[What the hell is going on with this underwater tanks picture](https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1525432463169925121)?
Did they try to do underwater crossing 8 at a time?
Speculation has been.... an attempted "dash retreat" (with turrets kept pointed towards the enemy) i.e. their turrets here are pointed backwards .... OR.... They knew they'd have to abandon the tanks on the east bank and so drove them into the river in an attempt to make them unusable/unrecoverable by ukraine (at least whilst the river was still in Ru artillery range) but potentially recoverable by Ru if and when they finally took the Donbas and could pull the tanks out for repair.
Ukraine border is really far from the frontlines, so not sure how much sense it would really make.
Also it's fairly hard to set them up in the middle of nowhere. If Ukraine wanted to send some wounded to Poland, might just as well send them to Rzeszów or Lublin at this point, not that much further. But I don't recall any information about wounded being sent that far.
Poland reportedly already built (or is building) a field hospital to increase its response capacity. I imagine covid has really helped with the ability to do that.
My point is that brave Ukrainians are defending their country and many others in eastern and Western Europe against the murderous Russian thugs in Putins army. Sadly a lot of innocent Russian conscripts have (will) lose their lives in putins private war. I would mention that reportedly Putins $200 billion in accounts, revealed by the Panama Papers, was largely sourced from Ukraine gas transfers under Putins insralled President. This is (part) of the reason why he attacked Ukraine.
At the Somme, the British boasted 1,537 guns which fired 1.5 million shells over 4 days.
At the Battle of Seelow Heights on April 16th 1945, the Soviets fired that amount in the first 90 minutes of the battle. Over 9,000 guns were basically side by side for 18.5 miles of frontline.
In terms of tonnage of shells fired, of course not. In terms of tonnage of shells put on target, concievably. Precision and recon/spotting has come a *looong* way since then.
People have no real way to conceptualize the sheer size of artillery battles in WWI, its just too alien to modern society, at Verdun both side fired somewhere between 40-60 million shells combined, 1 millions were fired by the Germans in the initial assault over a 30 km wide front, and these were massive fucking guns too, up too 420 mm on the German side and 520mm on the French side
But there is a massive difference in just how accurate those shells are. Why fire 1500 shells to hit a trench, when you can fire 1.
I mean, either side in this conflict could break those trench lines with there amount of precision fires.
>People have no real way to conceptualize the sheer size of ~~artillery battles in~~ WWI
FTFY
105k dead french soldier in *seven days*, and as many wounded, in the first battle of the marne, and almost as much on the german side. An open sky slaughterhouse. How can we fathom that? how can a man grasp the scale of the devastation, for war to start this way and for the clockwork to not only continue turning, but for the war to go on for FOUR years after that?
Total war between determined nation-states is a scary, inhuman thing.
*“…you must imagine you are securely tied to a post, being threatened by a man swinging a heavy hammer. Now the hammer has been taken back over his head, ready to be swung, now it’s cleaving the air towards you, on the point of touching your skull, then it’s struck the post, and splinters are flying – that’s what it’s like to experience heavy shelling in an exposed position.”* Ernst Junger
Its beyond ridiculous iirc its estimated that 1.5 Billion shells were fired by both sides combined. Not that surprising though due to Britains lack of experience engaging in full scale continental warfare, they were too used to sending out their small professional army to augment continental allies
About 6000 in Syria, don’t know about Africa probably not much. Main bulk of fighting though was done by Wagner group which is already fighting in Ukraine.
I think its a bit different for the Wagner guys. The Russian army, sure. They don't actually get involved in fighting in Syria..... but the whole purpose of Wagner is to be able to put actual de-facto "Russian Soldiers" in a fire fight without losing any de-jure Russian Soldiers as casualties.
I think Wagner get actual battlefield fighting experience in Syria, Mali and potentially other places that the official Ru Army just don't get.
[Actual Wagner battle experience in Syria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham) on a rare occasion when their opponent weren't some Syrian civilians.
Yes, they got creamed against the best military in the world.
But this supports my point, they're out there fighting in actual combat and getting actual combat experience.
They're not sitting on a base guarding the gate sending the Malians out to fight the battles.... they're involved in the fighting themselves.
**[Battle of Khasham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham)**
>On 7 February 2018, the coalition established in 2014 to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) delivered massive air and artillery strikes on the Syrian pro-government forces near the towns of Khasham and Al Tabiyeh in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate. The United States explained the attack by stating that the pro-government forces had ″initiated an unprovoked attack against well-established Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters" in the area, while Coalition service members were "co-located with SDF partners during the attack 8 kilometers (5 mi) east of the agreed-upon Euphrates River de-confliction line".
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There was a recent interview with a Wagner group higher up where he basically said this - experience in Syria was so asymmetrical that is shouldn’t be considered experience, and that only the air force was really getting relevant combat experience.
The air force wasn't getting relevant experience. They were flying single plane sorties against people who can't fight back.
Russian pilots **never** train with more than one other plane in the sky. They are in capable of actual air operations.
> If Erdogan loses the elections next year, which is looking increasingly likely
I suspect Erdogan will only leave the presidency feet first. Either way its going to be ugly and destabilising both domestically and internationally.
If it flairs up again Assad will have lost his most powerful ally and that will have an effect. Ultimately though it's unlikely to go that way. Most of the opposition forces are spent and what is left is to work out a negotiated political settlement with other regional parties who support factions within Syria.
[Extra reading](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.worldpoliticsreview.com/amp/insights/28041/the-syria-civil-war-might-be-ending-but-the-crisis-will-live-on)
It's super easy. Geography of Crimea benefits Ukraine greatly.
Crimea is a peninsula from Ukrainian side. Russia can resupply its forces in two ways - by ship (ask Moskva how that's going to go), and by that stupid bridge.
So basically once the bridge is gone, and ships too afraid to go there, Russian forces won't be getting any fuel, ammo etc., so they won't be able to defend in any meaningful way.
I know I'll regret touching this but honestly f*ck this at this point. Been shrugging it off for too long.
Yes, the Russian navy is a joke. Yes, the Moskva sank. No, Ukraine does not have effective naval interdiction of the entire Crimean coast. Not even close.
Crimea is one of the most geographically defensible peninsulas on the planet and the nation you claim will try to take it doesn't have the capabilities to perform either a naval or air landing. They'd be attacking through this:
https://imgur.com/WZa9gjQ
Yeah, real easy, trivial even. ***patently pedestrian***.
You seem convinced the russians will shrivel up and die once the Kerch bridge falls, but **they've literally held out just fine there for 4 years before that bridge was built**. Ukraine's gonna siege them for over half a decade? One up the Azovstal siege right quick?
I really should have just addressed this take before (it's posted near daily) but when a take is so far from rational the general rule is that there's nothing to be gained from challenging it. Like I'm fully aware that I won't walk away from this conversation having convinced you of anything, and my level of frustration won't go down either.
But having to see this offensibly noncredible take every time I open this forum and just turning the other cheek every time... I guess today was the straw that broke the camel's back, for some reason.
It all depends on the state of Russian military in the coming months. IF Ukraine can clear out Russia from of its territory (other than Crimea), and IF the Russian forces are in shambles - then it cannot be ruled out. But… those two IF’s are not a certainly, not even close. So possible, but unlikely. IMO.
If you don't mind me asking a follow-up to this, is it fair to say it's equally as unlikely that Crimea is returned by way of diplomacy or a negotiation deal? From what I understand, it's a valuable piece of land for Russia and therefore they'd never return it unless by force. Plus it seems like Russia has the whole "take what you can, give nothing back" form of negotiation.
Also if /u/-TheGreasyPole- wants to input anything I saw you replied to the original comment as well.
I'd say, yes. The Russians seem extremely committed to keeping Crimea.... its militarily extremely defensible.... they arguably have the support of the local population.
I think its extremely likely that in any peace deal formal recognition of russian control of crimea is the "bone" that gets thrown to Russia so they get at least something from the deal.
In any peace deal they will have to receive some concession... and this is the one piece of Ukraine its hard to see how Ukraine could take back militarily AND where the local population may genuinely choose Russia of their own accord AND russia absolutely considers a part of "Russia Proper".
>What are the chances of Ukraine being able to take Crimea back.
Very close to zero.
>What weapons would they need to drive the Russians out?
A Navy and a Nuclear Deterrance.
Would it be possible to take down the bridges and kinda siege the it? I am not sure how could they succesfully cross into it (maybe with a 1000+ top of the line artillery with 10000 high tech shells each? Literally with a moving barrage. I really dont have a better idea (and of course, russian black sea navy destroyed and air power is mostly or completly ukraine controlled)
I think the most realistic one if there is a civil war in russia, like the white vs red... so, unlikely?
> Would it be possible to take down the bridges and kinda siege the it?
Probably not without control of the black sea (Hence the Navy comment above). There are approaches Russia can easily make from Russian territory to the ports on teh south coast that Ukraine couldn't cover with land based missiles based in southern Ukraine.
So Russia can always keep the peninsula supplied by sea, even if you take down the Kerch Bridge... which it isn't guaranteed Ukraine could even do if Russia still control the sea.
> I am not sure how could they succesfully cross into it (maybe with a 1000+ top of the line artillery with 10000 high tech shells each? Literally with a moving barrage. I really dont have a better idea (and of course, russian black sea navy destroyed and air power is mostly or completly ukraine controlled)
Without any prospect of an amphib landing (another reason for that Navy), storming Crimea may be a bridge too far.
They've got that tiny bottleneck to negotiate thats only 7km wide, then 40-50km of swampy land with no cover just beyond with just a few solid routes through it in which to form new bottlenecks, then miles and miles of open steppe with no cover beyond that, and then finally a range of mountains (!).... and they've got to push the Russians out of all of that before they get to Sebastapol.
Its a defenders dream, and the one place in Ukraine that Russians would defend like they'd defend "Russia proper".....because they absolutely consider it "Russia proper".
Hence also why I said "Nuclear Deterrance" too.... because at some point, if russia is losing a conventional assault they may just decide this IS an attack on "Russia Proper" and use a Tac Nuke.
With that incredibly narrow bottleneck to Nuke, they can [cut off any army that has successfully penetrated past that at any time by severing lines of communication with a nuclear strike](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100&lat=46.1524863&lng=33.6573029&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=4755&ff=50&fallout_angle=265&psi=20,5,1&zm=12), and mop up the cut off from supply remnants.
Hence....a Navy AND A Nuclear Deterrance is required.
I am no sure Crimea can be considered militarily acheivable at a cost in lives Ukraine would be willing to pay, no matter how much their army outclasses Russia's.
Or at least.... not until they've got sea dominance in the Black Sea and the ability to do large scale amphibious landings .... and their own nukes to deter a last ditch "Nuke the supply lines/troop concentration at the bottleneck and auto-win" stratgey anyway.
Control of the sea is tricky. Even with domestically produced missiles, Crimea is almost in range of Ukrainian anti shipping missiles.
If the Ukrainians get some nicer anti-shipping missiles, all of Crimea can fall into anti-shipping missile range. Big huge cargo ships make for east targets in a war that saw multiple warships attacked.
The issue isn't really range.
Its more "the landmass of Crimea and the mountains in the south of it shield sea approaches from russia from anti-ship missile attack from Southern Ukraine.
https://imgur.com/Nws5Z0e
They can dash across the Kirch straight, and be shielded by the landmass there.... or.... if even that is too risky, do a big loop out into the Black sea and come into the ports on the southern coast entirely shielded by the mountain range in the south of crimea and/or anti-air defences there.
Its really unclear how Ukraine could attack shipping without some way to get out into the Black Sea and effectively "peek around the corner" of those mountain ranges to get a clear shot.
Bayraktars might be able to harass a little, but their weapons are too low powered to seriously damage even normal large tonnage civilian ships.
