now about 10 kilometres east of that.
According to the official communication, Russian units need rest and recharge to regain their combat capability. The retreating army is one of the most vulnerable targets in a war, and by putting pressure on it, it is easy to achieve breakthroughs and even strategic defeat of the enemy. The Russians' immediate halt indicates that they suffered losses during Severodonetsk and Lyshchansk of a magnitude that did not even allow them to maintain pressure. The other possible reason is more political, more on that later (of course, the two together are also possible).
Beyond all this, however, is the arrival of Western missile artillery systems in the war. Every day for the past week, Russian munitions depots have been destroyed in 2-3-4 locations far behind the front line. The Ukrainians clearly see the system as a strategic asset and are targeting Russian logistics. We wrote a long post on the impact of this yesterday morning, it is worth a read.
Taking out key points of the Russian supply system on the eastern front could mean in the medium term that the Russians are stuck in a "pause in operations". The Russian success around Severodonetsk and Lyshchansk came from weeks of continuous shelling of everything in their path, and the infantry eventually succeeded in pushing the Ukrainian defenders out of the rubble. During the four months of the war, this was the only tactical element that brought the Russians tangible success, but it will no longer be sustainable if ammunition supplies begin to falter.
In Donbass, the sieges of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk will be the next high point of the war, but the Russians are still a long way from that. They have been trying to gain the upper hand north of the two cities for weeks and troops have been arriving steadily. Their deployment has so far been uninterrupted, but in recent days Ukrainian rocket attacks have hit Russian transport routes and warehouses on both the north and east banks of the Donetsk River, as well as an Izium command centre.
From the east, the Russians would have to peel through on the aforementioned Siversk - Soledar - Bakhmut line, which is about 30 kilometres from the twin cities. The pace of the Russians has not been fast so far (remember, the operation to take the Donbass after the abandonment of the Kiev and Kharkiv fronts is almost 90 days old and they have managed to take an area the size of Budapest in that time), but so far at least their artillery-based tactics have worked.
On the southern front, the Ukrainians are also taking out Russian depots one by one. The situation is a bit different in this area than in Donbass. The transport routes here are longer and do not reach them in their full depth, but the railway network is not so dense, essentially limited to 2-3 lines. Part of the Herszon warehouses have been destroyed, but Melitopol and the railway bridge to the east of it were also attacked.
Collapsing the Hershon supply would require even longer-range rockets to give the Ukrainians better firepower on the Crimean lines, but there could already be problems, especially as there are only three bridges across the Dnieper at Herszon - two in the town of Herszon and one at Nova Kakhovka - and two of these are now accessible by tube artillery.
On the basis of the above, it is expected that in the medium term the Russians will not be able to regain momentum on the Donbas front, or will do so only very slowly, and that they may be forced to retreat gradually at Herson if Ukrainian pressure, which has been maintained for weeks, intensifies.
Serious changes are unlikely in the next 1-2 weeks, after which we may see the real impact of the HIMARS systems on Russian logistics. I wrote above about the political implications, but it's already a longer post than I thought, so I'll leave the diplomatic war to another post.
-hp
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part two
One of the most significant developments on the Ukrainian front last week was the arrival of long-awaited Western missile artillery systems and long-range guns, which resulted in daily pictures and videos of Russian ammunition and fuel depots going up in smoke or being destroyed in explosions. Below is a look at the impact of this new development on Russian artillery logistics. This post is largely a translation of a paper by Thomas C. Theiner, with additional information from elsewhere.
---
Since 2014, the Russian military has deployed dozens of ammunition depots near railway stations in separatist-held areas. Russian ammunition depots are always located close to the railways, as their army suffers from a serious shortage of logistic units and transport vehicles. This is compounded by army corruption and technological backwardness. The latter is reflected in seemingly ordinary things such as the lack of forklifts and crane trucks for loading, but they also lack standard pallets and optimised transport capacity.
Supplies and ammunition are loaded onto trains by hand, transported to the front, unloaded again by hand and then loaded onto trucks by hand again. These are then taken to the direct combat units, where they are again unloaded by hand. This is, of course, an extremely time-consuming process.
