re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Multiple blasts were reported in Iran Saturday night, as drones of an unknown origin carried out attacks on critical Iranian defense production facilities. At the time of this writing, there are no confirmed details on the number of attacks and the targets other than the major ammunition plant at Isfahan. Isfahan is Iran’s third largest city and located about 270 miles south of Tehran.

UPDATE: Explosion at Military Plant in Isfahan #Iran, local media saying it’s by drone targeting munitions manufacturing centers. Video: pic.twitter.com/t7sLXENoZK

— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 29, 2023

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I wanna be deep in the cover where tanks can't tread.

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By 1945, Stars and Stripes cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin was famous, and his creations, the G.I.s Willie and Joe, were popular with troops throughout the European Theater of Operations – with one singular and vocal exception: Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.


For the spit-and-polish Patton, Mauldin’s unshaven and unkempt fictional G.I.s that were a regular feature in Stars and Stripes and several newspapers in the United States, were “a disgrace” that subverted discipline. Mauldin’s characters had been a bone of contention for Patton since 1943, when Mauldin, then a member of the 45th Division in Patton’s Seventh Army, drew them for the division newspaper during the Sicilian campaign. An incensed Patton demanded that its commander, Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton , fire Mauldin. Middleton, who knew how to handle his mercurial boss, said he would … provided Patton put the order in writing. Patton backed down.



But that didn’t mean Patton had given up the fight. Since that time, Patton had periodically complained to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters, SHAEF, about Mauldin’s creations, demanding that they be banned. Things came to a head in late February 1945 when Mauldin, on assignment for Stars and Stripes, visited Patton’s Third Army area and promptly ran afoul of the MPs for being “out of uniform.” Mauldin had forgotten his helmet. Things quickly went downhill from there. After returning to the Stars and Stripes office, an incensed Mauldin responded with a biting cartoon skewering Third Army and its commander’s nit-picking regulations and fines.

Looking to smooth things over before they got completely out of hand, Eisenhower’s Navy aide, Capt. Harry Butcher, suggested to Patton that he and Mauldin meet and clear the air between them. After threatening to throw Mauldin “in jail for thirty days” if he came back into the Third Army area, Patton agreed that Butcher’s idea sounded reasonable and a meeting was scheduled.

After threatening to throw Mauldin “in jail for thirty days” if he came back into the Third Army area, Patton agreed that Butcher’s idea sounded reasonable and a meeting was scheduled.

Butcher personally briefed the nervous Mauldin on how to look. Butcher recalled, “I told him that when he went to Patton’s office to make certain his uniform was neat and tidy and that he was in proper dress for the Third Army area. . . . He must stand at attention and salute smartly. If he did less, the interview was doomed to failure.”

A few days later Mauldin, a frightened, baby-faced twenty-five-year-old, was ushered into Patton’s office, convinced he was on “a suicide mission.” Mauldin promptly snapped to attention and delivered his best parade ground salute.
Lt. Gen. George Patton


Patton, in full medal-bedecked uniform, with more general’s stars on his collar and shoulders than Mauldin could count, rose from behind his desk and motioned Mauldin to sit on a nearby chair. Patton then took for himself a large chair beside Mauldin that Patton’s pet English terrier, Willie, had vacated.

For forty-five minutes, Patton fulminated about “those god-awful things you call soldiers,” complaining that, amongst other things, they look “like goddamn bums.” Glaring at Mauldin, he growled as deeply as his high-pitched voice allowed, “What are you trying to do, incite a goddamn mutiny?”

At one point during Patton’s tirade, which included, Mauldin later admitted, an inspirational military history lesson, Mauldin unconsciously reached out to scratch Willie’s ear. Then he stopped. Mauldin was reaching out with his drawing hand, and he was convinced that a snap of Willie’s powerful jaws would accomplish for Patton what all the general’s letters to SHAEF had failed to do – put an end to Willie and Joe cartoons.



Patton had so dominated their appointment that Mauldin had only a couple of minutes to give his side that, needless to say, left Patton unmoved. They parted, agreeing to disagree.

But Patton still could not let the issue lie, and SHAEF again was the recipient of his complaints regarding Mauldin’s creations. Finally, Eisenhower had had enough of this distracting tempest in a teapot. He wrote an official letter to Deputy Theater Commander Lt. Gen. Ben Lear that said, in part, “A great deal of pressure has been brought on me in the past to abolish such things as Mauldin’s cartoons. . . . You will make sure that the responsible officer knows he is not to interfere in matters of this kind. If he believes that any specific violation of good sense or good judgment has occurred, he may bring it to my personal attention.”

On April 11, 1945, an amused Butcher wrote in his diary, “It looks to me that General Patton may now admit he has lost the battle of Mauldin.”

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Conventional Russian forces are likely replacing exhausted Wagner Group forces to maintain the offensive in Bakhmut after the Wagner Group’s offensive in Bakhmut culminated with the capture of Soledar around January 12. The Wagner Group’s assault on Bakhmut has likely culminated with its surge on Soledar. Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut have not made significant gains since capturing Soledar around January 12. Conventional Russian units are now participating in fighting in Bakhmut to reinvigorate the Russian offensive there.