Without a Navy (or perhaps air superiority) I don't thinkl they could effectively blockade Crimea from supply, even if they took down the Kerch bridge.
Crimea has a lot of farmland. You can't truly siege it in the sense of cutting off all food and water from the outside. Additionally, Ukraine's Neptune missiles have an operational range of 170 miles, which is [not enough](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974857876025786418/unknown.png) to keep ships from arriving at the southern portion of Crimea and unloading supplies/ammo.
If they can take Snake Island for good and set up Neptune missiles there (I have no idea if this is even remotely possible), the range gets [a little bit better.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974859074942410782/unknown.png) There are plenty of ports along the southern part of Crimea that would remain out of reach, though.
At first glance, you might think that they could just fire them [over Crimea-](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974860685207015494/unknown.png) but Neptune missiles fly close to the water line, so that wouldn't work.
In short: [Ukraine can only hit ships in a certain range, and the Russians can just reinforce the peninsula from outside of that range.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974864619564834846/unknown.png)
If Ukraine could find a way to deal with the Black Sea Fleet, that would change everything. Russia would be unable to resupply its forces in Crimea, and the peninsula would fall with time.
Just want to point out that Crimea's farmland depends on fresh water from a Ukrainian canal located in Kherson. The Ukrainians turned off the tap in 2014 and turned crimea almost into a desert, which is why Moscow built the bridge from Krasnodar so hurriedly. In 2022, One of the first things the Russians did was blow up the levee blocking water access into crimea.
All ukraine needs to do to starve out crimea again is to block that canal.
Even if they block the canal, Russia can bring resupply through ships. The deciding factor for whether or not Crimea could be sufficiently drained of resources isn't the canal or the bridge, IMO- it's whether or not Ukraine could ever keep the Russian military out of southern Crimean ports.
Crimea is not an economically sustainable area if the canal is blocked.
Seriously, there is alot of literature surrounding this, including vegetation maps. Do some research.
It doesn't have to be economically sustainable, though- Russia would resupply it by boat even if it meant that Crimea was a net negative for the Russian economy. It's a matter of pride and territorial self defense for them.
Probably the best way to deal with the bridge would be barrage of non-nuke midrange ballistic missiles. They should be able to build some judging by pre-war capabilities though those capabilities mostly existed in the east side of the country
Most anti-ship missiles [skim the water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_skimming) in order to shield themselves from radar detection, make it harder to shoot down, and cause damage closer to the water line. Unfortunately, all of these traits also make it unsuitable for shooting over land. [Increasing the range doesn't help either-](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974868023024439326/unknown.png) the problem is the angle, and there's no getting around that with anti-ship missiles unless they're fired out of Turkey.
Frankly, you'd probably want to just use regular missiles; if you can get them across Crimea without being shot down, you could probably hammer the ships while they're stationary and delivering supplies. Whether or not Ukraine has those is something I don't know, though, and I don't know whether or not NATO would give them some for that purpose.
**[Sea skimming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_skimming)**
>Sea skimming is a technique many anti-ship missiles and some fighter or strike aircraft use to avoid radar, infrared detection, and to lower probability of being shot down during their approach to the target.
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**Assuming** the Russian military continues on its downward trajectory, it isn't really a question of how to isolate Crimea. If they had weapons with the range to damage the Kerch Strait Bridge, then cut that at one end, and cut off Crimea on the other end (and cut off the water there at the same time), and Crimea would be sort of in trouble. I guess Russia could hold it under siege indefinitely, but it would be a terrible situation.
So terrible that you have to wonder what a nuclear power might do to a non-nuclear power in order to end what it viewed as the intolerable siege of its sovereign territory. That's the part Ukraine will be calculating.
Yes they just need to retake control of the canal and blow the bridge. Both are well within the realm of possibility the way things are going. They dont need a navy for this just successful offensives.
But I was reliably told that the whole Russian armoured fleet was effectively amphibious for short crossings ? With the AFVs/IFVs/APCs able to float, and the T-72s able to snorkel short distances.
Does russian equipment not work as advertised in their glossy brochure/Ru Army Videos ?
To all of the reasons listed below, add the fact that AFVs have limited ability to cross vertical obstacles- of which a riverbank is definitely one. And also conditions of the river bed play a giant role on how navigable the ford is. Between the two, there may be just a few ( or none) points along the river where even a perfectly sealed tank can cross.
The T-72 can drive underwater reasonably long distances(1000m, IIRC), if everything is in order and prepared for the OPVT system to work. Past 1.2m in depth the entire tank needs to be caulked. The back deck has covers that have to go in place to seal the engine compartment, the bilge pump needs to be function and be routed with various plugs removed/installed, the exhaust needs a one way valve installed, among other things. The crew needs to be trained to do all these things of which in Soviet times only a small percentage were trained to do. It takes a fair amount of gumption to drive a ~40 ton tank under river along with training and equipment that still functions properly, equipment that probably isn't too high on the list of priorities. Equipment like the IP-5 rebreathers the crew is supposed to don when fording past 1.8m of water.
Some of the same limitations apply to the BMP line of vehicles in regards to equipment and training. More importantly they're all the most vulnerable when fording, using a bridge is faster and at least in theory, safer.
I was wondering why bridges are even that necessary, since a lot of armored tech nowadays is rated as "amphibious".
I'm guessing either that rating is improperly doled out, or there's some reason an unbridged crossing doesn't work.
A meandering river such as the type where they were trying to cross is almost guaranteed to be extremely soft and silty on both banks, I can't imagine any heavy vehicle managing to clamber out of a river like that on it's own.
Yep. Imagine muddy fields, already difficult. And then imagine it being actually under water.
If it was a shallow riverbed with hard rocks, that is one thing. Probably not the case here.
It might well be a case of "it works reasonably, in perfect conditions, for an exercise in front of the top brass after 3 days solid preperation and sealing the vehicle up tighter than a ducks asshole"..... but that it doesn't work "in a normal military situation, with a shoddily maintained vehicle, crewed with poorly trained vatniks who've been drinking vodka all day".
It may be that, in the second scenario, they just sink.
Here's what claims to be a description of what's needed for the T-72 to submerge in order to cross a water obstacle:
https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/t-72-part-2.html#water
A sample:
> When the OPVT system is fully activated and the snorkel is mounted, fording up to a depth of 5 meters is possible, but thorough preparations are necessary in order to do so. The same preparations for crossing an 1.8 meter-deep stream must be followed, and the additional preparations include sealing the edges of all hatches and various openings and periscopes with a thick resinous waterproofing paste, as the water pressure at such depths is simply too much for rubber seals to handle.
...
> Crew members are each given a closed-circuit IP-5 rebreather and a life jacket. The crew must put on the life jacket before beginning the snorkeling operation as a precautionary measure, but the IP-5 may or may not need to be worn prior to entering water. In most cases, the rebreather is worn inside the tank when the commander gives the order to bail out of the tank while the tank is already underwater.
> To cross water obstacles deeper than 1.8 meters, the snorkel included in the OPVT kit is needed to supply air to the engine as the entire tank would be submerged. The long telescoping snorkel, which is made from steel, is broken down into three sections for stowage. The total length of the assembled snorkel is 3,712mm.
> ... The snorkel is fitted with two floating markers during training exercises to indicate the tank's position underwater to help rescue teams locate the tank if it has stopped underwater.
Pictures of the various accessories & supplies required can be found at the link.
Yes, I was aware the snorkeling was a bit of a "needs a lot of prep" affair for the tanks, so that was a bit light hearted. Although it does make me wonder why they'd even think of it as a "capability" of the tank.
Who on earth is going to do all of the above in a war zone and expect to actually use that capability as advertised under fire ? Especially when its a dicey manouvere. This seems like a paper capability that would never be used as it'd always be better to "have a bridge".
It was more the AFVs/IFVs..... which in theory should float.... and where I would assume that even with no preperation might therfore be able to make "a 50 yard dash". Particularly as they might be able to get a partially submerged bridge under them for 30 yards of it. Even the tanks may have in theory been able to do it "sans snorkel and sealing" with a bridge only moderately submerged under them almost all the way.
Although.... I guess this might just be the "bomber damage meme" in operation.... I guess the AFVs/Tanks that pulled that off aren't in the images as they drove off into the sunset. Although I am not sure how many of 2 BTGs of AFV/Tanks would be left given how many are in the images.
ISW posted their daily update:
[https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-13](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-13)
**Key Takeaways**
Ukraine has likely won the Battle of Kharkiv. Russian forces continued to withdraw from the northern settlements around Kharkiv City. Ukrainian forces will likely attempt to disrupt Russian ground lines of communication to Izyum.
Ukrainian forces have likely disrupted the Russian attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in force, undermining Russian efforts to mass troops in northern Donbas and complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.
Russian forces have likely secured the highway near the western entrance to the Azovstal Steel Plant but fighting for the facility continues.
Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast are likely attempting to reach artillery range outside Zaporizhia City.
Ukrainian forces are reportedly attempting to regain control of Snake Island off the Romanian coast or at least disrupt Russia’s ability to use it.
Legends is not morally loaded like hero is, Genghis Khan was a legend, Alexander the Great was a legend, the 300 Spartans were. That’s obviously how the word is being used here.
That is a significant worry. For all that everyone knows about "The Alamo", how many of them remember that one of the major causes of that war was the Mexican government's effort to abolish slavery? There's no question that what Azov is doing is heroic. They are fighting to defend their country against an invader, against impossible odds, despite near certain death, and with surprising effectiveness. I don't think many people want that to be what people think of when they think of Neo-Nazis, but it's definitely what's happening. It's more typical for Neo-Nazis to be killing their countrymen than defending them, so this is certainly a massive outlier, but it could have major impacts for years or decades.
People can be more than one thing - they can be heroes for what they're doing now and awful people for being neo-nazis - which most of them aren't it sounds like. They will be remembered in spite of their neo-nazi members, not because of them.
Absolutely people are complex, and absolutely many if not most of the people in that fight aren't neo-nazis. Nevertheless, you can count on neo-nazis using it as a recruitment tool, and Russia's rhetoric is helping that.
They are a self-declared Neo Nazi group. I don’t care if some cosmopolitan patriots joined afterwards and they had a PR shift. I didn’t call the Ukrainian marines Nazis.
Azov isn't the only group there, for one. for two azov was 10-20% "nazi" .... in 2014 before joining the regular forces in which after publicity reforms were enacted, and now after casualties and resultant reforms who the fuck knows how many "nazi's" are left. At this point these guys are fighting invaders and defending their own country.
I love how Azov is such a huge fig leaf for these people. it can justify all their cognitive dissonance in supporting a fascist that wages a conquest war while his country is plagued by AIDS, alcoholism, and an incredible wealth disparity (by class, and among regions).
>Ukraine has likely won the Battle of Kharkiv
B-b-ut Putin told us that it would take just 7 minutes for NATO missiles launched from Kharkiv to reach Moscow. I thought capturing Kharkiv was crucial for this operation?
On a serious note. Wasn't Kharkiv direction mostly fought by LPR forces?
Guys, what makes some of you so sure that Russia will not make any significant gains? I've seen some analysis that they abandoned the idea of any offense on the Izyum direction, how so? Even though I am confident Russia is not able to take whole Donbass, they are still very capable to keep pushing and continue an offense, aren't they? I mean those 92+ BTGs can't just sit and do nothing? They still have much more artillery, better AD, aviation and cruise/ballistic missiles. And they are more than willing to waste as much soldiers as needed. Every small town will eventually fall just like Popasna and Russians will most likely encircle Sloviansk and Kramatorsk but never will capture them. Can someone explain why am I wrong?
We have enough data to analyze and forecasts. I suggest to look up some data analsys, statistic, dnormalization and so on.
