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Icon Of Sin posted:There’s also gotta be some propaganda value in shutting down the Russian offensive, in which Bakhmut seems to be their objective/main effort. Even now they’ve successfully blunted that main effort, and made the Russians pay absolutely dearly for every meter of ground they’ve taken. The main effort, tbh, looked like Vuhledar, the second effort being Oskil river, and this being like the 3rd most important effort of 5-6 prongs in the offensive. Every other effort is just doing worse than Bakhmut so far.
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Mar 3, 2023 13:59
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Deltasquid posted:I'm starting to wonder if the Ukrainians are ever going to pull back from Bakhmut. I'm no longer convinced they will. Assuming that Bakhmut's main strategic relevance is indeed its ability to tie up Russian troops who cannot be deployed elsewhere, the intention might be to willingly turn it into a second Mariupol that buys time for the Ukrainian counteroffensives later this year (probably elsewhere in the country, but perhaps even a counteroffensive to liberate or envelop Bakhmut before the Russians can properly dig in?) instead of pulling back.
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Mar 3, 2023 14:17
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mobby_6kl posted:They said they'll reinforce it for strategic reasons. Whether that's true or just cover to help with the retreat is another question though. The situation looks pretty sketchy. Thankfully, Russia is again attacking right into the mud season, with every next day getting worse until like April, so the positional warfare around the town is guaranteed to slow down.
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Mar 3, 2023 14:19
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I don't think they would be keen on losing hundreds or thousands of troops in the town. That's what I thought as well, but the city's supply lines appear to be hanging by a thread and mobby_6kl posted:They said they'll reinforce it for strategic reasons. Whether that's true or just cover to help with the retreat is another question though. The situation looks pretty sketchy.
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Mar 3, 2023 14:32
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Taking a brief break from Bakhmut, Novaya Gazeta has done an in-depth analysis of pro-Russian voting patterns in the European Parliament. This might be a bit dry if you're not following EU politics proper, but I found it interesting to see someone finally do the maths on all the usual suspects. https://euobserver.com/world/156762
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Mar 3, 2023 14:43
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Deltasquid posted:That's what I thought as well, but the city's supply lines appear to be hanging by a thread and Public statements about troop movements are not necessarily true.
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Mar 3, 2023 14:45
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Salary in the Ukrainian army. They made some changes effective since February this year.  First picture is base pay depending on your position and organization (Army, Assault Forces & Marines, Special Operations) Second picture shows the bonus payments - 0 if not deployed, 30k if deployed, 100k if on the frontline. Death compensation to relatives is 15 000 000.
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Mar 3, 2023 14:45
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Deltasquid posted:I'm starting to wonder if the Ukrainians are ever going to pull back from Bakhmut. I'm no longer convinced they will. Assuming that Bakhmut's main strategic relevance is indeed its ability to tie up Russian troops who cannot be deployed elsewhere, the intention might be to willingly turn it into a second Mariupol that buys time for the Ukrainian counteroffensives later this year (probably elsewhere in the country, but perhaps even a counteroffensive to liberate or envelop Bakhmut before the Russians can properly dig in?) instead of pulling back. I have been wondering about this as well--the insistence on holding it at such a precious cost makes a lot more sense if they want to Russia to stay fully committed for a few more weeks in preparation for the counteroffensive.
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Mar 3, 2023 15:43
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Buddy, when people are actually shooting at you things are a little different from playing Combat Mission. Things that appear to be “just common sense” can be very difficult to do even if you correctly diagnose the situation, which is also difficult. Yes, and...it's a battle drill. It's something a well-trained platoon practices constantly. Absolutely poo poo goes south in a hurry when rounds start to fly, but Russian tactical formations constantly display an absolutely amateur level of tactical competence. Operationally, too, Vuhledar was amateur hour. No evidence of the use of smoke, no use of breaching assets. They don't even attack at night or in low visibility. Contrary to popular wisdom, attacking tanks don't love wide open terrain. Defenders want clear skies, wide open terrain, and great visibility. Attackers want horrible weather, no visibility, and a nice piece of low ground to advance through. All that said, there is likely a substantial amount of selection bias in our sources. We don't get a lot of video of nighttime operations not because neither side has nightvision, but because the assets used to publish videos often aren't equipped with good low-light cameras or thermal cameras. Russia losing so many junior officers and then doubling down by sending all of the trainers to the front and losing them means they have an absolute dearth of capable junior leaders right now, and it shows. They also lost a lot of battalion-level staff officers last summer, from staffs which were already a bit small. That, too, is showing.
