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Post by mrcoke on May 7, 2022 18:13:13 GMT
Russia's "Victory Day" tomorrow. Any bets on what they'll try to show? Here are the rumours from the past fortnight or so for victories they want to claim in Ukraine: 1) Mariupol parade 2) Kherson referendum to leave Ukraine 3) Complete seizure of Lugansk and/or Donetsk I wonder whether there will be any brave protesters?
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Post by Gods on May 7, 2022 18:32:57 GMT
Russia's "Victory Day" tomorrow. Any bets on what they'll try to show? Here are the rumours from the past fortnight or so for victories they want to claim in Ukraine: 1) Mariupol parade 2) Kherson referendum to leave Ukraine 3) Complete seizure of Lugansk and/or Donetsk Some talk of parading Ukrainian prisoners. I won't sleep properly in my bed until Putin hangs.
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Post by questionable on May 7, 2022 19:06:26 GMT
Russia's "Victory Day" tomorrow. Any bets on what they'll try to show? Here are the rumours from the past fortnight or so for victories they want to claim in Ukraine: 1) Mariupol parade 2) Kherson referendum to leave Ukraine 3) Complete seizure of Lugansk and/or Donetsk Some talk of parading Ukrainian prisoners. I won't sleep properly in my bed until Putin hangs. As much as I loathe this kind of stuff but surely there’s a terrorist type attack planned.
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Post by Gods on May 7, 2022 19:54:56 GMT
Some talk of parading Ukrainian prisoners. I won't sleep properly in my bed until Putin hangs. As much as I loathe this kind of stuff but surely there’s a terrorist type attack planned. Nor do I but I have thought for some time surely terrorist style attacks will come but perhaps Russia is a country so intimidating to any dissidents that anyone who might contemplate such a thing are snuffed out before they even start.
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Post by The Drunken Communist on May 7, 2022 20:03:51 GMT
Nor do I but I have thought for some time surely terrorist style attacks will come but perhaps Russia is a country so intimidating to any dissidents that anyone who might contemplate such a thing are snuffed out before they even start. Yeah, terrorist attacks never happen in Russia...
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Post by questionable on May 7, 2022 20:06:49 GMT
Nor do I but I have thought for some time surely terrorist style attacks will come but perhaps Russia is a country so intimidating to any dissidents that anyone who might contemplate such a thing are snuffed out before they even start. Yeah, terrorist attacks never happen in Russia... Was there a gas attack on an underground train station years ago??
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Post by Bojan Mackey on May 7, 2022 21:34:50 GMT
Was there a gas attack on an underground train station years ago?? I did this on the tube once after a particularly dodgy Greggs.
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Post by bayernoatcake on May 7, 2022 23:24:06 GMT
Remember the "Russian warship go fuck yourself" Snake Island? The other day Ukrainian Bayraktars blew up two anti-aircraft weapons and two patrol boats. The Russians sent another anti-air missile vehicle on a little landing boat this morning and... they got Bayraktard again. Footage online but warning: you can see people moving before the explosions. If Putin insists on occupying it then the Ukrainians could get free kills every day and those anti-aircraft systems are great value targets. If the Russians send in ships to target the Bayraktars then those could be in range of Ukraine's Neptune missiles. I've followed a pro-Russian "intel" guy on Twitter who's insisting everything is going to Russia's genius plan. What did he say 12th April? "LOL they really are out of Bayraktars". It happened already. 2 SU-27’s of the destroyed (according to Russia) Ukranian Aitforce blowing the fuck out of the main building.
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Post by partickpotter on May 8, 2022 9:04:35 GMT
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Post by bayernoatcake on May 8, 2022 10:19:37 GMT
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Post by mtrstudent on May 8, 2022 16:07:53 GMT
OMG Snake Island again. The Russians were doing the same thing at Chornobaivka airport outside Kherson, they kept putting equipment in artillery range. The most amazing thing is that pro-Russia people were saying yesterday that the Ukrainians attacked Snake Island and lost helicopters etc then ran away. Now the footage shows it was a Russian helicopter getting blown up instead, according to the experts who've been pretty reliable so far. I'm not sure about the four boats, it could be footage from different angles? It's 2-4 boats in the videos.