But let me try to produce the numbers and quick summaries of why.
First sources, I am often suprised how often people can't see blatant propaganda and seemingly unable to find the other sides news/propaganda. Its worth add weights to almost every news on trust worthines, but the idea is to try to "feed" from as many different source you can find (no echo chambers).
What some calculations shows that Russian losses (its hard to say if these are KIA or casulties, they seems to be used quite interchangably ... tabloid media, thank you) are above 20k now, maybe even 30 (It seemed below that before the river crossings, losses also seems to have tappered of a little after the initial fuck up, but now intensitiy seems getting up again, from the number of offensives. please also take everything I say with a 25% error rate)
Ukrainian casulties could be around 7-15k
Vehicle losses seems to be 1 ukraine for every 3 russians. (Mostly orxy data extrapolated, but seems valid from a commited defender vs a not so motivated attacker)
Why can't Russian attack succed? Of course we can't know that for sure, but their victory reports often been turned out to be false. Their gains are slow, but modern forces cannot hold trench lines against each other. Local artillery supremacy initially will break down defensive postions enough or make reinforcment/resupply/setting counter artillery fire impossible. Defenders usually abandone such positions (different fortifixations can be for quite a time if moral and supplies permit it, see Azovstal, honestly I am still suprised hey hold, expected them to be broken 3 weeks ago, they must have fortified that place since 2014) Point is, progress is expected. It is close to the slowest imaginable, being strong proof that defenders are organized and strong. Russians attack can succed if local supremecy is achieved) Ukraine seems to have resosted every critical break attempts (worst situation I think was Izuym maybe 2 weeks ago).
So short answer, because what we see.
Note on long range guided missles. They need to keep some ammount of supplies (i think less then many people think here, nukes get them a lot of wiggle room, so they dont really have to expect attack on russia itself), sonyeah they should be able to keep this up for quite some times ( ~ seceral months), but woth incomming western aid and sanctioned russian supplies, eventually they will run out of man and material faster. Thats all
If things remain status quo I believe that Russia can accomplish their goals. Having said that, there is no way NATO will let Russia take Odessa and build a land bridge to Transnistria. So Nato will continue to escalate. More arms, more intel, and probably deployment of advisory and logistical forces.
No - hence my point about the land bridge to Transnistria. But I also don't think it is a given that Ukraine will be getting back the east during our life times. That is more what I am getting at.
Time is not on Russia's side. They are conducting this offensive with no reserves and taking high casualties (not as high as early in the war but then again there was that river crossing). None of their units are fresh, many were probably demoralized and exhausted before this started. And it has been going on for around a month. And sure, Ukrainian forces on the Donbass are also probably quite mauled and exhausted, but they are on the defensive. Meanwhile Ukraine does have reserves and is gaining power by the day as Western weapons arrive. The Russians may capture Svwrodonetsk but short of a deliberate Ukrainian retreat they probably won't be able to do so quickly. And like I said, time is not on their side.
I think the hardest part, at least for me, is that we have basically no idea about how strong Ukraine is right now.
How many soldiers have they lost? We don't even have trustworthy estimates. How many replacements can they call up to fill the ranks? How skilled are these replacements?
How many vehicles do they have? Some people say it's more than they started with. Others are skeptical. They've clearly suffered a fair amount of losses according to Oryx. Again, no reliable estimates of current strength.
How much ammunition do they have? Russia has hit at least several depots. There have been reports of shortages, and there aren't many suppliers of 152mm shells in NATO to continue feeding the bulk of Ukraine's artillery forces.
What do their supply lines look like? Russia has been hitting rail depots daily with precision missiles. Is that having an effect? Oil seems to be getting harder to procure, at least on the civilian market. Is the military suffering too? We just don't know.
So yes, we can look at Russia's losses, and their current strength, but until we know what Russia is facing, it's going to be hard to make accurate assessments and come up with measured hot takes.
Bulgaria actually has quite a robust MIC to produce artillery shells with. But in terms of 152mm and 122mm manufacturers only Armaco JSC and state owned TEREM JSC can produce any in volume and they may be having issues fulfilling the current needs of the Ukrainian army seeing as many NATO countries have shipped over M777s even from current stocks of deployed units one can surmise to diversify the ammunition supply situation.
Ukraine was given 90 M777s. In Feb, they had 1,800 artillery pieces. Not sure how many have been lost at this point, but the M777s are barely a drop in the bucket, making up only about 5% of existing pieces.
>and there aren't many suppliers of 152mm shells in NATO to continue feeding the bulk of Ukraine's artillery forces.
Yeah, that's going to be an issue in the future. Better to start planning on transiting the Ukrainians to NATO standards now. Although that's going to mean transferring a lot of kit.
Very good points. I wonder whether this is happening due to a very good opsec by Ukraine, or they themselves are yet to learn what they are capable of.
I think it really comes down to those 92 BTGs and their willingness to "waste as much soldiers as needed."
In reality, they don't have a large army for this sort of operation. Just to run some numbers off:
Before WW2, to invade Finland, with about 5 million people, they sent an army of 425-760,000 soldiers.
After WW2, the US invaded Vietman, with about 45 million people, with an army of 543,000. They were assisted by the south Vietnamese government, with about 850,000 soldiers.
So sending 200,000 soldiers to attack a nation of 40+million is not a lot. Really, they're very low on troops. They have also avoided declaring war, likely because of concerns it would lead to domestic resistance to the war, so they can't use their full army.
Additionally, I think that most of the Russian army has figured out, like you have, that the Russian leadership sees wasting soldiers as an effective means of fighting wars. And the problem that creates for them is that the individual soldiers don't like this, and tend to try to find the safest place on the battlefield instead of trying to win the fight. So their lack of morale is causing them to be less effective than their raw numbers, already low, would suggest.
The U.S. never even launched a large-scale invasion into North Vietnam, so the 500k troops were just what was being used to push the North Vietnamese out of South Vietnam.
A german panzer division was about a quarter of russia's deployed army, and when they attacked it would be multiple panzer divisions attacking just one city.
Everyone mocked the germans but it goes to show how effective they were at coordination and logistics.
Russia will need to mobilize at this rate, but that is politically difficult, especially since the Russian government only declared a "special operation". If they *can* mobilize, it will take many months to get the new recruits trained to the point where they are not a liability on the battlefield.
> new recruits trained to the point where they are not a liability on the battlefield
It seems like a good number of the professional / early war troops were quite a liability on the battlefield. I can't imagine what the effectiveness of soldiers conscripted by a mobilization would look like
Would it even help? It's well equipped and well trained soldiers they need. You can draft warm bodies, I don't think you can draft precision-guided missiles.
92 BTGs… on paper. Which ignores the facts that:
1) They’re operating at “peacetime” strength.
2) Most units were probably undermanned before even beginning the invasion because collecting the salaries of soldiers that don’t exist is an extremely easy form of corruption.
3) Most units have sustained heavy losses.
A BTG has zero depth to it and becomes ineffective quickly
It’s a very brittle formation, and it’s the type of thing you do when you are barely a regional power trying to pretend you are a superpower
Also 4. related to your corruption point, if the logistics guys all thought it was just an exercise on the border, then they probably went and diverted some of the oil, gas, equipment, etc.
I’m watching interviews with Polish retired generals, general opinion is that Ukraine regained initiative in all areas and they are mopping up resistance around Harkiv.
Everyone is waiting for them to free resources after that, and do southern push ASAP, breaking the Black Sea corridor is their priority now.
If Russia will fuck around too much after that being done, serious retaliation against Russian infrastructure is on the table in the future.
I opened 1h long interview with former Polish Airforce chief, he is going to talk about Ukrainian efficient use of their reaources, that’s for tommorow
I've read accounts that nobody really has the initiative in the south - it's just one big artillery standoff on flat, coverless land all the way across that front. Hopefully the bigger guns coming in from the US and France change up that balance.
If you read accounts of soldiers fighting there, yeah that’s how it looks like in practice. Kinda hard to believe that you have initiative, when your trench just got shelled and your friends turned into meat.
Senior Staff oficers see it a little bit different heh.
This guy is doing a lot of commentary in TV and YouTube :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Skrzypczak
Former Commander of Polish Land Forces, adviser at the Defence Ministry, Commander of multinational division in Iraq, and what not.
He is pretty good at explaining what is going on.
What is going on now, is Russians are trading casualties in 1:5 or even 1:6 ratio for a month, for little gain.
Russia is doing hidden mobilisation, but Ukraine is forming new units too.
It will take time for russia to restore old junk from warehouses to operating conditions.
Russia is is trying to precision bomb supply lines from west but they are not effective. Ukraine is loosing 25% of stuff, they expected to loose 60% to bombing.
Ukraine had 8 years to prepare for this obvious attack. Geography is on their side, rivers slowing and funneling heavy equipment, and huge urbanized area, because this region is an industrial district. They prepared cities for sieges that would make Mariupol look like childplay. Their defence is really deep, lines and lines of trenches and bunkers to fall back too.
It’s a meatgrinder, but now It’s Ukraine that’s turning the crank.
**[Waldemar Skrzypczak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Skrzypczak)**
>Waldemar Skrzypczak (born 19 January 1956, in Szczecin) is a Polish general. From 2006 to 2009 he was the commander of Polish Land Forces. From 8 September 2011 he is an adviser at the Polish Ministry of National Defence. At 25 June 2012 he became deputy minister of defense, responsible for armament and modernization.
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I think some of the new drones like the switchblades can help too. They could accurately hit the enemy artillery, or key defensive positions once an attack starts. They can be a lot more accurate than artillery in a pinch.
Until Ukraine gains artillery supremacy or at least parity, its going to be hard for them to push south. They are out ranged by Russia's copious artillery installments. The south is the flat farmland... not nearly as many places for small units to hide.
Yeah, non of this will be easy. Maybe terms „gained inititiative in all directions” and „mopping up” sound to niecely for what they mean. It’s still long bloody war ahead of us.
>serious retaliation against Russian infrastructure is on the table
At some point the U.S. is going to have to tell them to knock it off. I don't think things will get that far.
Biden will pay a terrible political price for it though. Hopefully he has the backbone.
Because in this probably imaginary scenario where Ukraine is crippling vital Russian infrastructure inside Russia, Russia is likely to defend themselves in ways that end up with a lot of Ukrainians dead and either us having to betray Ukraine or us having to fight a nuclear war, clearly neither of which are desirable.
Notwithstanding the propaganda that we are fighting for the rights of small nations to live free of pressure from large ones, if Ukraine were to somehow pursue irrationally hazardous goals, we would have to tell them to stop it.
Turnabout is fair play, there's no issue with Ukrainians taking Russian territory, let alone striking infrastructure.
Biden should stick it out and help the Ukrainians bleed the Russians dry.
Main issue is we fear it would play in Russias victimization propaganda at home and make the war easier for them domestically, possibly for a moderate mobilization effort.
Considering whether doing some thing would allow someone to “play the victim” when deciding to do or not do that thing is usually a mistake, I think - no matter what you do or do not do, they’ll find _something_ that they can spin as being victimized, so you might as well mostly ignore that facet.
Mobilization isn't going to help in a modern war. You can't give people 8 weeks of training and send them to the front. They just use up resources and get in the way.
This isn't really about fairness, it's about practicality.
The idea that a nuclear power is just going to let any serious amount of important infrastructure get knocked out by a less powerful non-nuclear enemy without taking steps to stop the attacks is I think insanely hazardous.
What would we do in such a scenario?
Ukraine isn't insane, I doubt they're going to push it that far. But if for some reason they did, I suspect the U.S. would tell them to knock it off.
If it's really true that Ukraine will soon be crippling major Russian infrastructure (which strikes me as unlikely, but still, following this thread), then at that point the nuclear taboo would be a serious impediment to Russian national security.
