[Mentalist]

Malankazooie, on 10 August 2022 - 05:06 PM, said:

Umm, should Europe be concerned about that nuclear power plant? That's picked up again on the nightly news.

Unless they're total fucking morons, probably no.

They want to use it as a bargaining chip in negotiations-largely, to bring Ukraine to the table to resume said negotiations.

But seeing how Medvedev was saying that Russia will "unleash the Riders of the Apocalypse' if anything were to happen in Crimea, and, well, a whole airbase went up in flames, and they're trying to sweep it under the rug as a "minor accident due to clumsy munition handlers", it's becoming increasingly hard to take their weekly threats to nuke the world seriously.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 12 August 2022 - 04:28 AM

[Werthead]

Mentalist, on 12 August 2022 - 04:27 AM, said:

Unless they're total fucking morons, probably no.

I fear this, in itself, may be giving the Russians far, far too much credit.

We need to recall they had soldiers digging trenches just a few dozen metres from the ruins of Chornobyl, disturbing radioactive earth that had sat untouched for thirty-six years, and then stayed in it for a month. Nuclear safety is not the first thing on these guys' minds.

[Garak]

Russia never really cared much about the human cost of something/

[Mentalist]

Garak, on 13 August 2022 - 01:54 PM, said:

Russia never really cared much about the human cost of something/

They don't care, but if wind blows SE, they can lose Krasnodar Krai- one of their most populous regions with a positive growth stat, which is their breadbasket, and a link to the Caucasus republics.

Basically no one among Ukraine's higher ups is treating this as anything but a bluff.

And it's not like there's much they can do, until we're in range to isolate Enerhodar and starve them out.

[Werthead]

Reports tonight that Russia has pulled its entire military command for Kherson Oblast back across the Dnipro, which makes it unlikely they are planning to continue with an offensive. It's entirely possible they will withdraw all forces from the NW of the Dnipro altogether, which would mark a huge strategic victory for Ukraine.

The question is what they do then, because Ukraine attacking across the river is difficult but not impossible, and it's unclear what other fronts Russia can focus on. This new force they were building up in Nizhny Novgorod is currently estimated at 15k in strength, which is not going to be enough to take Kharkiv. They could redeploy it to Donbas where the Russians have finally taken Pisky (after levelling it with thermobaric bombs, apparently because they'd literally run out of everything else in the locker), but the grinding away there is apparently happening at a cost of Russian lives that some have described as apocalyptic, worse than when they were getting torn to shreds around Kyiv.

The current US military intelligence estimate is that out of the roughly 300k Russian and allied forces that have rotated through Ukraine since February (although apparently there's never been more than 190k in theatre at once), more than 70,000 are dead or seriously wounded.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 13 August 2022 - 10:17 PM

[Mentalist]

UA's estimates are even worse (roughly 44k KIA, and then apply the min ratio of 1.5:1 for WIA:KIA for some pretty terrible numbers.

But yeah. Basically UAF is trying to destroy orcs logistics (via the 4 bridges across Dnipro) and achieve air dominance in the South, especially over the Right Bank so as to force the orcs to make another "goodwill gesture" which would allow us to preserve lives, and leave the city of Kherson relatively un-levelled.

At the same time, there's serious fighting going on in the woods to the W and SE of Izyum, where we're trying to push them back into the city, and then cut the supply routes from LNR and Russian border. Eliminating the Izyum group would allow us to relieve the pressure on the Slov'yans'k-Kramators'k agglomeration and dedicate more troops to either the Donbas frontline (to finally grind that offensive to a complete halt), or try to clear the NE portion of Kharkiv Oblast all the way to the border, and then push into sparsely populated northen, agrarian part of Luhans'k Oblast, which we controlled prior to the February offensive.