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Mar 3, 2023 15:46
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 Jet gets shot down, at a distance. https://censor.net/ru/news/3403464/nad_okkupirovannym_enakievo_sbit_rossiyiskiyi_samolet_su34_videoThis is an interesting video. I've not seen a geo for it yet, but allegedly this is a Russian Su-34 in the skies of Yenakijeve, which is at least 20 km behind the frontline. I wonder what got it, if this checks out.
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Mar 3, 2023 15:49
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Freudian slippers posted:Sooo... the men in those tanks got themselves killed on purpose because they were convinced by their superiors to let the invasion fail? No. They got themselves killed because their operational concept sucked from the start, and then when they made contact they didn't do anything to put the odds in their favor. cinci zoo sniper posted:Thankfully, Russia is again attacking right into the mud season, with every next day getting worse until like April, so the positional warfare around the town is guaranteed to slow down. Yeah, it is definitely looking like the timing of the Russian offensive was driven by needless haste. It makes me wonder if we don't fully understand the constraints the Russian army is working under. I think we have a good idea of Russia's minimal and maximal political goals, but either one of them doesn't require haste on the order of weeks. They took enough time to fill in the personnel rosters, but not enough to actually train together. Symptomatically it reminds me of senior leaders in commercial businesses who assume humans are cogs in a machine and they can just e.g. swap out entire internal teams to outsourced teams with no disruption to their business.
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Mar 3, 2023 15:55
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Ynglaur posted:Yes, and...it's a battle drill. It's something a well-trained platoon practices constantly. Absolutely poo poo goes south in a hurry when rounds start to fly, but Russian tactical formations constantly display an absolutely amateur level of tactical competence. Echoing the battle drill part. React to ambush (near or far) in particular is something we (US army) trained on a fair bit. You don’t stay alive by staying in the killbox, you stay alive by getting out of it via assault or withdrawal (the opening blows are typically meant to remove withdrawal as an option). I know it sounds hideously aggressive and kind of counter-intuitive, but assaulting out of it is usually your absolute best option.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:00
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bandaid.friend posted:https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-03/adelaide-anti-vaccination-protest-used-for-russian-propaganda/102040148 That's my city! They're all as cooked as each other! Fortunately I don't think we have even an anti-vaccer in state parliament here, let alone someone on the Russian payroll. It'll be forgotten by tomorrow morning.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:06
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Ynglaur posted:Yeah, it is definitely looking like the timing of the Russian offensive was driven by needless haste. It makes me wonder if we don't fully understand the constraints the Russian army is working under. I think we have a good idea of Russia's minimal and maximal political goals, but either one of them doesn't require haste on the order of weeks. They took enough time to fill in the personnel rosters, but not enough to actually train together. Symptomatically it reminds me of senior leaders in commercial businesses who assume humans are cogs in a machine and they can just e.g. swap out entire internal teams to outsourced teams with no disruption to their business. I think part of it is doctrinal – Gerasimov is the guy who gets credited most often with authoring the crowd pleaser fuelless megacolumn stuck in a bog, and with his rear end being put on the line we see a return to aggro offensive operations and an apparent re-prioritization of information warfare efforts (cf. Gerasimov doctrine, but don't read it too seriously). Another part of it is political – Putin undoubtedly had an expectation of a result to report back to for the 1-year anniversary, since having various rituals and ceremonies associated with anniversaries and other “round” dates and numbers is customary here. That said, there must be quite a bit of simply practical stuff – training levels, equipment levels, quality of the officer corps, and so on. It's just that it's difficult to divorce these practicalities from the de facto reality of the appetite not matching the capability. Under Surovikin, their army didn't make any conquests, but it did seemingly held it poo poo together even before the manpower infusion. But then again, another way to explain that would be just “Russian army can't do a manoeuvre even if the other option is Somme where you replace mustard gas with mud pools”. Who the gently caress knows, besides that there are going to be some interesting milhistory books in the future.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:07
