[Mentalist]

I should do AFK long weekends more often. Good things tend to happen when I'm not around to read the news about them.

[Macros]

Go AFK ment

Fuck Putin, and fuck the spineless government officials condemning him.

[Mentalist]

Girkin, the ex-FSB bastard who ordered the downing of MH117 has been arrested in Moscow, who is being charged with "extremism". Earlier this week, his frequent conversation partner, retired colonel Kvachkov, was given (administrative, not criminal) charge for "discrediting the Russian Armed Forces"

It would appear that Kremlin is starting to purge the relatively independent pro-war talking heads who dare to speak out against how "inefficient the Russian war effort is".

[Werthead]

Girkin was handy because he was giving some fairly realistic assessments of Russia's long-term capabilities in this war, even if he was also full of self-aggrandising BS. As long as kept criticisms of the military to well below the top level that was fine, the second he moved to the top level he was in the crosshairs and the second he mentioned Putin, he was toast.

Putin trying to stir up trouble today by threatening Poland directly. The Polish, with the full force of NATO backing them up, seem distinctly unmoved.

[Werthead]

Russia has made incremental gains along the Kupiansk front. Fairly minor at the moment, but they have advanced close to a major highway.

Ukraine is starting to make more significant progress around Bakhmut, enveloping the city from the NW and SW. Ukraine's targets in this sector have to be Berkhivka to the north and Opytne in the south, to fully envelop the city suburbs. It also needs to shield its flanks, which it's doing well in the south (with heavy fighting in Klischiivka) but is finding harder in the north due to heavy defending forces. Still, some progress up there (helped by drone swams targeting logistics and resupply) and intriguingly, some signs of a tertiary effort (small in scale at the moment) taking shape up around Rozdolivka. If that becomes a bigger deal it could threaten not just Bakhmut but also Soledar. Might be another feint, though, or local forces capitalising on Russian weaknesses.

The main assault axis in the south-central region is achieving a degree of success on a very broad front, but the result of having to advance on a broad front means the depth of the advance is still relatively modest. But the front now runs from around Stepove almost to Novomaiorske. Russian units along the front are complaining a lot of being undermanned and not having enough heavy artillery support. The main problem here is the Russians keeping troops in advanced positions some kilometres in front of the main defensive line rather than letting them retreat to the heavy defences. This might be a good idea - bleed the Ukrainians before they even get to the main contact line - or it might be moronically stupid, by getting your defending troops killed in light cover and on open ground rather than in the main lines where they might be more defensible. Also, if you get your troops mown down in front of the heavy defences and there's nobody else to man the heavy defences, all you've done is hand over your defences intact to the enemy.

The SW end of the front appears to be developing intriguingly. The Ukrainians have reached the main contact line across the entire front and have found breaking it to be tricky, but have succeeded in capturing multiple heavy defence positions, pushing the lines back to Robotyne, with reports of fighting in the town outskirts. The Russians have faced heavy losses here, and it looks like this sector has been denuded of strength to reinforce other areas. But it's still tough going down in this area and Russian troops seem to be staying put in their defensive positions.

More infighting in the Kremlin. The MoD apparently now considers the loyalty of some VDV units suspect, so it's been proposed that they redeploy to Bakhmut to prop up defensive efforts there. Some suggestion they might be deliberately left to fight and die in the city, with the blame being put on their leader Teplinskiy. Last week VDV units signed a letter confirming they would mutiny if Teplinskiy is removed as other generals have been.

At some point last week Ukraine exceeded 230 square kilometres regained, exceeding the territorial gains by Russia for all of 2023 up to this point.

ETA: Unconfirmed reports today of an armoured breakthrough north of Tokmak. Unclear on the extent of that success.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 23 July 2023 - 06:42 PM

[Werthead]

Significant successes today: Ukraine reportedly halted and even slightly turned back the Russian advance on Kupiansk, regaining some 2 kilometres of territory lost in the preceding few days.

Much more importantly, Ukraine reportedly took Andriivka and has launched a concerted assault on Klischiivka. The Russians cannot hold there, they are pinned under heavy fire from the surrounding ridgeline. If Klischiivka goes, the southern front around Bakhmut will shift rapidly and allow Ukraine to bring most of the town under assault. Its supporting roads are already under fire control. Unconfirmed reports of Ukrainian forces raiding into the town itself.