How did the Russian ammunition supply work in Donbass before the Ukrainians received the M142 HIMARS systems, the PzH 2000, AHS Krab and CAESAR self-propelled guns?
2-4000 tons of ammunition were loaded onto train trains in Russia. The train reached Ukraine and the cargo was unloaded and stored 30-40 km from the front. Units fighting at the front sent their transport vehicles to the depots for ammunition, but the same was true for food, fuel, spare parts and other supplies.
The Russians, so dependent on the railways, maintain a corps of nearly 30,000 men just to run the network, whose task is to repair, maintain and build railway lines. If the Russian army loses its link with the railways, its entire logistics system will collapse.
Their march on eastern Kiev in the early stages of the war failed because they could not capture the railways around Chernihiv and Sumy due to unexpected resistance from the Ukrainian army. They had to use trucks to transport the war material under Kiev, which ended in disaster. Russian units cannot move more than 90-100 kilometres from their depots, and even this distance is only enough to maintain defensive lines. The distance between the Russian rail network and the Kiev suburbs was 300 kilometres, and was inundated by Ukrainian special forces and partisans hunting convoys.
In Donbass, Herzon and Zaporizhzhya, however, they can supply the army via railways. This allows them to deliver endless quantities of artillery ammunition to the front for the total destruction of Ukrainian villages, along with combat vehicles, fuel and all other supplies.
However, Russian munitions depots are now falling within range of Ukrainian guns and missiles. The German PzH 2000, the Polish AHS Krab and the French CAESAR can fire up to 40 kilometres, and even further with special ammunition. These guns use a GPS-based fire control system that can set the right firing parameters by accurately comparing their position with the position of the target. In addition, all three systems use their own radars to track the fired projectile and, if necessary, refine the aiming before the next shot is fired.
The Ukrainian army has never before had such a long-range and accurate gun. However, they allow them to destroy targets 35 kilometres behind the front line with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to data provided by partisans and civilians in the target area. The Ukrainians have developed a special phone application through which anyone can transmit target coordinates to their army.
In addition to these, the Ukrainian army has also received GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) missile systems with a range of 85 kilometres, but if less precise targeting is required, say for large buildings, this can be even more.
Effect of these weapons:
1, The Russians lose thousands of tons of ammunition due to the targeting of their stockpiles
2, They will have to move their depots back, up to 100 kilometres from the front
irst, each destroyed depot reduces the Russians' ability to properly supply their artillery, and the ammunition destroyed must be replaced. Although they have huge stocks, they cannot produce ammunition at the rate at which it is now being used. The fact that Belarusian stocks have already started to be shipped to Ukraine is an indication of this.
Secondly, the Russians cannot bring this large quantity of ammunition within range of Ukrainian rocket artillery, so they have to stop train trains 95-100 kilometres from the front, otherwise the Ukrainians will shoot them down. This will result in the Russians being forced to use trucks again.
Russia has lost over a thousand transport vehicles during the war, and the trucks now running have been subjected to months of heavy use, and the notoriously poor Russian maintenance methods are sure to decimate them.
So how will Russian logistics work in these circumstances:
1, Train trains will stop 100 kilometres from the front and be unloaded by hand
2, The trucks are loaded by hand and driven to the front. Both processes take hours, and Russian trucks carry less payload than Western trucks, as Russian ammunition does not come in standardised packaging, but in large wooden crates (remember the large crates under Kiev at the beginning of the war)
3., Ammunition arrives at the front, is unloaded by hand, the truck drives back to the depot
At this distance, with manual loading and unloading, a truck will not really be able to make more than one turn a day, and then we haven't even counted the errors. The Russian military does not have logistics management systems capable of handling this task, so without further ado, ammunition could go to the wrong place. This causes further problems, because there will be too much somewhere, which may have to be left there, and not enough elsewhere. If the car is left with the gunners, there will be a lack of delivery capacity from elsewhere.
NATO member states use advanced software and AI to manage logistics, but the Russians rely mostly on the instincts of their officers, which is not necessarily a problem when everything is ideal for them. In Donbas, this was the case until last week.
