Decent_Left
Well-known member
This is a bit sobering
The end?
- Thread starter borolad259
- Start date
FabioPorkpie
Well-known member
Live
Russian parliamentary bosses will today discuss revoking ratification of a treaty banning nuclear tests - a development that could trigger a new arms race between major world powers. Satellite images reveal a "dramatic" increase in Russia-North Korea rail traffic.
Ukraine war latest: Russia decision 'hints it is preparing for possible war with NATO' - as Moscow prepares to revoke nuclear treaty after Putin comments
Russian parliamentary bosses will today discuss revoking ratification of a treaty banning nuclear tests - a development that could trigger a new arms race between major world powers. Satellite images reveal a "dramatic" increase in Russia-North Korea rail traffic.
news.sky.com
Muttley
Well-known member
It's just more "sabre rattling" from the Putinistas. Currently Russia has something like 4000 nukes, US something less but we have some and France also has an "independent" nuclear deterrent. Russia spends about $80million on its defence. The US alone spends nearly ten times as much. From memory we spend about the same as Russia and France a little more. China spends about $200million. It is extremely doubtful that Russia has more than a few hundred nukes that might work. Of course even one is too many but it would be madness for them to start a new arms race they are not even in the same class as the US, they cannot win. This invasion has shown up their military as a paper bear. They will need to spend an awful lot of money just to replace the hardware that is rusting scrap in Ukraine let alone the trained soldiery that they have squandered. The stuff coming our of North Korea is potentially useful but it depends how good it is, how well stored and maintained it is, if they have the trained soldiers to use it and if they can get it to the front.
Jonny_Rondos_Disco_pants
Well-known member
Russia are on the offensive trying to circle the village of Avdiivka.
Ukraine has taken a back seat since Saturday
Ukraine has taken a back seat since Saturday
Apologies for the lack of updates. I have been getting them but been away in Sweden with other things occupying me.
From today
"One of the reasons the offensive is slow is that we take care about the civilians, and often stop to wait for them to clear out.
And even in a village that is almost cleared we use drones and precission artillery and hit only houses with confirmed Russian pressence.
Pavlivka that i GRADed is 100 percent empty, just a pointer.
Same with Stepne.
Andri'ivka and Klich'ivka? Zyrzkyi waited until they where confirmed to be empty.
And so on...
Bilhorod
Another 800 meters taken in the direction of Bilhorod, and they also widened the nipple with about the same amount.
It is now pretty much a propper salient, or perhaps we should call it a boob?
Still no real Russian forces, just a company of FSB-forces that arrived and tried to fight a bit before going back into Bilhorod City.
No heavy unit still from the Luhansk area.
They are still used there for nipplification attempts that end badly.
Bakhmut
Here there is potentially a large thing happening.
But, first let us go down to the Southern Bakhmut offensive.
Ukraine has managed to increase the area West of the railroad, but it is still unclear by how much.
Some units advanced quite a bit, but had to be called back to create a unified frontline, so we do not yet know how much was gained there.
Now the potential Biggie.
Russian maps now have Bakhmut City in the greyzone.
This is corroborated by the seeming lack of Russian units inside the City, there are though spotters hiding there to guide artillery, same as the Ukrainians have.
There's also snipers in there from both sides.
Notice, from both sides.
Neither side is particularly keen on taking the City outright for now.
Vuhledarish
Russia did a counterattack towards Novomykhailivka from Slavne with tanks and BMPs.
This would have if successfull undercut our positions in Stepne quite a bit.
Thankfully we have drones in the air launched from both the Eastern and Southern side, and ample artillery.
The armoured equipmment that came along a treeline was hit and taken out within a distance of 200 meters.
Follow on cluster shells took out the fleeing tank crews.
Total Russian equipment loss was 3 tanks and 3 BMPs.
We followed this up with shelling the Russian positions before making a rapid counter push of about 100 meters towards Slavne.
We will probably have to take Slavne in the end.
The rest
Over at the Tokmak Axis Oleksandr is busy with his newfound love for Kopani.
In Kherson things are slowly moving along, but nothing I can talk about."
From today
"One of the reasons the offensive is slow is that we take care about the civilians, and often stop to wait for them to clear out.
And even in a village that is almost cleared we use drones and precission artillery and hit only houses with confirmed Russian pressence.
Pavlivka that i GRADed is 100 percent empty, just a pointer.
Same with Stepne.
Andri'ivka and Klich'ivka? Zyrzkyi waited until they where confirmed to be empty.
And so on...
Bilhorod
Another 800 meters taken in the direction of Bilhorod, and they also widened the nipple with about the same amount.
It is now pretty much a propper salient, or perhaps we should call it a boob?
Still no real Russian forces, just a company of FSB-forces that arrived and tried to fight a bit before going back into Bilhorod City.
No heavy unit still from the Luhansk area.
They are still used there for nipplification attempts that end badly.
Bakhmut
Here there is potentially a large thing happening.
But, first let us go down to the Southern Bakhmut offensive.
Ukraine has managed to increase the area West of the railroad, but it is still unclear by how much.
Some units advanced quite a bit, but had to be called back to create a unified frontline, so we do not yet know how much was gained there.
Now the potential Biggie.
Russian maps now have Bakhmut City in the greyzone.
This is corroborated by the seeming lack of Russian units inside the City, there are though spotters hiding there to guide artillery, same as the Ukrainians have.
There's also snipers in there from both sides.
Notice, from both sides.
Neither side is particularly keen on taking the City outright for now.
Vuhledarish
Russia did a counterattack towards Novomykhailivka from Slavne with tanks and BMPs.
This would have if successfull undercut our positions in Stepne quite a bit.
Thankfully we have drones in the air launched from both the Eastern and Southern side, and ample artillery.
The armoured equipmment that came along a treeline was hit and taken out within a distance of 200 meters.
Follow on cluster shells took out the fleeing tank crews.
Total Russian equipment loss was 3 tanks and 3 BMPs.
We followed this up with shelling the Russian positions before making a rapid counter push of about 100 meters towards Slavne.
We will probably have to take Slavne in the end.
The rest
Over at the Tokmak Axis Oleksandr is busy with his newfound love for Kopani.
In Kherson things are slowly moving along, but nothing I can talk about."
It didn't end well. This is just before they got taken out by artillery. Apparently several of the tanks ended up in the drink.
Something more contextual about a news item you may have seen.
"I thought it would be good to clear up a few things in regards of the Baltic Connect issue.
It is both a gas pipeline interconnect between Finland and Estonia, and a communications cable bundle (fibreoptics and old phone cable).
The gas pipeline was pressurised, but did not transport any gas due to the Russian hubbub and EU not buying gas any longer from Russia.
What was detected is that the gas pressure inside the pipeline started to drop, and initially it was flagged as a natural leak.
So, slow even, and not a detonation like over at the Nordstreams.
The like was later located to the Finnish side of things.
And, if that had been it nobody would even have bothered to check closer, at least quickly.
It was what happened over on the Estonian side close in time that got everyones attention as the bulk of digital traffic between Finland and Estonia went "poop", and the internet needed to reroute very quickly.
This got a lot of attention, but was initially not made public.
If they had cut both things at the same place (roughly), it would probably have been interpreted as an anchor drag.
But, two of them at different places at roughly the same time?
Nah, coincidences happen, but two at the same point in time in two different spots?
We do know that it was Russia that did it, and since both of them are on territorial waters, and against classified security installations (military classified), it is a de facto act of war by Russia.
Why?
The most reasonable is that this was a "revenge is a dish best served cold" scenario, and that this was a delayed answer to the Nordstreams being blown up by "parties".
I currently favour this explanation.
The other explanation?
The gas pipeline is here insignificant, but the coms-cables are significant.
If you plan an attack you want to cut the country in question into a communications vacuum.
Finland has a ridiculous amount of cables between them, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany.
You need to cut an insane amount of cables on land and on the Baltic Sea Bottom to make them go dark.