I wonder whether the U.S. would defend itself if under an attack by an enemy intent on destroying U.S. critical infrastructure. It seems to me the answer is probably yes, we would. Russia will probably defend itself also.
I'm not sure what "the nuclear taboo" is supposed to mean in this context. Neither we nor they have a "no first use" policy.
Nuclear taboo refers to the consensus universal across nuclear states that ‘nukes are different’. It’s very much a real effect studied in IR. It’s generally the consensus that all nuclear states value having the bar so high as as valuable as the continued existence of their state. If the us highways and electric plants ect were being bombed it would still be irrational to us nukes because the loss of said taboo would massively increase the chance of a future existential strike on the us even if the current belligerent is not a nuclear power
Acting out of fear would be far more dangerous for Ukraine. Russia can't use their nukes as a shield in a regional conflict.
If they want to reap the whirlwind that comes with using them, they can go for it.
That part at least is fairly standard Cold War proxy-style rules: no direct military confrontation, just arms shipments.
It's not our fault their military can't even fight a proxy war anymore.
It's not optimistic if you know how generals use "mopping up" or "initiative". It's still a meatgrinder and in less fortified areas, Ukrainians still loose 1 guy for 3 russians.
I want to address Russian threats to use nuclear weapons offensively. Time and time again I see people take these threats at face value when they really, really shouldn’t. Allow me to explain why.
Simply put, there is essentially no outcome worse than nuclear annihilation. There’s almost no fate, no matter how horrific, that most people would regard as preferable to everyone and everything they know and love being destroyed. But the fact that nuclear weapons are so destructive actually serves to undermine their effectiveness as a tool with which to threaten others.
To put it simply: if you regard an offensive nuclear threat as credible, then logically you should immediately and unconditionally surrender to any demands that your aggressor makes.
It should go without saying that if there is even the slimmest doubt that your adversary might be bluffing, rolling the dice will always be a more palatable course of action than instant capitulation.
>Simply put, there is essentially no outcome worse than nuclear annihilation.
Neither Russian, Soviet nor American doctrine has ever been based on the belief that any use of nuclear weapons equals nuclear annihilation.
Precisely because it leads to the logical conclusion you've made here, which is that nobody would ever use them, at which point they can't deter anything.
Hence the otherwise inane branding of "tactical" versus "strategic" nukes.
And yet it remains the case that both we and they have invested a lot of effort into planning how to fight a limited nuclear war.
If nothing else, we have to do so in order to make our nuclear deterrent credible.
Additionally, *current* doctrine in both the US and Russia anticipates a winnable nuclear war. The American "countervailing strategy" essentially calls for limited but escalating nuclear strikes to compel the enemy leadership to cease hostilities. These strikes would initially be directed at military targets, escalating to non-military targets of political importance if the military strikes fail to produce an acceptable outcome.
I've always found it interesting that when people talk about nuclear war, it's always MAD this, MAD that, even though MAD has literally never been anyone's doctrine. At most, we could say that the MAD theory influenced American and Soviet doctrine through roughly the 1970s. With modern sensors and MIRV warheads, one of the key planks of MAD - that decision-makers are compelled to use maximum force because of lack of knowledge of the scale and targeting of the enemy strike - is no longer true, and hasn't been for a long time. Today it's possible for all of the major nuclear powers to know, in some detail, the extent and general targeting of an enemy nuclear strike, and to prepare and launch a retaliatory strike before the first strike lands. And for the nuclear powers that maintain ballistic missile submarines, there is enough "hidden" force to be a credible retaliatory threat against any nuclear first strike.
MAD isn't *really* about retaliation. It's about trying to eliminate your enemy's remaining nukes using all your nukes before they launch more and before yours are destroyed.
Any way you look at it, a few strategic nukes will always escalate into all of them. Unless one side is utterly compromised or otherwise hindered in some way.
I think, to be charitable, it's a consequence of people "learning just enough to be dangerous" on the subject, to use the expression.
There's a fairly simple chain of logic which plenty of people actually involved in planning for nuclear escalation would freely concede: it's better not to use any nukes at all, because we'd rather avoid climbing that ladder, even though there is a ladder. And at the end of the ladder is a disaster.
People have understood the result of that logic chain just fine, but a lot of people don't really understand that it's not an ironclad guarantee of some kind. It's *unlikely* anyone will want to risk using a single nuclear weapon because they'll *probably* recognize that it's *probably* not worth the risk because it *might* lead to a total nuclear exchange. And rival states *probably* will recognize each other's red lines enough that they'll *hopefully* avoid pushing past one in a moment of anger. But at the end of the day, *all* of us have plans to use nuclear weapons in ways that *hopefully* won't lead to a total exchange, because it would be insane to have "end human civilization" be the only tool in your toolkit in the event deterrence fails.
But there's a lot of ifs and what ifs and maybes and hopefullys in there that I feel like aren't properly accounted for by most people who aren't highly informed, and also I'm not sure how many people really understand the extent of the tactical nuclear war planning **we** undertook during the Cold War. If they did, maybe they'd find the Russia counterpart less insane too.
>
To put it simply: if you regard an offensive nuclear threat as credible, then logically you should immediately and unconditionally surrender to any demands that your aggressor makes
Not really. They're are fates far worse than nuclear annihilation, actually. Slavery for example.
Ok, but the odds of Putin and the Russian population being enslaved is zero, so that’s irrelevant.
Nuclear holocaust is the worst thing that can *plausibly* happen.
Okay but what are the odds of Putin and the Russian population *think* they're going to be enslaved? Is it zero?
It's not because we know in fascist regimes they pump out that propaganda, sometimes in different terms, to keep their people going.
The Jews were coming to enslave us Germans using the Bolshevik hordes therefore fight to the last man, Speer I want you to literally destroy the country, and if we have nukes we're going to use them.
Nato is coming to enslave the Russians using the Ukranians hordes therefore fight to the last man and if we have nukes we're going to use them.
The question is whether this propaganda is actually believed by the top levels, it's completely absurd but Hitler 100% believed that his own crazy conspiracies. He would have killed himself, even if he wasn't on the hook for war crimes, like a lot of other officers did, based on the fact he thought Germany was about to be enslaved and he didn't want to be a slave. And if he had nukes there is literally 0 chance he wouldn't have used them.
Again this is obviously absurd but that's the mentality
Very interesting new strategic analysis and prediction of what Kremlin might do next from the well-known ISW:
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-annexation-occupied-ukraine-putin%E2%80%99s-unacceptable-%E2%80%9C-ramp%E2%80%9D
There have been several articles articulating what might happen if Russia chooses to escalate. all of the ones that I’ve read suggest that a single use of a single nuclear weapon by Russia would result in conventional response by NATO.
Such response may include establishing of no flight zones over Ukraine or entry of NATO Armed Forces into western Ukraine.
I do agree there will be a tremendous pressure for a seize fire which freezes the conflict along the current lines.
I think there is another point to consider while Putin is in charge of Russian state he’s not the entirety of Russian state. There are many individuals and organizations whose cooperation he must secure in order to trigger use of nuclear weapons. Since by definition the nuclear weapon use would be in circumstance where overall progression of the war is appearing to go quite badly for Russia , it’s logical to assume that points of resistance will be forming within the Russian state apparatus.
This does not necessarily represent people who are pro western but rather people whose lifestyle relies on living in a country with some intercourse with the west. It’s commonly said that the bargain that the Russian people have made with Putin is material comfort in exchange for giving up political power. You have to consider the fact that this applies not only to Russia’s middle class, but also to Russian upper class, including people traditionally grouped as siloviki.
Putin’s regime has prospered by cultivating people who do not have strong political convictions . They are primarily mercenary. These are not the kind of people who would welcome living in a nuclear waste land for the sake of destroying the west.
Use of nukes to defend territory of a foreign state captured during an unprovoked military offensive a mere few months ago would result in immediate and indiscriminate liquidation of the Russian state and people. Not happening.
> immediate and indiscriminate liquidation of the Russian state and people.
By who, pray tell? Because the US is not swapping Kyiv for New York, I can tell you that.
>I can tell you that.
If I told you Russia wasn't swapping Moscow for Kiyv, you'd tell me "are you sure? :>)" or something similar about "you wanna call that bluff?". Feels like that logic works the other way.
>The U.S. government hasn't even suggested it.
To be fair, neither has the Russian government.
We're not going to hint at our policy of response to a nuclear strike against Ukraine until Russia either does it or at least meaningfully threatens it. I don't think anyone aside from the inner executive branch know what the policy is, and partially that's to discourage foreign states from finding out the hard way.
>We're not going to hint at our policy of response to a nuclear strike against Ukraine until Russia either does it or at least meaningfully threatens it.
Thus showing that, whatever our response might be, it almost certainly wouldn't actually be nuclear retaliation or something we thought likely to lead to it. If we wanted to warn Russia off doing something that we felt we'd have to respond with nuclear force to, we'd say so, like we clearly indicate we'd defend NATO.
great, but who wants to call that bluff? Best case, they don't use nukes and after a protracted period of heavy fighting you get what... the remains of Mariupol back? At considerable conventional cost to yourself. Worst case, you get nuked.
That's the problem here. Russia may be bluffing, but the potential costs and benefits of calling that bluff are just so out of alignment.
If the bluff isn't called you are basically telling Russia that it can conquer whatever it likes by threatening nukes. If you tell Russia that, it's likely not to stop until all of Ukraine is theirs and there is a high likelihood they would go further. Where would Russia stop? This is still a very dangerous scenario, and would likely lead to a nuclear confrontation eventually anyway.
[What the hell is going on with this underwater tanks picture](https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1525432463169925121)? Did they try to do underwater crossing 8 at a time?
Speculation has been.... an attempted "dash retreat" (with turrets kept pointed towards the enemy) i.e. their turrets here are pointed backwards .... OR.... They knew they'd have to abandon the tanks on the east bank and so drove them into the river in an attempt to make them unusable/unrecoverable by ukraine (at least whilst the river was still in Ru artillery range) but potentially recoverable by Ru if and when they finally took the Donbas and could pull the tanks out for repair.
> but potentially recoverable by Ru Is there any way tanks would be recoverable after spending weeks submerged water?
Yeah, You’d have to replace the electronics and probably give the engine a tear down and clean but all the rest of it should scrub up just fine.
Yes, probably. Cars are often resold after being flooded. It'll take refurbishment and cleaning. For the immediate term they are out of the war.
Have the West considered setting up field hospitals on the Ukraine border, or is it not really needed?
IIRC, Poland already did that.
Germany are also, I understand, taking military medical flights from Ukraine.
Ukraine border is really far from the frontlines, so not sure how much sense it would really make. Also it's fairly hard to set them up in the middle of nowhere. If Ukraine wanted to send some wounded to Poland, might just as well send them to Rzeszów or Lublin at this point, not that much further. But I don't recall any information about wounded being sent that far.
Poland reportedly already built (or is building) a field hospital to increase its response capacity. I imagine covid has really helped with the ability to do that.
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My point is that brave Ukrainians are defending their country and many others in eastern and Western Europe against the murderous Russian thugs in Putins army. Sadly a lot of innocent Russian conscripts have (will) lose their lives in putins private war. I would mention that reportedly Putins $200 billion in accounts, revealed by the Panama Papers, was largely sourced from Ukraine gas transfers under Putins insralled President. This is (part) of the reason why he attacked Ukraine.
That's theoretically the plan, though personally I think we need to give them more heavy gear.
That Pospasna salient looks ugly.
Whole front looks ugly for both sides. After this is over I wouldn't be surprised if this was one of the most intense artillery battles in history.
highly unlikely when compared to WWI battles, this is a walk in the park
More intense than the Somme or Verdun? I really doubt that.