While there's the whole "Russia will conduct a sham referendum and the declare Kherson a Russian city and threaten to nuke UA if it tried to take it back" threat on the table, after they swallowed the destruction of an entire aviation regiment in Crimea, that seems far less likely, so it's not really a consideration in the military calculus.
And if that's not the case, it makes no sense to rush pushing the orcs out of the Right Bank. As long as they are stuck there with poor logistics and degrading air cover, digging in to defend a politically, rather than a strategically, important region, it's in our best interests to have a group as large as possible pinned down there-while we can focus additional efforts on other areas of the frontline.

[Mentalist]

Heh, 2 days of explosions and air raid alarms in a row in Crimea. Plus a major ammo depot exploding in Belgorod Oblast' in Russia, and a whole bunch of strikes all across the frontlines.

This isn't a counterattack yet, but we're definitely showing that we can inflict serious damage everywhere, which is nice to see.

[Macros]

How Cynical are we off the car bomb, and the fact that her father chose, purportedly, last minute to travel in a different car?
Blame laid at Ukraine's feet naturally

[Garak]

I'm extremely cynical about it.

[Tsundoku]

Here's a theory:

https://www.news.com...8a594c30fde8130

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle targeted by string of deadly car bomb attacks
Members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle are being brutally killed one by one – and the slayings have revealed a growing crisis for the leader.

[Mentalist]

Tsundoku, on 27 August 2022 - 12:32 AM, said:

Here's a theory:

https://www.news.com...8a594c30fde8130

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle targeted by string of deadly car bomb attacks
Members of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle are being brutally killed one by one – and the slayings have revealed a growing crisis for the leader.

Everyone that article links who isn't Dugina was a Ukrainian collaborator. Not in any way, shape, or form, "part of Putin's inner circle".

Even Dugin's own influence is debatable. He's the spiritual guru of the Russian Far Right, and a lot of junior officers in the FSB and and other security forces are quite receptive to his ideas; but his direct influence over the central leadership is negligible, he's not part of Putler's Petersburg crime family. His ideology is being coopted, and his adepts are being used as cannon fodder RN, sure. But actual value that Dugin had to the Russian political establishment prior to the media circus that's now trying to turn Darya into a martyr was highly questionable.

Even now, after some Duma deputees started going "too nazi" with their comments, the Kremlin sent out a missive to tone down the whole incident.

[Werthead]

Outstanding reporting here on the battle to save Kyiv. Some really quite remarkable accounts of front-line fighting, including the 2,000-strong brigade that managed to logjam one of the key approaches to the city (around Chernihiv) and then went wild attacking over 30,000 Russian troops who couldn't advance, sometimes riding buggies through low-lying marshlands to attack the column from different directions.

Our (UK's) Prime Minister is a complete and total moron, but when he called the Battle of Kyiv the greatest and most remarkable military feat of the 21st Century, he was not kidding.

Some great energy here as well. "We need to retake the airport. "We haven't got enough men." "We need to do it anyway. "Okay." *does it* "Huh."

There has also been some interesting reporting on Zelensky and his inner circle not buying that a Russian attack was imminent, on the completely reasonable grounds the Russians hadn't enough troops. They didn't factor on the Russian idiocy in attacking anyway. Also the Ukrainian military command also didn't think an attack likely, but fortunately made a series of prepared plans in case they did, which they were able to initiate immediately (thus saving their entire air force and probably most of their artillery, which were automatically moved to secure new locations). The UK and USA were 100% convinced that the Russians were going to attack about a fortnight before they did, because the US and UK journalist corps had 32 years of deeply embedded reporters in Moscow with Kremlin contacts who basically told them it was probably happening, and because of the US and UK's previous operations in Iraq, they could tell when the build-up suddenly accelerated and reached a critical mass which you wouldn't do for a bluff (in particular the mass-transfer of blood supplies to the front).

This post has been edited by Werthead: 27 August 2022 - 10:24 AM

[Mentalist]

Yeah, I was online in a forum with a bunch of ppl on the night of the strike and people from Mykolayiv reported that the airplanes stationed there took off like 15 min before the strikes on the airfield.