Estonia on the other side has the Baltic Connect, The Trans-Baltic Cable, and on running to Sweden.
This means that Estonia is a far easier target for an operation like this.
It is also good to remember that Finland can punch back hard, but Estonia is not really able to stave off a direct attack without massive NATO-intervention.
Finland could pretty much singlehandedly finish the war if the got attacked, so from a military standpoint they can't be the potential target.
Reason I do not see this as a viable option right now, is mainly from Russia not having sufficient troops around to attack even Estonia, both we and Finland would have Brigade strength units over before Russia could invade.
And we know all to well what happens when Russia runs into a Nordic Brigade...
No, unless Russia moves in units in the order of 20 000 soldiers plus they can't do anything, current numbers near the Estonian border is 350...
Now everyone will say "hybrid-warfare", and yes that is an option, at least for now.
If so we will soon see at least another cable being cut, probably both.
And it would need to happen quite soon since the Finns are already prepping for laying a new cable with a cable-layer that is moving in from the Netherlands as I write.
Turns out that Finland had a stockpile of Nautical grade fibre-optical cable.
Answer?
There will be none, at least for now.
But, in a while a few Russian cables will be cut at odd places.
This is not something one start a war over, especially since Russia did not start this back-and-forth...
Finland and Estonia might though kick out a few diplomats, that is after all the time-honoured answer to all Russian anusing in this part of the world."
"
"I thought it would be good to clear up a few things in regards of the Baltic Connect issue.
It is both a gas pipeline interconnect between Finland and Estonia, and a communications cable bundle (fibreoptics and old phone cable).
The gas pipeline was pressurised, but did not transport any gas due to the Russian hubbub and EU not buying gas any longer from Russia.
What was detected is that the gas pressure inside the pipeline started to drop, and initially it was flagged as a natural leak.
So, slow even, and not a detonation like over at the Nordstreams.
The like was later located to the Finnish side of things.
And, if that had been it nobody would even have bothered to check closer, at least quickly.
It was what happened over on the Estonian side close in time that got everyones attention as the bulk of digital traffic between Finland and Estonia went "poop", and the internet needed to reroute very quickly.
This got a lot of attention, but was initially not made public.
If they had cut both things at the same place (roughly), it would probably have been interpreted as an anchor drag.
But, two of them at different places at roughly the same time?
Nah, coincidences happen, but two at the same point in time in two different spots?
We do know that it was Russia that did it, and since both of them are on territorial waters, and against classified security installations (military classified), it is a de facto act of war by Russia.
Why?
The most reasonable is that this was a "revenge is a dish best served cold" scenario, and that this was a delayed answer to the Nordstreams being blown up by "parties".
I currently favour this explanation.
The other explanation?
The gas pipeline is here insignificant, but the coms-cables are significant.
If you plan an attack you want to cut the country in question into a communications vacuum.
Finland has a ridiculous amount of cables between them, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany.
You need to cut an insane amount of cables on land and on the Baltic Sea Bottom to make them go dark.
Estonia on the other side has the Baltic Connect, The Trans-Baltic Cable, and on running to Sweden.
This means that Estonia is a far easier target for an operation like this.
It is also good to remember that Finland can punch back hard, but Estonia is not really able to stave off a direct attack without massive NATO-intervention.
Finland could pretty much singlehandedly finish the war if the got attacked, so from a military standpoint they can't be the potential target.
Reason I do not see this as a viable option right now, is mainly from Russia not having sufficient troops around to attack even Estonia, both we and Finland would have Brigade strength units over before Russia could invade.
And we know all to well what happens when Russia runs into a Nordic Brigade...
No, unless Russia moves in units in the order of 20 000 soldiers plus they can't do anything, current numbers near the Estonian border is 350...
Now everyone will say "hybrid-warfare", and yes that is an option, at least for now.
If so we will soon see at least another cable being cut, probably both.
And it would need to happen quite soon since the Finns are already prepping for laying a new cable with a cable-layer that is moving in from the Netherlands as I write.
Turns out that Finland had a stockpile of Nautical grade fibre-optical cable.
Answer?
There will be none, at least for now.
But, in a while a few Russian cables will be cut at odd places.
This is not something one start a war over, especially since Russia did not start this back-and-forth...
Finland and Estonia might though kick out a few diplomats, that is after all the time-honoured answer to all Russian anusing in this part of the world."
"
I should add that The End is approaching as far as these missives from the front go. At the beginning of November my mate is finally being rotated out and will return tour our civilian projects, although I still have to call him The Brigadier (he will still be a reservist). He will still be able to keep us very well informed as he will still have his other part time intel "role". We have important things to do though, so this is very good news for me.
xxlshirts_fit_all
Well-known member
The end of ‘the end’ 
Decent_Left
Well-known member
Skip through to 2.50, - becoming more deranged to the extent Solovyov started to look a bit embarrased.
& This is what the Ivan in the street has to take in as informed commentary on world affairs - sheesh
& This is what the Ivan in the street has to take in as informed commentary on world affairs - sheesh
MolteniArcore
Well-known member
What’s his thoughts on this Israel situation? With the US sending forces to Isreal do Ukraine fear that this is the end of US support for their cause?
HolgateCorner
Well-known member
He’s done a great job keeping us informed, he’s a top man
I think we will still get informed updates, as he will still be in the information loop, as he was before going to make the Zap Nuclear plant safe. They will though be posted from the safety of Sweden.
Anyway, for @Muttley more details on the Avdivka attack.
"The Russian goal has now sort of become clearer in the last couple of days.
As per usual it is pretty much insane.
It seems like they are willing to sacrifice their entire offensive capacity over the next couple of weeks to gain ground, hold it across the winter while they try to rebuild their forces, and then restart things in april/may.
In one way they are probably doing it to counter any Ukrainian Blitz-advancement like last year.
This means that where the Russians previously attacked with 50-100 men in a meatwave attack, now they are doing it with about 500 men at a time, and at more localised areas.
And, they are using large amounts of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and sort of do artillery preparations with their new shells and missiles from North Korea.
They also concentrated their main attack on a single City, in accordance with the Putin Order.
Only thing that was really surprising was the City they picked, for once they picked something that would be an advantage for them in the long run, and a problem for us.
They decided to go once again for the City of Avdivka, the big fortress one with one "i".
As I discuss it there will be detours, bear with me.
Avdivka
Apparently the Russians decided to do something about is having hit them hard here previously and show who's the boss.
We obviously had different opinions.
The Russians started with unusually heavy artillery preparations as they bombarded Avdivka itself, Vodyane in the South and Stepove in the North.
The last two are the points where they have tried to pincer for a year now to close Avdivka into a trap.
Detour 1: They are using North Korean 152mm shells now, and they tried to use North Korean GRAD-missiles.
This was the moment when Russia and the World in general discovered that North Korean GRADs are 123mm and not 122mm.
So the missiles did not fit, there are some hilarious videos of Russian soldiers trying to hammer the missiles into the tubes.
I would not want to be around when you try to fire 40 missiles that are stuck in the tubes...
At the same time two full Mechanised Infantry Brigades started to move into attack posture towards the pincer points.
For the first time in months they had the full amount of heavy equipment, last time that happened was over at the Battle of Kreminna.
This was the point when Zyrzkyi got on the blower and called for reinforcements from us, and this was also the reason for the Pow-wow over at our HQ, people just love our giant arsed map of the area.
Before the pow-wow we had though already had 1 mech bat and 1 tank bat from the 21st roll out, while the rest of the 21st was loaded unto trucks to head over to act as a fire-brigade.
As it turns out, it was needed.
As the Russians attacked they totally swamped the tripwire defence-lines that are manned with groups of 10-15 men, and they attacked those small units with 150 to 350 men each.
The Ukrainian small groups, called in for artillery strikes and legged it back to the next position.
Detour 2: It turns out that Russia has no demining equipment left.
At least in this part of the theatre.
Zyrzkyi has prioritised those systems high up on the target-lists, something that had a big effect.