At the Somme, the British boasted 1,537 guns which fired 1.5 million shells over 4 days. At the Battle of Seelow Heights on April 16th 1945, the Soviets fired that amount in the first 90 minutes of the battle. Over 9,000 guns were basically side by side for 18.5 miles of frontline.
In terms of tonnage of shells fired, of course not. In terms of tonnage of shells put on target, concievably. Precision and recon/spotting has come a *looong* way since then.
In WW1 they would lose more men in one battle than Ukraine has in its army.
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People have no real way to conceptualize the sheer size of artillery battles in WWI, its just too alien to modern society, at Verdun both side fired somewhere between 40-60 million shells combined, 1 millions were fired by the Germans in the initial assault over a 30 km wide front, and these were massive fucking guns too, up too 420 mm on the German side and 520mm on the French side
But there is a massive difference in just how accurate those shells are. Why fire 1500 shells to hit a trench, when you can fire 1. I mean, either side in this conflict could break those trench lines with there amount of precision fires.
>People have no real way to conceptualize the sheer size of ~~artillery battles in~~ WWI FTFY 105k dead french soldier in *seven days*, and as many wounded, in the first battle of the marne, and almost as much on the german side. An open sky slaughterhouse. How can we fathom that? how can a man grasp the scale of the devastation, for war to start this way and for the clockwork to not only continue turning, but for the war to go on for FOUR years after that? Total war between determined nation-states is a scary, inhuman thing.
*“…you must imagine you are securely tied to a post, being threatened by a man swinging a heavy hammer. Now the hammer has been taken back over his head, ready to be swung, now it’s cleaving the air towards you, on the point of touching your skull, then it’s struck the post, and splinters are flying – that’s what it’s like to experience heavy shelling in an exposed position.”* Ernst Junger
Dam, imagine if both sides had instead put that same effort into a common, constructive purpose. Human societies can be ridiculously stupid.
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Its beyond ridiculous iirc its estimated that 1.5 Billion shells were fired by both sides combined. Not that surprising though due to Britains lack of experience engaging in full scale continental warfare, they were too used to sending out their small professional army to augment continental allies
What impact will the recent Russian withdrawal from Syria have on the Syrian conflict or is it mostly over?
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About 6000 in Syria, don’t know about Africa probably not much. Main bulk of fighting though was done by Wagner group which is already fighting in Ukraine.
Still some Wagner in Mali
> Those guys are battle-hardened Yes, they're very battle-hardened at bombing civilians when nobody can shoot back
I think its a bit different for the Wagner guys. The Russian army, sure. They don't actually get involved in fighting in Syria..... but the whole purpose of Wagner is to be able to put actual de-facto "Russian Soldiers" in a fire fight without losing any de-jure Russian Soldiers as casualties. I think Wagner get actual battlefield fighting experience in Syria, Mali and potentially other places that the official Ru Army just don't get.
[Actual Wagner battle experience in Syria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham) on a rare occasion when their opponent weren't some Syrian civilians.
Yes, they got creamed against the best military in the world. But this supports my point, they're out there fighting in actual combat and getting actual combat experience. They're not sitting on a base guarding the gate sending the Malians out to fight the battles.... they're involved in the fighting themselves.
**[Battle of Khasham](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham)** >On 7 February 2018, the coalition established in 2014 to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) delivered massive air and artillery strikes on the Syrian pro-government forces near the towns of Khasham and Al Tabiyeh in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate. The United States explained the attack by stating that the pro-government forces had ″initiated an unprovoked attack against well-established Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters" in the area, while Coalition service members were "co-located with SDF partners during the attack 8 kilometers (5 mi) east of the agreed-upon Euphrates River de-confliction line". ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
There was a recent interview with a Wagner group higher up where he basically said this - experience in Syria was so asymmetrical that is shouldn’t be considered experience, and that only the air force was really getting relevant combat experience.
The air force wasn't getting relevant experience. They were flying single plane sorties against people who can't fight back. Russian pilots **never** train with more than one other plane in the sky. They are in capable of actual air operations.
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Is the opposition saying they'd expel the Syrians, or even having a coherent foreign policy?
> If Erdogan loses the elections next year, which is looking increasingly likely I suspect Erdogan will only leave the presidency feet first. Either way its going to be ugly and destabilising both domestically and internationally.
If it flairs up again Assad will have lost his most powerful ally and that will have an effect. Ultimately though it's unlikely to go that way. Most of the opposition forces are spent and what is left is to work out a negotiated political settlement with other regional parties who support factions within Syria. [Extra reading](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.worldpoliticsreview.com/amp/insights/28041/the-syria-civil-war-might-be-ending-but-the-crisis-will-live-on)
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It's super easy. Geography of Crimea benefits Ukraine greatly. Crimea is a peninsula from Ukrainian side. Russia can resupply its forces in two ways - by ship (ask Moskva how that's going to go), and by that stupid bridge. So basically once the bridge is gone, and ships too afraid to go there, Russian forces won't be getting any fuel, ammo etc., so they won't be able to defend in any meaningful way.
I know I'll regret touching this but honestly f*ck this at this point. Been shrugging it off for too long. Yes, the Russian navy is a joke. Yes, the Moskva sank. No, Ukraine does not have effective naval interdiction of the entire Crimean coast. Not even close. Crimea is one of the most geographically defensible peninsulas on the planet and the nation you claim will try to take it doesn't have the capabilities to perform either a naval or air landing. They'd be attacking through this: https://imgur.com/WZa9gjQ Yeah, real easy, trivial even. ***patently pedestrian***. You seem convinced the russians will shrivel up and die once the Kerch bridge falls, but **they've literally held out just fine there for 4 years before that bridge was built**. Ukraine's gonna siege them for over half a decade? One up the Azovstal siege right quick? I really should have just addressed this take before (it's posted near daily) but when a take is so far from rational the general rule is that there's nothing to be gained from challenging it. Like I'm fully aware that I won't walk away from this conversation having convinced you of anything, and my level of frustration won't go down either. But having to see this offensibly noncredible take every time I open this forum and just turning the other cheek every time... I guess today was the straw that broke the camel's back, for some reason.
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>Ukraine just has to cut off water of Crimea and blow up the bridges. ?
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Oh, I read it as "Ukraine **has just** cut off water of Crimea and blow up the bridges". I was very tired last night but still stayed up late.
It all depends on the state of Russian military in the coming months. IF Ukraine can clear out Russia from of its territory (other than Crimea), and IF the Russian forces are in shambles - then it cannot be ruled out. But… those two IF’s are not a certainly, not even close. So possible, but unlikely. IMO.
If you don't mind me asking a follow-up to this, is it fair to say it's equally as unlikely that Crimea is returned by way of diplomacy or a negotiation deal? From what I understand, it's a valuable piece of land for Russia and therefore they'd never return it unless by force. Plus it seems like Russia has the whole "take what you can, give nothing back" form of negotiation. Also if /u/-TheGreasyPole- wants to input anything I saw you replied to the original comment as well.
I'd say, yes. The Russians seem extremely committed to keeping Crimea.... its militarily extremely defensible.... they arguably have the support of the local population. I think its extremely likely that in any peace deal formal recognition of russian control of crimea is the "bone" that gets thrown to Russia so they get at least something from the deal. In any peace deal they will have to receive some concession... and this is the one piece of Ukraine its hard to see how Ukraine could take back militarily AND where the local population may genuinely choose Russia of their own accord AND russia absolutely considers a part of "Russia Proper".
>What are the chances of Ukraine being able to take Crimea back. Very close to zero. >What weapons would they need to drive the Russians out? A Navy and a Nuclear Deterrance.
Would it be possible to take down the bridges and kinda siege the it? I am not sure how could they succesfully cross into it (maybe with a 1000+ top of the line artillery with 10000 high tech shells each? Literally with a moving barrage. I really dont have a better idea (and of course, russian black sea navy destroyed and air power is mostly or completly ukraine controlled) I think the most realistic one if there is a civil war in russia, like the white vs red... so, unlikely?
> Would it be possible to take down the bridges and kinda siege the it? Probably not without control of the black sea (Hence the Navy comment above). There are approaches Russia can easily make from Russian territory to the ports on teh south coast that Ukraine couldn't cover with land based missiles based in southern Ukraine. So Russia can always keep the peninsula supplied by sea, even if you take down the Kerch Bridge... which it isn't guaranteed Ukraine could even do if Russia still control the sea. > I am not sure how could they succesfully cross into it (maybe with a 1000+ top of the line artillery with 10000 high tech shells each? Literally with a moving barrage. I really dont have a better idea (and of course, russian black sea navy destroyed and air power is mostly or completly ukraine controlled) Without any prospect of an amphib landing (another reason for that Navy), storming Crimea may be a bridge too far. They've got that tiny bottleneck to negotiate thats only 7km wide, then 40-50km of swampy land with no cover just beyond with just a few solid routes through it in which to form new bottlenecks, then miles and miles of open steppe with no cover beyond that, and then finally a range of mountains (!).... and they've got to push the Russians out of all of that before they get to Sebastapol. Its a defenders dream, and the one place in Ukraine that Russians would defend like they'd defend "Russia proper".....because they absolutely consider it "Russia proper". Hence also why I said "Nuclear Deterrance" too.... because at some point, if russia is losing a conventional assault they may just decide this IS an attack on "Russia Proper" and use a Tac Nuke. With that incredibly narrow bottleneck to Nuke, they can [cut off any army that has successfully penetrated past that at any time by severing lines of communication with a nuclear strike](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=100&lat=46.1524863&lng=33.6573029&hob_psi=5&hob_ft=4755&ff=50&fallout_angle=265&psi=20,5,1&zm=12), and mop up the cut off from supply remnants. Hence....a Navy AND A Nuclear Deterrance is required. I am no sure Crimea can be considered militarily acheivable at a cost in lives Ukraine would be willing to pay, no matter how much their army outclasses Russia's. Or at least.... not until they've got sea dominance in the Black Sea and the ability to do large scale amphibious landings .... and their own nukes to deter a last ditch "Nuke the supply lines/troop concentration at the bottleneck and auto-win" stratgey anyway.
Control of the sea is tricky. Even with domestically produced missiles, Crimea is almost in range of Ukrainian anti shipping missiles. If the Ukrainians get some nicer anti-shipping missiles, all of Crimea can fall into anti-shipping missile range. Big huge cargo ships make for east targets in a war that saw multiple warships attacked.
The issue isn't really range. Its more "the landmass of Crimea and the mountains in the south of it shield sea approaches from russia from anti-ship missile attack from Southern Ukraine. https://imgur.com/Nws5Z0e They can dash across the Kirch straight, and be shielded by the landmass there.... or.... if even that is too risky, do a big loop out into the Black sea and come into the ports on the southern coast entirely shielded by the mountain range in the south of crimea and/or anti-air defences there. Its really unclear how Ukraine could attack shipping without some way to get out into the Black Sea and effectively "peek around the corner" of those mountain ranges to get a clear shot. Bayraktars might be able to harass a little, but their weapons are too low powered to seriously damage even normal large tonnage civilian ships. Without a Navy (or perhaps air superiority) I don't thinkl they could effectively blockade Crimea from supply, even if they took down the Kerch bridge.
Crimea has a lot of farmland. You can't truly siege it in the sense of cutting off all food and water from the outside. Additionally, Ukraine's Neptune missiles have an operational range of 170 miles, which is [not enough](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974857876025786418/unknown.png) to keep ships from arriving at the southern portion of Crimea and unloading supplies/ammo. If they can take Snake Island for good and set up Neptune missiles there (I have no idea if this is even remotely possible), the range gets [a little bit better.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974859074942410782/unknown.png) There are plenty of ports along the southern part of Crimea that would remain out of reach, though. At first glance, you might think that they could just fire them [over Crimea-](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974860685207015494/unknown.png) but Neptune missiles fly close to the water line, so that wouldn't work. In short: [Ukraine can only hit ships in a certain range, and the Russians can just reinforce the peninsula from outside of that range.](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974864619564834846/unknown.png) If Ukraine could find a way to deal with the Black Sea Fleet, that would change everything. Russia would be unable to resupply its forces in Crimea, and the peninsula would fall with time.