But the Russian is a 20th century army with 19th century logistics in a 21st century war. It will take time, but just as the NLAW, the Javelin and the Stinger helped the Ukrainians to victory at Kiev, the PzH 2000, the Krab and the CAESAR could be decisive factors in the theatre of operations in Donbass and Kherson. As the saying goes: amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
One of the most significant developments on the Ukrainian front last week was the arrival of long-awaited Western missile artillery systems and long-range guns, which resulted in daily pictures and videos of Russian ammunition and fuel depots going up in smoke or being destroyed in explosions. Below is a look at the impact of this new development on Russian artillery logistics. This post is largely a translation of a paper by Thomas C. Theiner, with additional information from elsewhere.
---
Since 2014, the Russian military has deployed dozens of ammunition depots near railway stations in separatist-held areas. Russian ammunition depots are always located close to the railways, as their army suffers from a serious shortage of logistic units and transport vehicles. This is compounded by army corruption and technological backwardness. The latter is reflected in seemingly ordinary things such as the lack of forklifts and crane trucks for loading, but they also lack standard pallets and optimised transport capacity.
Supplies and ammunition are loaded onto trains by hand, transported to the front, unloaded again by hand and then loaded onto trucks by hand again. These are then taken to the direct combat units, where they are again unloaded by hand. This is, of course, an extremely time-consuming process.
How did the Russian ammunition supply work in Donbass before the Ukrainians received the M142 HIMARS systems, the PzH 2000, AHS Krab and CAESAR self-propelled guns?
2-4000 tons of ammunition were loaded onto train trains in Russia. The train reached Ukraine and the cargo was unloaded and stored 30-40 km from the front. Units fighting at the front sent their transport vehicles to the depots for ammunition, but the same was true for food, fuel, spare parts and other supplies.
The Russians, so dependent on the railways, maintain a corps of nearly 30,000 men just to run the network, whose task is to repair, maintain and build railway lines. If the Russian army loses its link with the railways, its entire logistics system will collapse.
Their march on eastern Kiev in the early stages of the war failed because they could not capture the railways around Chernihiv and Sumy due to unexpected resistance from the Ukrainian army. They had to use trucks to transport the war material under Kiev, which ended in disaster. Russian units cannot move more than 90-100 kilometres from their depots, and even this distance is only enough to maintain defensive lines. The distance between the Russian rail network and the Kiev suburbs was 300 kilometres, and was inundated by Ukrainian special forces and partisans hunting convoys.
In Donbass, Herzon and Zaporizhzhya, however, they can supply the army via railways. This allows them to deliver endless quantities of artillery ammunition to the front for the total destruction of Ukrainian villages, along with combat vehicles, fuel and all other supplies.
However, Russian munitions depots are now falling within range of Ukrainian guns and missiles. The German PzH 2000, the Polish AHS Krab and the French CAESAR can fire up to 40 kilometres, and even further with special ammunition. These guns use a GPS-based fire control system that can set the right firing parameters by accurately comparing their position with the position of the target. In addition, all three systems use their own radars to track the fired projectile and, if necessary, refine the aiming before the next shot is fired.
The Ukrainian army has never before had such a long-range and accurate gun. However, they allow them to destroy targets 35 kilometres behind the front line with pinpoint accuracy, thanks to data provided by partisans and civilians in the target area. The Ukrainians have developed a special phone application through which anyone can transmit target coordinates to their army.
In addition to these, the Ukrainian army has also received GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) missile systems with a range of 85 kilometres, but if less precise targeting is required, say for large buildings, this can be even more.
Effect of these weapons:
1, The Russians lose thousands of tons of ammunition due to the targeting of their stockpiles
2, They will have to move their depots back, up to 100 kilometres from the front
irst, each destroyed depot reduces the Russians' ability to properly supply their artillery, and the ammunition destroyed must be replaced. Although they have huge stocks, they cannot produce ammunition at the rate at which it is now being used. The fact that Belarusian stocks have already started to be shipped to Ukraine is an indication of this.