To support the infantry Russia sent in armoured fists containing IFVs and tanks ranging between 8-12 vehicles each in a column.
The lack of mine clearing equipment forced them to mine-clear by driving equipment over said minefield.
We will soon get back to the effect of that, let us for now just say that it was not pretty.
Russia fairly rapidly advanced 200 to 400 meters into the contact-zones of the pincer-tips.
But at that point concentrated fire with everything from 152mm artillery, GRADs, all the way down to 40mm mini-mortars (from China) was used to slow them down.
It was sort of the moment that if it make a bang, you use it.
Regardless, the Russians continued to advance through this honestly insane meatgrinder.
This was the situation as the tank and the CV90 battalions arrived.
We divided them up so half/half arrived at each pincer-point.
Over the next four hours tankfire and 40mm autocannon fire broke the attack due to direct fire angles at short range.
The sight of huge metal monsters firing upon you as an infantryman knowing that your tanks and IFVs are stuck far behind you was to much for them, and they fell back to about the 200 meter advancement line and started to dig in at forrest lines or ducked down in ditches.
By this point the next CV90 battalion arrived on the Southern side, they moved in about 1km towards Opytne in the Avdivka direction and made a swift counter-attack under-cutting the Russian offensive by moving 200 meters into the Russian lines threatening the Russian supply lines for their Southern pincer-arm.
This night we finally had the entire 21st in place and the situation is somewhat stabilised.
The Russians are continuously attacking though, and they are using both airplanes and helicopters to attack together with artillery.
This means that we are constantly moving about and hitting in lightning attacks to not give the Russians time to find target-solutions.
Effects
More than 800 Russian soldiers have terminally ceased to function in 24 hours in Avdivka, and there are reports of the hospitals in Donetsk being swamped by wounded Russians being brought in.
There are caravans of busses bringing wounded back to Rostov-na-Donu.
Equipment (Avdivka only)
30 tanks, T-72s and T-90s only
79 IFVs of all types.
14 Artillery pieces
1 SU-25
1 GRAD that self-immolated as the crew tried to fire the 123mm rockets...
1 Air Defence System
15 Drones
We did not count other vehicles and fuel-trucks, but it is substantial.
Bridging
The Russians have run out of proper bridging equipment, not that they had a lot of it to begin with, it is one of the stranger experiences in this war, it seems like the Soviet Union never prioritised building bridging equipment.
Anyhoos, the Russians have improvised bridges that can be placed out, they are small, they are narrow, and they are not really functioning that well.
That led to a hilarious video of two Russian tanks slipping off one of the bridges ending up upside down in a small creek, probably drowning the crews, and with 8 other tanks and IFVs getting stuck behind them.
Conclusion
There's ample signs that Russia intend to continue this for about 1 to 2 weeks, that is a judgement based on the number of troops they have in the area, and the amount being brought over from Luhansk.
Yes, they have finally started to move troops from there.
According to Zyrzkyi this is the 14th Battle of Avdivka since 2014, and 11th since 24th of February 2022.
Tank Girl claims there was one more between 2014 and 2022.
Since both have been fighting there I am certain that it is correct +/-1.
I would though not put it beyond Olga to add one battle to the list just to get a reason to nab at Zyrzkyi.
I leave it to the historians to debone this, let us say there has been a lot of battles here.
Heck, it is my second one here.
Anyway, Russia is losing a full brigades worth of dead, wounded and lost equipment per 24 hours.
We are still moving in extra units, among them the 73rd.
We will win the battle, and it may turn out to be The One.
The One where Russia finally loses their ability to perform any offensive operations, at least in a manner that can pose a credible threat.
I will though say this.
Without the 21st ready to move out at any time Ukraine would have been in ****-creek.
You can't load and move out Soviet Gear that fast.
Also, I have had them load and move every other day and clocked every single time and ripped new rectums in any commander that was not fast enough to my exacting standards.
The Russians never believed that Ukraine could drop in a hammer blow at those speeds.
On the other hand, we did not see them coming in time either.
Problem for us is that the units here are so darn close that they can just press the starter button and go and they are at the attack point in half an hour."
I guess it's this direct frontline personal stuff that we'll miss.
Anyway, for @Muttley more details on the Avdivka attack.
"The Russian goal has now sort of become clearer in the last couple of days.
As per usual it is pretty much insane.
It seems like they are willing to sacrifice their entire offensive capacity over the next couple of weeks to gain ground, hold it across the winter while they try to rebuild their forces, and then restart things in april/may.
In one way they are probably doing it to counter any Ukrainian Blitz-advancement like last year.
This means that where the Russians previously attacked with 50-100 men in a meatwave attack, now they are doing it with about 500 men at a time, and at more localised areas.
And, they are using large amounts of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and sort of do artillery preparations with their new shells and missiles from North Korea.
They also concentrated their main attack on a single City, in accordance with the Putin Order.
Only thing that was really surprising was the City they picked, for once they picked something that would be an advantage for them in the long run, and a problem for us.
They decided to go once again for the City of Avdivka, the big fortress one with one "i".
As I discuss it there will be detours, bear with me.
Avdivka
Apparently the Russians decided to do something about is having hit them hard here previously and show who's the boss.
We obviously had different opinions.
The Russians started with unusually heavy artillery preparations as they bombarded Avdivka itself, Vodyane in the South and Stepove in the North.
The last two are the points where they have tried to pincer for a year now to close Avdivka into a trap.
Detour 1: They are using North Korean 152mm shells now, and they tried to use North Korean GRAD-missiles.
This was the moment when Russia and the World in general discovered that North Korean GRADs are 123mm and not 122mm.
So the missiles did not fit, there are some hilarious videos of Russian soldiers trying to hammer the missiles into the tubes.
I would not want to be around when you try to fire 40 missiles that are stuck in the tubes...
At the same time two full Mechanised Infantry Brigades started to move into attack posture towards the pincer points.
For the first time in months they had the full amount of heavy equipment, last time that happened was over at the Battle of Kreminna.
This was the point when Zyrzkyi got on the blower and called for reinforcements from us, and this was also the reason for the Pow-wow over at our HQ, people just love our giant arsed map of the area.
Before the pow-wow we had though already had 1 mech bat and 1 tank bat from the 21st roll out, while the rest of the 21st was loaded unto trucks to head over to act as a fire-brigade.
As it turns out, it was needed.
As the Russians attacked they totally swamped the tripwire defence-lines that are manned with groups of 10-15 men, and they attacked those small units with 150 to 350 men each.
The Ukrainian small groups, called in for artillery strikes and legged it back to the next position.
Detour 2: It turns out that Russia has no demining equipment left.
At least in this part of the theatre.
Zyrzkyi has prioritised those systems high up on the target-lists, something that had a big effect.
To support the infantry Russia sent in armoured fists containing IFVs and tanks ranging between 8-12 vehicles each in a column.
The lack of mine clearing equipment forced them to mine-clear by driving equipment over said minefield.
We will soon get back to the effect of that, let us for now just say that it was not pretty.
Russia fairly rapidly advanced 200 to 400 meters into the contact-zones of the pincer-tips.
But at that point concentrated fire with everything from 152mm artillery, GRADs, all the way down to 40mm mini-mortars (from China) was used to slow them down.
It was sort of the moment that if it make a bang, you use it.
Regardless, the Russians continued to advance through this honestly insane meatgrinder.
This was the situation as the tank and the CV90 battalions arrived.
We divided them up so half/half arrived at each pincer-point.
Over the next four hours tankfire and 40mm autocannon fire broke the attack due to direct fire angles at short range.
The sight of huge metal monsters firing upon you as an infantryman knowing that your tanks and IFVs are stuck far behind you was to much for them, and they fell back to about the 200 meter advancement line and started to dig in at forrest lines or ducked down in ditches.
By this point the next CV90 battalion arrived on the Southern side, they moved in about 1km towards Opytne in the Avdivka direction and made a swift counter-attack under-cutting the Russian offensive by moving 200 meters into the Russian lines threatening the Russian supply lines for their Southern pincer-arm.
