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Charlotte Hornets posted:The lacklustre military support and invisible red lines (e.g the same Belgorod can't be meaningfully touched) Ukraine doesn't *want* to hit Belford. It would be a strategic blunder.
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Nov 28, 2022 18:57
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HonorableTB posted:I was extremely confused about the "New York" part of your post until I scoured a map and saw, sure enough, there is a Ukrainian New York :o One thing I can tell you I learned this year on Bumble is that there’s a place called “Ukraina” in northern Latvia, which tends to get regular visitors in what the app calls travel mode.
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Nov 28, 2022 18:58
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HonorableTB posted:
Exactly, they have no obligations. So let's just provide enough not to die but also not enough to live. So everything is half assed hence Ukraine won't get any leverage through the battlefield to avoid an inevitable poo poo deal.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:16
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Charlotte Hornets posted:Exactly, they have no obligations. So let's just provide enough not to die but also not enough to live. So everything is half assed hence Ukraine won't get any leverage through the battlefield to avoid an inevitable poo poo deal. Saying Ukraine won't have any battlefield leverage is an odd thing to say coming off the heels of two very successful offensives that liberated Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts, including the city of Kherson itself. I would say that is a great deal more help than "enough not to die"
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Nov 28, 2022 19:22
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Charlotte Hornets posted:Exactly, they have no obligations. So let's just provide enough not to die but also not enough to live. So everything is half assed hence Ukraine won't get any leverage through the battlefield to avoid an inevitable poo poo deal. How do you characterize Ukraine's recent performance? I feel like NATO military campaigns against lesser opponents have really skewed people's perceptions about how successful wars go.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:22
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It seems difficult for people in the age of social media and fresh daily drama to keep an entire arc in their minds at once. Ukraine has waged a wildly successful defensive war and executed some incredible counter offensives, but today there are rumors of a single regionally-important town possibly being taken back and all of a sudden we're forcing Ukraine to surrender because "they're doing so bad" or whatever. Tiresome.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:30
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mutata posted:It seems difficult for people in the age of social media and fresh daily drama to keep an entire arc in their minds at once. Ukraine has waged a wildly successful defensive war and executed some incredible counter offensives, but today there are rumors of a single regionally-important town possibly being taken back and all of a sudden we're forcing Ukraine to surrender because "they're doing so bad" or whatever. Tiresome. This is the same regional town that Russia has claimed to have captured twice a week since June?
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Nov 28, 2022 19:32
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mutata posted:It seems difficult for people in the age of social media and fresh daily drama to keep an entire arc in their minds at once. Ukraine has waged a wildly successful defensive war and executed some incredible counter offensives, but today there are rumors of a single regionally-important town possibly being taken back and all of a sudden we're forcing Ukraine to surrender because "they're doing so bad" or whatever. Tiresome. No poo poo. This is such a bizarre time for pro Ukraine folks to be  doomers.Like it would be great to give Ukraine 1,000 M1A2 SEPv3 tanks or whatever, but the idea that NATO secretly wants Ukraine to stalemate as part of some 12D international relations chess they're playing is real dumb.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:34
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:How do you characterize Ukraine's recent performance? Ukraine is fighting as good as possible within their means. But people expect them to do everything possible and impossible. If you legit think they have the means to cross the Dnepr and a certain isthmus to claim back Crimea. Or somehow regain back the Donetsk-Makiivka-Alchevsk-Luhansk continuous agglomeration. Or go take back Melitopol area which the Russians have spent 9 months digging trenches and putting up barriers and minefields. They have barely enough to defend yet people seems to have illusions about Russians dying en masse through hypothermia, crooked Msta-S barrels and rusty AKMs. Like people have this idea that those drone drop videos or some whining mobiks will pave the way to victory or something whilst some Ukrainians are daily eating 120 mm mortar rounds in some cold wet isolated forward trench somewhere near Avdiivka.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:36
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If russia actually captures Bakhmut i wonder what the russian dead per meter will work out at? If Putin want's to sacrifice the next two generations of his own country's population for temporary possession of land then he's a bigger fool than me.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
Comparing Shahed 136s to B-17s in this way seems entirely inappropriate since the russians are obviously not planning to carpet bomb Ukraine with Shaheds like its dresden or tokyo, they're knocking out critical infrastructure (or threatening to do so in a way that requires Ukraine invest substantial resources to stop the attacks). Either way, knocking out Ukraine's infrastructure is unlikely to improve Russia's fortunes.