Secondly, the Russians cannot bring this large quantity of ammunition within range of Ukrainian rocket artillery, so they have to stop train trains 95-100 kilometres from the front, otherwise the Ukrainians will shoot them down. This will result in the Russians being forced to use trucks again.
Russia has lost over a thousand transport vehicles during the war, and the trucks now running have been subjected to months of heavy use, and the notoriously poor Russian maintenance methods are sure to decimate them.
So how will Russian logistics work in these circumstances:
1, Train trains will stop 100 kilometres from the front and be unloaded by hand
2, The trucks are loaded by hand and driven to the front. Both processes take hours, and Russian trucks carry less payload than Western trucks, as Russian ammunition does not come in standardised packaging, but in large wooden crates (remember the large crates under Kiev at the beginning of the war)
3., Ammunition arrives at the front, is unloaded by hand, the truck drives back to the depot
At this distance, with manual loading and unloading, a truck will not really be able to make more than one turn a day, and then we haven't even counted the errors. The Russian military does not have logistics management systems capable of handling this task, so without further ado, ammunition could go to the wrong place. This causes further problems, because there will be too much somewhere, which may have to be left there, and not enough elsewhere. If the car is left with the gunners, there will be a lack of delivery capacity from elsewhere.
NATO member states use advanced software and AI to manage logistics, but the Russians rely mostly on the instincts of their officers, which is not necessarily a problem when everything is ideal for them. In Donbas, this was the case until last week.
But the Russian is a 20th century army with 19th century logistics in a 21st century war. It will take time, but just as the NLAW, the Javelin and the Stinger helped the Ukrainians to victory at Kiev, the PzH 2000, the Krab and the CAESAR could be decisive factors in the theatre of operations in Donbass and Kherson. As the saying goes: amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Redesign
Towards the end of the Vietnam War, the US used Operation Linebacker 2 to get the warring parties to sit down and negotiate a deal. Nixon was in a hurry to get out of the war, which had become extremely unpopular, but the North and South Vietnamese governments were also stubborn on certain points of peace. Then the B-52 bombers arrived and began bombing Vietnam to a pulp around Christmas 1972. It became clear that the US could, if it wanted to, inflict losses on the front in this proxy war that could not be replaced at a pace. Negotiations were finally concluded.
The situation in Ukraine is very different in many ways, but there are some parallels.
One is that the war in Ukraine is becoming less popular. Although oil prices have started to fall after the big panic, gas prices are rising. It seems likely that there will be no drastic problems this winter, but serious financial problems and politically huge, small problems.
However much many people support the Ukrainians' defence against Russian aggression, they are facing inflation and gas supply problems just as much as the Hungarian pensioners who are enthusiastically cheering for Moscow and who think they should have given up long ago, especially Bandera, and Solovyov on RTR Planetary said that there were pogroms in Lugansk before the Russian liberators arrived. And Biden fell into a speech. Let's forget about them and see what's happening in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, both belligerent sides were exhausted in the fighting over the territory of Lugansk province. Casualty figures are very difficult to gather, but it seems certain that the Russians have sacrificed a great deal of their best troops and their best equipment, and it is also certain that, despite the defending side's advantage in such a war, a great many well-trained, battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers have also perished. Ukraine has most likely dismantled its old Soviet-era military equipment and now depends almost exclusively on Western arms supplies for its success.
Russia needs time at this point to replace the manpower and weapons behind the front and to find a weak point on the Ukrainian lines, as in the last operation in Pomerania, where they were able to break through the Ukrainian defences and surround the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk from the south.
According to news reports, there is a de facto mobilisation in Russia, conscripts are not being deployed, but conscripts and veterans are being persuaded by money and threats to join as contract soldiers. Meanwhile, the pictures are coming back of trains carrying heavy weapons to the front. Experts say these are older generation weapons. Of course, they have been going there before, but now it seems that not only are they being given to the second and third lines, but we should expect to see them in the next Russian attack. If there is a next Russian attack.