This night we finally had the entire 21st in place and the situation is somewhat stabilised.
The Russians are continuously attacking though, and they are using both airplanes and helicopters to attack together with artillery.
This means that we are constantly moving about and hitting in lightning attacks to not give the Russians time to find target-solutions.
Effects
More than 800 Russian soldiers have terminally ceased to function in 24 hours in Avdivka, and there are reports of the hospitals in Donetsk being swamped by wounded Russians being brought in.
There are caravans of busses bringing wounded back to Rostov-na-Donu.
Equipment (Avdivka only)
30 tanks, T-72s and T-90s only
79 IFVs of all types.
14 Artillery pieces
1 SU-25
1 GRAD that self-immolated as the crew tried to fire the 123mm rockets...
1 Air Defence System
15 Drones
We did not count other vehicles and fuel-trucks, but it is substantial.
Bridging
The Russians have run out of proper bridging equipment, not that they had a lot of it to begin with, it is one of the stranger experiences in this war, it seems like the Soviet Union never prioritised building bridging equipment.
Anyhoos, the Russians have improvised bridges that can be placed out, they are small, they are narrow, and they are not really functioning that well.
That led to a hilarious video of two Russian tanks slipping off one of the bridges ending up upside down in a small creek, probably drowning the crews, and with 8 other tanks and IFVs getting stuck behind them.
Conclusion
There's ample signs that Russia intend to continue this for about 1 to 2 weeks, that is a judgement based on the number of troops they have in the area, and the amount being brought over from Luhansk.
Yes, they have finally started to move troops from there.
According to Zyrzkyi this is the 14th Battle of Avdivka since 2014, and 11th since 24th of February 2022.
Tank Girl claims there was one more between 2014 and 2022.
Since both have been fighting there I am certain that it is correct +/-1.
I would though not put it beyond Olga to add one battle to the list just to get a reason to nab at Zyrzkyi.
I leave it to the historians to debone this, let us say there has been a lot of battles here.
Heck, it is my second one here.
Anyway, Russia is losing a full brigades worth of dead, wounded and lost equipment per 24 hours.
We are still moving in extra units, among them the 73rd.
We will win the battle, and it may turn out to be The One.
The One where Russia finally loses their ability to perform any offensive operations, at least in a manner that can pose a credible threat.
I will though say this.
Without the 21st ready to move out at any time Ukraine would have been in ****-creek.
You can't load and move out Soviet Gear that fast.
Also, I have had them load and move every other day and clocked every single time and ripped new rectums in any commander that was not fast enough to my exacting standards.
The Russians never believed that Ukraine could drop in a hammer blow at those speeds.
On the other hand, we did not see them coming in time either.
Problem for us is that the units here are so darn close that they can just press the starter button and go and they are at the attack point in half an hour."
I guess it's this direct frontline personal stuff that we'll miss.
The end of ‘the end’
Sadly not. I suspect we have a way to go.
Oka, some stuff collected to post later today, but a heads up. The USA continues to prepare for and attack on Iran, Blinken doing the rounds of neighbouring countries. Iran threatening war upon Israel. And just to brighten our mornings even further, Finland has unilaterally closed off the Gulf of Finland, turned on targeting radar and readied missile batteries .... hopefully this is simply to blockade the Russian Baltic ports as a response to Russia cutting the comms cables between Estonia and Finland. As I say, plenty to post later on Ukraine, I just have to sift through it.
A slightly nerdy post on artillery
"After sleeping like a donkey I am now in a state to explain a few things, and I am also happy that we will get our last night under the stars tonight (unless Russia does something really out of the box).
The first point is the 1 to 10 casualty rate figure, and how the heck we can sustain that.
And here it is important to point out that this is not the number for defence only where you can theoretically achieve 1 to 5 numbers.
No, that was the number combined from Defence, Offense and counter-attacks.
So, how on Earth did we pull this almost impossible number?
There is an answer, and that is that we have shifted one key parameter heavily into Ukraines favour.
Well, two key parameters, but they are somewhat interlinked.
Let me explain.
The God of War
Soviet doctrine stated that through pure volume of artillery you could win any engagement, battle and war.
It did not matter really what you hit and where, just by shear wall of fire you could just steamroll across an enemy indefinitely.
And it is/was absolutely true, at least back then.
Problem is that to be able to pull it off you need an immense industrial base geared up to support it, and an army oriented towards the immense logistics and storage required.
Obviously the Soviet Union pulled this off, and it is proven that they did so, both on records and in practice.
The known and well studied data is very impressive, and we should go through those data points.
Soviet Artillery
In the 80s the Soviet Union had the following artillery resources:
50 000 artillery systems of various types and ages.
Russia loved to save older stuff in the warehouses, age was not that important for their doctrine to work.
That they used different shells and calibres was though a bit of a headache.
But the plan was always to produce new more uniform artillery systems if a war broke out.
50 000 spare barrels, one each for every single artillery system.
80 to 100 million shells in huge warehouses and storage sites.
Production capacity of 50 000 barrels per year.
Production capcity of 20 000 complete artillery systems per year.
Shell production capacity of 20 million shells per year.
This was backed up by the best logistics system ever constructed by humanity.
Say what now???
Here we need to discuss Soviet Doctrine, the real one and not the hyperbolic version that the West believed existed during the Cold War.
The Soviet Union was mainly defencive in its stance.
The official Soviet Doctrine stated that the Soviet Union should be able to simultaneously defend against both NATO and China in a land war by ripping both apart with artillery and then perform massive tank counter-attacks to end the wars.
So, they built a logistics system of unprecedented scale to achieve this.
It is called the Soviet Railsystem.
Across the entire Soviet Union there was enormous switching yards filled with tens of thousands of flatbed cars filled with preboarded artillery systems, shells, tanks, BMPs, etcetera.
And this was supported by an army of engineers and engineering soldiers on a scale larger than most countries armies.
If attacked trains would start to roll out within hours to where they where needed, and trucks was only needed for those famous last 90km.
In an excercise 1984 Russia hauled 1 million men and their heavy gear from storage in 48 hours, and arrived 8 days later on the Chinese border.
The West did not learn about this until the 90s, this scared the Chinese enough to cancel a planned border-beef and secured the Soviet border for a decade.
Obviously this meant that the Soviet Union was never really able to perform a war to take all of Europe due to rail incompatibility.
This lack of forward deployment offensive capability bit them in the **** in Afghanistan, and now in their Russian guise in Ukraine.
Soviet to Russia transition
As the Soviet Union fell rampant thievery and corruption ensued almost immediately as the Soviet Union fell apart.
Without the ability to pay salaries newly enterprising officers solved the problem by selling what they had laying about, be it shells, artillery systems, spare barrels, tanks... whatever.
On top of that there was no money for upkeap, so what was stored started to go to ****.
And, quite a bit of the ready stores ended up outside of Russia, with the most famous example being that 20 milllion shell storage in Transnistria.
Other stuff ended up in brand new countries.
Sidenote: The stuff in that Transnistrian warehouse was sold by the Transnistrians over the years, at the start of the war only 5 million shells remained.
The remains ended up in Ukraine after some enterprising soul bought it from the Russians, carted it off into Moldova and then around into Ukraine.
Seller was a certain colonel lieutenant of Russian origin who is now sunbathing in Turkey.
Russia 2022
Let us now go through Russian numbers in January of 2022.
25 000 artillery systems, 10 000 of later nick, the rest being what nobody wanted to buy.
5 000 spare barrels.
20 million shells, half usable, half garbage.
Production capacity:
10-20 artillery systems per year.
No barrel production capacity.
No shell production capacity active. They did though get 2 factories up and running after a year.
The last was caused by the limited need for newly produced shells since they had 20 million in storage that was all reported as fully functional.
Now
2000 shells per day in real figures, reported production is 5500 shells per day.
