The end?
- Thread starter borolad259
- Start date
Littlefella68
Active member
African nations to head up peace talks?
h_m_boro
Well-known member
Think they've took the "Ultras" thing to a new level .......
Ok, he's being a bit melodramatic, but... he's quite good at this stuff.
"
Before getting to the headline I feel the need to discuss a couple of other tidbits.
Kinzhal
Yet another of Russias "superweapons" have turned out to be duds.
Problem with the Kinzhal is that at the end it is unable to continue manouvering and it is subsonic.
It is just an extremely expensive glidebomb at this stage.
What did make it hard to hit was that it flew at extreme speed on the way through Ukraine.
The big difference is not the Patriot as such, the IRIS-T is quite capable of knocking them down, and did so 3 times last night.
The big difference is that now the entire radar intercept system is integrated into one massive multi-radar array.
This gives Ukraine enough time to react and blow the Kinzhals to smithereens.
Out of the 18 missals and drones towards Kyiv, 6 was Kinzhal, and 100 percent was knocked down.
On top of that Ukraine misnamed the jet driven version of the Shaheed, instead of Supercam they accidentally wrote Supercum, and general hilarity ensued.
Ukraine having a sense of humour have now officially renamed it to Supercum.
Missiles
Ukrane is highly successful with the Storm Shadow missiles due to employing the EW dummy missile to fly before the cruise missile as a waterbreaker.
Russia is mildly unamused by this.
Why Luhansk/Donetsk?
Well, starting there is a good choice since it forces the Russians to push back their logistics and command posts behind their own border in the hope that Ukraine will not fire into Russia. It is likely that Ukraine will not do that for now at least.
So, when all of those are moved out, then Ukraine will start hitting Crimea with gusto.
Or at least as much gusto as is possible when you will receive a Storm Shadow every two days on average, and one Gungnir per week and build a HRIM-2 every other week.
PrSM? One per day.
In the end these will be used for longrange only.
It will be the 150km GLSDB that will be the bulk weapon from now on.
Bakhmut
While Wagner is having minor success inside Bakhmut City in the area called The Citadel and took a city block, it is met with tanks and lots of artillery.
The houses they took are being expertly demolished on top of them.
Outside of Bakhmut itself on the northern and southern flank the story is completely different.
Here Ukraine is slowly grinding up line after line.
On the southern side Ukraine is deploying breaching charges to good effect on the third (of 5) defensive lines, and are using lots of artillery on line 4 and 5. Behind that missiles are taking out command posts, radars and air defence systems.
Ukraine is going slow but very steady, they are not doing rapid manouvres, instead they are adeptly using their technological superiority to avoid losses of lives on their side.
If Ukraine can continue at the going pace Bakhmut will be surrounded in about 2-4 weeks.
POWs
Ukraine has an interesting problem.
So many Russians are giving up that Ukraine has run out of stockades.
Simply put, there are so many Russians that they have run out of places to put them.
Previously they traded Russians for their own soldiers, but now there is not enough Ukrainians to trade.
This is rather embarrassing for Russia.
But, if you have barrier guards behind your soldiers, giving up is a pretty good option really, especially since Russians by now know that they will be relatively well treated and fed by the Ukrainians if they put up a white flag and shuffle forward.
The Embarrassed Revolution
I have previously talked about various power factions being at a low level conflict with each other.
But, I have not really talked about average Russians, and the effect pure embarrassment has on them, and their mid level leaders.
The Kinzhals turned out to be such an embarrassment.
Russia had touted them as invincible and unstoppable, a super weapon that put Russia at the top of the heap.
On top of that even the Americans stated that they had nothing that could take it out.
So, seeing Kinzhals dropping like flies against weapons that everyone said was incapable of taking them down...
This made the mid-level management part of Russia say, enough.
The 3 guys that built them was arrested today on treason charges for selling expensive useless garbage (12 million USD a pop) to Russia, and more arrests are expected in the coming days.
Those 3 are top tier people in the weapons industry, these are people in high places, influential oligarchs with Putins and Soyghurts ear...
Arrested by lowly prosecutors and ordinary Police, and then arraigned by regular city judges.
To the best of my knowledge, these are the first 3 real corruption charges in Russia since 2010ish.
Yesterday there was a court case in Moscow where a man was sentenced to nine years in prison for speaking out against the war on social media.
No unusual at all, rather business as usual.
But, as his friends started to file out past his cage the man started to hammer out the beat against the plexiglas and sing Chervona Kalyna loudly.
And the crowd sang back and applauded.
The police and guards looked like they would **** themselves, and none of the onlookers was arrested.
There is also a sharp spike in intercepted calls were ordinary Russians talk about being ashamed of their country and embarrassed.
Not because of the war or deaths, no instead over that their country is turning out to be weak and an embarrassing laughing stock globally.
And they all blame Putin and their leaders for this.
It turns out that 200 000 dead Russians, and countless suffering was not enough to push Russians to the brink of a revolution.
But being ashamed over their incompetency and the clownishness of their leaders pushed them towards a revolution.
We are near where a spark will set it all off.
That sad T-34 is often mentioned, how Putin weakened Russia into only being able to field a single old tank.
When will it happen?
As a Northerner myself I can with fair confidence say that it will happen when long warm summer nights drive people out into parks and streets to drink while vacationing.
You southerners do not understand the insane difference those sunny evening do with us.
Swedes takes to the park to drink in droves, same with Russians... only sundeprived people understand this urge to drink in parks...
Tens of thousands of sad, depressed, unhappy, ashamed and embarrassed Russians on the streets of Moscow, and everyone fuelled by high-octane vodka... what ever could go wrong with that mix?
The Resistance
Today videos started to be spread all over Russian internet channels.
Men in uniform, armed, claiming to be the resistance of Russia fighting for a free democratic Russia.
All with a grey insignia on black of a sword-trident that looks strangely similar to another golden sword-trident of Ukraine.
Claiming that there are 10 000 of them, and that they are coming for Moscow.
The most well spread video of them was rapidly geolocated.
It was filmed in the forrest at Stalins Dacha outside of Moscow, the same Dacha that he died in.
That is a rather powerful message in Russia.
In other videos they claimed the responsibility of many of the "smoking incidents" in Russia.
And then they thanked Putin for the weapons that they had gotten from the SMO...
Russia is now a powderkegg.
The fuse is lit."
"
Before getting to the headline I feel the need to discuss a couple of other tidbits.
Kinzhal
Yet another of Russias "superweapons" have turned out to be duds.
Problem with the Kinzhal is that at the end it is unable to continue manouvering and it is subsonic.
It is just an extremely expensive glidebomb at this stage.
What did make it hard to hit was that it flew at extreme speed on the way through Ukraine.
The big difference is not the Patriot as such, the IRIS-T is quite capable of knocking them down, and did so 3 times last night.
The big difference is that now the entire radar intercept system is integrated into one massive multi-radar array.
This gives Ukraine enough time to react and blow the Kinzhals to smithereens.
Out of the 18 missals and drones towards Kyiv, 6 was Kinzhal, and 100 percent was knocked down.
