re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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I'm also seeing German media reports of the same thing. This is a big embarrassment for both Germany and the US. The main point of this Ramstein conference was to organize Leopard 2 deliveries to Ukraine.

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We should call their bluff and send 10 and guarantee a 1-1 exchange for Poland to provide their leopards to Ukraine. When they drag their feet Us brass and polish brass should drag their arse in the media Trump style.

Useful map that shows the GLSDB's 150km range from current lines. When Ukraine gets this weapon, there's a lot of Russian-held territory that will become vulnerable, including about half of Crimea.




In particular, Russia has been unloading ships at Berdyansk, and that will stop. They have used the city of Luhansk as a major base in many ways, and that will stop. The major logistics hub at Dzhankoy in Crimea will be in range.

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The U.S. also sent Russia these supplies and equipment during WW2 -

"After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, America sent the first convoys with goods to the Soviet Union by August.

The scope of the aid is detailed by Russia Beyond, an online publication of Russia’s state newspaper (Rossiyskaya Gazeta), and also by many historians, including U.S. policy analyst Albert L. Weeks in his 2004 book Russia’s Life-Saver: Lend-Lease Aid to the USSR in World War II.

In the final tally, America sent its Russian ally the following military equipment:

400,000 jeeps and trucks
14,000 airplanes
8,000 tractors
13,000 tanks

And these supplies:

More than 1.5 million blankets
15 million pairs of army boots
107,000 tons of cotton
2.7 million tons of petroleum products (to fuel airplanes, trucks, and tanks)
4.5 million tons of food

Americans also sent guns, ammunition, explosives, copper, steel, aluminum, medicine, field radios, radar tools, books and other items.

The U.S. even transported an entire Ford Company tire factory, which made tires for military vehicles, to the Soviet Union.

From 1941 through 1945, the U.S. sent $11.3 billion, or $180 billion in 2016 dollars, in goods and services to the Soviets."

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Entire refineries, crude oil and quite a few process units to make high octane gasoline for airplanes sent over as modules. The Russian refinery manager I met had 3 identical down to the footprint of one at Shell in Carson, CA (Dominguez site of Wilmington Refinery.

This is an interesting watch from Solovyov's morning show. More holy war, existential crisis, and satanism with a sprinkling of Allah Akbar. He makes sure to showcase one of his visits to the "front lines" and if you watch him while the other guy is speechifying you will notice he is a tag chaser (some of you guys will certainly know what that means). Maybe the big boy on the crutches made Solovyov his dependapotomus the night before.

YT

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You still need the time to train crews on Leopards and Bradleys and this will take a couple months at the very least.

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And that’s if you’re transitioning already trained and veteran units to use these vehicles in place of the T-72s and BMPs they had been using. If they’re planning to form new units to use these vehicles on top of crew level training, they’ll also have to train them to function at first the platoon, then company, battalion, and finally brigade level. That will take several months minimum.

The main question is, does the Ukrainian Army have sufficient forces to allow already existing units to be pulled off the front to go train on these new Western vehicles?

They really don’t have a choice. If tanks and IFVs get sent they have to go get trained on them. Everyone else just has to hold the line. But this needs to happen now for them to be combat effective in spring/summer. I also don’t see why we haven’t given Poland some of our F-16s being taken out of service to replace the 23 Mig-29s they still have but don’t even want. Poland wants to be a 100% western military and Ukrainian pilots could jump in and fly them immediately. They need aircraft but it has to be Soviet systems until Ukraine can upgrade their air bases and runways. The F-16 has a very fragile nose gear they just couldn’t operate under the current conditions. There was no point in giving them JDAMS if they don’t have the aircraft to deliver them.

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cajunangelle

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go back to the poliboard

Def Mon also has this one up which shows some nice comparisons factoring in behind lines range reduction and GMLRS versus GLSDB ranges



Twitter

Edit as it wasn't clear in legend, black broken line is for GMLRS.

ISW Update

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech commemorating the Soviet forces’ breaking of the siege of Leningrad illustrated that he remains uncertain about his ability to significantly shape the Russian information space. Putin used his January 18 speech to reiterate standard and longstanding Kremlin rhetoric that falsely maintains that Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine to protect residents in the Donbas from neo-Nazis who, the Kremlin claims, seized control of the Ukrainian government in 2014

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Putin’s speech is likely part of a larger and relatively new informational effort to wrap the "special military operation" inside the greater Russian national mythos of the Great Patriotic War (the Second World War) to increase Russian support for a protracted war and increasing mobilization. Putin’s speech was symbolically significant for the Russian domestic audience.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov augmented these efforts to increase Russian support for a protracted war by explicitly claiming that Ukraine and the West are pursuing the genocide of the Russian people. Lavrov accused the West of assembling a coalition of European countries to use Ukraine as a proxy in a war that aims to solve the "Russian question" in the same way that Adolf Hitler had sought a "final solution" to eradicate Europe’s Jewish population.[7] Lavrov argued that Western officials’ desire for the strategic defeat of Russia is tantamount to the genocide of the Russian people.