The disparity is caused by a combo of corruption, and Ukraine blowing factories up at a steady rate.
Next year this is supposed to go up to 25 000 shells per day according to Russia. How that will be achieved since they are not able to up the numbers now to even their more modest 2023 prognosis is beyond me and everyone else.
Especially since there is no evidence of them building new factories or refurbishing any old factories.
Those old factories are hulks by the way, all that can be stolen or sold is gone.
In other words, Russia should be happy if they can hit the 5 - 10 000 number in late 2024.
100-200 new artillery systems per year.
100-200 new spare barrels per year.
Ukraine War
In the beginning Russia started off with firing 65 000 shells per day, or 20+ million per year.
And, Russia did at that point chug their way forwards oblitering cities as they went, most famously Mariupol.
That fell down to 20 000 shells in the 4th quarter of 2022, remember how the Russian generals back then cried about shell-hunger and how Prigozhing screamed?
It was still a respectable 7 million shells per year.
Well, today that is called "the good old days".
In Q1 of 2023 they had saved up a bit, and also been able to buy back shells from various places, and gotten shells from Iran.
This brought them back up to being able to spend 28 000 shells, and this brought on the Winter Offensive from Russia.
Spending 10 million shells on a yearly basis was though beyond what was sustainable, and the number started to drop off.
This time the decline was terminal.
Currently the number is down to 7 000 shells per day, or 2.5 million shells per year.
The trend is constantly going downwards, question is where it will end?
Russia produces about 2 000 shells per day
They are buying 1 500 to 2 000 shells per day from Iran and North Korea
The rest is coming out of ever shrinking stores.
This give the reasonable assumption that Russia will bottom out at around 3 500 to 5 000 shells, well unless Ukraine blow up a couple of more factories...
Ukraine Side
The Ukrainians had to be far more parsimonious with their shells, they never had those enormous stores.
So, at the beginning they had only 4 000 shells per day to play with, or 1.5 million on a yearly basis.
On top of that, the Ukrainians had allies who was never as shell-sexual as the Russians was.
This number did though start to go up to a first peak of 7 000 shells per day as shells from mainly the US arrived.
But, Ukraine was early on told that they would have to use those shells effectively, and that supply would never reach what Soviet Doctrine demanded.
So, they adapted their strategy accordingly at made certain to always have reserves that was stored far behind the frontlines for rainy days.
So, in Q4 of 2022 they saved up 2 000 shells per day.
And in Q1 of 2023 EU sourced shells started to arrive, so the Ukrainians felt confident in using another 7K to counter the Russian Winter Offensive.
So, when the Q2 lull came they really saved shells in the bank, 3K of the 7K received was stored for their future offensive.
At this time they got positive information from the EU as EU had chucked in billions to solve the short, medium and longterm production.
And this was important since US stores started to dry up at an alarming rate, and in Q2 EU became the main supplier of shells.
The US also arranged so that South Korea sold 0.5 million shells to Ukraine via the US.
And since they had gotten a delivery curve from the EU reaching into 2024 and beyond it started to be happy days in the Ukrainian artillery and the curve started to climb slowly and steadily in the knowledge of how much they would receive in the future, and this time reliably.
Ukraine is now recieving 9 000 shells per day, or 3.3 million on a yearly basis.
That is 2 000 more than Russia receive.
Obviously Ukraine will be frugal and save as much as possible.
But what has the Ukrainian artillery officers crying with joy is the knowledge that at the end of 2024 they will get between 15 000 and 18 000 shells per day.
So, on the shell per day metric Ukraine is now on top of Russia due to the production capacity and economic power of the West (mainly the EU now).
This is obviously not enough to make the difference to 1 to 10 in casualty rate.
Precission
If you have 1 shell in 15 compared to the enemy you rapidly learn to make every single shell count.
No wall of fire attacks just to move along the enemy, no bus stops or toilets blown up.
No, each shell must be targeted on a Russian piece of equipment or trench.
Ukraine learned this lesson well.
And as Western artillery systems started to arrive, especially the more advanced European ones, the Ukrainians learned that they could use between 1 to 5 shells to take out a target that the Russians needed 100 shells to hit even if they targeted a specific target.
Obviously this 20 - 100 advantage is if you use Bonus or Excalibur rounds.
If you use bog standard base bleed shells that number is 1 to 10, now... why does that 1 in 10 look so familiar?
Hm...
It should here also be stated that Ukraine has done a fabulous job with the far and few shells they received by hitting Russian shell stores and artillery systems.
This has further degraded the amount of Russian shells in the air considerably.
Avdivka
Being able to dish out more shells than the Russians, and hit between 10 to 100 times more tagets per shell average did a large part of it.
We also could dip into those reserve stores that Ukraine have due to being frugal, it was after all rainy days to say the least.
We also had shells that were longer reaching, and had a good amount of counter-battery radars.
It also did not help that Russia basically attacked in a 1:1 ratio in personel and equipment, not the 1:3 (absolute minimum) or 1:5 (prefered).
And that leads us to the second parameter that we have moved in Ukraine into their advantage.
The tanks and CVs have 1:10 higher precission due to build quality and guidance systems.
Also, the survivability in those are 1:10 compared to the Russian systems.
Note, that is crew survivability, the tracks etcetera is just marginally better, so the Western gear is 1:2 prone to break down on the battlefield due to enemy fire (still an advantage).
Anyway, all of this gave us the ability to fall back, artillery them, and our artillery was always safe, and we could rapidly move out our armour, artillery the Russians, and then sweep in under artillery cover and pound some Russian **** like Peter North, and then pull out and spray them with more sem... shells.
Let us break things down further.
Out of the 1:10 casualty rate, the bulk was among Zyrzkyi's infantry that holding the lines.
Only 1 in 10 (again that number) was among my armoured units.
The artillery had two lost systems and about 1:10 compared to my armour.
I am saying mine since Tank Girl graciously gave me command.
This was my technocratic take on it based on numbers and data.
Zyrzkyi put it differently:
"We are bloody good and they are idiots".
He has a point, we made very few mistakes, and the Russians made a mother of a mistake in even attacking without any advantage in personel and equipment, and against fortified positions.
Avdivka
Currently the Russians are pushed back almost to the starting point.
But, they will probably come back for a second run.
This time they will try with less equipment but the same number of soldiers, we know this from sat data and longrange survaillance drones.
But that is about two days away.
So, for the time being the artillery is taking out their artillery at the same high rate, and also any loitering armour they can find.
As Oleksandr drily stated, if this continue you will reach 1:100 ratio...
I almost believe him.
Putin is an idiot of spectacular proportions for ordering this attack.
He picked the hardest nut to crack, and cracked a lot of Russian nutsacks against it.
My reply was to quote Napoleon:
"Do not interupt your enemy as he is making a mistake". "
"After sleeping like a donkey I am now in a state to explain a few things, and I am also happy that we will get our last night under the stars tonight (unless Russia does something really out of the box).
The first point is the 1 to 10 casualty rate figure, and how the heck we can sustain that.
And here it is important to point out that this is not the number for defence only where you can theoretically achieve 1 to 5 numbers.
No, that was the number combined from Defence, Offense and counter-attacks.
So, how on Earth did we pull this almost impossible number?
There is an answer, and that is that we have shifted one key parameter heavily into Ukraines favour.
Well, two key parameters, but they are somewhat interlinked.
Let me explain.
The God of War
Soviet doctrine stated that through pure volume of artillery you could win any engagement, battle and war.
It did not matter really what you hit and where, just by shear wall of fire you could just steamroll across an enemy indefinitely.
And it is/was absolutely true, at least back then.
Problem is that to be able to pull it off you need an immense industrial base geared up to support it, and an army oriented towards the immense logistics and storage required.
Obviously the Soviet Union pulled this off, and it is proven that they did so, both on records and in practice.
The known and well studied data is very impressive, and we should go through those data points.
Soviet Artillery
In the 80s the Soviet Union had the following artillery resources:
50 000 artillery systems of various types and ages.