One of Ukraine's heavy assault formations is reportedly in the Orikhiv-Tokmak axis, with increasing Russian Telegram panic in that area that a major assault might be imminent. That's in one of the most heavily-fortified area s of the front, but if Ukraine can break through there, it can break through anywhere.

[Werthead]

Russia has resumed its offensive on the Lyman-Svatove-Kupiansk front and made up some ground, mostly fields and a couple of tiny hamlets. It appears Russia had a rare intelligence breakthrough and discovered when Ukraine was rotating units. It hit the front just as the new units were taking up position and were under-prepared. After losing ~5km the Ukrainians mounted a counter-attack which recaptured around 2km, but Russian reinforcements drove the Ukrainians back again. The Russians are aiming to regain all of Luhansk Oblast territory in this area and perhaps push into Kharkiv Oblast to set up a buffer zone. Ukrainian reinforcements have apparently been deployed to stabilise the front.

However, far more strategically significant is the southern front. Ukraine has taken Staromaiorske, continuing to collapse the Russian lines in the centre of the front. The successes in this area are opening up multiple axes of attack towards the coast.

They are also gaining ground around Robotyne, which is a major target in the west of the front. The goal here is easily identifiable as Tokmak. Retaking Tokmak would give Ukraine lines of advance towards the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the west, Melitopol to the south-west and the coast to the south and south-east.

At the eastern end of the front there is significant ground being gained around Bakhmut, which is being enveloped on the southern side. The northern side is heavier going but progress is being made. Russia is shifting significant numbers of reinforcements into the area, but some Russian troops have refused to be deployed to the front, which is under complete fire control by Ukrainian artillery and snipers based on the ridge heights above. Some VDV formations are apparently being prepared to go into the area as reinforcements, but leaked documents signed by Gerasimov indicate this is actually punishment duty for a video filmed by VDV troops expressing anger at the treatment of some high-ranking generals.

[Mentalist]

NYT is now blaring that UAF is throwing its reserves to breakthrough at Robotyne towards Tokmak, and if successful, Melitopol. They quote this should become clear during the next 3 weeks.

I remain skeptical, since that stretch (Tokmak-Polohy) is just about the heaviest fortified sector of the frontline after the Old Contact Line.

We'll see soon enough, I guess.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 26 July 2023 - 08:48 PM

[Gorefest]

Not just the reserves though, sounds like they are deploying their full strenght of elite trained troops and tanks to force a breach towards the Crimean peninsula. I guess the die is cast.

[Chance]

Gorefest, on 27 July 2023 - 07:56 AM, said:

Not just the reserves though, sounds like they are deploying their full strenght of elite trained troops and tanks to force a breach towards the Crimean peninsula. I guess the die is cast.

Ukraine's military command are probably being forced to escalate or accept stalemate due to time, scale and limits of attrition. Time as in we are already practically in august. Scale as in companies and battalions don't conquer areas the size that is being contested in Ukraine. Limits of attrition is basically self explaining artillery/missile fire doesn't hold ground and once you've fired on the plum targets your increasingly ending up in the classic situation where you need many shells to kill one dude with a kalashnikov.

I hope they know what they are doing either way, the battlefield in Ukraine seems to be among the least friendly to offensive operations since ww1.

This post has been edited by Chance: 27 July 2023 - 09:04 AM

[Werthead]

Chance, on 27 July 2023 - 09:04 AM, said:

Ukraine's military command are probably being forced to escalate or accept stalemate due to time, scale and limits of attrition. Time as in we are already practically in august. Scale as in companies and battalions don't conquer areas the size that is being contested in Ukraine. Limits of attrition is basically self explaining artillery/missile fire doesn't hold ground and once you've fired on the plum targets your increasingly ending up in the classic situation where you need many shells to kill one dude with a kalashnikov.

I hope they know what they are doing either way, the battlefield in Ukraine seems to be among the least friendly to offensive operations since ww1.

Ukraine is dealing with a huge number of variables, some of which are known to within a much closer degree of certainty than others.

They know Russia is holding a massive front and it is overstretched: Russia has between 250,000 and 400,000 personnel in-theatre but maybe 50% of them are front-line combat troops, and a much smaller number of them are experienced, veteran formations. The majority are conscripts with little or essentially no formal training, although ad hoc training by experienced personnel is taking place, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Russia's stock of front-line, combat-capable tanks and armoured vehicles has taken a massive battering and they have been forced to drag out 1950s-era stock to make up for deficiencies. This stock is also widely dispersed, with it appearing a fair bit of it assembled on the Lyman front for the offensive up there, meaning it is not of defensive value in the main area of the Ukrainian operation. Not that most of it would be much good (the US and European IFVs can easily destroy Russian tanks from the 1950s and 1960s, and inflict heavy damage on their T-72-derived models, which is most of them, without the modern tanks even appearing).