On top of that Ukraine misnamed the jet driven version of the Shaheed, instead of Supercam they accidentally wrote Supercum, and general hilarity ensued.
Ukraine having a sense of humour have now officially renamed it to Supercum.
Missiles
Ukrane is highly successful with the Storm Shadow missiles due to employing the EW dummy missile to fly before the cruise missile as a waterbreaker.
Russia is mildly unamused by this.
Why Luhansk/Donetsk?
Well, starting there is a good choice since it forces the Russians to push back their logistics and command posts behind their own border in the hope that Ukraine will not fire into Russia. It is likely that Ukraine will not do that for now at least.
So, when all of those are moved out, then Ukraine will start hitting Crimea with gusto.
Or at least as much gusto as is possible when you will receive a Storm Shadow every two days on average, and one Gungnir per week and build a HRIM-2 every other week.
PrSM? One per day.
In the end these will be used for longrange only.
It will be the 150km GLSDB that will be the bulk weapon from now on.
Bakhmut
While Wagner is having minor success inside Bakhmut City in the area called The Citadel and took a city block, it is met with tanks and lots of artillery.
The houses they took are being expertly demolished on top of them.
Outside of Bakhmut itself on the northern and southern flank the story is completely different.
Here Ukraine is slowly grinding up line after line.
On the southern side Ukraine is deploying breaching charges to good effect on the third (of 5) defensive lines, and are using lots of artillery on line 4 and 5. Behind that missiles are taking out command posts, radars and air defence systems.
Ukraine is going slow but very steady, they are not doing rapid manouvres, instead they are adeptly using their technological superiority to avoid losses of lives on their side.
If Ukraine can continue at the going pace Bakhmut will be surrounded in about 2-4 weeks.
POWs
Ukraine has an interesting problem.
So many Russians are giving up that Ukraine has run out of stockades.
Simply put, there are so many Russians that they have run out of places to put them.
Previously they traded Russians for their own soldiers, but now there is not enough Ukrainians to trade.
This is rather embarrassing for Russia.
But, if you have barrier guards behind your soldiers, giving up is a pretty good option really, especially since Russians by now know that they will be relatively well treated and fed by the Ukrainians if they put up a white flag and shuffle forward.
The Embarrassed Revolution
I have previously talked about various power factions being at a low level conflict with each other.
But, I have not really talked about average Russians, and the effect pure embarrassment has on them, and their mid level leaders.
The Kinzhals turned out to be such an embarrassment.
Russia had touted them as invincible and unstoppable, a super weapon that put Russia at the top of the heap.
On top of that even the Americans stated that they had nothing that could take it out.
So, seeing Kinzhals dropping like flies against weapons that everyone said was incapable of taking them down...
This made the mid-level management part of Russia say, enough.
The 3 guys that built them was arrested today on treason charges for selling expensive useless garbage (12 million USD a pop) to Russia, and more arrests are expected in the coming days.
Those 3 are top tier people in the weapons industry, these are people in high places, influential oligarchs with Putins and Soyghurts ear...
Arrested by lowly prosecutors and ordinary Police, and then arraigned by regular city judges.
To the best of my knowledge, these are the first 3 real corruption charges in Russia since 2010ish.
Yesterday there was a court case in Moscow where a man was sentenced to nine years in prison for speaking out against the war on social media.
No unusual at all, rather business as usual.
But, as his friends started to file out past his cage the man started to hammer out the beat against the plexiglas and sing Chervona Kalyna loudly.
And the crowd sang back and applauded.
The police and guards looked like they would **** themselves, and none of the onlookers was arrested.
There is also a sharp spike in intercepted calls were ordinary Russians talk about being ashamed of their country and embarrassed.
Not because of the war or deaths, no instead over that their country is turning out to be weak and an embarrassing laughing stock globally.
And they all blame Putin and their leaders for this.
It turns out that 200 000 dead Russians, and countless suffering was not enough to push Russians to the brink of a revolution.
But being ashamed over their incompetency and the clownishness of their leaders pushed them towards a revolution.
We are near where a spark will set it all off.
That sad T-34 is often mentioned, how Putin weakened Russia into only being able to field a single old tank.
When will it happen?
As a Northerner myself I can with fair confidence say that it will happen when long warm summer nights drive people out into parks and streets to drink while vacationing.
You southerners do not understand the insane difference those sunny evening do with us.
Swedes takes to the park to drink in droves, same with Russians... only sundeprived people understand this urge to drink in parks...
Tens of thousands of sad, depressed, unhappy, ashamed and embarrassed Russians on the streets of Moscow, and everyone fuelled by high-octane vodka... what ever could go wrong with that mix?
The Resistance
Today videos started to be spread all over Russian internet channels.
Men in uniform, armed, claiming to be the resistance of Russia fighting for a free democratic Russia.
All with a grey insignia on black of a sword-trident that looks strangely similar to another golden sword-trident of Ukraine.
Claiming that there are 10 000 of them, and that they are coming for Moscow.
The most well spread video of them was rapidly geolocated.
It was filmed in the forrest at Stalins Dacha outside of Moscow, the same Dacha that he died in.
That is a rather powerful message in Russia.
In other videos they claimed the responsibility of many of the "smoking incidents" in Russia.
And then they thanked Putin for the weapons that they had gotten from the SMO...
Russia is now a powderkegg.
The fuse is lit."
Sweden trained another brigade. I'm mainly posting this because our man is in the photos. This is from over a year ago when he was training Tank Girl's brigade.
It/she was so successful that Sweden has, in secret, been training a new Ukrainian group ... but this time they are going back to the Ukraine as a full Nordic Battle Group, with all the brand new, top spec equipment ... a lot of it.
I may be able to post more fully from what he has just sent me a bit later.
It/she was so successful that Sweden has, in secret, been training a new Ukrainian group ... but this time they are going back to the Ukraine as a full Nordic Battle Group, with all the brand new, top spec equipment ... a lot of it.
I may be able to post more fully from what he has just sent me a bit later.
Last edited:
Pretty informative one this.
"It has been mentioned that the offensive near Bakhmut is going slow, and that it is likely to not be the real one.
So for those wondering why, and is it the real offensive? Some answers, and a bit of a background.
Background
The Grand Total of the Russian Army is currently believed to be in total 600 000 men across all of the shebang of Russia.
There's also roughly 100 000 each that belong to the navy and the air force, but let us not count those here.
With "army" I mean every type of land fighting force, including air defence, train force, logistics and supply, etcetera etcetera.
Just the train force was 70 000 men strong at the beginning of the war, these are engineering soldiers tasked with maintaining and defending the expansive train network throughout Russia, and during war also expanding it into newly occupied territories.
This number also does not discern between PMCs like Wagner, regular army, Occupied Ukrainian Republic Militias, and so on and so forth...
In Bakhmut I have been lazy and said that Ukraine is fighting 1/3rd of the Russian army.
It is true, but it is a figure that must be explained better.
First we need to take into account that only half of the 600 000 are combat units used in a frontline setting (or as reserves for combat duty).