Russia loved to save older stuff in the warehouses, age was not that important for their doctrine to work.
That they used different shells and calibres was though a bit of a headache.
But the plan was always to produce new more uniform artillery systems if a war broke out.
50 000 spare barrels, one each for every single artillery system.
80 to 100 million shells in huge warehouses and storage sites.
Production capacity of 50 000 barrels per year.
Production capcity of 20 000 complete artillery systems per year.
Shell production capacity of 20 million shells per year.
This was backed up by the best logistics system ever constructed by humanity.
Say what now???
Here we need to discuss Soviet Doctrine, the real one and not the hyperbolic version that the West believed existed during the Cold War.
The Soviet Union was mainly defencive in its stance.
The official Soviet Doctrine stated that the Soviet Union should be able to simultaneously defend against both NATO and China in a land war by ripping both apart with artillery and then perform massive tank counter-attacks to end the wars.
So, they built a logistics system of unprecedented scale to achieve this.
It is called the Soviet Railsystem.
Across the entire Soviet Union there was enormous switching yards filled with tens of thousands of flatbed cars filled with preboarded artillery systems, shells, tanks, BMPs, etcetera.
And this was supported by an army of engineers and engineering soldiers on a scale larger than most countries armies.
If attacked trains would start to roll out within hours to where they where needed, and trucks was only needed for those famous last 90km.
In an excercise 1984 Russia hauled 1 million men and their heavy gear from storage in 48 hours, and arrived 8 days later on the Chinese border.
The West did not learn about this until the 90s, this scared the Chinese enough to cancel a planned border-beef and secured the Soviet border for a decade.
Obviously this meant that the Soviet Union was never really able to perform a war to take all of Europe due to rail incompatibility.
This lack of forward deployment offensive capability bit them in the **** in Afghanistan, and now in their Russian guise in Ukraine.
Soviet to Russia transition
As the Soviet Union fell rampant thievery and corruption ensued almost immediately as the Soviet Union fell apart.
Without the ability to pay salaries newly enterprising officers solved the problem by selling what they had laying about, be it shells, artillery systems, spare barrels, tanks... whatever.
On top of that there was no money for upkeap, so what was stored started to go to ****.
And, quite a bit of the ready stores ended up outside of Russia, with the most famous example being that 20 milllion shell storage in Transnistria.
Other stuff ended up in brand new countries.
Sidenote: The stuff in that Transnistrian warehouse was sold by the Transnistrians over the years, at the start of the war only 5 million shells remained.
The remains ended up in Ukraine after some enterprising soul bought it from the Russians, carted it off into Moldova and then around into Ukraine.
Seller was a certain colonel lieutenant of Russian origin who is now sunbathing in Turkey.
Russia 2022
Let us now go through Russian numbers in January of 2022.
25 000 artillery systems, 10 000 of later nick, the rest being what nobody wanted to buy.
5 000 spare barrels.
20 million shells, half usable, half garbage.
Production capacity:
10-20 artillery systems per year.
No barrel production capacity.
No shell production capacity active. They did though get 2 factories up and running after a year.
The last was caused by the limited need for newly produced shells since they had 20 million in storage that was all reported as fully functional.
Now
2000 shells per day in real figures, reported production is 5500 shells per day.
The disparity is caused by a combo of corruption, and Ukraine blowing factories up at a steady rate.
Next year this is supposed to go up to 25 000 shells per day according to Russia. How that will be achieved since they are not able to up the numbers now to even their more modest 2023 prognosis is beyond me and everyone else.
Especially since there is no evidence of them building new factories or refurbishing any old factories.
Those old factories are hulks by the way, all that can be stolen or sold is gone.
In other words, Russia should be happy if they can hit the 5 - 10 000 number in late 2024.
100-200 new artillery systems per year.
100-200 new spare barrels per year.
Ukraine War
In the beginning Russia started off with firing 65 000 shells per day, or 20+ million per year.
And, Russia did at that point chug their way forwards oblitering cities as they went, most famously Mariupol.
That fell down to 20 000 shells in the 4th quarter of 2022, remember how the Russian generals back then cried about shell-hunger and how Prigozhing screamed?
It was still a respectable 7 million shells per year.
Well, today that is called "the good old days".
In Q1 of 2023 they had saved up a bit, and also been able to buy back shells from various places, and gotten shells from Iran.
This brought them back up to being able to spend 28 000 shells, and this brought on the Winter Offensive from Russia.
Spending 10 million shells on a yearly basis was though beyond what was sustainable, and the number started to drop off.
This time the decline was terminal.
Currently the number is down to 7 000 shells per day, or 2.5 million shells per year.
The trend is constantly going downwards, question is where it will end?
Russia produces about 2 000 shells per day
They are buying 1 500 to 2 000 shells per day from Iran and North Korea
The rest is coming out of ever shrinking stores.
This give the reasonable assumption that Russia will bottom out at around 3 500 to 5 000 shells, well unless Ukraine blow up a couple of more factories...
Ukraine Side
The Ukrainians had to be far more parsimonious with their shells, they never had those enormous stores.
So, at the beginning they had only 4 000 shells per day to play with, or 1.5 million on a yearly basis.
On top of that, the Ukrainians had allies who was never as shell-sexual as the Russians was.
This number did though start to go up to a first peak of 7 000 shells per day as shells from mainly the US arrived.
But, Ukraine was early on told that they would have to use those shells effectively, and that supply would never reach what Soviet Doctrine demanded.
So, they adapted their strategy accordingly at made certain to always have reserves that was stored far behind the frontlines for rainy days.
So, in Q4 of 2022 they saved up 2 000 shells per day.
And in Q1 of 2023 EU sourced shells started to arrive, so the Ukrainians felt confident in using another 7K to counter the Russian Winter Offensive.
So, when the Q2 lull came they really saved shells in the bank, 3K of the 7K received was stored for their future offensive.
At this time they got positive information from the EU as EU had chucked in billions to solve the short, medium and longterm production.
And this was important since US stores started to dry up at an alarming rate, and in Q2 EU became the main supplier of shells.
The US also arranged so that South Korea sold 0.5 million shells to Ukraine via the US.
And since they had gotten a delivery curve from the EU reaching into 2024 and beyond it started to be happy days in the Ukrainian artillery and the curve started to climb slowly and steadily in the knowledge of how much they would receive in the future, and this time reliably.
Ukraine is now recieving 9 000 shells per day, or 3.3 million on a yearly basis.
That is 2 000 more than Russia receive.
Obviously Ukraine will be frugal and save as much as possible.
But what has the Ukrainian artillery officers crying with joy is the knowledge that at the end of 2024 they will get between 15 000 and 18 000 shells per day.
So, on the shell per day metric Ukraine is now on top of Russia due to the production capacity and economic power of the West (mainly the EU now).
This is obviously not enough to make the difference to 1 to 10 in casualty rate.
Precission
If you have 1 shell in 15 compared to the enemy you rapidly learn to make every single shell count.
No wall of fire attacks just to move along the enemy, no bus stops or toilets blown up.
No, each shell must be targeted on a Russian piece of equipment or trench.
Ukraine learned this lesson well.
And as Western artillery systems started to arrive, especially the more advanced European ones, the Ukrainians learned that they could use between 1 to 5 shells to take out a target that the Russians needed 100 shells to hit even if they targeted a specific target.
Obviously this 20 - 100 advantage is if you use Bonus or Excalibur rounds.
If you use bog standard base bleed shells that number is 1 to 10, now... why does that 1 in 10 look so familiar?
Hm...
It should here also be stated that Ukraine has done a fabulous job with the far and few shells they received by hitting Russian shell stores and artillery systems.
This has further degraded the amount of Russian shells in the air considerably.
Avdivka
Being able to dish out more shells than the Russians, and hit between 10 to 100 times more tagets per shell average did a large part of it.
We also could dip into those reserve stores that Ukraine have due to being frugal, it was after all rainy days to say the least.