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Nov 28, 2022 19:51
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mutata posted:It seems difficult for people in the age of social media and fresh daily drama to keep an entire arc in their minds at once. Ukraine has waged a wildly successful defensive war and executed some incredible counter offensives, but today there are rumors of a single regionally-important town possibly being taken back and all of a sudden we're forcing Ukraine to surrender because "they're doing so bad" or whatever. Tiresome. Yeah, I feel like we returned to pre-Kharkiv days. It should be a disclaimer that a return to relatively static attrition based warfare where positions are ceded and taken in inches is not a symptom of victory or defeat. War is dynamic and situations change is all. I don't think any real decision makers have any illusion that the war is a done deal.
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Nov 28, 2022 20:24
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Charlotte Hornets posted:They have barely enough to defend I honestly think you really need to back up some of your claims here. In recent months, Ukraine has on balance been on the offensive. Your claim that they don't have the manpower to defend. How are both of these things possible?
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Nov 28, 2022 20:41
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OctaMurk posted:Comparing Shahed 136s to B-17s in this way seems entirely inappropriate since the russians are obviously not planning to carpet bomb Ukraine with Shaheds like its dresden or tokyo, they're knocking out critical infrastructure (or threatening to do so in a way that requires Ukraine invest substantial resources to stop the attacks). Either way, knocking out Ukraine's infrastructure is unlikely to improve Russia's fortunes. Eh, quantity has a quality all its own -- even if Shaheds are ninety times more "efficient" than carpet bombing with dumb munitions, that means each shahed is only as effective as one planeload of bombs from one run of a b-17. I mean, fair point that the comparison needs footnoting but I don't think the comparison is inappropriate given the scale of the difference. The firebombing of Dresden killed an estimated 25,000 people in one single incident. Russia has killed what, about 5k Ukrainian civilians in the course of this war? There's no reason to think that air attacks on civilians or civilian infrastructure are going to make any difference in this war. They haven't ever before.
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Nov 28, 2022 20:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Russia has killed what, about 5k Ukrainian civilians in the course of this war?  OHCHR estimate is approaching 7k dead and 11k wounded with their own explicit warning that the real numbers “could be higher”. In addition to what could very well be tens of thousands of dead civilians in Mariupol’, literally millions have been displaced.
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Nov 28, 2022 21:10
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cinci zoo sniper posted:
Sorry, I was literally just pulling that number from the first google result. For purposes of this argument the exact number of dead may not matter that much though. Even if the real number is tens of thousands, we've seen prior wars where tens of thousands of civilians were killed in air bombing, and it did diddlysquat to end the war; if anything it made defensive resolve stronger. There's no historical evidence at all to indicate that the Russian terror bombing campaign will actually achieve any strategic goal for Russia; rather the historical evidence is that all it's going to do is make Ukraine even angrier.
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Nov 28, 2022 21:15
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That I agree with. I think Charlotte had valid points about the material support and overall military situation being in a precarious places, where they are mostly managing to balance it - when the goal is to throw Russia’s armies out - but as far as the national consciousness has been concerned, they’re expectedly just becoming more resolved and spirited to keep standing up for themselves.
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Nov 28, 2022 21:20
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Just Another Lurker posted:If russia actually captures Bakhmut i wonder what the russian dead per meter will work out at? Thats exactly the the discussion I saw on RU twitter a few minutes ago. The OP was wondering if Putin is sacrificing the Wagner group but the general opinion is (and I agree) that its the convicts and recently mobilized human waves while preserving the Wagner core. Mobilized casualties don't matter IMO. Putin had reached a state of solipsism when its "well, I've seen it all, death is soon anyway why not Marshal Zhukov this whole thing to conclusion, russians don't seem to mind."
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Nov 28, 2022 23:06
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The worst thing seems to be that russians indeed don't mind. Such as communities and families coming together to buy "humanitarian" aid for their soldiers which is literally food and basic necessities. And volunteers who do bring that stuff to them while avoiding higher command and logistics hubs who just hoard, steal and mismanage it all. Recent set of interviews I read quoted a tank mechanic who said they spend their salaries on spare parts and even manuals because "the army has no money to spare" and it felt like "meh, it sucks but what can you do".
