The end?

As the good General is now back in civilisation.... some news in brief.

"Fronts:

The Russian army are now starting to show signs of buckling under the strain of 6 simultaneous offensives, each taking up some 50K soldiers.
There's also signs of serious shortages in equipment and consumables.
Let us take an anti-clockwise gander...

Kinburn Spit to Krynky
In other words, Tank Girl's Tour of Kherson.
After securing the border to Krynky she expanded that area deeper into Kherson by about a kilometre, and then went towards Kozachi Laheri, about half of that town is now in Ukrainian hands.
All of that was done by drone work and artillery, soldiers only did flag plantings.

Over at Hola Pryzstan there's now heavy drone activity as the toehold there is slowly expanded, same goes for Oleshky and that literal bridgehead where Russia is slowly being pushed back.

The new item is Kinburn Spit that is being depopulated and demilitarised using longrange drones, artillery, missiles, and TG's boonfangled innovations (Grads mounted on marine drones).
I guess you can guess where this will go shortly...

Robotyne to Vuhledar
This front has completely frozen from a Russian perspective, and if anything it is Ukraine making some small headway, same goes for Urozhaine and Vuhledar where the small gains made are all Ukrainian.

Ocheretyne to Marinka
Tarnovzkyy has slammed the door shut in the face of Russia so hard that they are all having nosebleeds.
They are now so attrited in the Ocheretyne bulge that they are buckling and slowly cracking, the momentum is now definitely back in Ukrainian hands here, and I suspect that he is going to pull off some of his counter-punches very soon after some additional grinding of his Russians.

Avdiivka
Here Russia has also ground to a halt.
You are getting the picture how their offensives are going now?

Chasiv Yar / Bakhmut
Klichi'ivka is now definitely back in Ukrainian hands as Brigadier Plucky continues his hearding of Russian "pets" south of Bakhmut.
At Chasiv Yar he has pushed the attack-prongs back between 1 and 3km, and that is true for all 3 prongs.
That was Russian ****ed up offensive no 4, two more two go.

Kupyansk
Well... let us say that it is going nowhere as per usual.
Imagine a Russian full on meatwave assault that has been going for a full year without the frontline moving a single meter.
Now, ponder the piles of dead Russians that have amassed?
Definitely the most odorous part of the frontline, the scenes from there is worse than what it must have been at Verdun.
Verdun used to hold the previous world record of killed per square meter of ground.

Vovtjansk / Kharkiv
Russia made progress, but that has now stalled out fully against the very robust Ukrainian defence lines 3-5 km behind the border.
What amases me is that even local border guard soldiers thought that they should have built the defences on the border itself in full visibility... and then griped on social media about there not being any defence lines.
Sigh...

Anyway, the border guards did better than I thought.
I had tought that we would be lucky if they lasted 24 hours before they got pushed back all the way to the Zero-line of Ukraine.
They fought a rear-guard fight for 7 days before being pushed into the zero-line and the waiting troops there.

Russia attacked with a total of 50K men at their disposal, against well fortified 80 000 Ukrainian troops, plus auxilary units.
And the Ukrainians are mainline units, the core of professionals, among them the entire 21st Armoured Division.
What happened is best described as a slaughter house in slowmotion.

In the 10 first day Russia suffered 15 000 in killed and injured, all of them from St Petersburg and Moscow.
And it continues unabated.

The Russian officers had been told that they would only meet Border Guards and auxilary units, and that the defences was skimpy.
Instead they were met with a hailstorm of artillery with Ukraine gaining a 2:1 artillery advantage from getgo, plus drones so plenty that the Russian commanders are complaining about the sky going black from time to time.

And just as Russia declared that Vovtjansk was theirs the CV90-platforms entered the town....
Of all sorts and makes including 90-120 Ghosts making a first appearance.

Russia is now buckling along the entire line of contact as they run out of equipment, men and consumables.
In other words:
"Told ya so!" :)


Conclusion
Having 300K soldiers in offensive at 6 places at the same time is just insanity on a never before seen point in history.
Russia just do not have the manpower to keep it up, and also they are no longer able to provide equipment for that many offensives, nor enough consumables.
Something that the Kharkiv insanity proved.

But, Russia being Russia they are now bragging about an upcoming final offensive along all six points of offence during the summer.
Normally I would say that it is bull****, but Russia has a tendency to do exactly what it states when it comes to their offenses.
So, we all hope that they will do exactly this."
 
Ukraine going back at the Russians now between Kharkiv and Bilhorod. Vovchanske is now back in Ukraine control.

"Total 6 armoured Brigades and 4 artillery Brigades plus two infantry Brigades in the counter offensive.

All running CV90s and Archer + Archer II artillery..."

Fingers crossed.
 
Decent_Left said:
But, but please don’t fire our supplies at military targets inside Russia.