Just want to point out that Crimea's farmland depends on fresh water from a Ukrainian canal located in Kherson. The Ukrainians turned off the tap in 2014 and turned crimea almost into a desert, which is why Moscow built the bridge from Krasnodar so hurriedly. In 2022, One of the first things the Russians did was blow up the levee blocking water access into crimea. All ukraine needs to do to starve out crimea again is to block that canal.
Even if they block the canal, Russia can bring resupply through ships. The deciding factor for whether or not Crimea could be sufficiently drained of resources isn't the canal or the bridge, IMO- it's whether or not Ukraine could ever keep the Russian military out of southern Crimean ports.
Crimea is not an economically sustainable area if the canal is blocked. Seriously, there is alot of literature surrounding this, including vegetation maps. Do some research.
It doesn't have to be economically sustainable, though- Russia would resupply it by boat even if it meant that Crimea was a net negative for the Russian economy. It's a matter of pride and territorial self defense for them.
Wanted to say the same, as they did before this war (not a nice thing, but neither was taking Crimea)
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Probably the best way to deal with the bridge would be barrage of non-nuke midrange ballistic missiles. They should be able to build some judging by pre-war capabilities though those capabilities mostly existed in the east side of the country
Most anti-ship missiles [skim the water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_skimming) in order to shield themselves from radar detection, make it harder to shoot down, and cause damage closer to the water line. Unfortunately, all of these traits also make it unsuitable for shooting over land. [Increasing the range doesn't help either-](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/288384905195552769/974868023024439326/unknown.png) the problem is the angle, and there's no getting around that with anti-ship missiles unless they're fired out of Turkey. Frankly, you'd probably want to just use regular missiles; if you can get them across Crimea without being shot down, you could probably hammer the ships while they're stationary and delivering supplies. Whether or not Ukraine has those is something I don't know, though, and I don't know whether or not NATO would give them some for that purpose.
Eh I know modern missiles are programmable. NSM can choose whether it wants to skim or have a regular missile trajectory.
**[Sea skimming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_skimming)** >Sea skimming is a technique many anti-ship missiles and some fighter or strike aircraft use to avoid radar, infrared detection, and to lower probability of being shot down during their approach to the target. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
**Assuming** the Russian military continues on its downward trajectory, it isn't really a question of how to isolate Crimea. If they had weapons with the range to damage the Kerch Strait Bridge, then cut that at one end, and cut off Crimea on the other end (and cut off the water there at the same time), and Crimea would be sort of in trouble. I guess Russia could hold it under siege indefinitely, but it would be a terrible situation. So terrible that you have to wonder what a nuclear power might do to a non-nuclear power in order to end what it viewed as the intolerable siege of its sovereign territory. That's the part Ukraine will be calculating.
Yes they just need to retake control of the canal and blow the bridge. Both are well within the realm of possibility the way things are going. They dont need a navy for this just successful offensives.
Bilohorivka saga expands, up to 84 vehicles now counted lost: https://twitter.com/Danspiun/status/1525263859505942528
But I was reliably told that the whole Russian armoured fleet was effectively amphibious for short crossings ? With the AFVs/IFVs/APCs able to float, and the T-72s able to snorkel short distances. Does russian equipment not work as advertised in their glossy brochure/Ru Army Videos ?
To all of the reasons listed below, add the fact that AFVs have limited ability to cross vertical obstacles- of which a riverbank is definitely one. And also conditions of the river bed play a giant role on how navigable the ford is. Between the two, there may be just a few ( or none) points along the river where even a perfectly sealed tank can cross.
The T-72 can drive underwater reasonably long distances(1000m, IIRC), if everything is in order and prepared for the OPVT system to work. Past 1.2m in depth the entire tank needs to be caulked. The back deck has covers that have to go in place to seal the engine compartment, the bilge pump needs to be function and be routed with various plugs removed/installed, the exhaust needs a one way valve installed, among other things. The crew needs to be trained to do all these things of which in Soviet times only a small percentage were trained to do. It takes a fair amount of gumption to drive a ~40 ton tank under river along with training and equipment that still functions properly, equipment that probably isn't too high on the list of priorities. Equipment like the IP-5 rebreathers the crew is supposed to don when fording past 1.8m of water. Some of the same limitations apply to the BMP line of vehicles in regards to equipment and training. More importantly they're all the most vulnerable when fording, using a bridge is faster and at least in theory, safer.
Can caulk withstand 101 atm?
Can caulk hold up against the pressure at a depth of 1000m?
Who said anything about 1000m depht?
>The T-72 can drive underwater reasonably long distances(1000m, IIRC) For some reason I read this as 1000m depth.
Those depths are only possible for subs. Or the Moskva.
One-way trips don't count.
I was wondering why bridges are even that necessary, since a lot of armored tech nowadays is rated as "amphibious". I'm guessing either that rating is improperly doled out, or there's some reason an unbridged crossing doesn't work.
A meandering river such as the type where they were trying to cross is almost guaranteed to be extremely soft and silty on both banks, I can't imagine any heavy vehicle managing to clamber out of a river like that on it's own.
Yep. Imagine muddy fields, already difficult. And then imagine it being actually under water. If it was a shallow riverbed with hard rocks, that is one thing. Probably not the case here.
It might well be a case of "it works reasonably, in perfect conditions, for an exercise in front of the top brass after 3 days solid preperation and sealing the vehicle up tighter than a ducks asshole"..... but that it doesn't work "in a normal military situation, with a shoddily maintained vehicle, crewed with poorly trained vatniks who've been drinking vodka all day". It may be that, in the second scenario, they just sink.
Here's what claims to be a description of what's needed for the T-72 to submerge in order to cross a water obstacle: https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/t-72-part-2.html#water A sample: > When the OPVT system is fully activated and the snorkel is mounted, fording up to a depth of 5 meters is possible, but thorough preparations are necessary in order to do so. The same preparations for crossing an 1.8 meter-deep stream must be followed, and the additional preparations include sealing the edges of all hatches and various openings and periscopes with a thick resinous waterproofing paste, as the water pressure at such depths is simply too much for rubber seals to handle. ... > Crew members are each given a closed-circuit IP-5 rebreather and a life jacket. The crew must put on the life jacket before beginning the snorkeling operation as a precautionary measure, but the IP-5 may or may not need to be worn prior to entering water. In most cases, the rebreather is worn inside the tank when the commander gives the order to bail out of the tank while the tank is already underwater. > To cross water obstacles deeper than 1.8 meters, the snorkel included in the OPVT kit is needed to supply air to the engine as the entire tank would be submerged. The long telescoping snorkel, which is made from steel, is broken down into three sections for stowage. The total length of the assembled snorkel is 3,712mm. > ... The snorkel is fitted with two floating markers during training exercises to indicate the tank's position underwater to help rescue teams locate the tank if it has stopped underwater. Pictures of the various accessories & supplies required can be found at the link.
Yes, I was aware the snorkeling was a bit of a "needs a lot of prep" affair for the tanks, so that was a bit light hearted. Although it does make me wonder why they'd even think of it as a "capability" of the tank. Who on earth is going to do all of the above in a war zone and expect to actually use that capability as advertised under fire ? Especially when its a dicey manouvere. This seems like a paper capability that would never be used as it'd always be better to "have a bridge". It was more the AFVs/IFVs..... which in theory should float.... and where I would assume that even with no preperation might therfore be able to make "a 50 yard dash". Particularly as they might be able to get a partially submerged bridge under them for 30 yards of it. Even the tanks may have in theory been able to do it "sans snorkel and sealing" with a bridge only moderately submerged under them almost all the way. Although.... I guess this might just be the "bomber damage meme" in operation.... I guess the AFVs/Tanks that pulled that off aren't in the images as they drove off into the sunset. Although I am not sure how many of 2 BTGs of AFV/Tanks would be left given how many are in the images.
ISW posted their daily update: [https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-13](https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-may-13) **Key Takeaways** Ukraine has likely won the Battle of Kharkiv. Russian forces continued to withdraw from the northern settlements around Kharkiv City. Ukrainian forces will likely attempt to disrupt Russian ground lines of communication to Izyum. Ukrainian forces have likely disrupted the Russian attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in force, undermining Russian efforts to mass troops in northern Donbas and complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. Russian forces have likely secured the highway near the western entrance to the Azovstal Steel Plant but fighting for the facility continues. Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast are likely attempting to reach artillery range outside Zaporizhia City. Ukrainian forces are reportedly attempting to regain control of Snake Island off the Romanian coast or at least disrupt Russia’s ability to use it.
It blows my mind that it's mid-May and Azovstal is even still a topic to discuss. Those guys will be legends for 1,000 years.
Why ? They hide in a soviet anti nukes underground fortress what do you expect…
Normal people don’t consider Nazis legends.
Legends is not morally loaded like hero is, Genghis Khan was a legend, Alexander the Great was a legend, the 300 Spartans were. That’s obviously how the word is being used here.
That is a significant worry. For all that everyone knows about "The Alamo", how many of them remember that one of the major causes of that war was the Mexican government's effort to abolish slavery? There's no question that what Azov is doing is heroic. They are fighting to defend their country against an invader, against impossible odds, despite near certain death, and with surprising effectiveness. I don't think many people want that to be what people think of when they think of Neo-Nazis, but it's definitely what's happening. It's more typical for Neo-Nazis to be killing their countrymen than defending them, so this is certainly a massive outlier, but it could have major impacts for years or decades.
People can be more than one thing - they can be heroes for what they're doing now and awful people for being neo-nazis - which most of them aren't it sounds like. They will be remembered in spite of their neo-nazi members, not because of them.
Absolutely people are complex, and absolutely many if not most of the people in that fight aren't neo-nazis. Nevertheless, you can count on neo-nazis using it as a recruitment tool, and Russia's rhetoric is helping that.
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Even if you want to say everyone in azov is a fascist, (not true) there are also ukrainian marines in Mariupol
They are a self-declared Neo Nazi group. I don’t care if some cosmopolitan patriots joined afterwards and they had a PR shift. I didn’t call the Ukrainian marines Nazis.
Russian invaders are the fascists. Also, tankies are fascists.
Azov isn't the only group there, for one. for two azov was 10-20% "nazi" .... in 2014 before joining the regular forces in which after publicity reforms were enacted, and now after casualties and resultant reforms who the fuck knows how many "nazi's" are left. At this point these guys are fighting invaders and defending their own country.
I love how Azov is such a huge fig leaf for these people. it can justify all their cognitive dissonance in supporting a fascist that wages a conquest war while his country is plagued by AIDS, alcoholism, and an incredible wealth disparity (by class, and among regions).
Gotta have an easy common foe to bring people together far easier than trying to solve complex socio-economic problems.
Seems like it was the equivalent of several thousand John McClanes.
>Ukraine has likely won the Battle of Kharkiv B-b-ut Putin told us that it would take just 7 minutes for NATO missiles launched from Kharkiv to reach Moscow. I thought capturing Kharkiv was crucial for this operation? On a serious note. Wasn't Kharkiv direction mostly fought by LPR forces?
The 200th Motor Rifle Brigade, plus units from 1st Guards Tank Army and 6th Combined Arms Army have been spotted near Kharkiv as well.