In the meantime, Ukraine has acquired a new weapon, the US HIMARS launcher and its GMLRS missile. Both sides have already had Russian weapons in this category. The HIMARS, however, is several generations more advanced and can do some important things. One is that it is very accurate. It can hit buildings 50-80 kilometres behind the front line where the Russians store ammunition and fuel. A typical image of the last 10-12 days is a Russian ammunition depot burning with huge flames, secondary explosions. The Russians, in the critical phase of bringing supplies forward to the front for another offensive, are faced with the fact that if the depot is not at least 70 km from the front, it is in danger. However, with a daily supply surge of 70 km, it is not possible to attack. Obviously, they'll figure out something against HIMARS sooner or later. What's striking is that in 10 days they haven't started hunting it from the air. Hunting it with artillery is almost hopeless. The first three letters of the abbreviation stand for high mobility, which means that once it has fired its missiles, it immediately disappears, and when the missiles hit, it is already kilometres away from the launch site. The answer to this would be an air-to-helicopter hunt, and it is no coincidence that the next US aid mission to Ukraine will be the NASAMS air defence system that we have ordered, and that the Italian-American Aspide system of an earlier generation (given by the Spanish) is already there.
Meanwhile, the area around Herszon and Zaporozhye is a huge issue. It seems that by this morning the Russians had abandoned the village of Kiszelivka, north-west of Herson, which was the last line of defence before the Herson airport. This is all very heroic, but the question is what they can do with Herszon, which the Russians will obviously hold for as long as they can. It is quite another thing to attack a city of hundreds of thousands of people than to go village by village dismantling defensive lines. If this offensive is launched, the Russians will be in a dilemma, because taking Herszon is perhaps their most important success, and losing it would be a huge defeat. If, on the other hand, they concentrate their forces there, it could weaken the positions they have just gained in Lugansk. In addition, if they do not move reinforcements from Crimea, the land corridor (Mariupol, Berdyansk, Melitopol) will be in the range of HIMARS all the time...
But it would be a mistake to think that a Ukrainian triumphal march is imminent. Despite all Russian weaknesses, the Russians are still the much bigger and much stronger army. The current developments (added to the fact that the Russian fleet has been practically pushed out of the waters off Kherson and Odessa) are designed to make war a non-starter, just like the bombing of Vietnam 50 years ago. If hundreds of tons of ammunition are exploding every day, if trains start to derail (one derailed yesterday), the Russians must realise that the territory they occupy is 1) not pacified 2) constantly exposed to deep strike, which they cannot do anything about for the time being.
We know that the Russians can endure quite a lot, the standard of living of the population is a secondary issue. However, the war has now reached the stage where maintaining a military presence in Ukraine has become prohibitively expensive. That is why their cyber attacks against western countries have increased, because they have to try to make war more expensive for them too.
Unless there is a large scale Ukrainian attack around Herszon, we are now in for weeks where this mutual price gouging will be the main trend. A factory shuts down here, an oil refinery blows up there. Without large-scale operations, this could easily mean the rest of the summer.
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Towards the end of the Vietnam War, the US used Operation Linebacker 2 to get the warring parties to sit down and negotiate a deal. Nixon was in a hurry to get out of the war, which had become extremely unpopular, but the North and South Vietnamese governments were also stubborn on certain points of peace. Then the B-52 bombers arrived and began bombing Vietnam to a pulp around Christmas 1972. It became clear that the US could, if it wanted to, inflict losses on the front in this proxy war that could not be replaced at a pace. Negotiations were finally concluded.
The situation in Ukraine is very different in many ways, but there are some parallels.
One is that the war in Ukraine is becoming less popular. Although oil prices have started to fall after the big panic, gas prices are rising. It seems likely that there will be no drastic problems this winter, but serious financial problems and politically huge, small problems.
However much many people support the Ukrainians' defence against Russian aggression, they are facing inflation and gas supply problems just as much as the Hungarian pensioners who are enthusiastically cheering for Moscow and who think they should have given up long ago, especially Bandera, and Solovyov on RTR Planetary said that there were pogroms in Lugansk before the Russian liberators arrived. And Biden fell into a speech. Let's forget about them and see what's happening in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, both belligerent sides were exhausted in the fighting over the territory of Lugansk province. Casualty figures are very difficult to gather, but it seems certain that the Russians have sacrificed a great deal of their best troops and their best equipment, and it is also certain that, despite the defending side's advantage in such a war, a great many well-trained, battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers have also perished. Ukraine has most likely dismantled its old Soviet-era military equipment and now depends almost exclusively on Western arms supplies for its success.