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Lavrov’s equations of the West with Nazi Germany and its support for Ukraine with an effort to exterminate the Russian people are ludicrous and almost certainly aimed at a domestic Russian audience. Ukraine has never threatened to invade or seize territory beyond the internationally recognized borders of 1991. Neither NATO as an alliance nor any individual member state has threatened to invade Russia, let alone to pursue the destruction of Russians as a people. The purpose of Lavrov’s outrageous and absurd comparison was very likely meant to complement Putin’s rhetoric and other Russian efforts to persuade the Russian people that Ukraine and its Western backers pose a real and imminent threat to Russian territory and to the Russian people in their homes. Russian governments, the Wagner Private Military Company, and the Russian military have dug trenches and established militias in areas bordering Ukraine for months, ostensibly to defend against the nonexistent threat of a Ukrainian invasion.[9] These efforts, together with Putin’s and Lavrov’s statements wrapping themselves in the banners of the Red Army waging the Great Patriotic Special Military Operation, are meant to galvanize support for protracted mobilization and suffering in pursuit of Putin’s unprovoked aggression and search for territorial conquest.

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Putin and Lavrov continue to deny Ukrainian sovereignty and outright reject direct negotiations with Ukraine. Putin emphasized in his speech that Russia is fighting to protect people who live in its "historical territories" in Ukraine, a continuation of Kremlin rhetoric that rejects Ukrainian sovereignty and seeks to justify Putin’s maximalist goals of territorial acquisition in Ukraine.[10] Lavrov explicitly stated that "there can be no talk of negotiations with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky" and argued that Western insistence on Ukraine’s involvement in negotiations is "nonsense" as the West is in charge of making decisions in Ukraine.[11] Lavrov stated that the Kremlin would respond seriously to any noteworthy proposals from the United States

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Putin continues efforts to reinvigorate Russia’s defense industrial base to support a protracted war in Ukraine. Putin visited workers at the Obukhov State Plant—part of the Almaz-Antey Russian state-owned defense industrial company—on January 18.[14] Putin stated that the Russian defense industry currently can produce more than it could previously in an unspecified past time frame and stated that Russia will achieve the defense industrial production level that Russia needs.[15] Putin acknowledged that workers at the Obukhov factory work three shifts a day and reiterated that defense industry workers were exempted from mobilization, likely because Putin needs to keep specialized workers in Russia’s defense industrial base.

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Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin is becoming increasingly bold in his verbal attacks against the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD). Prigozhin criticized the MoD’s new guidelines for Russian troops in Ukraine that restrict the use of certain personal electronic devices in combat zones and set stricter guidelines for men’s grooming standards on January 18.[18] Prigozhin defended Russian line soldiers who do not adhere to grooming standards (Prigozhin observed that beards are customary for many Muslim and Orthodox Christian fighters) and claimed that soldiers’ use of smartphones and tablets is necessary for modern warfare.[19] Prigozhin stated that "war is the time of the active and courageous, and not of the clean-shaven who turned in phones to the warehouse."[20] Prigozhin further criticized out-of-touch Russian MoD officials who must "develop along with the development of modern warfare, learn how to effectively kill the enemy and seize territories," and not "comb everyone under your ridiculous rules, principles and whims."

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Prigozhin directly attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presidential administration and insinuated that some officials working there are traitors who want Russia to lose the war in Ukraine—one of Prigozhin’s boldest attacks against the Kremlin to date.[23] Prigozhin weighed in on an ongoing Russian policy debate about banning YouTube and stated that some officials in the Kremlin presidential administration oppose banning YouTube because it would undermine their effort to have the United States and Russia reestablish relations after Russia loses the war in Ukraine.[24] Prigozhin stated that such officials think that the United States will "forgive [Russia] its sins" of supporting "pro-Russian interests" and "supporting Putin" if Russia begs for Western forgiveness after losing the war.[25] Prigozhin called these officials "traitors of the people" who proclaim exalted pro-Russian values but nevertheless live and vacation abroad and "support the West in every possible way

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Prigozhin and other notable voices in Russia are carving out a new space to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin without fear of retribution. Prigozhin and other prominent Russian nationalists such as Igor Girkin, a former Russian militant commander and prominent critical voice in the Russian milblogger information space, have been opening a new sector in the Russian information space where certain figures can criticize Putin and the highest echelons of the Russian government without any apparent retribution.

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A helicopter transporting Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs officials crashed in a residential area in Brovary, Kyiv Oblast on January 18. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service announced that the crash killed 16, including Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky and three children, and injured 30, including 16 children.

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British Defence Intelligence
UPDATE ON UKRAINE
19 January 2023
INTELLIGENCE UPDATE

Russia is likely considering deploying a small number of its new T-14 Armata main battle tanks in Ukraine. In late December 2022, imagery showed T-14s on a training area in southern Russia: the site has been associated with pre-deployment activity for the Ukraine operation.

This followed pro-government Russia media outlets claiming T-14s were being prepared for deployment. However, it is unclear whether Russia has yet moved the type into Ukraine.

Any T-14 deployment is likely to be a high-risk decision for Russia. Eleven years in development, the programme has been dogged with delays, reduction in planned fleet size, and reports of manufacturing problems. An additional challenge for Russia is adjusting its logistics chain to handle T-14 because it is larger and heavier than other Russian tanks.

If Russia deploys T-14, it will likely primarily be for propaganda purposes. Production is probably only in the low tens, while commanders are unlikely to trust the vehicle in combat.