We also had shells that were longer reaching, and had a good amount of counter-battery radars.
It also did not help that Russia basically attacked in a 1:1 ratio in personel and equipment, not the 1:3 (absolute minimum) or 1:5 (prefered).
And that leads us to the second parameter that we have moved in Ukraine into their advantage.
The tanks and CVs have 1:10 higher precission due to build quality and guidance systems.
Also, the survivability in those are 1:10 compared to the Russian systems.
Note, that is crew survivability, the tracks etcetera is just marginally better, so the Western gear is 1:2 prone to break down on the battlefield due to enemy fire (still an advantage).
Anyway, all of this gave us the ability to fall back, artillery them, and our artillery was always safe, and we could rapidly move out our armour, artillery the Russians, and then sweep in under artillery cover and pound some Russian **** like Peter North, and then pull out and spray them with more sem... shells.
Let us break things down further.
Out of the 1:10 casualty rate, the bulk was among Zyrzkyi's infantry that holding the lines.
Only 1 in 10 (again that number) was among my armoured units.
The artillery had two lost systems and about 1:10 compared to my armour.
I am saying mine since Tank Girl graciously gave me command.
This was my technocratic take on it based on numbers and data.
Zyrzkyi put it differently:
"We are bloody good and they are idiots".
He has a point, we made very few mistakes, and the Russians made a mother of a mistake in even attacking without any advantage in personel and equipment, and against fortified positions.
Avdivka
Currently the Russians are pushed back almost to the starting point.
But, they will probably come back for a second run.
This time they will try with less equipment but the same number of soldiers, we know this from sat data and longrange survaillance drones.
But that is about two days away.
So, for the time being the artillery is taking out their artillery at the same high rate, and also any loitering armour they can find.
As Oleksandr drily stated, if this continue you will reach 1:100 ratio...
I almost believe him.
Putin is an idiot of spectacular proportions for ordering this attack.
He picked the hardest nut to crack, and cracked a lot of Russian nutsacks against it.
My reply was to quote Napoleon:
"Do not interupt your enemy as he is making a mistake". "
Frontline update (late yesterday)
"In my previous one I ended up nerding away on artillery so hard that there was just no space, nor any time left, to do the frontlines.
So, after having eaten way to much Indian food that we had droned in to our little camp, someone promptly fell asleep.
I am supposed to wake her in two hours when the stars are at their maximum.
I slept for ten hours so I am a bit perkier.
So, frontline musing it is.
Bilhorod People's Republic
The Nipple has now become a full boob, and to my horror the Ukrainians are now full on using my irreverent terminology.
I am contemplating that my legacy will be the military terms of Nipple and Boob, it is sort of on par and in style I guess.
Anyway, over the last week the People's Republic of Bilhorod Liberation Army (non-official title) has taken Shebekino, Novaya Tavolzhanka, Bezliudovka, Shebekinskii and today Maslova Pristan fell.
That leaves the Free Russia Brigade 5km from Bilhorod City proper.
This is a full 15km inside Russian territory, and within visual artillery range.
I would call that a decent sized boob.
Russians have now forcefully reacted, they have put up a border post stopping cars from driving into the liberated areas.
5 guys and a log across the road, majestic response.
This has though caused a bit of a problem in regards of equipment.
It is one thing to use western provided artillery from the other side of the border using the Free Russia Brigade (FRB) as spotters, but now this is becoming unfeasible due to the distance.
The solution is obvious, they will "find" a few 152mm Russian pieces that has been captured, and some leftover stock of Russian shells, same goes with 4 T-90 Proryv that has been restored and some more BMPs of different varieties.
They are even getting an abandoned S-300 that Ukraine nicked.
Otherwise the general conclusion is to let them continue while the going is good.
And since this iteration of them are mostly former Wagnerites that are non-to-happy with the Russian army and their treatment of them, the general idea is to let them fight a rearward fight as and when the Russians finally show up to the party.
I must though say that it is the first time I know of in military history where a country is invaded and is not **** bothered to do something about it beyond shoving their collective heads into the sand.
Luhansk
Russia is now working hard on nipplifications here, but they are not really getting anywhere, and whatever nipple is formed is rapidly pounded back.
The fighting here is though hard on any scale.
There are 3 main vectors of attack, in fact more like 3 battles raging here, towards Kupyansk, from Svatove and from Kreminna.
But, there are now and then other surprise attacks along the entire line.
This means that the forces here are naturally being stretched out, and Zyrzkyi has requested reinforcements from Kharkiv direction, and sort of hinted that he might ask us for units as and whenever Avdivka is cooling down.
There are a few Brigades also coming from the Odesa direction.
Tank Girl is not keen on sending anything more in case Avdivka get worse, or the Russians kick of an attack in Marinka or Stepne. We are also supposed to be able to aid Oleksandr if he is hit with a big counter-offensive.
So, even if we on paper have a large reserve, that is already called for and needed as a fire brigade.
But, if needs be we can arrive within 12-16 hours.
I am though sure that Zyrzkyi can manage.
Spelling, he spells it Syrskiy, I did though once Ukrainify his spelling into Zhyrzhkyy, and he ended up with being renamed into the medium version to his horror.
Bakhmut
Here Ukraine has taken everything out to the lakes towards Odraivka.
This means that they hold the height curve and are able to pound away at Russian positions from above all the way to Odraivka, and if they had two more weeks they would probably be able to take everything up to Odradaivka.
It is sort of depending on the weather now, but if nothing else they have fire control of the entire area and can continue on fot all the way during Rasputitsa, and take it during the winter firm ground period.
Taking this "sausage" of land along the height curve was a big victory and give the Ukrainians option to also go towards Opytne and Kurdumyivka.
Options...
Avdivka
Here we are now happily stomping on things removing the last few small Russian nipples.
Rematch in a few days is though pretty much a thing now, but with better equipment ratios.
In Marinka and Stepne Tank Girl have been busy swatting Russian counter-attacks.
This led her to proudly pronounce "My boobs are to firm for the Russians"...
I have literally destroyed an entires country's military lingo.
Over at Pavlivka nothing much has happened, we are not putting any effort into those villages while Avdivka and the rest is ongoing, running 3 battles at the same time is quite enough, thank you very much. :)
Tokmak Axis
Oleksandr is getting nowhere fast in Novoprokopivka and Verbove area due to constant Russian counter-attacks and infusion of reinforcements into those areas.
It has turned into a positional phase of grinding them down as fast as they arrive, but without gaining a moment for a push.
So, he is instead having way to much fun over at Kopani, taking a field here and field there, alternating from the North and from the East.
He is now 500 meters away from the village on a third of the way counted as a circle.
And since he is now firmly holding the small village of Nesterianka he is pushing towards the equally minute village of Myrne.
This in turn means that he is now holding the road into Kopani, so the Russians have to supply via driving over the fields, and since that is slow the drones have ample time to find and hit them.
I think that his plan is to start storming the place as and when he has it in more than a half-circle.
While he is grinding away in Novoprokopivka and Verbove he is also rotating forces, and also injecting a couple of new Brigades he has received.
Kherson
Having the commanding general going "poof" all of a sudden caused havoc in that command.
It was not much that the general could do, he had to go back to Israel ASAP, and even though everyone understands that it put in a big hole.
This confusion caused an oversight on what the Russians was up to, and they succeeded with hauling 8 GRADs up to the river right across from Kherson City, and they used those to attack right over Kherson City hitting a suburb behind.
Sadly both hospitals was hit.
It was at that point obvious that Ukraine needed a new commander with the capacity to take over on the fly.
So, in a first the field commanders voted for a candidate of their own to send.
The first question was "do you want it?", but I guess they knew that I would say no, and why, but weirdly enough I am the senior general all of a sudden without a command so it was the polite thing to do.
So, I made a suggestion.
If you remember my favourite colonel from over Urozhaine et al?
Well, he has been upgraded to a brigadier, and he has a couple of good subs.
