re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Even though they're unlawful invaders serving the ego of a crazed dictator, they are still two men that found love on the battlefield, only to have it literally ripped apart by a mortar drone. It's basically the plot for the new Netflix reboot of "A Farewell to Arms," staring Timothée Chalamet and John Boyega.

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Working Title:

We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Gay

I am pretty firmly in the demographics are destiny camp. I stated this early in the thread how Russia simply needs live bodies. The smallest age group in Russia between 0-75 are people aged 20-24. The next smallest is 15–19 and the next smallest is 25-29.

Between those killed, irreparably wounded and the outward migration, Russia is going to collapse is going to collapse its prime working age population of men. And in a country with no real prospect for immigration to fill the void. This sets up some pretty scary outcomes for a population likely to endure prolonged economic hardship and being fed a diet of racial replacement and survival narratives.

Meanwhile - the US remains the developed country with the best demographic outlook. Hurray immigrants!

The rapidity of the advances makes it really hard for the mappers to publish accurate maps. Most of them will wait for some type of confirmation before they update.

At this point, I find myself viewing (and reposting) a lot of different things that you have to look at as a whole to gain a good picture of what's going on. Don't rely on any one Twitter/telegram poster, look at as many as you can and you can get a pretty solid idea of what's happening. You have to filter out the outliers.

There was a post in the thread yesterday about a wide-scale Ukrainian offensive along the eastern front. By watching the posts from both sides, you can get a pretty clear picture of if that is true or not.

There is a lot more information available in the Russian Telegram space than I find from Ukrainian sources. Rybar, Kotsnews, GreyZone(wagner), and WarGonzo are all fairly prolific posters. There are some excellent sources on the Ukrainian side as well, @WarTranslated is a great follow to get a sense of what the Russians are really saying behind the scenes. @Warmonitor3 is great for up-to-the-minute updates, but his stuff can be overly optimistic at times. @Defmon has good stuff, but not a lot of it.

My favorite mapper from the Ukrainian perspective https://twitter.com/JominiW has really slowed down how often he publishes, it used to be every few days, now its once a month (or less). The problem is his maps are so detailed that by the time he gets the info together, the maps are out of date.

Yeah, JominiW was incredible earlier in the war. Speaking of DefMon, this is what he just put out on Kherson, saying that the magenta line is where he expects the Russians to try to establish a new defensive line:




But, really, there are no hills, no big rivers, no forests -- all that area is just open fields. So, how is Russia going to have the opportunity to establish any kind of real line there? With less equipment and ammo all the time.

All the area east of the Imhulets is going to be orc-free within a week.

Russia has to stop the Ukrainian penetration along the river and straighten out its lines to get Ukraine out of its flank. If they can't stabilize it along the river, it doesn't matter where else Russia is able to establish a line as Ukraine will have already flanked it.

ETA: Pay attention to an attack coming from Ukraine along the northern part of the Inhulets river. Along the bright green axis I added to this map. Ukraine has already crossed the river there.

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The guy is admitting they need to rebuild their entire military and economy from the ground up to be able to compete. Good luck with that.

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This was supposed the be a modernized Russian military rebuilt after it was in complete shambles after the Soviet collapse. LINK
Ukraine is proving this military rebuild was apparently a failure & its going to be even tougher going forward.

Ukraine's strategic goal in this area is to liberate Nova Kakhovka on the south side of the river. If they can do that, then they can cut off the water supply to Crimea via the canal that comes out of the river where the blue line begins below.

Crossing the river here will not be easy.


Obviously, I have no idea if this is the plan, it just makes sense. Ukraine will capture everything on the east side of the Inhulets River, and then start pushing Kherson City from the East and North.

The Ukrainians have demonstrated an ability to effectively use pincher movements, I don't know why that would change in this case.

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-4 HIMARS launchers and ammo
-16 155mm Howitzers;
-75,000 155mm artillery rounds;
-500 precision-guided 155mm artillery rounds;
-1,000 155mm rounds of Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems
--16 105mm Howitzers;
-30,000 120mm mortar rounds;
-200 MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles;
-200,000 rounds of small arms ammunition;
-Obstacle emplacement equipment;
-Claymore anti-personnel munitions
-Field equipment.

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Damn posters here are fast. I was about to link this. This is the package that another poster was referring to being already shipped last week. The $1.1 billion 18 himars announded last week is a future build package for Ukraine.



Has Ukraine lost any of the 20 something Himars/ MLRS Systems so far ?

One of the Russian bloggers reported them destroying a garrison of them during Lyman but was never confirmed. And Ukraine probably won't report losing for optics).