Russia needs time at this point to replace the manpower and weapons behind the front and to find a weak point on the Ukrainian lines, as in the last operation in Pomerania, where they were able to break through the Ukrainian defences and surround the cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk from the south.
According to news reports, there is a de facto mobilisation in Russia, conscripts are not being deployed, but conscripts and veterans are being persuaded by money and threats to join as contract soldiers. Meanwhile, the pictures are coming back of trains carrying heavy weapons to the front. Experts say these are older generation weapons. Of course, they have been going there before, but now it seems that not only are they being given to the second and third lines, but we should expect to see them in the next Russian attack. If there is a next Russian attack.
In the meantime, Ukraine has acquired a new weapon, the US HIMARS launcher and its GMLRS missile. Both sides have already had Russian weapons in this category. The HIMARS, however, is several generations more advanced and can do some important things. One is that it is very accurate. It can hit buildings 50-80 kilometres behind the front line where the Russians store ammunition and fuel. A typical image of the last 10-12 days is a Russian ammunition depot burning with huge flames, secondary explosions. The Russians, in the critical phase of bringing supplies forward to the front for another offensive, are faced with the fact that if the depot is not at least 70 km from the front, it is in danger. However, with a daily supply surge of 70 km, it is not possible to attack. Obviously, they'll figure out something against HIMARS sooner or later. What's striking is that in 10 days they haven't started hunting it from the air. Hunting it with artillery is almost hopeless. The first three letters of the abbreviation stand for high mobility, which means that once it has fired its missiles, it immediately disappears, and when the missiles hit, it is already kilometres away from the launch site. The answer to this would be an air-to-helicopter hunt, and it is no coincidence that the next US aid mission to Ukraine will be the NASAMS air defence system that we have ordered, and that the Italian-American Aspide system of an earlier generation (given by the Spanish) is already there.
Meanwhile, the area around Herszon and Zaporozhye is a huge issue. It seems that by this morning the Russians had abandoned the village of Kiszelivka, north-west of Herson, which was the last line of defence before the Herson airport. This is all very heroic, but the question is what they can do with Herszon, which the Russians will obviously hold for as long as they can. It is quite another thing to attack a city of hundreds of thousands of people than to go village by village dismantling defensive lines. If this offensive is launched, the Russians will be in a dilemma, because taking Herszon is perhaps their most important success, and losing it would be a huge defeat. If, on the other hand, they concentrate their forces there, it could weaken the positions they have just gained in Lugansk. In addition, if they do not move reinforcements from Crimea, the land corridor (Mariupol, Berdyansk, Melitopol) will be in the range of HIMARS all the time...
But it would be a mistake to think that a Ukrainian triumphal march is imminent. Despite all Russian weaknesses, the Russians are still the much bigger and much stronger army. The current developments (added to the fact that the Russian fleet has been practically pushed out of the waters off Kherson and Odessa) are designed to make war a non-starter, just like the bombing of Vietnam 50 years ago. If hundreds of tons of ammunition are exploding every day, if trains start to derail (one derailed yesterday), the Russians must realise that the territory they occupy is 1) not pacified 2) constantly exposed to deep strike, which they cannot do anything about for the time being.
We know that the Russians can endure quite a lot, the standard of living of the population is a secondary issue. However, the war has now reached the stage where maintaining a military presence in Ukraine has become prohibitively expensive. That is why their cyber attacks against western countries have increased, because they have to try to make war more expensive for them too.
Unless there is a large scale Ukrainian attack around Herszon, we are now in for weeks where this mutual price gouging will be the main trend. A factory shuts down here, an oil refinery blows up there. Without large-scale operations, this could easily mean the rest of the summer.
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As of dawn today, warehouses and bases in the occupied territory were again blessed: they are burning in Alchevsk, Torez, Kharkiv, Shakhtyorsk, Kirovsk, Ilovaisk and the Kalinynsky district of Donetsk.