**** Russia & **** the USA

https://twitter.com/x/status/1794382643045581074
Click to expand...
This is what they always do when they've taken big military hits, which they have this week. They always go for a big, soft, civilian target.

Here's a someone redacted update from Commander CherryCola (received before the hypermarket hit)

"While the Russian offensives have run out of steam Ukraine is using their glut of new high-powered artillery system and shells.
Especially we see Archers and Archer IIs galumphing about appearing everywhere to provide counter battery fire with deadly precission.

After their first appearance in the North putting a stopper in Russian advances there, some have gone east to spread their love over Russias artillery.
They roll up, blow up everything, and then move on rapidly to the next target down the line.
Extremely effective due to their integrated radar systems.

Also, their road speed of 70km/h and their ability to set up under a minute, then lob 9 shells in the next minute, and vamoose under the third minute, it is easy to understand how a unit of 4 of them can be so deadly and surprising.
Imagine being a Russian artillery battery, and all of a sudden 36 shells drop on you within seconds, and then the ******* that did it are gone when you go looking for them...

Crimea
Crimea was rocked by heavy missile strikes using homegrown ballistic missiles called 360, ATACMs and SCALP missiles.
Airfields, bases, and bridges was hit on a line going from the west coast to the south coast through Simferopol.
Since everyone is focusin on the more flashy stuff, I will instead point out the bridge part.

This is a concerted effort to separate Sevastopol from the rest of Crimea by cutting as many roadbridges as possible, and when that is done other parts will be chopped off.

Airplanes
Ukraine struck airfields inside Russia taking out at least 5 airplanes on the ground.
It was very carefully not disclosed what weapons systems was used, but all of the strikes was within the 300km marker from the Ukrainian positions/borders, so you may guess what has happened.
Seemingly Anthony Blinken won his power struggle against Jake Sullivan in regards of setting US weapons free for usage inside of Russia.

Lackings
This was a total surprise for all of us.
No Western intelligence service had gotten any info, nor had the Ukrainian army any info about it.
But, it seems like Russia is very close to the brink of running out of ammo.

48 hours ago reports of diminished usage of ammunition started to come from local Ukrainian field commanders at battalion level, those are the ones that have the best contact with the enemy.
And right about after that we started to intercept Russian commanders being very vocal asking "Where the hell is the ammo?".

This is obviously good news, but at the same time it is problematic to act on the good news.
Yes, we can take advantage on a tactical level and make minor gains and take fields and trench positions, but we can't act and go on the offensive in a broader strategic sense.
Why now?

Well, we do not know if this is due to problems sourcing and producing ammo, or if it is just some sort of glitch in deliveries.
If it is the first alternative we should go on a massive offensive as fast as possible, but if it is the second alternative we risk to run head first into fresh deliveries that have just been held up.

Ukraine have hit a lot of arms factories, and we have seen diminished deliveries from both Iran and NK lately.
So, it may be sourcing and production problems paired with old stocks finally running out.
It could be problems related to trains and delivery schedules.
It could also be related to confusion due to the arrests of generals involved in logistics, for now this is the prefered line of thought among the relevant Ukrainian Generals.

What is though clear is that we must rapidly find out what is causing it, and how we best can exploit it, temporary or not.

My point is that if Ukraine had been poised to strike in a big strategic offensive to push Russia out nor, it would have been prudent to strike now.
But, Ukraine is not there yet, it would take at least a month to set up such an offensive, and that offensive would burn through the reserves of supplies at a horrendous rate regardless of Russian problems.
No, we need to wait until Winter to fatten up those storages.
But, we can easily speed up what is already in the workings, and while at it do some spectacular tactical gains making Russia look like idiots.

Peace Conference
Here we do have intel that is pretty good.
Russia is truly scared about the upcoming peace conference.

They fear that there will be some sort of binding resolution ordering Russia to go home, and they know that if that is enforced they would not stand a chance in hell.
And they are not far off the mark on this.

If such a resolution is taken at the Swiss conference mid June, then the NATO summit in early July in Washington would turn into a "how do we go about enforcing this" event.
So, Russia is indeed entitled to having intestinally emplaced butterflies.

Russias answer is obviously the usual bull**** suggestion of having a ceasefire at the current frontlines.
They do know that this will never fly, but they are reflexively attempting this as a starting position.

At the same time Brazil and China have suggested another peace conference to discuss the Chinese peace plan.
No date is set for that one, so my guess is that they want to host a second conference after the Swiss one.
Notable here is that the Chinese peaceplan is a return to the 1991 borders, so it is not a much happier prospect for Russia, but at that one Russia would at least get a position at the table, which they are not getting in Switzerland.

What should be understood is that there are 3 different roads that can lead to the end of the war.
These are the Military Victory, Russian Prolapse, and the Diplomatic Peace.
I often tend to emphasize the first option, because it has so far been the most tangible.
But, the most realistic are in the long run is option two and three.
Russian prolapsability is in the hands of Russia, so that is not something we can bank on.