So. 300 000 troops. This is an extreme number, a typical western army has 1:4 ratio and not a 1:2 ratio.
This is indicative of the supply and maintenance issues that Russia has.
It is only possible to have a 1:2 ratio, and that is that you do not have large reserve forces, and this is now the case, almost all of the combat units in Russia is on the front lines.
So, 300 000 men in combat units, but 100 000 of those are in the Far East and along the western borders (spread extremely thin towards the West, like Russia does not really see NATO as a threat...)
So, even though the total Russian army contingent in Ukraine is 400 000 men strong there are only 200 000 dedicated to fighting and equipped to do so.
Out of those 100 000 is in the Bakhmut part of the frontline.
Another 50 000 is in the rest of Donbas, all the way from the Belgorod border down to Vuhledar, and from Vuhledar the entire way to the Kinburn Spit you have the last 50 000.
Behind them are logistics and air defence etcetera, but not combat units.
So, in fact half of Russias army in Ukraine is tied down in Bakhmut.
Russia has spent the last 10 months digging line after line of defensive lines, some has been dug behind unmoving frontlines, and some as the Russian offensive has pushed the front forwards.
There are now 5 complete defensive lines, an insane number by any stretch of the imagination since we are talking about trenches.
In the first world war there was only two complete, and never more than 3 in depth.
But to make things even worse, there are also incomplete lines, especially in Bakhmut proper, and then they have built fortifications and strongpoints (mid-thing between a trench and a fort).
So, now let me rephrase the western pundit narrative that Ukraine is not doing a serious offensive in Bakhmut and that things is incredibly slow...
Here goes:
Ukraine has in the first 5 days of their offensive taken more than 20 square kilometres of the most well defended and fortified piece of land to have ever existed in human history, and Ukraine has broken two complete defence lines in two different sites and cleared them over large distances.
With that sentence the discussion about it being real and why it is taking time should be dead, but I want to talk about another reason it takes time.
Deathometer
This is a direct translation of the Swedish term for it.
The Russian phrase is "sanitation number", the US uses acronyms as per usual in the form of KIA.
Prigozhin is basically using the sanitation numbers as a way to brag about how hard they are fighting, my jaw dropped over how pleased he was over having 20 percent dead per month... let that sink in. He was pleased about a disastrous number.
The Russian army is not much better, but they do not openly talk about it.
Let us just state this: Russia does not give a single **** about how many soldiers die in this war.
10 000 dead is a good deal as long as the generals get to move their desks 1 meter towards Berlin.
Russia just rushes head on into the Ukrainian trenches and fortifications with little or no armoured vehicles in Bakhmut.
Quite like lemmings running over a cliff abyss.
Ukraine is a democratic state, and democratic run armies tend to try to save lives of their soldiers.
Ukraines much lower Deathometer numbers in the war is often said to be due to mainly having defended themselves, and the 5:1 ratio of dead when defending.
Problem is obviously that this is hogwash.
Ukraine has performed 3 very counter offensives already, namely the Kyiv push, the Kharkiv to Kreminna push, and the liberation of Northern Kherson.
In fact, Ukraine has performed much larger offensives than Russia in the last year.
So, how come that Ukraine has a ratio that is 1:5 against Russia (it is better) while doing massive offensives?
This is an extremely complex question, I will limit the answer otherwise I will write a book.
1. Better leadership on both a strategic and tactical level picking their fights more wisely.
2. Better supply and maintenance chain.
3. Better artillery preparation of the battlefield.
4. Usage of better and more abundant equipment.
This means that in Bakhmut the leadership has preidentified weaknesses, then they take out the Russian supply chains through masterful artillery preparation, and then they storm using large amounts of breaching charges and other specialised equipment.
And, they do it only when they are as sure as possible that they will succeed, and then do it in overwhelming numbers to limit contact time.
All of this takes a lot of time to do.
In all of the above is the answer to the question about why it is so slow.
To that I counter how steady the progress has been, and how deliberate it has been.
I bet that Ukraine has achieved every single daily goal, and that is quite something in a battle of this magnitude.
Is it working, well Ukraine so far in this offensive against the most well defended and fortified area has a sub 1:1 deathometer rating.
A final interesting tidbit.
For every sanitised russian there is 1 injured and 2 captured.
Remember that they shoot everyone leaving the lines backwards, and that includes their own injured...
This is why Russia has so low injured numbers.
So, for every day Russias army in Bakhmut become 2 percent smaller...
The Real Offensive?
There are two parts to this.
The first one is an emphatic "This is the real offensive!".
It is the part that will take the longest time to win, and it is the currently most politically important.
Because Ukraine must crush the psyche of the Russian population and leadership and hammer in that they are pathetic losers.
So, opening up the Offensive Season with breaking 1/3rd of the entire Russian army in Bakhmut will give them at least a TKO over Russia.
Offensive Season is an apt expression.
I have the entire time stated that Ukraine can, and will, perform up to 3 major offensives at the same time, and a couple of smaller offensives to just rattle the Russian army.
So why is Ukraine not doing those 3 now?
Kherson is ongoing, and that is the other major offensive, it is just that Ukraine is not going full gungho here to save lives of their soldiers. Instead they are developing and slowly expanding their 3 beach heads here, and they are also waiting for something huge to arrive.
Over in Vuhledar artillery preparation is ongoing with sniper precission, and small areas are taken on an almost daily basis.
Here the offensive clearly is at a shaping stage.
Here Ukraine is also waiting for a huge arrival.
The Huge Arrival
To save lives Ukraine must be able to win the artillery war at depth.
For every kilometre of depth that Ukraine can deny Russian logistics and force that back towards Russia is saving thousands of Ukrainian lives.
Problem is that Ukraine previously had barrel artillery up to 50km, and GMLRS up to 80km.
Now they have Storm Shadows, HRIM-2s and Gungnirs, but these are very rare birds, just a few hundred spread out over a year.
Heck not even the US has enough of cruise missiles to hurt Russia as bad as is needed.
But, the Storm Shadows et Al., are just a stop gap measure, that was originally intended to drop the Kersh Bridge and sink ships of the Russian navy.
Ukraine can't waste those valuable resources on forcing the bulk of Russian supply lines backwards, so instead they do a highly important strategic target or two per day.
What Ukraine is waiting for is the mass arrival of huge amounts of PrSM and GLSDBs.
The GLSDBs was delayed somewhat for technical reasons in regards of the old reused rockets that needed to be individually X-rayed, on top of that enough launchers needed to be built to make a difference.
It speaks volumes about the insane combined production power of Boeing/SAAB that they will be able to churn out 10 000 of the buggers for the offensive, albeit a tad delayed.
Currently this mass weapon with a range of 150km and a precission of sub 1 meter is rolling towards Ukraine on massive trains that are so heavy that they are damaging the tracks of the Öresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark.
Fun fact, the trains running are so heavy that SAAB had to borrow specially adapted I-ORE ore trains from LKAB to even getting them to move, the I-ORE is the worlds strongest electric locomotive.