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Nov 28, 2022 23:14
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Disorganized citizens facing brutal repression at the whiff of resistance can't effectively resist, and its not really fair to blame them. There's been a lot of attempts to get it started, but Russia is pretty good at immediately dragging everyone away to prison and/or sending them off to Ukraine to die. If Russia had stood back and let people organize and discuss their grievance and protest, I'm sure the whole country would have blown up by now. In this sort of situation where you have a repressive regime, you kinda need the military to revolt, and Putin is several steps ahead of everyone on preventing that from ever happening as well with his own fanatical praetorian guards keeping officers in line, causing Generals to disappear when they get too popular, etc.
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Nov 29, 2022 00:20
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Charlotte Hornets posted:But losing Bakhmut will mean the Siversk-Solder-Bakhmut will collapse This seems doubtful. At the glacial pace of advance, if they withdraw from Bakhmut it'd be to lines a few kilometers further back. Siversk is 30 km away and in the opposite direction as the main russian forces. It'd take literally years at this rate to reach there. Charlotte Hornets posted:Situation is not good by any means. I have the opposite view. The Russians are exhausting what remains of their professional forces and modern equipment on strategically unimportant objectives that they lack the means to achieve.
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Nov 29, 2022 02:13
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Charlotte Hornets posted:It's obvious that Russia has scaled back its ambitions e.g trying to encircle Slovyansk and Kramatorsk already failed in May. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I honestly think you really need to back up some of your claims here. In recent months, Ukraine has on balance been on the offensive. Your claim that they don't have the manpower to defend. How are both of these things possible? Without access to classified materials, no one (including Twitter OSINT) can make a useful assessment of who is winning or who is more likely to retain an edge in the coming months. All outsiders can do is observe what has happened before and come up with a plausible scenario that fits the facts and behavior we have seen so far. Over the past 10 months with what we have witnessed the most likely assessment that can be made is that both the Ukrainians and the Russians are no longer capable of major offensive activities on the level that would either see the sudden liberation of Ukrainian territory or their sudden collapse. The logical reasoning for this is simple. If the Ukrainians were legitimately on the ropes manpower-wise, would they have risked significant portions of their regular troops in a major counterattack to clear Kharkiv up to the Russian border? This move actually increased the frontage they needed to hold. Would a Ukrainian army that was facing a legitimate manpower crunch also launch sustained offensive pressure in Kherson when they had the option of continuing the status quo of pinning down Russia's best troops in Kherson in a state where they were under-supplied and were not a major offensive threat? Similarly, there are zero reasons to be alarmed about minor gains by the Russians here and there on the Donbas. If the Russians did have the forces in the numbers needed seriously reverse Ukranian fortunes, then we would have seen it deployed already and Kharkiv never would have happened. Local successes happen all the time. Just in October, everyone in the thread was breathlessly waiting for the total collapse of the Russian army after Kharkiv and were licking their chops at every minor village being liberated on the far bank of the Siverskyi river when in reality, it was the last gasp of the Ukrainian attack as the Russians firmed up their positions. The setbacks listed could easily have been a local overmatch forcing the defenders to move out. I think short of Putin getting removed from power and the war ending, the current situation is as good as the Ukrainians could have hoped for. Significant portions of the country have been liberated. Kyiv and Ukrainian sovereignty is safe, and the Russians are actively on a defensive posture or taking defensive measures on significant portions of the front with no prospect of any major offensive action. If you offered them on the 1st of March that at the end of November these would be the front lines, I think they would have taken that without thinking twice. By the same token, there is no reason for over-exuberance on behalf of the Ukrainians. Every day this war drags on they lose more citizens that are in their economic and reproductive prime and the Ukrainian demographics weren't exactly healthy, to begin with. Their continued ability to wage war is almost entirely contingent on continued Western support and while that support still appears to be still quite solid, there is no way you prolong this war or slow roll your ability to liberate as much of your country as possible before your backers potentially get sick of the bill that you are wracking up on their credit cards. And it is clear they aren't exactly blitzing to clear back to the 2022 borders. Indeed we know they tried as they sustained attacks on Russian forces in the Izyum sector well past the days when the easy gains were being won and they couldn't crack the Russians. Same thing in Kherson when twice, they appeared to make hard pushes to force a breakthrough only to fail and have to resort back to the slow squeeze before the Russians decided to get smart and abandon the right bank. So while the Ukrainians aren't exactly in danger of collapsing, it appears they have spent the majority of their bullets for now. This is all that one can reasonably say given public information. Maybe the Ukrainians or Russians are secretly building a new reserve for a big attack come the spring or even in winter if the weather allows for it. But I sincerely doubt any of us ITT have information on the existence of such an effort or would have access to such info even if it was true. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Nov 29, 2022 02:28