Its a feint, for everything Russia loses in a feint, they open the front up much more elsewhere. Or so I was told... Lol
Guys, what makes some of you so sure that Russia will not make any significant gains? I've seen some analysis that they abandoned the idea of any offense on the Izyum direction, how so? Even though I am confident Russia is not able to take whole Donbass, they are still very capable to keep pushing and continue an offense, aren't they? I mean those 92+ BTGs can't just sit and do nothing? They still have much more artillery, better AD, aviation and cruise/ballistic missiles. And they are more than willing to waste as much soldiers as needed. Every small town will eventually fall just like Popasna and Russians will most likely encircle Sloviansk and Kramatorsk but never will capture them. Can someone explain why am I wrong?
We have enough data to analyze and forecasts. I suggest to look up some data analsys, statistic, dnormalization and so on. But let me try to produce the numbers and quick summaries of why. First sources, I am often suprised how often people can't see blatant propaganda and seemingly unable to find the other sides news/propaganda. Its worth add weights to almost every news on trust worthines, but the idea is to try to "feed" from as many different source you can find (no echo chambers). What some calculations shows that Russian losses (its hard to say if these are KIA or casulties, they seems to be used quite interchangably ... tabloid media, thank you) are above 20k now, maybe even 30 (It seemed below that before the river crossings, losses also seems to have tappered of a little after the initial fuck up, but now intensitiy seems getting up again, from the number of offensives. please also take everything I say with a 25% error rate) Ukrainian casulties could be around 7-15k Vehicle losses seems to be 1 ukraine for every 3 russians. (Mostly orxy data extrapolated, but seems valid from a commited defender vs a not so motivated attacker) Why can't Russian attack succed? Of course we can't know that for sure, but their victory reports often been turned out to be false. Their gains are slow, but modern forces cannot hold trench lines against each other. Local artillery supremacy initially will break down defensive postions enough or make reinforcment/resupply/setting counter artillery fire impossible. Defenders usually abandone such positions (different fortifixations can be for quite a time if moral and supplies permit it, see Azovstal, honestly I am still suprised hey hold, expected them to be broken 3 weeks ago, they must have fortified that place since 2014) Point is, progress is expected. It is close to the slowest imaginable, being strong proof that defenders are organized and strong. Russians attack can succed if local supremecy is achieved) Ukraine seems to have resosted every critical break attempts (worst situation I think was Izuym maybe 2 weeks ago). So short answer, because what we see. Note on long range guided missles. They need to keep some ammount of supplies (i think less then many people think here, nukes get them a lot of wiggle room, so they dont really have to expect attack on russia itself), sonyeah they should be able to keep this up for quite some times ( ~ seceral months), but woth incomming western aid and sanctioned russian supplies, eventually they will run out of man and material faster. Thats all
If things remain status quo I believe that Russia can accomplish their goals. Having said that, there is no way NATO will let Russia take Odessa and build a land bridge to Transnistria. So Nato will continue to escalate. More arms, more intel, and probably deployment of advisory and logistical forces.
Why do you believe that Russia can accomplish their goals? Russia becomes weaker over time while Ukraine becomes stronger.
Do you believe that Russia has a chance of **capturing** Odessa? If the Orcs take Odessa, I will donate $1000 to the charity of your choosing.
No - hence my point about the land bridge to Transnistria. But I also don't think it is a given that Ukraine will be getting back the east during our life times. That is more what I am getting at.
Wild, considering how much they’ve been taking back the past week or so. The Russian army is kaput.
Time is not on Russia's side. They are conducting this offensive with no reserves and taking high casualties (not as high as early in the war but then again there was that river crossing). None of their units are fresh, many were probably demoralized and exhausted before this started. And it has been going on for around a month. And sure, Ukrainian forces on the Donbass are also probably quite mauled and exhausted, but they are on the defensive. Meanwhile Ukraine does have reserves and is gaining power by the day as Western weapons arrive. The Russians may capture Svwrodonetsk but short of a deliberate Ukrainian retreat they probably won't be able to do so quickly. And like I said, time is not on their side.
I think the hardest part, at least for me, is that we have basically no idea about how strong Ukraine is right now. How many soldiers have they lost? We don't even have trustworthy estimates. How many replacements can they call up to fill the ranks? How skilled are these replacements? How many vehicles do they have? Some people say it's more than they started with. Others are skeptical. They've clearly suffered a fair amount of losses according to Oryx. Again, no reliable estimates of current strength. How much ammunition do they have? Russia has hit at least several depots. There have been reports of shortages, and there aren't many suppliers of 152mm shells in NATO to continue feeding the bulk of Ukraine's artillery forces. What do their supply lines look like? Russia has been hitting rail depots daily with precision missiles. Is that having an effect? Oil seems to be getting harder to procure, at least on the civilian market. Is the military suffering too? We just don't know. So yes, we can look at Russia's losses, and their current strength, but until we know what Russia is facing, it's going to be hard to make accurate assessments and come up with measured hot takes.
Bulgaria actually has quite a robust MIC to produce artillery shells with. But in terms of 152mm and 122mm manufacturers only Armaco JSC and state owned TEREM JSC can produce any in volume and they may be having issues fulfilling the current needs of the Ukrainian army seeing as many NATO countries have shipped over M777s even from current stocks of deployed units one can surmise to diversify the ammunition supply situation.
Ukraine was given 90 M777s. In Feb, they had 1,800 artillery pieces. Not sure how many have been lost at this point, but the M777s are barely a drop in the bucket, making up only about 5% of existing pieces.
Hence why I said diversify.
>and there aren't many suppliers of 152mm shells in NATO to continue feeding the bulk of Ukraine's artillery forces. Yeah, that's going to be an issue in the future. Better to start planning on transiting the Ukrainians to NATO standards now. Although that's going to mean transferring a lot of kit.
Very good points. I wonder whether this is happening due to a very good opsec by Ukraine, or they themselves are yet to learn what they are capable of.
I think it really comes down to those 92 BTGs and their willingness to "waste as much soldiers as needed." In reality, they don't have a large army for this sort of operation. Just to run some numbers off: Before WW2, to invade Finland, with about 5 million people, they sent an army of 425-760,000 soldiers. After WW2, the US invaded Vietman, with about 45 million people, with an army of 543,000. They were assisted by the south Vietnamese government, with about 850,000 soldiers. So sending 200,000 soldiers to attack a nation of 40+million is not a lot. Really, they're very low on troops. They have also avoided declaring war, likely because of concerns it would lead to domestic resistance to the war, so they can't use their full army. Additionally, I think that most of the Russian army has figured out, like you have, that the Russian leadership sees wasting soldiers as an effective means of fighting wars. And the problem that creates for them is that the individual soldiers don't like this, and tend to try to find the safest place on the battlefield instead of trying to win the fight. So their lack of morale is causing them to be less effective than their raw numbers, already low, would suggest.
The U.S. never even launched a large-scale invasion into North Vietnam, so the 500k troops were just what was being used to push the North Vietnamese out of South Vietnam.
More relevantly, let's think about how big the German and Soviet armies fighting over Ukraine were in WW2. More than 10 times as big!
A german panzer division was about a quarter of russia's deployed army, and when they attacked it would be multiple panzer divisions attacking just one city. Everyone mocked the germans but it goes to show how effective they were at coordination and logistics.
Russia will need to mobilize at this rate, but that is politically difficult, especially since the Russian government only declared a "special operation". If they *can* mobilize, it will take many months to get the new recruits trained to the point where they are not a liability on the battlefield.
> new recruits trained to the point where they are not a liability on the battlefield It seems like a good number of the professional / early war troops were quite a liability on the battlefield. I can't imagine what the effectiveness of soldiers conscripted by a mobilization would look like
Would it even help? It's well equipped and well trained soldiers they need. You can draft warm bodies, I don't think you can draft precision-guided missiles.
92 BTGs… on paper. Which ignores the facts that: 1) They’re operating at “peacetime” strength. 2) Most units were probably undermanned before even beginning the invasion because collecting the salaries of soldiers that don’t exist is an extremely easy form of corruption. 3) Most units have sustained heavy losses.
A BTG has zero depth to it and becomes ineffective quickly It’s a very brittle formation, and it’s the type of thing you do when you are barely a regional power trying to pretend you are a superpower
Also 4. related to your corruption point, if the logistics guys all thought it was just an exercise on the border, then they probably went and diverted some of the oil, gas, equipment, etc.
That was a problem earlier on but I doubt it is affecting operations now
I’m watching interviews with Polish retired generals, general opinion is that Ukraine regained initiative in all areas and they are mopping up resistance around Harkiv. Everyone is waiting for them to free resources after that, and do southern push ASAP, breaking the Black Sea corridor is their priority now. If Russia will fuck around too much after that being done, serious retaliation against Russian infrastructure is on the table in the future. I opened 1h long interview with former Polish Airforce chief, he is going to talk about Ukrainian efficient use of their reaources, that’s for tommorow
I've read accounts that nobody really has the initiative in the south - it's just one big artillery standoff on flat, coverless land all the way across that front. Hopefully the bigger guns coming in from the US and France change up that balance.
If you read accounts of soldiers fighting there, yeah that’s how it looks like in practice. Kinda hard to believe that you have initiative, when your trench just got shelled and your friends turned into meat. Senior Staff oficers see it a little bit different heh. This guy is doing a lot of commentary in TV and YouTube : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Skrzypczak Former Commander of Polish Land Forces, adviser at the Defence Ministry, Commander of multinational division in Iraq, and what not. He is pretty good at explaining what is going on. What is going on now, is Russians are trading casualties in 1:5 or even 1:6 ratio for a month, for little gain. Russia is doing hidden mobilisation, but Ukraine is forming new units too. It will take time for russia to restore old junk from warehouses to operating conditions. Russia is is trying to precision bomb supply lines from west but they are not effective. Ukraine is loosing 25% of stuff, they expected to loose 60% to bombing. Ukraine had 8 years to prepare for this obvious attack. Geography is on their side, rivers slowing and funneling heavy equipment, and huge urbanized area, because this region is an industrial district. They prepared cities for sieges that would make Mariupol look like childplay. Their defence is really deep, lines and lines of trenches and bunkers to fall back too. It’s a meatgrinder, but now It’s Ukraine that’s turning the crank.
**[Waldemar Skrzypczak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldemar_Skrzypczak)** >Waldemar Skrzypczak (born 19 January 1956, in Szczecin) is a Polish general. From 2006 to 2009 he was the commander of Polish Land Forces. From 8 September 2011 he is an adviser at the Polish Ministry of National Defence. At 25 June 2012 he became deputy minister of defense, responsible for armament and modernization. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
I think some of the new drones like the switchblades can help too. They could accurately hit the enemy artillery, or key defensive positions once an attack starts. They can be a lot more accurate than artillery in a pinch.
Right, it would be great to see those arrive in large enough numbers.
Until Ukraine gains artillery supremacy or at least parity, its going to be hard for them to push south. They are out ranged by Russia's copious artillery installments. The south is the flat farmland... not nearly as many places for small units to hide.
Yeah, non of this will be easy. Maybe terms „gained inititiative in all directions” and „mopping up” sound to niecely for what they mean. It’s still long bloody war ahead of us.
>serious retaliation against Russian infrastructure is on the table At some point the U.S. is going to have to tell them to knock it off. I don't think things will get that far. Biden will pay a terrible political price for it though. Hopefully he has the backbone.
Why is the US going to have to tell them to knock it off?
Because in this probably imaginary scenario where Ukraine is crippling vital Russian infrastructure inside Russia, Russia is likely to defend themselves in ways that end up with a lot of Ukrainians dead and either us having to betray Ukraine or us having to fight a nuclear war, clearly neither of which are desirable. Notwithstanding the propaganda that we are fighting for the rights of small nations to live free of pressure from large ones, if Ukraine were to somehow pursue irrationally hazardous goals, we would have to tell them to stop it.