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Icon Of Sin posted:Echoing the battle drill part. React to ambush (near or far) in particular is something we (US army) trained on a fair bit. You don’t stay alive by staying in the killbox, you stay alive by getting out of it via assault or withdrawal (the opening blows are typically meant to remove withdrawal as an option). Especially if you can't turn around because, like the article on the battle of Vuhledar says, you've just happily trundled your column into a massive minefield. Pulling another couple quotes from that Politico oral history: quote:GEN. MARK MILLEY: In the Russian system, it’s very top down — centralized command and control. The Ukrainians were brought up under the Soviet system, so they had the same system — top down — but in 2014, we go in there and start training them after the invasion of Crimea. The western method — what America calls mission command — essentially says that you authorize and delegate authority to conduct military activity or operations to the lowest level at which it can be successfully executed. You empower junior officers and junior noncommissioned officers to execute tactical operations. A battlefield is a very dynamic thing, and they’re going to respond to the exigencies of a battlefield at the time. You need to empower them to make the right decisions. It makes for a very decentralized method of command that is very effective in combat because warfare is a very dynamic environment filled with chaos, confusion and fear.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:08
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Aren't the Russian attacks for the winter season sort of winding up? I can see them trying to pinch off Bakhmut enough that the same impact that applied to Russia in Kherson will apply to Ukraine trying resupply over tenuous communication lines. But otherwise, maybe this is it until the ground firms up. E) and also, I see a lot of chat about the one year anniversary of the conflict starting as obviously having impact on operational planning, but is that really the norm for conflict? That one side or the other puts on big show/offensive every anniversary of the balloon going up? Electric Wrigglies fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 16:16
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Aren't the Russian attacks for the winter season sort of winding up? I can see them trying to pinch off Bakhmut enough that the same impact that applied to Russia will apply to Ukraine trying resupply over tenuous communication lines. But otherwise, maybe this is it until the ground firms up. Nah, they were winding up January, and Bakhmut is the only meaningful movement all of that has produced. Now, we don’t have information on whether if Russian soldiers in Bakhmut are fighting on the last fart, or if every BTG gets rotated every couple of days, so in that sense they may very well be ramping in Bakhmut specifically, but for the rest of the frontline there are no public expectations that they’re about to slam into something.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:20
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Electric Wrigglies posted:E) and also, I see a lot of chat about the one year anniversary of the conflict starting as obviously having impact on operational planning, but is that really the norm for conflict? That one side or the other puts on big show/offensive every anniversary of the balloon going up? It’s not a matter of war planning, it’s a matter of common sense of Putin having to go back to his people and say that he’s done gently caress all in a year. His year of review speech had him literally ramble about treating the small rivers of Russia fairly.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:22
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Under Surovikin, their army didn't make any conquests, but it did seemingly held it poo poo together even before the manpower infusion. But then again, another way to explain that would be just “Russian army can't do a manoeuvre even if the other option is Somme where you replace mustard gas with mud pools”. Who the gently caress knows, besides that there are going to be some interesting milhistory books in the future. Surovikin is a competent operational commander. He pulled off a multi-division withdrawal under fire across the Dnieper. Had he been left in command I suspect the Russian offensive would have begun after the mud season, and to greater effect. I'm very glad he was removed from command. I'll reiterate a previously-stated prediction with more color: I think the current Russian commanders are getting played by Bakhmut. Ukraine is fixing their attention there along with massive numbers of potential infantry reserves. Whenever and wherever the Ukrainian offensive is, the Russian forces there will be far shorter on infantry support than they'd like.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:33
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Could just be the military dirt roads that are open. Christopher alluded to those in an earlier tweet. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1631671464037429248?s=20 I saw some unconfirmed chatter that the SU-34 takedown was possibly friendly fire. Suppose both can still be technically true. https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1631678761933451265?s=20
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Mar 3, 2023 16:35
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Shes Not Impressed posted:Could just be the military dirt roads that are open. Christopher alluded to those in an earlier tweet. CNN piece I linked confirmed that, as I noted in the post, receiving information from the same sources who told them about the blast.