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Post by mtrstudent on May 8, 2022 16:20:33 GMT
Russia's "Victory Day" tomorrow. Any bets on what they'll try to show? Here are the rumours from the past fortnight or so for victories they want to claim in Ukraine: 1) Mariupol parade 2) Kherson referendum to leave Ukraine 3) Complete seizure of Lugansk and/or Donetsk I wonder whether there will be any brave protesters? I hope Kherson and Melitopol partisans can stir the shit, but if I were the Russians I'd try to prepare traps for the 9th. My guesses of what Russia might do: 1) Could film some soldiers in Mariupol, but a full parade with cheering crowds etc would surprise me. 2) Kherson referendum is delayed, they might announce one will happen or claim the Oblast is under control. Extreme case they'll announce annexation. 3) Luhansk looks bad for Ukraine with the last big-ish city (Sievierodonetsk) nearly cut off. The Russians are probably out of time for a big breakthrough, so my guess is they'll get their fake Republic whores to parade in occupied Ukraine but back from the main lines. Luhansk souds awful. The train lines north at Yampil got seized earlier, and Popasna to the south of the front fell yesterday. Ukraine says it was a strategic withdrawal, but they held it for almost 6 weeks so they clearly thought it was defensible at some point. The Russians are grinding through here, it's a matter of whether the Ukrainians can do enough damage to force them to run out of steam.
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Post by questionable on May 8, 2022 17:00:52 GMT
Hopefully Zelenski has something planned, I’d absolutely love it
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Post by mtrstudent on May 8, 2022 17:08:09 GMT
Berlin banned Russian and Ukrainian flags during memorials today.
I know Sieg Heil and the Swastika are banned. Did they also ban Jewish symbols for "balance"?
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Post by partickpotter on May 8, 2022 18:00:45 GMT
Hopefully Zelenski has something planned, I’d absolutely love it A few cruise missiles hitting red square would be just wonderful!
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Post by themistocles on May 8, 2022 21:27:26 GMT
UKR now need more than NATO supplied equipment to defend the East.
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Post by bayernoatcake on May 9, 2022 7:14:40 GMT
😂Doesn’t make the Russian Airforce look to be in good health.
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Post by Northy on May 9, 2022 7:46:37 GMT
Hopefully Zelenski has something planned, I’d absolutely love it A few cruise missiles hitting red square would be just wonderful! it would probably mean the end of Ukraine though
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Post by Gob Bluth on May 9, 2022 8:00:28 GMT
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Post by partickpotter on May 9, 2022 8:09:41 GMT
A few cruise missiles hitting red square would be just wonderful! it would probably mean the end of Ukraine though Possibly. But, I’m beginning to think the only way Putin could defeat Ukraine is with unconventional arms - chemical or nuclear - which even he would be wary of deploying.
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Post by Northy on May 9, 2022 8:50:44 GMT
😂Doesn’t make the Russian Airforce look to be in good health. Could be a ploy where they are all heading to Ukraine instead ?
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Post by bayernoatcake on May 9, 2022 9:11:00 GMT
😂Doesn’t make the Russian Airforce look to be in good health. Could be a ploy where they are all heading to Ukraine instead ? Oh almost certainly but for a supposed mighty force it’s not really a good look that they can’t do both. Like Snake Island, where the hell is the Russian Airforce?
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Post by lawrieleslie on May 9, 2022 9:19:52 GMT
Some talk of parading Ukrainian prisoners. I won't sleep properly in my bed until Putin hangs. As much as I loathe this kind of stuff but surely there’s a terrorist type attack planned. The Indonesian G20 summit in Bali during November could be an ideal opportunity.