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https://twitter.com/MT_Anderson/status/1597358834208473089 It's kind of mind boggling that preparations for a massive bombing campaign are visible to the public like this. There's nothing really Ukraine to do to prevent it either. It's also interesting to see Russia finally making gains around Bakhmut after beating their heads into the wall for weeks. They've paid heavily for it. Bashez fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 04:04
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saratoga posted:This seems doubtful. At the glacial pace of advance, if they withdraw from Bakhmut it'd be to lines a few kilometers further back. Siversk is 30 km away and in the opposite direction as the main russian forces. It'd take literally years at this rate to reach there. A lot has been written about Bakhmut being strategically meaningless like this: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/25/2138399/-Ukraine-update-Let-s-take-stock-of-the-current-front-lines Basically, what I've been seeing is that Kramatorsk and Slovyansk are the important cities in that area and taking Bakhmut wouldn't help with taking those a whole bunch. I'm no military expert, but I wouldn't count on any tides changing for the Russians in that area until those cities are under threat.
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Nov 29, 2022 04:07
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Bashez posted:It's also interesting to see Russia finally making gains around Bakhmut after beating their heads into the wall for weeks. They've paid heavily for it. Based on Telegram posts of mobiks saying they were getting shipped out of Kherson en masse to Bakhmut front or to the Donetsk area, the most likely scenario is that Russia is confident Ukraine does not have the force available to threaten the front near Kherson for a few more months. They think the defensive positions they have there now are good enough for the winter. So they're redirecting all available cannon fodder power to Bakhmut so that they can get any sort of "win" to change the propaganda narrative back home. I fully expect Russia to take it for propaganda purposes to buy themselves some good press at home and then promptly lose it again in the Spring. The reason I don't see Ukraine being able to advance in the near future is the recently published numbers of 20K shells per day fired by Russia, and only 7K per day fired by Ukraine. The artillery resupply from Europe is not looking that great for what is basically artillery + trench warfare right now. Russia is still digging up shells somewhere or has enough production capacity to maintain an infinite supply at the current ~20K per day levels. Rad Russian fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 04:47
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Rad Russian posted:Based on Telegram posts of mobiks saying they were getting shipped out of Kherson en masse to Bakhmut front or to the Donetsk area, the most likely scenario is that Russia is confident Ukraine does not have the force available to threaten the front near Kherson for a few more months. They think the defensive positions they have there now are good enough for the winter. So they're redirecting all available power to Bakhmut so that they can get any sort of "win" to change the propaganda narrative back home. I fully expect Russia to take it for propaganda purposes to buy themselves some good press at home and then promptly lose it again in the Spring. The thing about the Kherson area is that any Ukrainian advance will not come over the river, except for small raids to attrit the Russians and demoralize the troops holding the river line. The Ukrainians have extensive territory on the left bank of the Dnipro in Zaporizhia, so any assault on the Russian left-bank regions will hook south then southwest. There are no natural barriers in the way of an offensive coming from that direction. We'll see what happens when the ground freezes and mobility is restored. I think the Ukrainians will reinforce the Bakhmut area some, but the mobile spearhead is going to wipe out the Russian gains in the South just as soon as they can get reorganized.
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Nov 29, 2022 04:56
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Rad Russian posted:The reason I don't see Ukraine being able to advance in the near future is the recently published numbers of 20K shells per day fired by Russia, and only 7K per day fired by Ukraine. Russians are on the offense trying to reduce Ukrainian fortifications before assaulting them so they should be firing many times more shells. Expecting parity wouldn't make sense, the defenders won't fire much until the troops start advancing and it'll take a lot less ammo to kill people out in the open.