Making the trains lighter is not an option, there are just to many trains running towards Ukraine now, there are no more track-slots available and the bulk of SAABs slots are for the 2 million shells they are producing for Ukraine this year.
Anyway, I am waffling...
This means that in about 2 weeks Ukraine has enough of the GLSDBs stockpiled to start cutting Russian supply lines 150km deep.
Now PrSM (PRISM) are those weird looking Himars cassettes with 2 missiles in them.
Those have already been photographed in Ukraine. They have a range of 499km.
Raytheon went to Boeing, BAE Systems and SAAB to get enough production capacity to produce them far faster than the original contract to the US Army stipulated.
500 has been delivered, and a further 1 500 are inbound.
So far Ukraine has used them very sparingly, but they have already been photographed several times being used by Ukraine against Russian targets.
The PrSM and the GLSDBs had been promised to be delivered in late April, but not even the worlds largest companies could ramp up production fast enough.
And Ukraine knowing that they are weeks away at that stage chose to delay, and only start one Real Offensive, and doing prep work on the other Two.
By doing that they are saving thousands of lives, and as it turns out just the threat of losing in Bakhmut is creating giant arsed waves in Moscow on it's own.
I can understand Moscow.
If my strongest fortress was the first part of the expected Offensive then I would really get weak in my knees.
If half of your army in Ukraine is being pushed backwards in a steady manner, and you expect two more offensives... then you basically know you have lost.
The army knows this very well, problem is that the civilians are still to stupid to grasp it.
Over the next 5 months the Offensive Season will unfold and it will contain at least 2 more big offensives, some will be fast manouver warfare, and some will be extremely slow and look like nothing ever seen previously and being done at a speed that would impress even a threetoed sloth.
Third Space
As I went through Officer College I learned tactics and War School thought me strategy.
These are the two classic spaces (fields) of warfare.
Problem is just that this is not enough for Ukraine to win.
They can win both tactically and strategically and in the end push out all of the Russian army out of Ukraine without winning the war.
To get a decisive win in a war you need to decapitate the political hand of the opposing country, or get them to admit defeat and go home.
The latter option is not gonna happen, Russia is just to damn stupid and stubborn to admit defeat without being occupied.
And, occupying Russia is not an option for two main reasons.
The first is the blasted fact that Russia is way to large for Ukraine to successfully occupy.
The second one is that Russia would use nukes before Moscow fell to the army, so a partial win by decapitating the capital city of the enemy is not an option either.
So, how in the name of feck do you win then?
I call this the Third Space, and that is to by military means win politically over the opposing force.
Ukraine can only win by humiliating the political leadership of Russia through devastating political battlefield wins on their own soil (mostly).
And here the targets are different than what would be tactical or strategic wins.
Grinding up 5 defense lines on two sides of Bakhmut is a tactical victory, encircling it is a tactical win.
Cutting the landbridge is a big tactical win.
But, none of this is a Third Space win, especially not the latter landbridge cutting.
Inside of Ukraine there are 3 Third Space targets that would crush everything that the Russian leadership has stated as unmutable truths and objectives. Losing them would expose all of Russia as feeble meowling weaklings and turning all that propaganda into lies smeared like **** in the face of the Russian population.
These 3 Ukrainian targets are:
1. Bakhmut, thanks to the Russian sexual fetish and 10 months of unending Russian propaganda about how fabulous a win taking it would be.
2. Donbas City, ostensibly the entire war is there to safeguard the Russians in this City... and Russia has spent a lot of effort into this narrative.
3. Crimea, the liberation of Crimea would crush the lie that Crimea is a historic part of Russia to stay forever inside Russia.
Achieving all of them in one go would be massive, but if done one after each other the effect is grinding into the heads of Russians that their country is just **** that can't do anything to stop Ukraine and that it is all pointless and based on lies by their leaders.
If the Russian leadership is still alive at this stage Ukraine need to do the fourth target on the Third Space list, and that is to invade Russia itself and take Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk.
Third Space can only be won by carefully spaced crushing defeats of these key targets, ordinary Russians must learn that whatever they do Ukraine will serve them new costly defeats at every stage, and that unless they have a leadership able to put a stop to it, that they the ordinary Russian is well and truly ****ed.
Hundreds of smoking accidents, assassinations, resistance cell attacks, and so on are all obviously helping to grind in this looming sense of doom and defeat.
Welcome to Third Space, my space.
This was the final reason why Bakhmut is indeed a serious part of the offensive, for now even more important than any cutting of landbridges... "
Also, he mentioned that last night that Belarus is establishing border controls at its border with Russia. Not seen this confirmed yet, but it would make sense after the last week.
"It has been mentioned that the offensive near Bakhmut is going slow, and that it is likely to not be the real one.
So for those wondering why, and is it the real offensive? Some answers, and a bit of a background.
Background
The Grand Total of the Russian Army is currently believed to be in total 600 000 men across all of the shebang of Russia.
There's also roughly 100 000 each that belong to the navy and the air force, but let us not count those here.
With "army" I mean every type of land fighting force, including air defence, train force, logistics and supply, etcetera etcetera.
Just the train force was 70 000 men strong at the beginning of the war, these are engineering soldiers tasked with maintaining and defending the expansive train network throughout Russia, and during war also expanding it into newly occupied territories.
This number also does not discern between PMCs like Wagner, regular army, Occupied Ukrainian Republic Militias, and so on and so forth...
In Bakhmut I have been lazy and said that Ukraine is fighting 1/3rd of the Russian army.
It is true, but it is a figure that must be explained better.
First we need to take into account that only half of the 600 000 are combat units used in a frontline setting (or as reserves for combat duty).
So. 300 000 troops. This is an extreme number, a typical western army has 1:4 ratio and not a 1:2 ratio.
This is indicative of the supply and maintenance issues that Russia has.
It is only possible to have a 1:2 ratio, and that is that you do not have large reserve forces, and this is now the case, almost all of the combat units in Russia is on the front lines.
So, 300 000 men in combat units, but 100 000 of those are in the Far East and along the western borders (spread extremely thin towards the West, like Russia does not really see NATO as a threat...)
So, even though the total Russian army contingent in Ukraine is 400 000 men strong there are only 200 000 dedicated to fighting and equipped to do so.
Out of those 100 000 is in the Bakhmut part of the frontline.
Another 50 000 is in the rest of Donbas, all the way from the Belgorod border down to Vuhledar, and from Vuhledar the entire way to the Kinburn Spit you have the last 50 000.
Behind them are logistics and air defence etcetera, but not combat units.
So, in fact half of Russias army in Ukraine is tied down in Bakhmut.
Russia has spent the last 10 months digging line after line of defensive lines, some has been dug behind unmoving frontlines, and some as the Russian offensive has pushed the front forwards.
There are now 5 complete defensive lines, an insane number by any stretch of the imagination since we are talking about trenches.
In the first world war there was only two complete, and never more than 3 in depth.
But to make things even worse, there are also incomplete lines, especially in Bakhmut proper, and then they have built fortifications and strongpoints (mid-thing between a trench and a fort).