No one really believed there'd be a full-scale invasion, b/c Ukrainians have spent the last 8 years actually facing the Russians, and they had the experience from the Debaltsevo offensive (which we only lost, b/c Poroshenko ordered a unilateral ceasefire of our artillery, allowing the orcs to capture a key position and isolate our troops in the salient--which mostly got out anyway, but had to leave a lot of heavy weapons behind) and other engagements. And based on those experiences, they didn't expect the Ruscists to be anything special--which turned out to be the case.

Of course, there's also the fact that the FSB wrote off billions of dollars and "supposedly" they had large amount of pro-Russian insurgents ready to go in all major cities to assist in the takeover.
But since the FSB would embezzle 60+% of those funds, and then their people in UA (primarily Medvedchuk and his cohorts) would embezzle the same amount of the remainder on fancy houses, gold-encrusted traincars, etc--that whole thing turned out to be quite a dud.

[Werthead]

Very early days, but the American Department of Defence has confirmed they believe a "major" Ukrainian counter-offensive has begun. The scale of it appears to be significantly larger than anticipated, running up the north bank of the Dnipro all the way from Kherson to beyond the Nova Kakhovka dam.

The attack was preceded by a massive, sustained artillery, aerial and drone bombardment lasting most of the night. Apparently under the force of the bombardment, the Russian VDV (paratrooper) unit attached to the Donetsk People's Republic's 109th regiment literally fled. The DPR unit held until they came under direct attack by advancing Ukrainian forces before fleeing themselves. Shortly afterwards, Ukrainian military sources confirmed that the first of three concentric lines of defence surrounding Kherson City have been breached. This is very similar to how Azerbaijan blitzed the Armenian lines in the war in 2020 (which the Armenians had spent "years" massively fortifying, not a few months, and got torn to pieces by drone-led precision strikes).

During the artillery bombardment, all remaining bridges over the lower Dnipro were cut, leaving three very small pontoon bridges and a couple of ferries as the sole way over the Dnipro (the lower Dnipro is hundreds of metres wide, it is not an easy river to cross). There are somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 Russian and allied soldiers on the north and western sides of the river. Some reports that the Russian command has already ordered all troops north of Nova Kakhovka to prepare to pull back behind the dam as it's almost the only hard crossing point available. If they go, they're going to leave a ton of equipment behind, the dam's surface road has been so heavily shelled you can't drive tanks across it.

This could represent the collapse of the entire Russian front along the western and northern banks of the Dnipro, which would be a colossal strategic loss for the Russians and represent a major Ukrainian victory, assuming it comes off. Kherson was the first Ukrainian city captured (more or less) intact during the war and its loss would be a huge embarrassment for Moscow. Probably not coincidentally, there's also reports that Shoigu is facing either demotion or some kind of face-saving sideways promotion out of his responsibility for the war.

[Werthead]

Quote

Volodymyr Zelenskyi: "The Russians should know that we will drive them to the border. To our border, the line of which has not changed. The Russians know it well.

"If they want to survive, it is time for the Russian military to flee. Go home. If you are afraid to return to your home in Russia - well, let such soldiers surrender, and we will guarantee them compliance with all norms of the Geneva Conventions.

"If they do not listen to me, they will deal with our defenders, who will not stop until they release everything that belongs to Ukraine."

[Mentalist]

I'm still unsure as to the scale. Could've been just a "recon in force" that happened to achieve an unexpected breakthrough, and now they're trying to figure out whether they should commit to it.

By all metrics, this is "ahead of schedule", as according to all *publically available* info, the UAF remain severely outgunned for this type of a major offensive. Literally yesterday I told my dad that it's pretty obvious no big push will happen until the first batch of 10k infantry who completed basic training in the UK are back, equipped and deployed.

