re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Steering this conversation away from politics and back onto the realities of the ground, when you wake up in the morning what are your thoughts?

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My first thought is I appreciate your contributions over the last 2-3 pages and the responses it’s garnered. It’s refreshing after the arguments and political point taking ad nauseam lately.

From what I can gather between the UK and Poland there may be a thousand or so Ukrainian troops getting elite level training to enter the fray. UK committed to train up to 10K, but reporting is only saying a few hundred. Not sure if feint or accurate, but, let’s call it 1K between the two countries, doesn’t seem enough to make significant immediate impact unless maybe they were to somehow become amphibious forces dedicated to an effort in retaking Crimea after Russia has lost Kherson.

Seems like the HIMARS destroying ammo depots and supply lines is buying time and bleeding Russia of ammo which is helpful, but would need to be paired with a blitz to take advantage and that’s not happening at present.

I think most likely Ukraine retakes Kherson and a new stalemate begins, unless there really is a million man army coming online in the next couple of weeks, but without serious artillery and more advanced missile deliveries it would seem that would be very costly for the ground they gain. I wonder if the initiative, as some have alluded to, may be to retake Kherson and southern Ukraine while cutting off Crimea and sacrificing the East.

Opinion of a civilian who has been in this thread from the beginning, tried to monitor using (hopefully trustworthy Twitter accounts who provide support for their commentary with visual evidence and/or background and sourcing), likes history and has always been fascinated with WWII history. Take it for nothing more sophisticated than that.

General Milley would know, the other end of this is the defence systems that will be in place within the next two weeks, what happened by Kiev at the beginning of the war to Russian Supply lines is about to be repeated but with the morale of the Russians at an all time low (I know those territorial gains seem temporary) and the intercepts talking of large scale mutiny and surrender it won’t take more than a couple/three days of not eating or running out of ammo before this could turn. The thing that the Russians are talking about is the guerrilla warfare that’s popping up in the occupied territories. Pretty amazing stories of drunk Russian soldiers getting their throats slit while passed out…

The report of even just one Russian soldier getting the crap beat out of him in supposedly the most Russian sympathizing area, Crimea is quite telling.

There’s no way Russia has the amount of operational bombers left in their fleet that we do. I question how many Tu-95 Bears are still airworthy and they have almost completely retired the Tu-22, even the “newer” variants made in the 1980’s. Any AA system worth its salt would have a field day locking in on the tu-95. They are 1950’s technology and really haven’t been updated continuously like we have done our b-52 and b-1 bombers. I’m sure they probably could get 50 tu-95’s in the air but there has been less than 500 made in its entire existence so if more than 20% are still air worthy I would be shocked. It takes a lot to keep planes in the air and the Russians aren’t known for maintaining their equipment like we do. I would be surprised if they had more than 100 total heavy bombers able to to fly. Their main attack force would come from su-25 and su-24 ground attack aircraft and a mix of MIG and SU fighters and fighter bomber aircraft. I don’t think they really can afford to lose too many airframes which is why we haven’t seen them crossing the front lines into western Ukraine. Most all attacks are from across the border or from Russian lines in the east.

Yea I saw that. Absolutely pathetic. I’ll give some of those Russian pilots credit though. They have balls flying some of those antiques. You wouldn’t catch my arse dead sitting in some of their equipment and I’ve flown some sketchy airframes in my time.

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I need LW to drop in. All this positive news gets my hopes up too high.

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Lima Whiskey, where is the Russian hammerblow about to strike in your opinion?

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I don’t think there will be a hammer blow.

The Russians will break the Bahkmut-Seversk line, and then they’ll move on to Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.

When those fall, I expect the Ukrainians will retreat to Dnipro.

I can imagine scenarios where defeat and casualties break the Ukrainian Army, but we’re not there yet.

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Do you agree this operational pause is the functional equivalent to a culmination point?

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Clausewitz was writing about the risk of over extending yourself, and making yourself vulnerable to an enemy counter attack.

So in this case no, I don’t think so.

This made me chuckle

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Terrorist Pushilin said that North Korea recognized the "DPR"

The ambassadors of two "great superpowers" - "DPR" and the DPRK exchanged pleasantries and even showed some kind of recognition paper.

Meanwhile, "LPR" was already offended: even North Korea did not recognize them.

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LINK

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the risk of over extending yourself, and making yourself vulnerable to an enemy counter attack.

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Soon

Hard for am army to fight without ammunition and Russia’s logistics are a joke. If I’m a Russian soldier I’m not getting caught dead within a half mile of an ammunition depot. They have shot their best shot already and it wasn’t enough. I don’t see them building up again to the level they had when they invaded. I mean what kind of commander knowingly drives an armored column several miles long on a bottleneck road with no avenue of escape or evasion? Fish in a barrel. Still can’t believe they tried that in the first days. It was just plain overconfidence and they got their shite blown to pieces for it. But it’s all good they will break out the army of T-34s and go get Vasily Zaytsev’s sniper rifle out of the museum while they are at it to counterattack.