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Post by bayernoatcake on May 9, 2022 11:45:30 GMT
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Post by Northy on May 9, 2022 14:58:41 GMT
Could be a ploy where they are all heading to Ukraine instead ? Oh almost certainly but for a supposed mighty force it’s not really a good look that they can’t do both. Like Snake Island, where the hell is the Russian Airforce? waiting on a supply of duck tape
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Post by mtrstudent on May 9, 2022 15:39:25 GMT
Could be a ploy where they are all heading to Ukraine instead ? Oh almost certainly but for a supposed mighty force it’s not really a good look that they can’t do both. Like Snake Island, where the hell is the Russian Airforce? The European Sentinel satellite images are amazing. You can see contrails from sorties near Snake Island. The Russians say they shot down lots of Ukrainian things near there but they'll say anything. Apparently they wiped out Ukraine's airforce after three days lol.
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Post by mtrstudent on May 9, 2022 16:11:40 GMT
Wow so far victory day was a nothingburger.
Got to be good news? Putin didn't raise expectations or mobilise officially.
What do we think his plan is? Does he believe his military saying that Ukraine's army is about to collapse?
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Post by RichieBarkerOut! on May 9, 2022 17:46:01 GMT
If anyone is having John Bruning withdrawal symptoms, here are the thoughts of his friend, Jon Parshall.
Monday Morning: Ugh. But at least Putin didn't declare war on Ukraine, right? (Normal Disclaimer: just a WWII historian trying to make whatever sense he can regarding the Ukraine War, gleaned from publicly available information, including a lot of data from Tom Cooper, John R Bruning, Roy Cauldery, Jack W Greene, and others.) TL;DR Russia's Easter Offensive is failing so far, and no matter what happens, whatever they end up getting out of this thing ain't gonna be worth the cost, I don't think.
Okay, so back to the build-up to the May 9 Parade in Moscow, which had a lot of people (myself included) feeling distinctly twitchy about what Putin was going to say or do there. I was delighted to be greeted this morning with the anticlimactic news that his speech turned out to be basically more rehashed lies about the reasons underlying his launching a war of aggression, but nothing further in the way of Russian escalation.
I think this was smart on Putin's part. I mean, he may not be much of a military strategist, but he's a savvy politician playing to his domestic audience. And he realizes that keeping this thing branded as a "Special Military Operation" allows him to continue controlling the narrative (via his captive state media), thereby providing him flexibility downstream in defining what "Victory(tm)" might look like. As soon as he does something like a formal declaration of war, he loses control of that narrative, and becomes obligated to fight for more absolute goals, like the capture of all of Ukraine. And I think he realizes that even a fully mobilized Russia just doesn't have what it would take to do that anymore. One of his henchmen made the comment the other day that the Special Military Operation wouldn't end until Russian forces had reached the Polish border. That is, of course, just laughably unrealistic at this point. And declaring war wouldn't make it any more so. Sure, it would put a lot of reservists back into uniform. But it wouldn't do anything to improve Russia's logistical situation, nor the bankruptcy of their basic war plan.
To that end, let's take a look at the layer cake of this war, starting at the top:
Grand Strategy (i.e. how the war is affecting Russia's larger position within the world): Disaster, and getting disaster-er all the time. Russia is diplomatically isolated as never before. I mean, when was the last time Sweden and Switzerland picked sides in a war, fer cryin' out loud? Russia has created for itself conditions wherein the ranks of its enemies have been both re-invigorated and augmented. It soon may find two new NATO members (Finland and Sweden(!!!)) on it northern borders, at a time when its own military capacity is fading and stretched increasingly thin. The Russian economy is limping along somehow. And yeah, the ruble has rebounded. But as Perun has noted in his videos, the price of shoring up that particular Potemkin Village has been by placing so many restrictions on the free flow of capital, and the actual operations of the Russian stock market, that the entire thing is a laughable fiction. Capital flight and foreign de-investment aren't just abstractions here: they represent a looming catastrophe for both Russian employment and economic development. And if Putin makes good on his threat to seize those corporate assets, the post-war foreign re-investment situation will be even worse. Meanwhile a noticeable chunk of Russia's most valuable younger tech workers are exiting the country. This war has set back Russia's position in the world by a generation. It's a catastrophe.