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Nov 29, 2022 05:02
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Rad Russian posted:Russia is still digging up shells somewhere or has enough production capacity to maintain an infinite supply at the current ~20K per day levels. They're getting them from North Korea, apparently.
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Nov 29, 2022 05:03
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saratoga posted:Russians are on the offense trying to reduce Ukrainian fortifications before assaulting them so they should be firing many times more shells. Expecting parity wouldn't make sense, the defenders won't fire much until the troops start advancing and it'll take a lot less ammo to kill people out in the open. Probably right. Just wondering because these numbers do align with alarm bells coming from the US govt that Ukraine is rapidly running out of shells and missiles. Or maybe Ukraine is simply hoarding them for a future offensive.
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Nov 29, 2022 05:09
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Rad Russian posted:Probably right. Just wondering because these numbers do align with alarm bells coming from the US govt that Ukraine is rapidly running out of shells and missiles. Or maybe Ukraine is simply hoarding them for a future offensive. the only alarm bells whatsoever are wrt 155 and you should go reread the wording of that because it most definitely is not 'rapidly running out of'
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Nov 29, 2022 05:17
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Rad Russian posted:Probably right. Just wondering because these numbers do align with alarm bells coming from the US govt that Ukraine is rapidly running out of shells and missiles. Or maybe Ukraine is simply hoarding them for a future offensive. I believe that ratio is actually much more favorable to Ukraine than it was last summer. Russia was firing as many as 50,000 per day.
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Nov 29, 2022 05:22
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Ynglaur posted:They're getting them from North Korea, apparently. Gonna be a "in soviet russia, YOU default on NORTH KOREA" reversal of fortune going on
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Nov 29, 2022 05:30
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https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/1597229055132463104
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Nov 29, 2022 06:10
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Focusing the blame on the Muslim and Buddhist(?) minorities is an extra-bad look there....
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Nov 29, 2022 06:14
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He's clearly not a wartime consigliere. And are the Tu's getting bomb-bombs? Like, actual large dropped munitions? Or is it just more from the kalibr and converted nuclear cruise missile stockpile?
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Nov 29, 2022 06:18
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OddObserver posted:Focusing the blame on the Muslim and Buddhist(?) minorities is an extra-bad look there.... I kinda read the Pope's statements before this as principled pacifism. Ie war is simply evil and no good can come from it, even for the defending side. Perhaps not really revelvent, but also in line with a lot of Christian thought. This just confirms he simply likes Russia tho, lol
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Nov 29, 2022 06:19
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Rad Russian posted:Based on Telegram posts of mobiks saying they were getting shipped out of Kherson en masse to Bakhmut front or to the Donetsk area, the most likely scenario is that Russia is confident Ukraine does not have the force available to threaten the front near Kherson for a few more months. They think the defensive positions they have there now are good enough for the winter. So they're redirecting all available cannon fodder power to Bakhmut so that they can get any sort of "win" to change the propaganda narrative back home. I fully expect Russia to take it for propaganda purposes to buy themselves some good press at home and then promptly lose it again in the Spring. 20k versus 7k per day is closer to parity than it used to be. I don't think Ukraine was ever close to matching Russia's tube artillery volume during their offensive and I doubt they will be at any point in this war.
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Nov 29, 2022 07:33
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OAquinas posted:He's clearly not a wartime consigliere. This is what I'm wondering too. My guess would be they are getting loaded with cruise missiles. I still don't think Russia can realistically fly heavy bombers directly over most of Ukraine because they still have plenty of AA missiles that can take them down.
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Nov 29, 2022 07:36
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OAquinas posted:He's clearly not a wartime consigliere. Nah, no dumb dombs. Far too risky, trying to fly a big, noisy bomber over Ukraine. The TU-95 has multiple subvariants adapted to fire different stand-off munitions and the TU-160 was designed with just that it mind.
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Nov 29, 2022 07:41
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The strategic bombers are being used purely to launch missiles at long range, yeah.
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Nov 29, 2022 07:44
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