So, now let me rephrase the western pundit narrative that Ukraine is not doing a serious offensive in Bakhmut and that things is incredibly slow...
Here goes:
Ukraine has in the first 5 days of their offensive taken more than 20 square kilometres of the most well defended and fortified piece of land to have ever existed in human history, and Ukraine has broken two complete defence lines in two different sites and cleared them over large distances.
With that sentence the discussion about it being real and why it is taking time should be dead, but I want to talk about another reason it takes time.
Deathometer
This is a direct translation of the Swedish term for it.
The Russian phrase is "sanitation number", the US uses acronyms as per usual in the form of KIA.
Prigozhin is basically using the sanitation numbers as a way to brag about how hard they are fighting, my jaw dropped over how pleased he was over having 20 percent dead per month... let that sink in. He was pleased about a disastrous number.
The Russian army is not much better, but they do not openly talk about it.
Let us just state this: Russia does not give a single **** about how many soldiers die in this war.
10 000 dead is a good deal as long as the generals get to move their desks 1 meter towards Berlin.
Russia just rushes head on into the Ukrainian trenches and fortifications with little or no armoured vehicles in Bakhmut.
Quite like lemmings running over a cliff abyss.
Ukraine is a democratic state, and democratic run armies tend to try to save lives of their soldiers.
Ukraines much lower Deathometer numbers in the war is often said to be due to mainly having defended themselves, and the 5:1 ratio of dead when defending.
Problem is obviously that this is hogwash.
Ukraine has performed 3 very counter offensives already, namely the Kyiv push, the Kharkiv to Kreminna push, and the liberation of Northern Kherson.
In fact, Ukraine has performed much larger offensives than Russia in the last year.
So, how come that Ukraine has a ratio that is 1:5 against Russia (it is better) while doing massive offensives?
This is an extremely complex question, I will limit the answer otherwise I will write a book.
1. Better leadership on both a strategic and tactical level picking their fights more wisely.
2. Better supply and maintenance chain.
3. Better artillery preparation of the battlefield.
4. Usage of better and more abundant equipment.
This means that in Bakhmut the leadership has preidentified weaknesses, then they take out the Russian supply chains through masterful artillery preparation, and then they storm using large amounts of breaching charges and other specialised equipment.
And, they do it only when they are as sure as possible that they will succeed, and then do it in overwhelming numbers to limit contact time.
All of this takes a lot of time to do.
In all of the above is the answer to the question about why it is so slow.
To that I counter how steady the progress has been, and how deliberate it has been.
I bet that Ukraine has achieved every single daily goal, and that is quite something in a battle of this magnitude.
Is it working, well Ukraine so far in this offensive against the most well defended and fortified area has a sub 1:1 deathometer rating.
A final interesting tidbit.
For every sanitised russian there is 1 injured and 2 captured.
Remember that they shoot everyone leaving the lines backwards, and that includes their own injured...
This is why Russia has so low injured numbers.
So, for every day Russias army in Bakhmut become 2 percent smaller...
The Real Offensive?
There are two parts to this.
The first one is an emphatic "This is the real offensive!".
It is the part that will take the longest time to win, and it is the currently most politically important.
Because Ukraine must crush the psyche of the Russian population and leadership and hammer in that they are pathetic losers.
So, opening up the Offensive Season with breaking 1/3rd of the entire Russian army in Bakhmut will give them at least a TKO over Russia.
Offensive Season is an apt expression.
I have the entire time stated that Ukraine can, and will, perform up to 3 major offensives at the same time, and a couple of smaller offensives to just rattle the Russian army.
So why is Ukraine not doing those 3 now?
Kherson is ongoing, and that is the other major offensive, it is just that Ukraine is not going full gungho here to save lives of their soldiers. Instead they are developing and slowly expanding their 3 beach heads here, and they are also waiting for something huge to arrive.
Over in Vuhledar artillery preparation is ongoing with sniper precission, and small areas are taken on an almost daily basis.
Here the offensive clearly is at a shaping stage.
Here Ukraine is also waiting for a huge arrival.
The Huge Arrival
To save lives Ukraine must be able to win the artillery war at depth.
For every kilometre of depth that Ukraine can deny Russian logistics and force that back towards Russia is saving thousands of Ukrainian lives.
Problem is that Ukraine previously had barrel artillery up to 50km, and GMLRS up to 80km.
Now they have Storm Shadows, HRIM-2s and Gungnirs, but these are very rare birds, just a few hundred spread out over a year.
Heck not even the US has enough of cruise missiles to hurt Russia as bad as is needed.
But, the Storm Shadows et Al., are just a stop gap measure, that was originally intended to drop the Kersh Bridge and sink ships of the Russian navy.
Ukraine can't waste those valuable resources on forcing the bulk of Russian supply lines backwards, so instead they do a highly important strategic target or two per day.
What Ukraine is waiting for is the mass arrival of huge amounts of PrSM and GLSDBs.
The GLSDBs was delayed somewhat for technical reasons in regards of the old reused rockets that needed to be individually X-rayed, on top of that enough launchers needed to be built to make a difference.
It speaks volumes about the insane combined production power of Boeing/SAAB that they will be able to churn out 10 000 of the buggers for the offensive, albeit a tad delayed.
Currently this mass weapon with a range of 150km and a precission of sub 1 meter is rolling towards Ukraine on massive trains that are so heavy that they are damaging the tracks of the Öresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark.
Fun fact, the trains running are so heavy that SAAB had to borrow specially adapted I-ORE ore trains from LKAB to even getting them to move, the I-ORE is the worlds strongest electric locomotive.
Making the trains lighter is not an option, there are just to many trains running towards Ukraine now, there are no more track-slots available and the bulk of SAABs slots are for the 2 million shells they are producing for Ukraine this year.
Anyway, I am waffling...
This means that in about 2 weeks Ukraine has enough of the GLSDBs stockpiled to start cutting Russian supply lines 150km deep.
Now PrSM (PRISM) are those weird looking Himars cassettes with 2 missiles in them.
Those have already been photographed in Ukraine. They have a range of 499km.
Raytheon went to Boeing, BAE Systems and SAAB to get enough production capacity to produce them far faster than the original contract to the US Army stipulated.
500 has been delivered, and a further 1 500 are inbound.
So far Ukraine has used them very sparingly, but they have already been photographed several times being used by Ukraine against Russian targets.
The PrSM and the GLSDBs had been promised to be delivered in late April, but not even the worlds largest companies could ramp up production fast enough.
And Ukraine knowing that they are weeks away at that stage chose to delay, and only start one Real Offensive, and doing prep work on the other Two.
By doing that they are saving thousands of lives, and as it turns out just the threat of losing in Bakhmut is creating giant arsed waves in Moscow on it's own.
I can understand Moscow.
If my strongest fortress was the first part of the expected Offensive then I would really get weak in my knees.
If half of your army in Ukraine is being pushed backwards in a steady manner, and you expect two more offensives... then you basically know you have lost.
The army knows this very well, problem is that the civilians are still to stupid to grasp it.
