re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Thirty percent of their houses have no toilet.

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This literally has no bearing on a country's military. Only 55% of the US had indoor plumbing in 1945 and I would think our military did pretty good.

ETA but I guess if everyone gets indoor plumbing in China I guess it means their military is good suddenly? Like that's the measure of military strength is the number of shitters in a country?

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More evidence that Ukraine immediately crossed the river

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Defense of Ukraine
@DefenceU

Ukraine government organization
Beautiful Dnipro


Ukraine MoD tweet

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The river is a true natural obstacle that acts as a true force multiplier for the defending troops.

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246 years ago this month Washington executed one of the great tactical retreats in history, salvaging a fighting force out of New York and into New Jersey. Perhaps Russia is banking on Ivan Washington walking through that door and triumphantly crossing in dnipro on Christmas.

But more than likely the Russians are just a rudderless band of barbarians with no solutions other than more rape.

Realistically, getting the rest of NATO (and only a few actually enhance NATO, the rest are tripwires at best) to pay their share is the minimum one should expect. Trump wanted them to do so and Putin seems to have been more persuasive.

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Has Ukraine lost any HIMARS systems in combat?

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Ukraine and the US say no. They say that every system is accounted for. And, to be fair, Russia has never shown any footage of any of them being blown up.

(Ukraine has created wooden decoys that look like HIMARS, and Russia has hit a couple of them, but they clearly weren't the real thing.)

There are two reasons that I lean towards the idea that Ukraine is attacking the left bank in force and establishing a beachhead. I could certainly be wrong, and we could just be witnessing harassing actions from SOF groups, but:

1) The Russian supply problem wasn't simply a problem of getting stuff across the Dnipro River. The supply problem is a function of the Kerch Bridge explosion, and Russia can only get things to that general area via very, very long truck routes through Mariupol, or across the Kerch Strait by ferry and then back onto railroads. Retreating back across the Dnipro does nothing to fix the fundamental problem, which is that Russia cannot supply its forces in the South.

So, we don't know how far Russia really planned to retreat. They may have already resigned themselves to going back to Crimea.

2) Ukraine had plenty of time to prepare for this moment. Ukraine has also known, obviously, that simply retaking Kherson and leaving a sizeable Russian force directly across the river would expose a freshly-liberated Kherson to a torrential rain of artillery fire.

And yet, there's been no sign of that. Since the Russians left, the city has been at peace, and everyone is celebrating freely. Zelensky visited the city, gave soldiers medals, and oversaw the official raising of the Ukrainian flag at city hall ... and the Russians did nothing.

All that suggests to me that Ukraine has already cleared the Russians from the towns on the left bank, and that the need to do so was seen from the onset of the Ukrainian offensive in Kherson.

Edit: Yet another possibility is the Russians are getting out of those towns because they will flood when the timed charges blow the dam.

Not a single HIMARS lost.

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I think that there's a real chance that Russia may have decided to retreat from these areas.

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From the google earth image, I can understand why. 1 road in and 1 road out essentially.

Here's my guess at what will happen next.

Melitopol is now the most strategic point on the battlefield. If Ukraine controls it, Crimea is cut off and must rely on resupply by sea and air. If this occurs, then Ukraine can put legitimate pressure on Crimea. They will begin a similar pattern to what we've seen twice now in this war. A period of methodically degrading Russia's army, after which an offensive into Crimea could be launched.

To do this, I think they will do something along these lines

1) Push to the red lines on this map and establish blocking positions while launching an offensive to the center area of this map. From this position, the road between Melitopol and Crimea is within tube artillery range and the road can be effectively shut down for traffic. The rail line would be severed thus denying Crimea resupply by rail. At the same time, from the same general launch points, advance across the top of the area and take back Enerhodar and the nuclear plant.

Once the north and the middle are under control, move on to Melitopol. Russia only has one road and rail line to supply Melitopol, cut that and let the grapes wither on the vine.

Once they have Melitopol, they would control everything above the green line, thereby isolating Crimea