It is though good to remember that most wars end at the negotiation table, few wars have been won on the battlefield.
World War One was negotiated, and WWII is more or less an unusual exception in being a clear victory (Germany) and surrender (Japan).
And WWII came due to massive power application, a power application level that is unlikely unless NATO goes full on gungho together with either India or China.

It may come to this though if Russia does not accept unfavourable terms.
Because rest assured that nobody is going to accept a peace where Russia is left as a major power ever again."
 
A bit of a game changer (quietly)

"Usage of Weapons
Much have been done about Ukraine not being able to use western provided weapons inside of Russian territory.
At best they have gotten a vaguely formulated, "it is up to Ukraine to decide", but nobody has openly stated, "Go ahead and **** up Russia with out Arms".

Unofficially it has been a nogo to do it so far.
Almost everyone has followed US and ixnayed it unofficially.
Only exception was Sweden who gave an unofficial OK to use them.
But, basically it was not done more than some shelling and a little of TG doing an TG and sending in a couple of companies of CV90s in a support mission in Bilhorod and one attack on some barracks in Kursk.

That was basically all that Ukraine has dared do due to immense US pressure against it, and that is stemming from Jake Sullivan.
This did not sit well with neither Sweden, nor Ukraine.

In value Sweden is the third largest provider of weapons after the US and Germany.
And second in heavy equipment after the US.
And all of what we have given is of Swedish make, so we decide what the hell it is used as.

Sweden most often do things on the sly, with sneaky packages, undisclosed abillities provided, and so forth.
So far Sweden has never officially taken the lead in this war.
Well, until today.

Today Sweden announced that all Swedish provided weapons systems are free to be used inside of Russia and that there is no limitations on how Ukraine uses them inside Russia.
The Punderati came to the conclusion that it meant that Ukraine was free to fire into Russia with 155mm artillery.
As per usual they missed the entire boat by going to a different ocean.

The Kharkiv offensive was stopped partially by Ukraine pouring in 155mm shells into Russia already.
No, what it means is that ALL Swedish provided weapons systems AND all Swedish produced weapons provided by other nations, are free for usage inside of Russia.
That means NLAWS, CGs, AT4s, CV90s, Archers, etcetera, can be deployed into Russia as Ukraine sees fit.
And there many brigades of it.

This makes it official that Ukraine can use it for both counter-offensives into Russia to undercut the Russian offensive, or go on an entire offensive of their own.
This means that the heaviest units of any army in the world can go into Russia to b***r around to their hearts content.
Militarily this makes for quite a difference.

On the political side it is a hammerblow that an official NATO-country of rank gave the permission to do so.
It puts an enormous amount of pressure on UK and France among others.
Germany is s***ing itself, yes in the literal sense, Scholtz is rumoured to be down with migraine after hearing it.

But, the direct target for this political manouvre was directed against the US and Jake Sullivan.
It is well known that there is a brewing civil war inside the US administration between Sullivan and Anthony Blinken, the latter want to now approve Usage of Weapons (real milterm).
By doing this at this specific point in time (it was coming regardless) is giving Blinken one hell of a boost in his campaign.

You can now bet that the rest of the Nordics and Baltics will approve Usage of Weapons of whatever now they produce themselves.
You can only do that with what you produce yourself against the US, all US produced weapons are still not allowed, hence why it is such a heavy hit that Sweden did it, we are after all one of the few nations that produce almost everything ourselves.

But still, our neighbours produce quite a bits and bobs to bolster things.
And that will probably push both UK and France into declaring the same thing within a few days or couple of weeks.
And with Germany under heavy pressure already, I think they will buckle at that point and clear the Leopards and IRIS/Ts etcetera.
And that will leave the US in a truly awkward spot.

In the end it is a bit of a political manouvering on a level not seen out of Sweden since back in the eighties.
I honestly did not think our current government had it in them to take center stage like this and do some real Regional Power stuff.

Obviously Russia is now blowing flames out of their ****.
And it is no coincidence that this happened after we further fortified Gotland with one heck of a bunch of Robot batteries brimming with Gungnirs and AD there.
Gotland is now a prodigious fortress locking down the entire Baltic Sea if needed, and more than able to take out Kaliningrad on its own.

So, basically Russia can only fart flames and not much else as their arch enemy takes a huge **** over them on the global stage.
For genetical reasons I truly find this enjoyable.

For Ukraine this means that the entire 1st Combined Arms Army is now able to do what it was built for by Sweden and Ukraine, offensive operations inside Russia.
It is a very big sledgehammer aimed at the gonads of Russia."

Post script:

"UK and Poland followed suit within hours.

I expect all of the other Nordic and Baltic Countries and France to follow very fast."
 