Over the next 5 months the Offensive Season will unfold and it will contain at least 2 more big offensives, some will be fast manouver warfare, and some will be extremely slow and look like nothing ever seen previously and being done at a speed that would impress even a threetoed sloth.
Third Space
As I went through Officer College I learned tactics and War School thought me strategy.
These are the two classic spaces (fields) of warfare.
Problem is just that this is not enough for Ukraine to win.
They can win both tactically and strategically and in the end push out all of the Russian army out of Ukraine without winning the war.
To get a decisive win in a war you need to decapitate the political hand of the opposing country, or get them to admit defeat and go home.
The latter option is not gonna happen, Russia is just to damn stupid and stubborn to admit defeat without being occupied.
And, occupying Russia is not an option for two main reasons.
The first is the blasted fact that Russia is way to large for Ukraine to successfully occupy.
The second one is that Russia would use nukes before Moscow fell to the army, so a partial win by decapitating the capital city of the enemy is not an option either.
So, how in the name of feck do you win then?
I call this the Third Space, and that is to by military means win politically over the opposing force.
Ukraine can only win by humiliating the political leadership of Russia through devastating political battlefield wins on their own soil (mostly).
And here the targets are different than what would be tactical or strategic wins.
Grinding up 5 defense lines on two sides of Bakhmut is a tactical victory, encircling it is a tactical win.
Cutting the landbridge is a big tactical win.
But, none of this is a Third Space win, especially not the latter landbridge cutting.
Inside of Ukraine there are 3 Third Space targets that would crush everything that the Russian leadership has stated as unmutable truths and objectives. Losing them would expose all of Russia as feeble meowling weaklings and turning all that propaganda into lies smeared like **** in the face of the Russian population.
These 3 Ukrainian targets are:
1. Bakhmut, thanks to the Russian sexual fetish and 10 months of unending Russian propaganda about how fabulous a win taking it would be.
2. Donbas City, ostensibly the entire war is there to safeguard the Russians in this City... and Russia has spent a lot of effort into this narrative.
3. Crimea, the liberation of Crimea would crush the lie that Crimea is a historic part of Russia to stay forever inside Russia.
Achieving all of them in one go would be massive, but if done one after each other the effect is grinding into the heads of Russians that their country is just **** that can't do anything to stop Ukraine and that it is all pointless and based on lies by their leaders.
If the Russian leadership is still alive at this stage Ukraine need to do the fourth target on the Third Space list, and that is to invade Russia itself and take Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk.
Third Space can only be won by carefully spaced crushing defeats of these key targets, ordinary Russians must learn that whatever they do Ukraine will serve them new costly defeats at every stage, and that unless they have a leadership able to put a stop to it, that they the ordinary Russian is well and truly ****ed.
Hundreds of smoking accidents, assassinations, resistance cell attacks, and so on are all obviously helping to grind in this looming sense of doom and defeat.
Welcome to Third Space, my space.
This was the final reason why Bakhmut is indeed a serious part of the offensive, for now even more important than any cutting of landbridges... "
Also, he mentioned that last night that Belarus is establishing border controls at its border with Russia. Not seen this confirmed yet, but it would make sense after the last week.
Druss_The_Legend
Well-known member
I can also imagine Kaliningrad being a major flash point in the near future, especially if issues with Belarus and Russia arise.
Borothruandthru
Well-known member
Surely Ukraine will stop short of invading Russia ?
It's crossing a red line to using nuclear weapons or am I missing something.
Is Ukraine too close to Russia to use them for risk of fallout .
It's crossing a red line to using nuclear weapons or am I missing something.
Is Ukraine too close to Russia to use them for risk of fallout .
The red line is threatening to enter Moscow itself. Ukrainian troops have already waltzed into Belgorod oblast several times.
Personally, I don't think it will go that far anyway. I think that taking back Crimea would probably do the job, but taking Donetsk and Luhansk might also do it. The Russian leadership is already facing internal challenges. If the FSB/GRU grouping take charge, I think they'd pull the army out anyway, but I think they are probably biding their time, waiting for the army to be weakened even further by the Ukraine counter offensive.
Moldova announced this week I think that it is leaving the Russian economic block.
Blimmin flip. It's a full scale internal battle.
On maps and stuff....
"Most people are using the Deep State Maps, they are good after all.
Problem is that they are very slow on updating Ukrainian gains, and very fast to show Ukrainian losses.
This is due to Ukraine being very open with data on losses, and very secretive on their gains.
After all, there is no OpSec issue in reporting what your enemy has done to you, the enemy tend to know if it has taken ground.
But, data about where you are pushing and in what direction is more critical info.
Russia does the same thing, so if you want to follow Ukrainian gains you can do that on Russian maps.
Problem is that Russians are internally feuding, so they report bigger losses than real for their internal enemy, and less losses for themselves.
Wagner is fairly accurate, but the Russian MOD maps are all over the place with Russian regular army suffering very little losses, and Wagner is loosing all of Bakhmut each day.
It must suck to be a Russian frontline commander being issued inaccurate maps all the time...
This means that you need an alternate source to independently verify the MOD-maps, but not to the same degree for the Wagner maps.
The image contains a Wagnerite map (originally) that has been cross-referenced against sat imagery and Ukrainian progress reports where available, it is deemed above 90 percent correct, which is good enough for our purposes.
What is different between this map and now is that Ukraine has taken more ground towards Klichi'ivka as theirs and that contested space include one of the 2 massive fortifications protecting the town.
Also, the Ukrainians on the Northern side have taken the access of the road leading down towards the backside of Bakhmut, perfect for the upcoming encircling.
Bakhmut & Wagner
Wagner is now pushing hard to take Bakhmut before Ukraine encircles it.
And, it looks like he barely has the time to do it, but that it is pretty much a certainty unless Ukraine want a high casualty rate in a counter-offensive inside Bakhmut itself.
The reason for this is due to Russian political infighting.
Prigozhin previously stated that he would leave Bakhmut on the tenth of May, but the Russian MOD answered this by stating that if they left Bakhmut they would all be up on treason charges.
Prigozhins solution to this is to take Bakhmut, hand it over to the MOD as a done deal, and then vamoose rapidly before being put inside the sack by the Ukrainians.
He will become a hero in Russia, and the MOD will a few days later look like mindless chickens as the Ukrainians take them into a pocket and retake Bakhmut.
End result, a huge political win for Prigozhin if he can pull it off.
Second NBG
Now that we released the bombshell I can talk openly about it.
I told you last year that I was involved in training a Ukrainian Battalion on tanks, CV90s and the tactics of Nordic Battle Groups.
Later "Tank Girl" and her merry boys went back to Ukraine to wait for their gear, and that arrived a couple of months ago and was used in the Kherson Bridgehead operation.
With a bit of fettling on the Ukrainian side they themselves upgraded it to a Nordic Battle Group (reinforced Brigade) of sorts.
Thing is that both sides was very very happy about the result of this, and it was decided to do it with a full on Nordic Battle Group from getgo.
This time it was done with recruits and Ukrainian commanders, so it is a completely new unit.