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Mar 3, 2023 16:52
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The independent Russian news outlet Verstka contacted relatives of the boy who was allegedly shot by RVC in Bryansk oblast'. His uncle confirmed that the boy was injured, he learned about this from the boy's mother. Apparently the boy's family is originally from Tajikistan. E: phpbb screws up links with Cyrillics https://bit.ly/3mp8k0f Bryansk governor published a photo where he visits the boy at the hospital.  FSB also published a video that shows the car allegedly attacked by the pro-Ukraine soldiers, and some mines left by them. (video edited by Kommersant, there were visible dead bodies with blurred faces in the original) https://t.me/kommersant/48061 Paladinus fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 17:05
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cinci zoo sniper posted:CNN piece I linked confirmed that, as I noted in the post, receiving information from the same sources who told them about the blast. Since the only CNN on this page for me was censor.net, here's the link Cinci is referring to on page 235 of the thread: https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-3-23/h_2194d84ca2808eaf0836eece6e2bdf85
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Mar 3, 2023 17:37
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MT-LB continues being a very flexible platform: https://mobile.twitter.com/oryxspioenkop/status/1631676199394062342 (Not sure how well it will corner with THAT, though).
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Mar 3, 2023 17:43
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MT-LB is an amphibious transport, so that makes it a gunboat. or more likely a submarine with that thing
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Mar 3, 2023 17:48
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Wagner chief calls on Zelenskiy to abandon ‘encircled’ Bakhmut Zelenskiy: To the Russian Commander: NUTS! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 3, 2023 17:53
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Ynglaur posted:They don't even attack at night or in low visibility. I think this is a shrewd choice by them, actually. Simply because at this point I expect that Ukrainian forces in such a key place like Vuhledar absolutely own the night. lovely commercial hunting thermals are much better than what the typical Russian forces have available, and they are all getting shipped to Ukraine right now. Come nightfall, Russians don't want to be moving, they want to be huddled in a hole.
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Mar 3, 2023 18:19
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This is interesting. Polls give you one window into a country's public opinion, but an audience of self-selecting foreign policy/security wonks all reacting in one way does reveal in another way what a country thinks https://twitter.com/k_sonin/status/1631681166808940544 e: that's not to say that India wont' continue to be motivated by what India has judged to be its geopolitical interests, but there's also clearly absolutely no time for Lavrov's nonsense.
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Mar 3, 2023 18:25
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Tuna-Fish posted:I think this is a shrewd choice by them, actually. Simply because at this point I expect that Ukrainian forces in such a key place like Vuhledar absolutely own the night. lovely commercial hunting thermals are much better than what the typical Russian forces have available, and they are all getting shipped to Ukraine right now. Come nightfall, Russians don't want to be moving, they want to be huddled in a hole. That's a fair point. Soviet optics in vehicles had night vision--that is, light amplification--but not thermals. It's a significant difference, because thermal sights can see further and can see a fair amount through many forms of visible-light obscurants such as fog, smoke, and dust (that last, to a degree - density matters). It's also much easier to pick out bright thermals in a woodline than distinguishing people-shaped and vehicle-shaped forms in a woodline. I seem to recall that a lot of modernized T-72s and T-64s had thermals, but all of the Western tanks do (and, often: two thermal sights per vehicle). All of the Bradleys do, too.
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Mar 3, 2023 18:31
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Thermals are great for getting a "huh, that looks weird" reaction from visual irregularities too. So if you see something odd on thermal you can switch to visual channel (time of day/weather permitting) for actual ID.