Seems like I was quite wrong about that. But it remains to be seen how deep this offensive can reach

[Werthead]

It looks like the offensive might be a big scale-up of the HIMARS and other long-range artillery attacks we've already seen, systematically targeting and destroying supply dumps, command and control nodes and cutting off the Russians whilst simultaneously encouraging them to fall back behind the Dnipro. The goal appears to be to try to retake territory at relatively little cost. The more success Ukraine can achieve with correspondingly few losses, the greater the morale for when Ukraine commits to the larger-scaled offensives it needs to retake Donbas, which I doubt is viable until next year (and Russia may be trying to reconstitute again for a fresh spring offensive). But this current stratagem could regain Kherson and possibly most of the land corridor back to Crimea with relatively few casualties.

The question is if Russia can hold. It poured 20,000 reinforcements into the area last month, they promptly did nothing and now they're being picked apart, and this also completely stalled out progress in Donbas. From the Russian perspective, they should really only be holding Kherson as long as it takes them to secure Donetsk and then withdraw completely from the south and declare mission accomplished with the complete conquest of Donetsk. Stripping the critical theatre in the east to reinforce the (to the Russian overall objective) secondary theatre to the south is insane, and may end up costing them both.

[Tsundoku]

I had not heard of this account by a Russian soldier until now.

Guardian article from 18 Aug, I'm sure the 140 page diary referred to is available somewhere.

https://www.theguard...kraine-invasion

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 30 August 2022 - 12:59 PM

[Mentalist]

Werthead, on 30 August 2022 - 12:45 PM, said:

It looks like the offensive might be a big scale-up of the HIMARS and other long-range artillery attacks we've already seen, systematically targeting and destroying supply dumps, command and control nodes and cutting off the Russians whilst simultaneously encouraging them to fall back behind the Dnipro. The goal appears to be to try to retake territory at relatively little cost. The more success Ukraine can achieve with correspondingly few losses, the greater the morale for when Ukraine commits to the larger-scaled offensives it needs to retake Donbas, which I doubt is viable until next year (and Russia may be trying to reconstitute again for a fresh spring offensive). But this current stratagem could regain Kherson and possibly most of the land corridor back to Crimea with relatively few casualties.

The question is if Russia can hold. It poured 20,000 reinforcements into the area last month, they promptly did nothing and now they're being picked apart, and this also completely stalled out progress in Donbas. From the Russian perspective, they should really only be holding Kherson as long as it takes them to secure Donetsk and then withdraw completely from the south and declare mission accomplished with the complete conquest of Donetsk. Stripping the critical theatre in the east to reinforce the (to the Russian overall objective) secondary theatre to the south is insane, and may end up costing them both.

They've got their newly formed 3rd Army Corps to potentially throw at the Donbas Theatre. And things are progressing... slowly on the R bank. Because until they run out of ammo and supplies, 25-30 (even understrength) BTGs are still no pushovers.

But if you look at the FIRMS data, there's also an insane amount of firepower being unloaded in Zaporizhya Oblast (just N of Polohy). Which might be indicative of.... something far more interesting.
As long the communications over Dnipro are severed and the forces on the Right Bank are pinned down by political necessity to hold Kherson at all costs (while they are sitting ducks for UAF arty and, increasingly, air power), this provides an excellent opportunity to do nasty things to the orcs elsewhere.

Everyone I've listened to this week is repeating the same thing: "do not expect immediate results in Kherson. It's part of a long-tail op".
Which is perfectly fine, and none of this hype would've happened if part of the OC "South" didn't utter that "we broke through the 1st line of defense" line, which made everyone on both sides go ballistic with expectations.

[Cause]

https://www.cnn.com/...3e73a7c9949889a

Wouldnt this be the second time a Russian Businessman has fallen from his window in a hospital? Maybe they should put up railings?

Incredible how blatant Russia is sometimes and its amazing to note how they dont have to hide. Nothing will happen becuase of this.