And this time it is an NBG from the beginning, and they trained with their gear that they would bring back home.
Unike Tank Girl's Battalion that we trained down South, this was done up north at the most secret army base that we have, so we sneakily imported 4 700 Ukrainians and hid them in the woods... and nobody caught on.
Yesterday we published that they had arrived in Ukraine last week, what we did not publish is that it is additional gear (and a lot of it).
What are we talking about here?
2 mechanised infantry battalions riding 100 fully modernised CV90s.
1 tank battalion in 24 Leo2SEs.
1 artillery battalion with 12 Arcers, 12 GLSDB launchers and 4 Gungnir land based launchers
1 air defence battalion with Redacted missile systems
1 supply battalion
1 maintenance battalion
1 Redacted Battalion with Redacted purpose and function
All of the gear is updated to latest spec.
It is the wet dream of any military, it is so overpowered due to being designed to stop the Soviet Army (not the Russian weaklings) dead in their tracks at our border.
The NBG concept has been developed over 40 years to be the end all unit in regards of massed firepower, speed and precision.
No other country on the planet has anything similar.
This means that we in total have given Ukraine 30 percent of our total firepower, and with another 30 percent earmarked for Africa we are truly now down on our knees in regards of defence capacity.
Originally this was not seen as a problem giving away 30 percent of our gear, after all we would be NATO members by then, and we had 70 percent remaining, but then Erdogan and Sudan happened.
Still we doggedly held our word to Ukraine, because we need peace in our time, even if we weaken ourselves.
Privately even I started to doubt things as we on top of it decided to go to war in Africa to fulfil our 70 year long obligations there...
But, I am at the same time so insanely proud over what we did that I am choking up.
Delayed Offensive Part II
Yesterday I wrote about the missiles being the reason for Ukraine waiting.
Yes, missiles are incredibly important for the shaping stage, but to be honest Ukraine has in many places shaped things for 6 months and the supply lines are pretty much already cut...
The other half of the answer was this, the ultimate Sledgehammer Unit needed to crush through the Russians at speed.
Because an NBG is designed to do break through in an average speed of 35km an hour, compare that to the current speed of 1km per day.
Realistically though the speed will be lower, because not even feverish Swedes fuelled up on high-octane coffee could dream up storming this level of fortifications.
Now as a cheerful thought, lean back and close your eyes and ponder what a Sledgehammer like this will be able to do on the way from Vuhledar to Mariupol.
Bonus Waffle
As they sent out the press release they took pictures from way back when we trained Tank Girl's merry boys. (posted upthread)
Note the bewildering array of antennas, that is from the fully digital combat system that we use, any soldier can see everything on the battlefield from any vantage point, it removes all fog of war in the battle space of the NBG.
Into it feeds also drones, radar reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, and miscellaneous whatnot's.
This means that you as a field commander can lead from any vehicle.
Normally this is though done from a CV90 command vehicle.
But, some stupid field commanders do this from a tank, and for some mysterious reason they are using sun glasses to look cool.
This image was taken when we rode out to the famous "battle" where I belted Tank Girl by keeping every single vehicle at full manoeuvre speed, that in turn finally removed her sense of low speed from Russian gear.
Her last lesson was learning the hard way the advantages of high speed manoeuvre warfare.
The day after she handed my ass back to me and crushed me, fast learner in every sense of the word.
Anyway, third thank in the column in the tank commanders hatch (left side of image), that is me.
And since I am too tall for tanks I had folded away the seat and was standing on the floor of the turret."
"Most people are using the Deep State Maps, they are good after all.
Problem is that they are very slow on updating Ukrainian gains, and very fast to show Ukrainian losses.
This is due to Ukraine being very open with data on losses, and very secretive on their gains.
After all, there is no OpSec issue in reporting what your enemy has done to you, the enemy tend to know if it has taken ground.
But, data about where you are pushing and in what direction is more critical info.
Russia does the same thing, so if you want to follow Ukrainian gains you can do that on Russian maps.
Problem is that Russians are internally feuding, so they report bigger losses than real for their internal enemy, and less losses for themselves.
Wagner is fairly accurate, but the Russian MOD maps are all over the place with Russian regular army suffering very little losses, and Wagner is loosing all of Bakhmut each day.
It must suck to be a Russian frontline commander being issued inaccurate maps all the time...
This means that you need an alternate source to independently verify the MOD-maps, but not to the same degree for the Wagner maps.
The image contains a Wagnerite map (originally) that has been cross-referenced against sat imagery and Ukrainian progress reports where available, it is deemed above 90 percent correct, which is good enough for our purposes.
What is different between this map and now is that Ukraine has taken more ground towards Klichi'ivka as theirs and that contested space include one of the 2 massive fortifications protecting the town.
Also, the Ukrainians on the Northern side have taken the access of the road leading down towards the backside of Bakhmut, perfect for the upcoming encircling.
Bakhmut & Wagner
Wagner is now pushing hard to take Bakhmut before Ukraine encircles it.
And, it looks like he barely has the time to do it, but that it is pretty much a certainty unless Ukraine want a high casualty rate in a counter-offensive inside Bakhmut itself.
The reason for this is due to Russian political infighting.
Prigozhin previously stated that he would leave Bakhmut on the tenth of May, but the Russian MOD answered this by stating that if they left Bakhmut they would all be up on treason charges.
Prigozhins solution to this is to take Bakhmut, hand it over to the MOD as a done deal, and then vamoose rapidly before being put inside the sack by the Ukrainians.
He will become a hero in Russia, and the MOD will a few days later look like mindless chickens as the Ukrainians take them into a pocket and retake Bakhmut.
End result, a huge political win for Prigozhin if he can pull it off.
Second NBG
Now that we released the bombshell I can talk openly about it.
I told you last year that I was involved in training a Ukrainian Battalion on tanks, CV90s and the tactics of Nordic Battle Groups.
Later "Tank Girl" and her merry boys went back to Ukraine to wait for their gear, and that arrived a couple of months ago and was used in the Kherson Bridgehead operation.
With a bit of fettling on the Ukrainian side they themselves upgraded it to a Nordic Battle Group (reinforced Brigade) of sorts.
Thing is that both sides was very very happy about the result of this, and it was decided to do it with a full on Nordic Battle Group from getgo.
This time it was done with recruits and Ukrainian commanders, so it is a completely new unit.
And this time it is an NBG from the beginning, and they trained with their gear that they would bring back home.
Unike Tank Girl's Battalion that we trained down South, this was done up north at the most secret army base that we have, so we sneakily imported 4 700 Ukrainians and hid them in the woods... and nobody caught on.
Yesterday we published that they had arrived in Ukraine last week, what we did not publish is that it is additional gear (and a lot of it).
What are we talking about here?
2 mechanised infantry battalions riding 100 fully modernised CV90s.
1 tank battalion in 24 Leo2SEs.
1 artillery battalion with 12 Arcers, 12 GLSDB launchers and 4 Gungnir land based launchers
1 air defence battalion with Redacted missile systems
1 supply battalion
1 maintenance battalion
1 Redacted Battalion with Redacted purpose and function
All of the gear is updated to latest spec.