Russia's primary offensive and defensive doctrines rely on overwhelming artillery superiority, but this superiority has been eroded through direct destruction of batteries and precise targeting of ammunition stockpiles, leaving guns often sitting empty waiting for resupply. Ukraine has also been using their more advanced dynamic drones and guided HIMARS fire to destroy resupply vehicles in their hundreds, even on the move. This has left Russia short of artillery in many areas of the main front, either because their guns have been destroyed or damaged, and resupply is now taking much longer because their logistics trucks have been obliterated or the actual stockpiles have been moved so far back away from the front that it's just much more time-consuming to carry out. Russia shifting its resupply depots back to deal with the first appearance of HIMARS last summer contributed to the premature end of the summer offensive and Ukraine's resulting successful counter-offensive, and now Russia is moving the depots even further back to deal with Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles. That's actually become a major problem in Crimea and along the coast because there is nowhere for the depots to move back to, apart from all the way into Russia itself and leaving a sole resupply route across the Crimea Bridge and the land routes in via Rostov, which is simply far too far from the west of the front in Kherson and along the land bridge.

Russia knows all of this as well, so it has gone berserk using mines as a force-equaliser. They had potentially millions of Soviet-era and newer mines in stock and have placed a very large number of these along the battle front. This is massively delaying Ukrainian advances, although it's also contributing to a major problem for the Russians in developing flanking counter-attacks: as the Ukrainians clear sectors and advance, the Russians can't move up and hit them in the side without walking through their own minefields (and the Russians do not appear to have exactingly noted every mine they put down so they can clear them later). The Russians have also focused a lot of attention on this idea of defence-in-depth but not on operational reserves, which any sane defender would have done. Those operational reserves have been sent to other areas of the front (they are trying to hold Bakhmut at all costs) or deployed to reinforce the Lyman front offensive. That means if the Ukrainians do break through the main lines in depth in any one place and penetrate to the rear, there's not much behind the lines to slow them down. The Russians were not expecting the Ukrainians to attack the main defensive lines as they are and were also not expecting as much success as they've had. However, the cost to the Ukrainians is unclear and if it is sustainable for the several more weeks it will probably take to achieve any kind of decisive breakthrough.

On top of that you have both sides' AA making it difficult for both sides' air power to be brought to bear, but Russia has the long-range aircraft and ships able to sit off the coast and fire at the advancing forces from a position of relative safety. Russian helicopter doctrine versus MANPADs has also improved significantly from the start of the war, although they are still losing them.

Beyond all of that is the political aspect. In the last 18 months, Putin has gone from an unchallenged, invulnerable figure to one increasingly seen as out of touch, hesitant and possibly no longer fully competent. Some Russians have started publicly referring to him like a doddering old father or uncle, great in his younger days but maybe now should be left to retire comfortably. You also have Prigozhin's near-coup which came far closer to success than anyone expected, and Prigozhin has been allowed to go free afterwards. A lot of Russians think that's incompetence at work. You also have many in the FSB furious at being scapegoated for the early failure of the invasion, many in the military angry at fighting the war without sufficient resources of manpower or equipment (and then angry at being scapegoated for its failures), many pro-war nationalists furious at the war not being fought harsh enough, the oligarchs furious at having their massive revenues from the west cut off and the replacement deals to much poorer countries being far less lucrative, the provincial leaders furious that their people are being fed into the mincer so the kids in the cities don't have to serve (which is starting to change from necessity) and many Russians of all stripes who are extremely nervous about their country becoming the junior partner/vassal to a resurgent China, possibly having to hand over Vladivostok and some of their eastern provinces to Beijing in return for an alliance.