Strategy (i.e. what are the political goals of the "Special Operation," and how are they faring in Ukraine): Again, disaster. The initial political object of the invasion was the total subjugation of Ukraine and wholesale regime change. But Plan A failed utterly and embarrassingly. Plan B has been to capture the Donbas outright and also destroy the bulk of Ukraine's forces in the eastern part of the country. That too has failed so far. And it doesn't honestly look to me as if the Russians have the strength to really achieve it, even in the short term. And even if they can, can they actually assimilate their ill-gotten gains against a Ukrainian insurgency? I chuckle politely.
Operations (i.e. how are individual units being maneuvered in such a way so as to fulfill the Strategy): I'm going to come back to this in a moment, as it is currently the most interesting portion of the conflict.
Tactics (i.e. how are units actually fighting on the battlefield): Not favorable for RFA. Tactics is the level where a lot of the ink (and pixels) regarding this conflict has been focused, for the very simple reason that it is the level most immediately available to us, in the form of battlefield pics, and Twitter videos, and so on. We're seeing a lot of images. But it's bloody hard to put them into any sort of meaningful larger context. We historians have a name for this phenomena, because we run into it a lot when interviewing WWII veterans for their combat recollections, or trying to parse battlefield memoirs. We call it "War Through a Soda Straw." In other words, even the brightest, savviest soldier can only comment on what they can physically see around them. And they typically have a very difficult time placing their actions in a larger operational (or even temporal) context. A lot of times, with a combat vet, they can't remember where or when an event actually happened. They can only remember the mental picture it painted (or seared) on them. Time in combat becomes almost non-linear. It elongates and compresses in the mind of the solider. It's really bizarre.
Anyway, keep that in mind every time you see a picture or a video posted of a Russian tank being blown up, or a drone looking at this or that. Cuz that's what you're getting: the soda straw effect. Now, don't get me wrong: it's amazing to have this many soda straws. We've **never** had a war like this before in terms of the sheer amount of unclassified raw data and imagery that's being dumped in our laps almost in real time. It's awesome. But interpreting what we're seeing within the larger operational context is still really difficult.
Broadly speaking, though, at the tactical level what we've seen is that the Ukrainians are just much more flexible and adaptable (so far) than their RFA counterparts. And also much more highly motivated. That said, though, it's important to remember that the Ukrainian forces themselves have suffered heavily, and a lot of their newer replacements (reservists and territorial defense units) are not necessarily all that well-trained. They're not the same as regulars. So, it's gonna be interesting to see whether that qualitative tactical edge vis-a-vis RFA holds up. I think it will (because UKR have sufficient cadre to pass along those tactical lessons *and* because NATO is helping train as well), but it's not a sure thing.
Back to Operations. The biggest successes for the Russians thus far have been on this level, in that they have successfully driven a land corridor all the way from Crimea eastward along the coast to Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, capturing Berdyansk and (mostly) Mariupol, and turning the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake. That's a pretty important operational achievement. The question is whether it will hold up, or whether it's even meaningful.
In my mind, I think what's going on right now at the operational level is that the Ukrainians are trying to weather the storm in the Donbas, while simultaneously counterattacking to push Russian artillery out of range of Kharkiv. The Russians, meanwhile, are trying to pinch off a couple of decent-sized pockets and crush the Ukrainians inside them. It feels pretty nip and tuck, honestly, and that impression is reinforced by the very tight-lipped commentary coming from the UKR defense briefings. Which, from an operational security standpoint makes sense. We all know, though, that their eastern forces are in a really tight spot. But assuming UKR can master that situation, at some point, they're going to want to turn their attention back south, I'd think, and maybe start thinking about counterattacking and recapturing either Kherson or Mariupol.
Classically speaking, what you want to see on the operational level is one side being able to develop a decisive breakthrough somewhere on the front, and then being able to move a substantial maneuver force into the rear of the enemy, i.e. "into the operational depths", and start creating a dynamic, fluid situation on the battlefield. That hasn't happened yet, for either side. I think for the Russians, 1) their Plan B operational conception was flawed, too, in that they still can't apparently figure out how to concentrate sufficient forces along any single axis and developing a breakthrough, and 2) now they don't have sufficient forces (particularly infantry) left to make it happen. In other words, the Easter Offensive has failed (thus far) to generate decisive results, and is likely to fail outright in the next few weeks as the Russian army runs out of men. What gains the Russians have made in the Donbas have come at horrible cost in terms of wrecked Russian battalion tactical groups.