Ukrainian officials have maintained that the Russian offensive on Bakhmut has not culminated

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Russian forces are attempting to prevent Ukraine from regaining the initiative possibly ahead of a planned decisive Russian offensive in Donbas. Chief of the Russian General Staff Valery Gerasimov stated on December 22 that Russian forces are focusing most of their efforts on seizing Donetsk Oblast, which likely entails Russian forces capturing key positions in western Luhansk Oblast and northeastern Donetsk Oblast to reach the oblasts’ administrative borders

The localized attacks on Vuhledar and settlements in Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts are likely intended to disperse Ukrainian troops and set conditions for a decisive Russian offensive in western Luhansk Oblast, as ISW had previously assessed.[9] Russian forces may be attempting to disperse the Ukrainian grouping of forces on the Svatove-Kreminna line to enable a Russian recapture of Lyman, Donetsk Oblast. Russian forces could seek to use Lyman as a launching point for a decisive offensive to secure Donbas by conducting an offensive from Lyman in tandem with a drive on Bakhmut or from Bakhmut toward Slovyansk if the Russians succeed in capturing Bakhmut. The Russians may imagine that they can drive from their current positions directly to the Donetsk Oblast border along several independent lines of advance, although it is unlikely that they would not recognize the extreme improbability of success in such an attempt. The Russians more likely intend to pursue several phases of offensive operations culminating with securing the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. These phases would likely require anywhere from six to 12 months of Russian campaigning, if they are possible at all, extrapolating from past Russian operational patterns and assuming higher levels of Russian combat power and capability than ISW has observed since the start of the war.

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Russian forces likely lack the combat power necessary to sustain more than one major offensive operation while fixing Ukrainian forces in western Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts. There is no open-source evidence to suggest that Russian forces have regenerated sufficient combat power from their losses in the early phases of the war to enable Russian forces to conduct simultaneous large-scale mechanized offensives in the next several months.

The conventional Russian military still must undergo significant reconstitution before regaining the ability to conduct effective maneuver warfare. The Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) plans to significantly increase the size of Russia’s military with 12 new maneuver divisions will take at least until 2026, if this effort succeeds at all.

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The Russian military leadership may once again be planning an offensive operation based on erroneous assumptions about the Russian military’s capabilities, however. Russia's military failures in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson oblasts have demonstrated time and again that Russian military leadership overestimates the Russian military‘s own capabilities. The degraded Eastern Military District naval infantry elements that are currently attacking Vuhledar will likely culminate even if they succeed in capturing the settlement.[12] The Ukrainian loss of Vuhledar, if it occurs, would not likely portend an immediate Russian breakthrough on multiple lines of advance in Donetsk or in the theater in general, therefore. Ukraine‘s spring rain season (which normally occurs around April) will degrade the terrain’s suitability for maneuver warfare. If Russian forces attempt simultaneous mechanized offensives in the next two months they would likely disrupt Ukrainian efforts to conduct a counteroffensive in the short term, but such a Russian offensive would likely prematurely culminate during the spring rain season (if not before) before achieving operationally significant effects. Russian forces’ culmination would then generate favorable conditions for Ukrainian forces to exploit in their own late spring or summer 2023 counteroffensive. Ukraine would additionally be seeing growing benefits from the incorporation of Western tank deliveries that have only just been pledged.

The Russians are thus very unlikely to achieve operationally decisive successes in their current and likely upcoming offensive operations, although they are likely to make tactically and possibly even operationally significant gains. Ukraine will very likely find itself in a good position from which to conduct successful counteroffensive operations following the culmination of Russian offensives before or during the spring rainy season—always assuming that the Ukrainians do not preempt or disrupt the Russian offensives with a counter-offensive of their own.

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The Russian military’s decreasing reliance on Wagner forces around Bakhmut is likely reducing Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s influence.

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Prigozhin is likely sensing and is overcompensating for his declining influence and has therefore begun to attack the nationalist veteran faction. The veteran faction has been demanding that the Russian military command fix flaws within its conventional campaign instead of focusing on ineffective and unconventional solutions since at least May 2022.[15] Prigozhin continued on January 28 to berate Igor Girkin – a prominent Russian nationalist voice and a former Russian officer who has connections with the Russian veteran community – with vulgar insults and accusations that he is responsible for Russian forces’ loss of Slovyansk in 2014.

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Prigozhin is also facing bribery accusations, which may further diminish his reputation regardless of their validity. Prigozhin responded to a media inquiry on January 27 regarding speculations that he receives bribes from convicts who do not then serve on the front lines but still receive a pardon for their “service.”[19] The allegations claimed that Prigozhin had recruited and soon released convicted Lipetsk Oblast Parliamentarian Andrey Yaitskiy (who some commentators speculated was physically unfit for military service), which granted him a pardon in exchange for a bribe.[20] Prigozhin attempted to deflect the accusations by claiming that Wagner discharged Yaitskiy with honors following his heavy injuries sustained on the frontlines and included purported testimony from Yaitskiy’s alleged commanders who portrayed him as a hero

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$100B is peanuts and wouldn't even put a dent into infrastructure over here in the US. Our tax money is better spent funding an overseas battle

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The strikes on Iran are extremely distributed all over the country. No less than 7 large cities have been struck.

The Iranian security council has been convened for an emergency session

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Blahodatne, north of Bakhmut has been captured by Wagner PMC forces. Yesterday Wagner-boss Prigozhin already claimed the town was under control of its forces, which is now visually confirmed.

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Russian and Iranian State Media is already Claiming that the Drone Attacks on Military Facilities inside of Iran tonight are suspected to be from a NATO or NATO-Linked Country.

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The AFU destroyed a bridge near Melitopol at one of the main supply routes of Russian forces. Gauleiter Rogov reported that the bridge was hit by HIMARS. Locals report that the bridge was attacked when a convoy of Russian vehicles passed the area

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