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Mar 3, 2023 18:35
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Ynglaur posted:That's a fair point. Soviet optics in vehicles had night vision--that is, light amplification--but not thermals. It's a significant difference, because thermal sights can see further and can see a fair amount through many forms of visible-light obscurants such as fog, smoke, and dust (that last, to a degree - density matters). It's also much easier to pick out bright thermals in a woodline than distinguishing people-shaped and vehicle-shaped forms in a woodline. The T-72B3M or something had the bestest western thermals which Ukrainian crews could only drool at. But with the huge losses Russia took last year and general attrition on equipment (French Thales' service line hopefully doesn't pick up the phone anymore when a +7 country code number appears), there probably aren't too many of them left.
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Mar 3, 2023 18:47
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Nenonen posted:The T-72B3M or something had the bestest western thermals which Ukrainian crews could only drool at. But with the huge losses Russia took last year and general attrition on equipment (French Thales' service line hopefully doesn't pick up the phone anymore when a +7 country code number appears), there probably aren't too many of them left.
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Mar 3, 2023 18:52
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https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1631711474241482753?t=xruzAkfZ8dl3IV3x173Wpg&s=19 Khodakovsky also thinks that Bakhmut is intended to be a pinning action to support a Ukrainian counteroffensive elsewhere
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Mar 3, 2023 19:18
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More hardware: https://twitter.com/margbrennan/status/1631711386832105472?t=Ann-kl-prAzGoTYzTTdDsQ&s=19
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Mar 3, 2023 19:28
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More CVR(T) getting in to the hands of Ukraine https://twitter.com/serhiyprytula/status/1631675475754885124 I believe it's the first batch related to this story. 101 is up from the 50 in the article. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/03/a-joke-that-went-out-of-control-crowdfunding-weapons-for-ukraines-war
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Mar 3, 2023 20:30
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FMguru posted:My suspicion is that a lot of Russian tanks that had their optics listed as being upgraded with latest and fanciest thermals ended up have those optics stripped and sold off, or were never installed in the first place. That, or upgrade goals were not met. I think they were upgrading stuff like SU-25s at the rate of one vehicle per year. I can't imagine that MBTs were far exceeding that.
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Mar 3, 2023 21:49
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Coquito Ergo Sum posted:That, or upgrade goals were not met. I think they were upgrading stuff like SU-25s at the rate of one vehicle per year. I can't imagine that MBTs were far exceeding that. The goal was to have like a thousand T-14's operational by 2018 or so. As well as the rest of the whole Armata family of vehicles!¨ Instead T-62's have been brought to service.
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Mar 3, 2023 21:56
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HonorableTB posted:https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1631711474241482753?t=xruzAkfZ8dl3IV3x173Wpg&s=19 Do they have enough time before the ground thaws to launch a counteroffensive? Seems unlikely they'd be able to hold Bakhmut until things dry out in the spring. Unless the mud season also halts the Russian advances on Bakhmut I guess.
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Mar 3, 2023 22:20
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Chalks posted:Do they have enough time before the ground thaws to launch a counteroffensive? Seems unlikely they'd be able to hold Bakhmut until things dry out in the spring. The ground is already thawing. Right now, it keeps the Russians from advancing (or retreating) and makes them easier pickings. Ukraine won't start its own offensive until mud season is over. It's unlikely their counteroffensive would be at Bahkmut, but who knows.
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Mar 3, 2023 22:24
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Chalks posted:Do they have enough time before the ground thaws to launch a counteroffensive? Seems unlikely they'd be able to hold Bakhmut until things dry out in the spring. The south of Ukraine thaws and dries earlier than it does in the east/northeast regions. It's not super significant (about a week's difference more or less) but if you gently caress it up like Putin did, it can be very bad for you. It's possible the south will be dry enough to launch a counteroffensive while the mud's still a problem further northeast. In my view, the counteroffensive is going to be in the Zaporizhzhia oblast area and likely aimed at severing the land bridge between Crimea and Russia so the likely target for this next particular counteroffensive will be Melitopol, probably not Mariupol this time. Melitopol would be a reasonable target; it's strategically important, threatens the Russians further south with being caught in a pincer between Melitopol and Kherson, makes Russia decide whether to defend Mariupol direction or Crimea direction, leaves Ukraine a lot of flexibility in what to do next. HonorableTB fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Mar 3, 2023 |
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Mar 3, 2023 22:26
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