The political situation has become so volatile that Ukraine achieving a major breakthrough, even if outright military victory is unachievable, could well spark the downfall of Putin and his replacement with someone who might be prepared to end the war on advantageous terms to Ukraine. Even some of the nationalist hardliners people were concerned about as being "worse than Putin" have apparently been signalling they want the war to end, even so they can just rearm like crazy for the next 5-10 years and then try again, but of course Ukraine is willing to risk that since by then they will be in NATO and will have also been able to rearm like crazy.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 27 July 2023 - 06:23 PM

[Chance]

Werthead, on 27 July 2023 - 06:23 PM, said:

Russia knows all of this as well, so it has gone berserk using mines as a force-equaliser. They had potentially millions of Soviet-era and newer mines in stock and have placed a very large number of these along the battle front. This is massively delaying Ukrainian advances, although it's also contributing to a major problem for the Russians in developing flanking counter-attacks: as the Ukrainians clear sectors and advance, the Russians can't move up and hit them in the side without walking through their own minefields (and the Russians do not appear to have exactingly noted every mine they put down so they can clear them later).

The effect of massive mine fields and artillery with reliable observers (drones) seems to be the main factor in slowing down operations, together with lack of scale in operations and of course the lack of air superiority on either side. I've been wondering if it would have been more prudent to simply do attrition until spring when there is a chance of at least gaining regional air superiority. It also seems like the Russian army is more devolving than recovering from its losses, so time might be on the Ukraines side. We'll se, I hope pessimist me is wrong and it will go smooth all the way to Berdyansk/Melitopol.

Werthead, on 27 July 2023 - 06:23 PM, said:

Beyond all of that is the political aspect. In the last 18 months, Putin has gone from an unchallenged, invulnerable figure to one increasingly seen as out of touch, hesitant and possibly no longer fully competent. Some Russians have started publicly referring to him like a doddering old father or uncle, great in his younger days but maybe now should be left to retire comfortably.

Lets hope but it really seems that there is no real competition because those that where are in prisons / dead.

This post has been edited by Chance: 27 July 2023 - 07:55 PM

[Werthead]

Chance, on 27 July 2023 - 07:52 PM, said:

The effect of massive mine fields and artillery with reliable observers (drones) seems to be the main factor in slowing down operations, together with lack of scale in operations and of course the lack of air superiority on either side. I've been wondering if it would have been more prudent to simply do attrition until spring when there is a chance of at least gaining regional air superiority. It also seems like the Russian army is more devolving than recovering from its losses, so time might be on the Ukraines side. We'll se, I hope pessimist me is wrong and it will go smooth all the way to Berdyansk/Melitopol.

The scale is relatively impressive: Ukraine has nine or ten heavy assault formations (more are training in the US and Europe) with potentially tens of thousands of troops in each one, along with large batches of tanks and mobile artillery, backed up by experienced artillery brigades. This is just the heavy mobile forces they will use to punch into the main lines. So far only one, possibly one-and-a-bit, formations have actually been seen in the battle, we don't even know where most of the others are (Ukrainian opsec has been superior to Russia's throughout the war). Ukraine is also attacking on a relatively large scale in three areas of a very long front. It's a far, far bigger operation involving far more troops than last year's Kharkiv counteroffensive (which now appears to have been at least partially driven by a massive Russian strategic failure in properly redeploying to hold the Kharkiv front as it was a work of Ukrainian strategic genius; of course, winning is the primary objective no matter how it is done, and Ukraine achieved that).

Quote

Lets hope but it really seems that there is no real competition because those that where are in prisons / dead.

Prigozhin is not only still free, but was happily meeting with African clients of Wagner in St. Petersburg today. Several other Kremlin critics are MIA, but some others seem to be operating freely, based on their perceived value to Putin. Lukashenko has also taken a more robust line with Putin recently, seemingly using Wagner almost as a bargaining/blackmail chip. There are also a lot of people who are very unhappy with Putin but have kept very quiet about it publicly, or are smiling and supporting Putin in public but sharpening the knives behind closed doors. Those are the ones giving Putin the most sleepless nights.

[Mentalist]

UAF has deployed several of the newly spun up/staffed up brigades of the Ground Forces and one new Marine infantry brigade (the 37th).


There's at least half-dozen new mechanized brigades we haven't seen yet, plus a full dozen of the "Assault Guard" brigades of the National Guard that were being recruited for this offensive throughout the winter.

Gaining space to manouever in the south after punching though the giant trenchworks would force Putler to declare another mobilization. Right now he is trying to avoid it to make sure there's no unnecessary irritants for the March 2024 re-election.
More draconian measures for the next wave of mobilization could be enough to create the background instability for some group in the Kremlin to make their move.