And, since he was wedged between Tank Girl and Olexandr's commands (he is technically Olexandr's sub-commander), it was decided that he could be dispatched and Tank Girl and Olexandr keep an eye on the new commander in the area, and being able to lend a hand if needed.
Being known as a successful battle-commander, and being a bright one he slapped a few wrists, battened down the hatches, screamed a bit, and then had everything at hand in record time.
He might not have been a legend like "X", but he is probably as good, or even better in my view.
If nothing else he has achieved more land taken, and it is well known that he is a "winner".
He will do well.
Incidentally he took away Budanov's record of becoming a general by a full 3 years, they make them young over here.
Cheese
It is now time to break out the cheese plate, coke, and a bit of homemade cherry brandy.
And wake up miss sleepyhead and watch some stars.
It is so wonderfully quiet here, and not even a tchirp on the radio so far.
The night officer is really good as I've mentioned before, and he knows better than to bother us with things that he can deal with on his own, and he even more importantly know when to bug us.
I leave Tank Girl in good hands.
It is important to me.
Now, cheese and stars!"
"In my previous one I ended up nerding away on artillery so hard that there was just no space, nor any time left, to do the frontlines.
So, after having eaten way to much Indian food that we had droned in to our little camp, someone promptly fell asleep.
I am supposed to wake her in two hours when the stars are at their maximum.
I slept for ten hours so I am a bit perkier.
So, frontline musing it is.
Bilhorod People's Republic
The Nipple has now become a full boob, and to my horror the Ukrainians are now full on using my irreverent terminology.
I am contemplating that my legacy will be the military terms of Nipple and Boob, it is sort of on par and in style I guess.
Anyway, over the last week the People's Republic of Bilhorod Liberation Army (non-official title) has taken Shebekino, Novaya Tavolzhanka, Bezliudovka, Shebekinskii and today Maslova Pristan fell.
That leaves the Free Russia Brigade 5km from Bilhorod City proper.
This is a full 15km inside Russian territory, and within visual artillery range.
I would call that a decent sized boob.
Russians have now forcefully reacted, they have put up a border post stopping cars from driving into the liberated areas.
5 guys and a log across the road, majestic response.
This has though caused a bit of a problem in regards of equipment.
It is one thing to use western provided artillery from the other side of the border using the Free Russia Brigade (FRB) as spotters, but now this is becoming unfeasible due to the distance.
The solution is obvious, they will "find" a few 152mm Russian pieces that has been captured, and some leftover stock of Russian shells, same goes with 4 T-90 Proryv that has been restored and some more BMPs of different varieties.
They are even getting an abandoned S-300 that Ukraine nicked.
Otherwise the general conclusion is to let them continue while the going is good.
And since this iteration of them are mostly former Wagnerites that are non-to-happy with the Russian army and their treatment of them, the general idea is to let them fight a rearward fight as and when the Russians finally show up to the party.
I must though say that it is the first time I know of in military history where a country is invaded and is not **** bothered to do something about it beyond shoving their collective heads into the sand.
Luhansk
Russia is now working hard on nipplifications here, but they are not really getting anywhere, and whatever nipple is formed is rapidly pounded back.
The fighting here is though hard on any scale.
There are 3 main vectors of attack, in fact more like 3 battles raging here, towards Kupyansk, from Svatove and from Kreminna.
But, there are now and then other surprise attacks along the entire line.
This means that the forces here are naturally being stretched out, and Zyrzkyi has requested reinforcements from Kharkiv direction, and sort of hinted that he might ask us for units as and whenever Avdivka is cooling down.
There are a few Brigades also coming from the Odesa direction.
Tank Girl is not keen on sending anything more in case Avdivka get worse, or the Russians kick of an attack in Marinka or Stepne. We are also supposed to be able to aid Oleksandr if he is hit with a big counter-offensive.
So, even if we on paper have a large reserve, that is already called for and needed as a fire brigade.
But, if needs be we can arrive within 12-16 hours.
I am though sure that Zyrzkyi can manage.
Spelling, he spells it Syrskiy, I did though once Ukrainify his spelling into Zhyrzhkyy, and he ended up with being renamed into the medium version to his horror.
Bakhmut
Here Ukraine has taken everything out to the lakes towards Odraivka.
This means that they hold the height curve and are able to pound away at Russian positions from above all the way to Odraivka, and if they had two more weeks they would probably be able to take everything up to Odradaivka.
It is sort of depending on the weather now, but if nothing else they have fire control of the entire area and can continue on fot all the way during Rasputitsa, and take it during the winter firm ground period.
Taking this "sausage" of land along the height curve was a big victory and give the Ukrainians option to also go towards Opytne and Kurdumyivka.
Options...
Avdivka
Here we are now happily stomping on things removing the last few small Russian nipples.
Rematch in a few days is though pretty much a thing now, but with better equipment ratios.
In Marinka and Stepne Tank Girl have been busy swatting Russian counter-attacks.
This led her to proudly pronounce "My boobs are to firm for the Russians"...
I have literally destroyed an entires country's military lingo.
Over at Pavlivka nothing much has happened, we are not putting any effort into those villages while Avdivka and the rest is ongoing, running 3 battles at the same time is quite enough, thank you very much. :)
Tokmak Axis
Oleksandr is getting nowhere fast in Novoprokopivka and Verbove area due to constant Russian counter-attacks and infusion of reinforcements into those areas.
It has turned into a positional phase of grinding them down as fast as they arrive, but without gaining a moment for a push.
So, he is instead having way to much fun over at Kopani, taking a field here and field there, alternating from the North and from the East.
He is now 500 meters away from the village on a third of the way counted as a circle.
And since he is now firmly holding the small village of Nesterianka he is pushing towards the equally minute village of Myrne.
This in turn means that he is now holding the road into Kopani, so the Russians have to supply via driving over the fields, and since that is slow the drones have ample time to find and hit them.
I think that his plan is to start storming the place as and when he has it in more than a half-circle.
While he is grinding away in Novoprokopivka and Verbove he is also rotating forces, and also injecting a couple of new Brigades he has received.
Kherson
Having the commanding general going "poof" all of a sudden caused havoc in that command.
It was not much that the general could do, he had to go back to Israel ASAP, and even though everyone understands that it put in a big hole.
This confusion caused an oversight on what the Russians was up to, and they succeeded with hauling 8 GRADs up to the river right across from Kherson City, and they used those to attack right over Kherson City hitting a suburb behind.
Sadly both hospitals was hit.
It was at that point obvious that Ukraine needed a new commander with the capacity to take over on the fly.
So, in a first the field commanders voted for a candidate of their own to send.
The first question was "do you want it?", but I guess they knew that I would say no, and why, but weirdly enough I am the senior general all of a sudden without a command so it was the polite thing to do.
So, I made a suggestion.
If you remember my favourite colonel from over Urozhaine et al?
Well, he has been upgraded to a brigadier, and he has a couple of good subs.
And, since he was wedged between Tank Girl and Olexandr's commands (he is technically Olexandr's sub-commander), it was decided that he could be dispatched and Tank Girl and Olexandr keep an eye on the new commander in the area, and being able to lend a hand if needed.
Being known as a successful battle-commander, and being a bright one he slapped a few wrists, battened down the hatches, screamed a bit, and then had everything at hand in record time.
He might not have been a legend like "X", but he is probably as good, or even better in my view.
If nothing else he has achieved more land taken, and it is well known that he is a "winner".
He will do well.
Incidentally he took away Budanov's record of becoming a general by a full 3 years, they make them young over here.
Cheese
It is now time to break out the cheese plate, coke, and a bit of homemade cherry brandy.
And wake up miss sleepyhead and watch some stars.
It is so wonderfully quiet here, and not even a tchirp on the radio so far.
The night officer is really good as I've mentioned before, and he knows better than to bother us with things that he can deal with on his own, and he even more importantly know when to bug us.
I leave Tank Girl in good hands.
It is important to me.
Now, cheese and stars!"