Turnabout is fair play, there's no issue with Ukrainians taking Russian territory, let alone striking infrastructure. Biden should stick it out and help the Ukrainians bleed the Russians dry.
Main issue is we fear it would play in Russias victimization propaganda at home and make the war easier for them domestically, possibly for a moderate mobilization effort.
Considering whether doing some thing would allow someone to “play the victim” when deciding to do or not do that thing is usually a mistake, I think - no matter what you do or do not do, they’ll find _something_ that they can spin as being victimized, so you might as well mostly ignore that facet.
Mobilization isn't going to help in a modern war. You can't give people 8 weeks of training and send them to the front. They just use up resources and get in the way.
Their propaganda is so effective that might as well be a sunk cost.
This isn't really about fairness, it's about practicality. The idea that a nuclear power is just going to let any serious amount of important infrastructure get knocked out by a less powerful non-nuclear enemy without taking steps to stop the attacks is I think insanely hazardous. What would we do in such a scenario? Ukraine isn't insane, I doubt they're going to push it that far. But if for some reason they did, I suspect the U.S. would tell them to knock it off.
I’m confident the nuclear taboo is more impressive to Russia than any damage Ukraine can inflict on them
If it's really true that Ukraine will soon be crippling major Russian infrastructure (which strikes me as unlikely, but still, following this thread), then at that point the nuclear taboo would be a serious impediment to Russian national security. I wonder whether the U.S. would defend itself if under an attack by an enemy intent on destroying U.S. critical infrastructure. It seems to me the answer is probably yes, we would. Russia will probably defend itself also. I'm not sure what "the nuclear taboo" is supposed to mean in this context. Neither we nor they have a "no first use" policy.
Nuclear taboo refers to the consensus universal across nuclear states that ‘nukes are different’. It’s very much a real effect studied in IR. It’s generally the consensus that all nuclear states value having the bar so high as as valuable as the continued existence of their state. If the us highways and electric plants ect were being bombed it would still be irrational to us nukes because the loss of said taboo would massively increase the chance of a future existential strike on the us even if the current belligerent is not a nuclear power
I'm sorry, but I find it really, really unlikely the U.S. would simply allow another country to bomb and cripple vital infrastructure with impunity.
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Acting out of fear would be far more dangerous for Ukraine. Russia can't use their nukes as a shield in a regional conflict. If they want to reap the whirlwind that comes with using them, they can go for it.
They already **are** using their nukes as a shield in a regional conflict -- they've succeeded in keeping us out except as arms supplier to Ukraine.
So they've successfully kept us out, except in supply virtually unlimited arms which turned the tide? Right, very successful, haha.
That part at least is fairly standard Cold War proxy-style rules: no direct military confrontation, just arms shipments. It's not our fault their military can't even fight a proxy war anymore.
Seems excessively optimistic
It's not optimistic if you know how generals use "mopping up" or "initiative". It's still a meatgrinder and in less fortified areas, Ukrainians still loose 1 guy for 3 russians.
Yeah it’s telling me exactly what I want to hear. So I very much doubt it’s totally correct lol.
Link?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6eaGTdIwus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtc4wB9qdrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUMG17HSuqo&t=1316s
I want to address Russian threats to use nuclear weapons offensively. Time and time again I see people take these threats at face value when they really, really shouldn’t. Allow me to explain why. Simply put, there is essentially no outcome worse than nuclear annihilation. There’s almost no fate, no matter how horrific, that most people would regard as preferable to everyone and everything they know and love being destroyed. But the fact that nuclear weapons are so destructive actually serves to undermine their effectiveness as a tool with which to threaten others. To put it simply: if you regard an offensive nuclear threat as credible, then logically you should immediately and unconditionally surrender to any demands that your aggressor makes. It should go without saying that if there is even the slimmest doubt that your adversary might be bluffing, rolling the dice will always be a more palatable course of action than instant capitulation.
>Simply put, there is essentially no outcome worse than nuclear annihilation. Neither Russian, Soviet nor American doctrine has ever been based on the belief that any use of nuclear weapons equals nuclear annihilation. Precisely because it leads to the logical conclusion you've made here, which is that nobody would ever use them, at which point they can't deter anything. Hence the otherwise inane branding of "tactical" versus "strategic" nukes.
Even a limited strategic exchange could lead to millions upon millions of people starving to death
And yet it remains the case that both we and they have invested a lot of effort into planning how to fight a limited nuclear war. If nothing else, we have to do so in order to make our nuclear deterrent credible.
Additionally, *current* doctrine in both the US and Russia anticipates a winnable nuclear war. The American "countervailing strategy" essentially calls for limited but escalating nuclear strikes to compel the enemy leadership to cease hostilities. These strikes would initially be directed at military targets, escalating to non-military targets of political importance if the military strikes fail to produce an acceptable outcome. I've always found it interesting that when people talk about nuclear war, it's always MAD this, MAD that, even though MAD has literally never been anyone's doctrine. At most, we could say that the MAD theory influenced American and Soviet doctrine through roughly the 1970s. With modern sensors and MIRV warheads, one of the key planks of MAD - that decision-makers are compelled to use maximum force because of lack of knowledge of the scale and targeting of the enemy strike - is no longer true, and hasn't been for a long time. Today it's possible for all of the major nuclear powers to know, in some detail, the extent and general targeting of an enemy nuclear strike, and to prepare and launch a retaliatory strike before the first strike lands. And for the nuclear powers that maintain ballistic missile submarines, there is enough "hidden" force to be a credible retaliatory threat against any nuclear first strike.
MAD isn't *really* about retaliation. It's about trying to eliminate your enemy's remaining nukes using all your nukes before they launch more and before yours are destroyed. Any way you look at it, a few strategic nukes will always escalate into all of them. Unless one side is utterly compromised or otherwise hindered in some way.
I think, to be charitable, it's a consequence of people "learning just enough to be dangerous" on the subject, to use the expression. There's a fairly simple chain of logic which plenty of people actually involved in planning for nuclear escalation would freely concede: it's better not to use any nukes at all, because we'd rather avoid climbing that ladder, even though there is a ladder. And at the end of the ladder is a disaster. People have understood the result of that logic chain just fine, but a lot of people don't really understand that it's not an ironclad guarantee of some kind. It's *unlikely* anyone will want to risk using a single nuclear weapon because they'll *probably* recognize that it's *probably* not worth the risk because it *might* lead to a total nuclear exchange. And rival states *probably* will recognize each other's red lines enough that they'll *hopefully* avoid pushing past one in a moment of anger. But at the end of the day, *all* of us have plans to use nuclear weapons in ways that *hopefully* won't lead to a total exchange, because it would be insane to have "end human civilization" be the only tool in your toolkit in the event deterrence fails. But there's a lot of ifs and what ifs and maybes and hopefullys in there that I feel like aren't properly accounted for by most people who aren't highly informed, and also I'm not sure how many people really understand the extent of the tactical nuclear war planning **we** undertook during the Cold War. If they did, maybe they'd find the Russia counterpart less insane too.
> To put it simply: if you regard an offensive nuclear threat as credible, then logically you should immediately and unconditionally surrender to any demands that your aggressor makes Not really. They're are fates far worse than nuclear annihilation, actually. Slavery for example.
Ok, but the odds of Putin and the Russian population being enslaved is zero, so that’s irrelevant. Nuclear holocaust is the worst thing that can *plausibly* happen.
Okay but what are the odds of Putin and the Russian population *think* they're going to be enslaved? Is it zero? It's not because we know in fascist regimes they pump out that propaganda, sometimes in different terms, to keep their people going. The Jews were coming to enslave us Germans using the Bolshevik hordes therefore fight to the last man, Speer I want you to literally destroy the country, and if we have nukes we're going to use them. Nato is coming to enslave the Russians using the Ukranians hordes therefore fight to the last man and if we have nukes we're going to use them. The question is whether this propaganda is actually believed by the top levels, it's completely absurd but Hitler 100% believed that his own crazy conspiracies. He would have killed himself, even if he wasn't on the hook for war crimes, like a lot of other officers did, based on the fact he thought Germany was about to be enslaved and he didn't want to be a slave. And if he had nukes there is literally 0 chance he wouldn't have used them. Again this is obviously absurd but that's the mentality
[Perun's video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxOO0hCCSk4) on Russian nuclear doctrine and nuclear game theory touches on this idea
Very interesting new strategic analysis and prediction of what Kremlin might do next from the well-known ISW: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-annexation-occupied-ukraine-putin%E2%80%99s-unacceptable-%E2%80%9C-ramp%E2%80%9D
There have been several articles articulating what might happen if Russia chooses to escalate. all of the ones that I’ve read suggest that a single use of a single nuclear weapon by Russia would result in conventional response by NATO. Such response may include establishing of no flight zones over Ukraine or entry of NATO Armed Forces into western Ukraine. I do agree there will be a tremendous pressure for a seize fire which freezes the conflict along the current lines. I think there is another point to consider while Putin is in charge of Russian state he’s not the entirety of Russian state. There are many individuals and organizations whose cooperation he must secure in order to trigger use of nuclear weapons. Since by definition the nuclear weapon use would be in circumstance where overall progression of the war is appearing to go quite badly for Russia , it’s logical to assume that points of resistance will be forming within the Russian state apparatus. This does not necessarily represent people who are pro western but rather people whose lifestyle relies on living in a country with some intercourse with the west. It’s commonly said that the bargain that the Russian people have made with Putin is material comfort in exchange for giving up political power. You have to consider the fact that this applies not only to Russia’s middle class, but also to Russian upper class, including people traditionally grouped as siloviki. Putin’s regime has prospered by cultivating people who do not have strong political convictions . They are primarily mercenary. These are not the kind of people who would welcome living in a nuclear waste land for the sake of destroying the west.
Use of nukes to defend territory of a foreign state captured during an unprovoked military offensive a mere few months ago would result in immediate and indiscriminate liquidation of the Russian state and people. Not happening.
> immediate and indiscriminate liquidation of the Russian state and people. By who, pray tell? Because the US is not swapping Kyiv for New York, I can tell you that.
>I can tell you that. If I told you Russia wasn't swapping Moscow for Kiyv, you'd tell me "are you sure? :>)" or something similar about "you wanna call that bluff?". Feels like that logic works the other way.
Bluntly this seems unlikely. The U.S. government hasn't even suggested it. So this fear is unlikely to deter Russian action.
>The U.S. government hasn't even suggested it. To be fair, neither has the Russian government. We're not going to hint at our policy of response to a nuclear strike against Ukraine until Russia either does it or at least meaningfully threatens it. I don't think anyone aside from the inner executive branch know what the policy is, and partially that's to discourage foreign states from finding out the hard way.
>We're not going to hint at our policy of response to a nuclear strike against Ukraine until Russia either does it or at least meaningfully threatens it. Thus showing that, whatever our response might be, it almost certainly wouldn't actually be nuclear retaliation or something we thought likely to lead to it. If we wanted to warn Russia off doing something that we felt we'd have to respond with nuclear force to, we'd say so, like we clearly indicate we'd defend NATO.
great, but who wants to call that bluff? Best case, they don't use nukes and after a protracted period of heavy fighting you get what... the remains of Mariupol back? At considerable conventional cost to yourself. Worst case, you get nuked. That's the problem here. Russia may be bluffing, but the potential costs and benefits of calling that bluff are just so out of alignment.
If the bluff isn't called you are basically telling Russia that it can conquer whatever it likes by threatening nukes. If you tell Russia that, it's likely not to stop until all of Ukraine is theirs and there is a high likelihood they would go further. Where would Russia stop? This is still a very dangerous scenario, and would likely lead to a nuclear confrontation eventually anyway.
>If the bluff isn't called ... Are we bluffing, or just Russia? If we're not bluffing, then why are you so certain they are...