At the same time we know the Abramses will start arriving in September, so we can expect this current effort to last at least until October.

We'll see how much ground they gain in this phase.

[Werthead]

The situation on the Svatove-Kreminna-Lyman front is becoming clearer, thanks to the Deep State Telegram channel's analysis (Deep State has proven fairly reliable at deciphering Russian Telegram posts). The Russian offensive secured a fairly big chunk of territory, but most of this was in open fields and countryside where they did not have time or equipment to dig in. Ukrainian counter-attacks from their secondary lines of defence proved effective at dispersing Russian troops where they tried to start building expanded defences. This resulted in the identification of an expanded "grey zone" between the main lines. In the last few days Ukrainian forces have pushed back into this grey zone and retaken their former defensive positions, particularly on the Svatove axis. The situation appears to have stabilised, but the Russians could always reinforce and try again. What might be causing hesitation there is how many troops they might need to relocate to the southern front to stop a Ukrainian breakthrough.

It also looks a battalion of Chechen fighters took heavy losses fighting on the southern flanks of Bakhmut last week, possibly the first really major loss from a Chechen unit. Putin has been keeping the Chechens out of the worst fighting to keep Kadyrov happy, but it looks like the stretched manpower on the Bakhmut front left the Russians without much option but to deploy them to the front.

[Mentalist]

Another drone in Moscow. Yet again, it's supposedly been suppressed by EW... only to crash into the exacet same business centre tower that the "suppressed by EW station" drone "crashed" into 2 days ago. Funny coincidence, that.

Also, stuff blowing up in Sevastopol. And some buzz about sea drones chasing a couple of patrol ships- with mixed results. Orcs are saying no casualties and all targets destroyed, but the rumour mill talks about intercepted convo between the ships and a helicopter indicating "some" damage and a few casualties, so....eeeeehhh, ionno

Not a whole lot of news on the fronts, though DeepState is showing some tiny pushes in the outskirts of Donets'k. Ukrainian soldiers are saying the casualty ratios are generally favourable in the S, and "breaking point should come soon". Then again, last week we saw the newly formed 116th Mech do a not-so-great push SE of Robotyne, with some fatal communication errors, leading to casualties, prisoners, and unnecessary PR wins for the orcs. So this may have slowed down the pace, somewhat. Plus the rain, obviously.

Apropos of nothing specific, I'm ballparking something significant will happen in the S before or around Independence Day (the 24th). So we'll see.

[Mentalist]

Oh look, an orc landing ship in Novorossiysk had a bad accident with a sea drone.

Novorossiysk is the secondary Black Sea Fleet base, on the W E coast of the Black Sea. Roughly 600 km as the crow flies from Odessa, but if you got to swim around Crimea, it's over 650 klicks.


Safe to say, Western Eastern Black Sea is gonna be a no swim zone soon.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 04 August 2023 - 08:49 PM

[Tsundoku]

Mentalist, on 04 August 2023 - 07:24 AM, said:

Oh look, an orc landing ship in Novorossiysk had a bad accident with a sea drone.

Novorossiysk is the secondary Black Sea Fleet base, on the W coast of the Black Sea. Roughly 600 km as the crow flies from Odessa, but if you got to swim around Crimea, it's over 650 klicks.


Safe to say, Western Black Sea is gonna be a no swim zone soon.

Interesting, but I think you mean the East coast. Unless W is Cyrillic for E?

[Mentalist]

Tsundoku, on 04 August 2023 - 03:58 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 04 August 2023 - 07:24 AM, said:

Oh look, an orc landing ship in Novorossiysk had a bad accident with a sea drone.

Novorossiysk is the secondary Black Sea Fleet base, on the W coast of the Black Sea. Roughly 600 km as the crow flies from Odessa, but if you got to swim around Crimea, it's over 650 klicks.


Safe to say, Western Black Sea is gonna be a no swim zone soon.

Interesting, but I think you mean the East coast. Unless W is Cyrillic for E?

I'm gonna blame exceedingly poor sleep patterns on that one.

[Werthead]

Explosions near the Kerch Bridge, Russian air defences trying to engage Ukrainian drones. It looks like the primary target was the fuel tanker SIG, which has been hit 30 miles south of the bridge. Some reports that it's taking on water into the engine room and the crew has abandoned ship. Some reports that the bridge is on fire, but Russian Telegram channels debunking that, saying the bridge was not the target. The situation should become clearer in the morning.