But the Ukrainians haven't demonstrated a capacity to break through, either, I think because 1) they, too, are stretched very thin, 2) they don't have sufficient artillery, and 3) it's been damned hard since about 1941 to make a credible armored breakthrough on *any* modern battlefield, and then successfully **prosecute it** without also having air superiority. Which I just don't think UKR will ever have on this battlefield. Does that mean we get a stalemate outta this thing? Dunno, but at the moment it seems to be heading that way.
But then again, moving back up the layer cake, I just can't see that the achievement of a land corridor along the Sea of Azov is worth wrecking your entire army and screwing your domestic economy for a generation. Fascinatingly, this is the same kind of thinking you see happening for the Germans in 1942 as well: fixating on operational-level stuff as a substitute for having a credible national strategy and grand strategy. Germany's "strategy" in 1942 was basically, "Well, ummm, maybe if we can make **something** happen on the battlefield, it'll all work out in the end, somehow... despite the fact that 1) the Red Army hasn't been destroyed in the field last summer the way we thought, and 2) gee, the Americans are in the war now." For the Russians, the longer this thing drags on, the worse it gets. Even if they "achieve" an operational stalemate (which ain't all that great an achievement just to begin with in comparison to Plan A or even Plan B) and then manage to hold onto their Sea of Azov land corridor, those consolation prizes are hardly gonna be worth the price in blood and treasure they paid for them. It's idiocy. But at the end of the day, it's gonna be Vlad that decides when the war is over.
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Post by OldStokie on May 9, 2022 19:48:56 GMT
Good post RBO. I liken the "War Through a Soda Straw." scenario to that information gleaned in WW2 from resistance movements - they only give a narrow view of what's going on around them in the locality of where they are. That info was then collated back at HQ in the UK or US, where they tried to provide a bigger picture. But today, because of the satellite coverage, that info is much clearer. I say "HQ" as being in the UK and US because that's really where this war is being coordinated via satellite imagery and the 'Soda Straw' info. But NATO plans are difficult to carry out because the weakest link is the condition and ability of the UKR forces. Yes, they have the will, but war is never a game of playing soldiers, and the majority of the UKR forces in terms of experience are little different than the conscription squaddies in the Russian forces. Some things are difficult for me to get my head around. I know that Russia has struck in the west of Ukraine with cruise missiles, but they seem either not to be able to do it because of bad planning or because they lack the equipment to do so, and that is decimating the supply lines from west to east to break the supply chain of ammunition and heavy armament. And considering they have air superiority, I would have thought they could have done that easily by destroying roads and bridges and rail links leading from west to east. So, have Nato's supply of air defence missiles supplied to Ukraine made it too dangerous for Russia to overfly too much of Ukraine? One thing I did notice today from Putin's speech was that he specifically mentioned the Donbas region as 'A' goal. So maybe he's decided if he can take those areas then that will be his 'victory'. It won't be, of course. NATO will not stop supplying Ukraine with heavy and sophisticated weaponry so that the Donbas, and maybe even Crimea, will be subject to continuous fighting for many years to come, not only to help Ukraine out, but also to wear down the Russian army and navy to the point where the Donbas and Crimea will become a rope around their necks. So, if I was a NATO general, my overall aim at the moment would be to drive Russian forces to the north-east back to the Russian borders, and also drive them from the Odessa region back into the Donbas and Crimea. Once they'd done that, international shipping could export grain etc. through the Black Sea with NATO escorts. And we must never forget that Turkey can play a large part in this. They control the Bosphorus Strait and can dictate who goes through it. This is just a short version of my plans. I haven't even started on how I would drive the Russian navy away from Crimea and back into the Sea of Azov. OS.
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Post by RichieBarkerOut! on May 10, 2022 13:07:23 GMT
Yesterday in Poland.
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