In addition, in Ilovaisk, an entire S-400 system, which was supposed to provide air defence for the area, was destroyed. As this is not the first such lost air defence post, it is not at all surprising that the president of the manufacturing company 'Almaz-Antey', Mikhail Fradkov, and its director, Jan Novikov, have not only been sacked, but are also likely to face criminal charges, as they guaranteed the effectiveness of the weapons system against missiles of the Himars systems in particular when the multi-billion dollar procurement was concluded.
(translated from Donbass telegram channel)
In addition, in Ilovaisk, an entire S-400 system, which was supposed to provide air defence for the area, was destroyed. As this is not the first such lost air defence post, it is not at all surprising that the president of the manufacturing company 'Almaz-Antey', Mikhail Fradkov, and its director, Jan Novikov, have not only been sacked, but are also likely to face criminal charges, as they guaranteed the effectiveness of the weapons system against missiles of the Himars systems in particular when the multi-billion dollar procurement was concluded.
(translated from Donbass telegram channel)
The Russian version: "Fox (Kostyantyn Nikitenko) - drove around Mariupol in an armored personnel carrier and shot people for fun and laughter.
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Nova Kakhovka, Kherson region.
- Yesterday's strike struck the control post of the 49th Army, Air Defense, and missile depots to the air defense system.
According to preliminary data, over a hundred destroyed, about 200 wounded, half of whom are serious, some of whom will not survive.
There were emergency evacuation teams for some VIP wounded and killed.
In addition, over the course of today:
- At least 11 new missile strikes on Russian military targets using life-giving Himars.
Hitting targets (ammunition, fuel and lubricants depots) in Mariupol, Alchevsk, Shakhtersk, Kirovsk, Khartsyzsk, Chistyakovo, Zugres, Pridorozhnoe, Ilovaysk, Shakhta Kalina and the Leninsky district of Donetsk.
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It is impossible to rejoice in people's deaths, even if they are enemies.
But it is possible to rejoice in the combat effectiveness of one's army.
To the question "...we haven't started yet.")
Arestovich / Official
- Новая Каховка, Херсонская область. - Вчерашний удар по пункту управления 49 армии, ПВО, и складам с ракетами к ПВО. По предварительным данным, свыше ста уничтоженных, около 200 раненых, половина из которых - тяжёлые, часть из которых не выживет. Были срочные эвакогруппы для каких-то...
t.me
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Lucky if they can get Chinese cars...or else...Putler already presented the new Trabant eh Granta good for a 40 year productiion run.
But I don't know how the Chinese will get the sanctioned parts to Russia...
But I don't know how the Chinese will get the sanctioned parts to Russia...
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Looks like something Daihatsu or Dacia produced in 2006.
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The much vaulted S400 super weapon - flattened - oh dear never mind ?
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Should have left it an hour and struck it again when they were doing the recovery after the first strikeNova Kakhovka, Kherson region.
- Yesterday's strike struck the control post of the 49th Army, Air Defense, and missile depots to the air defense system.
According to preliminary data, over a hundred destroyed, about 200 wounded, half of whom are serious, some of whom will not survive.
There were emergency evacuation teams for some VIP wounded and killed.
In addition, over the course of today:
- At least 11 new missile strikes on Russian military targets using life-giving Himars.
Hitting targets (ammunition, fuel and lubricants depots) in Mariupol, Alchevsk, Shakhtersk, Kirovsk, Khartsyzsk, Chistyakovo, Zugres, Pridorozhnoe, Ilovaysk, Shakhta Kalina and the Leninsky district of Donetsk.
---
It is impossible to rejoice in people's deaths, even if they are enemies.
But it is possible to rejoice in the combat effectiveness of one's army.
To the question "...we haven't started yet.")
Arestovich / Official
- Новая Каховка, Херсонская область. - Вчерашний удар по пункту управления 49 армии, ПВО, и складам с ракетами к ПВО. По предварительным данным, свыше ста уничтоженных, около 200 раненых, половина из которых - тяжёлые, часть из которых не выживет. Были срочные эвакогруппы для каких-то...
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