It is the wet dream of any military, it is so overpowered due to being designed to stop the Soviet Army (not the Russian weaklings) dead in their tracks at our border.
The NBG concept has been developed over 40 years to be the end all unit in regards of massed firepower, speed and precision.
No other country on the planet has anything similar.
This means that we in total have given Ukraine 30 percent of our total firepower, and with another 30 percent earmarked for Africa we are truly now down on our knees in regards of defence capacity.
Originally this was not seen as a problem giving away 30 percent of our gear, after all we would be NATO members by then, and we had 70 percent remaining, but then Erdogan and Sudan happened.
Still we doggedly held our word to Ukraine, because we need peace in our time, even if we weaken ourselves.
Privately even I started to doubt things as we on top of it decided to go to war in Africa to fulfil our 70 year long obligations there...
But, I am at the same time so insanely proud over what we did that I am choking up.
Delayed Offensive Part II
Yesterday I wrote about the missiles being the reason for Ukraine waiting.
Yes, missiles are incredibly important for the shaping stage, but to be honest Ukraine has in many places shaped things for 6 months and the supply lines are pretty much already cut...
The other half of the answer was this, the ultimate Sledgehammer Unit needed to crush through the Russians at speed.
Because an NBG is designed to do break through in an average speed of 35km an hour, compare that to the current speed of 1km per day.
Realistically though the speed will be lower, because not even feverish Swedes fuelled up on high-octane coffee could dream up storming this level of fortifications.
Now as a cheerful thought, lean back and close your eyes and ponder what a Sledgehammer like this will be able to do on the way from Vuhledar to Mariupol.
Bonus Waffle
As they sent out the press release they took pictures from way back when we trained Tank Girl's merry boys. (posted upthread)
Note the bewildering array of antennas, that is from the fully digital combat system that we use, any soldier can see everything on the battlefield from any vantage point, it removes all fog of war in the battle space of the NBG.
Into it feeds also drones, radar reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, and miscellaneous whatnot's.
This means that you as a field commander can lead from any vehicle.
Normally this is though done from a CV90 command vehicle.
But, some stupid field commanders do this from a tank, and for some mysterious reason they are using sun glasses to look cool.
This image was taken when we rode out to the famous "battle" where I belted Tank Girl by keeping every single vehicle at full manoeuvre speed, that in turn finally removed her sense of low speed from Russian gear.
Her last lesson was learning the hard way the advantages of high speed manoeuvre warfare.
The day after she handed my ass back to me and crushed me, fast learner in every sense of the word.
Anyway, third thank in the column in the tank commanders hatch (left side of image), that is me.
And since I am too tall for tanks I had folded away the seat and was standing on the floor of the turret."
TeessideCleveland
Well-known member
That's why I hope Konigsberg is freed from Russia
Although our man doesn't seem to think that's necessarily what they need. Mind, it has all got to help.
Anyway, a bit more on Bakhmut.
"
As I "predicted" Ukraine is expanding the objective of the Bakhmut Offensive.
On the Northern flank there are now 3 separate vectors of attack.
These are the following that I have named after the angle of attack:
1. Berkhivka-Blahodatne, this was the first one. Wagner is desperately trying to plug this one.
2. Orikhovo-Vasylivka, this one is a minor development to punch back a Russian counter-offensive.
3. Krasnopolivka-Blahodatne, this is on the northern side of the northern Russian bulge. Prigozhin is currently begging the regular Russian army to plug this one, this is also putting strain on Soledar's defences.
On the Southern side there is big push towards Klichi'ivka now through and Ukraine is expanding their holdings daily along a unified front.
Intense artillery is slowly grinding down the Russian fortifications and Wagner is trying to send reinforcements here, but according to Prigozhin they take 30 percent losses on the way there every time they send units since Ukraine now has Klichi'ivka in a tactical pocket.
Due to Russia's insane Bakhmut fetish they are now openly moving remaining troops out from Zhaporizhzhia to Bakhmut, let us just say that this is making Ukraine snicker quite a bit.
They are also moving out fresh troops from Donetsk to Bakhmut.
There are also other troops on the way, but I will return to this below.
To counter this Ukraine is slowly putting in more forces from the 3rd Army Corps, but they are not as of now moving troops from the other two army corps.
I see this as Ukraine feeling confident that they can achieve their goals in Bakhmut without depleting other future offensive vectors and that other offensive vectors are imminently coming into play.
Since Russia is more or less picking Bakhmut as their preferred field of battle, I am not certain that Ukraine will be able to resist sending reinforcements in from other corps if this continues. One army corps can't effectively win over the entire Russian army in Ukraine.
Belarus Reinforcements
Whatever happened while Uncle Luka was in Russia it was not good for Belarusian/Russian relations.
It seems that Russia produced another "Xi-moment" and drove away Belarus.
Two days ago Belarus rapidly put back in place the border controls between Russia and Belarus, and are now denying partially Russian citizens (government employees) from entering into Belarus.
This is a major thing since the two countries are in a Union.
Yesterday Russia started to move out their remaining troops and equipment from Belarus with destination Bakhmut.
At the same time Belarus deployed their own troops in Minsk and other key cities on the Eastern border towards Russia.
KGB forces was also seen reinforcing the Belarusian border guards on the Eastern side.
Belarus is in deep lack of enough border guards, so they have also visible and rapidly thinned out the border guards down south towards Ukraine, and towards NATO-countries.
If you are moving guards and soldiers away from your "enemies" towards your "friend", it is sort of a message...
A year ago I said that it was just a matter of time before Uncle Luka would stab Putin in the back, and here it came.
I expect that there will be weird attempts at weird diplomacy from Belarus towards both Ukraine and the EU in the coming weeks.
And with weird I really mean weird, expect anything from trying to book ABBA to sending live examples of Zelenskyy's favourite fish, it is Uncle Luka after all and he never does anything in a normal fashion.
What I find interesting is that Russia is so suicidal at this stage in the war that they are happily trading an ally and "friend" for a couple of blocks of Bakhmut.
The only remaining step now for Russia is to move the troops out of the Far East and trade a third of their country to be able to control Bakhmut for a month or so...
If and when Shoygu and Gerasimov are brought to justice I will request to be able to interrogate them so I can get the answer to "Why the hell Bakhmut?"
If nothing else the answer would help future historians to understand what was so important there that it merited imploding the Russian Empire for a millennia or so.
I seriously suspect that future Muscovian (Russia will not exist) historians will be equally interested in that answer.
A message
In Ukraine there is buttons being pushed, engines started, it is close now for:
The Offensive Part III.
Expect things in the next few days."
Defender 4x4
Well-known member
Do we have any F16 ? Never seen any in the skies over North Yorkshire like every other combat plane.
Muttley
Well-known member
No.
RAF fly Eurofighter Typhoon and F35. There are a lot of F16 of various vintages and upgrades dotted throughout NATO.
Lefty
Well-known member
No, but there are reports Sunak was prepared to acquire some on behalf of Ukraine, since it seems the USA won't supply direct.