Some thoughts from today....edited down.

"As the more astute may have noticed, the numbers of killed Russian soldiers remain above average at steadily above 1000 per day, while at the same time the numbers of equipment is slowly creeping downwards.
If you remember I said that this would happen as Russian equipment numbers in Ukraine start to dwindle.
Tanks are now on average below 10 per day, armoured vehicles below 20, and it is now rare with artillery being above 30.

This is obviously not from a lack of trying, in fact Ukrainian drones and artillery have never worked as hard as they are doing now.
No, it is just that the environment is target poor now.
If Ukraine would have fired and droned like two months ago, the number would have been half of the current number.
This ties nicely with...

Shell Hunger
Russian artillery is now griping about shell hunger and not being able to sustain fire in support of offending units.
And it has come since the Russian offensive started in the Kharkiv direction, in other words at the most inoppartune of times for Russia.

But, it is not only on the Northern Front they are having shell hunger, it is across the entire frontline and it happened within days of it starting.
This follows on the news of Russian soldiers not getting enough rifle cartridges and having to attack with at best 1 magasine of rounds.

I am starting to bet that this is systemic failure in the Russian arms production.
In other words, Russia believed the ficticious production numbers that they have pumped out, and the drying up of stores and deliveries from NK and Iran is hitting them hard now.
If I am correct Russia will rapidly be forced to adjust to an entirely new reality in the war.

For the moment we spend our time squishing more or less defenseless Russians in situ not moving forward.
But, with Russias prodigious ability to field fresh meat that is not a solution longterm, if possible we will in the end push forward.

It should though be mentioned that there is a difference between Russians.
So far in the war Russia has mostly relied on non-ethnic Russian citizens from the minorities, but they have literally started to run out of those and are now increasingly relying on ethnic Russians.
This is especially true on the Northern front.

And Russia is already starting to hear grumblings about ethnic Russians being sent into an offensive without proper armoured support and little artillery fire support.
Most notably an entire airborne regiment out of Pskov Oblast (westernmost Russia), an almost exclusively ethnic Russian Oblast.

The regiment dissappeared and the relatives have exploded over them existing one day and not the other.
And yes, they dissappeared without a trace within one hour.
No survivors, no wounded, no prisoners.
1 200 ethnic Russians gone from the face of the planet as they ran into the 21st Armoured Division and got mulched in a storm of 40mm autocannon fire.
Their last message was fittingly "blyat".

What I am saying is that death has finally started to arrive in Moscow and St Petersburg.
And my bet is that protests will explode in a bit as more and more of their relatives go "boof"."
 
I enjoy this thread very much.
I was thinking about some of the discussions, from this time last year, and things do not seem to have panned out as forecast.
Somehow, Putin seems to be under less pressure than he was last year. Despite what we read on here, things look to have gone Russia's way. I think there is an element of war weariness and the attention is being diverted to Gaza. The notion that Putin instigated the Hamas atrocity to divert western attention is quite feasible and has been mentioned on here.
Is there going to be anything left in eastern Ukraine before this is over? What if the orange pig gets back in?
 
MoggasDog said:
I enjoy this thread very much.
I was thinking about some of the discussions, from this time last year, and things do not seem to have panned out as forecast.
Somehow, Putin seems to be under less pressure than he was last year. Despite what we read on here, things look to have gone Russia's way. I think there is an element of war weariness and the attention is being diverted to Gaza. The notion that Putin instigated the Hamas atrocity to divert western attention is quite feasible and has been mentioned on here.
Is there going to be anything left in eastern Ukraine before this is over? What if the orange pig gets back in?
Click to expand...
On the contrary, Putin .... or a "Putin" is under a lot of pressure. That's why you have generals and key personnel being arrested and the likes of Shoigu and Patrushev being shuffled. He's lost a huge amount of revenue, a good deal of the country's refinery capacity, China is taking the pee out of him, the Black Sea fleet is being moved to safety in the Caspian Sea, he has had negligable success in terms of territory gains, despite catastrophic losses (which now include ethnic Russians) ... oh, and Ukraine just took out two of Russias early warning Radar arrays ... and they're going to take more. To be honest, it's pretty hard to see what's going well for him/them at the moment. His attempt to re-draw boundaries in the Baltic lasted less than 24 hours, several countries have now given clearance for their munitions to be used in Russia, the US looks quite likely to follow eventually...if Blinken gets his way. F16s are about to appear in numbers. Crimea is being "prepared" on an almost nightl basis.
Mind you, the Russians did kill a load of people at the Ukrainian version of B&Q. So he does have something to gloat about.

At this time last year, General Sneaky was on a specific and limited mission to make the Zap NPP safe.... which he and his unit achieved. It is only since then that he really became heavily involved and fully in the picture as to the scale of things.... in all senses.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top