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khwarezm posted:Anyway I'm kind of curious regardless of how important Kadyrov is holding down the fort for Putin in Chechnya, would there a possibility of things kicking off there again without him? It all depends on how his inheritor (it will be one of his sons) handles the situation. Chechnia is not so much a subject of the federation but rather a personal union of Putin and Kadyrov. Hard to tell how powerful and numerous are EU based independant Ichkeria emigres are, but there is a pro Ukraine chechen batallion, I would imagine they'd want to go there and continue the fight
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Mar 6, 2023 11:14
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Kaja Kallas, prime minister of Estonia, has just won a large victory in elections, increasing her party's seats in parliament. Second place went to a far right nationalist party (Ekre), though it lost seats. Ekre had been critical of Kallas' outspoken support of Ukraine, but it seems voters continue to back her strongly. Between this result and the Czech presidential election, Ukraine continues to win support in eastern European elections. Kallas has been especially vocal in advocating for stronger support for Ukraine in the EU, and it looks like that will continue.
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Mar 6, 2023 11:18
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Not so in Hungary, unfortunately.
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Mar 6, 2023 12:41
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Financial Times reports that Iran deal for missiles is dead/on hold, great news https://twitter.com/FinancialTimes/status/1632622373290618881?t=GjFlDNWK3nAkHa20cD8NuQ&s=19 Uncertain how much of it is escalation balancing and how much is Israel looking at manufacturing plants menacingly fatherboxx fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 12:51
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fatherboxx posted:Financial Times reports that Iran deal for missiles is dead/on hold, great news Ah but surely Russia has nothing to worry about. After all they said on September 15th that supplying long-range rockets to Ukraine would be "crossing a red line" and that would be some serious poo poo of course.
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Mar 6, 2023 14:55
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WarpedLichen posted:Seems like the fighting and attrition isn't as lopsided towards the Ukrainians and there's fear of losing offensive potential from holding the city. For a place that's supposed to favor the defenders, that's not really a favorable sign. I still am not exactly sure what benefit holding Bakhmut has that made it worth throwing so much of russia's offensive capacity at it. Was it seriously just part of factions vying for putin's favor by delivering him a "win" on paper that they got drawn into having to have it? Or are there other more credible ideas about what happened? One of the things I picked up on from time to time was evidence that Ukranian troops were being rotated in and out of heavy fighting, keeping them relatively fresh compared to russian troops that would be pushed to exhaustion and unit elimination. Has there been anything showing that on the decline on Ukraine's side? I would be very worried if Bakhmut was being pressed into an "all in" situation on the Ukranian side without good reason.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:57
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Kavros posted:I still am not exactly sure what benefit holding Bakhmut has that made it worth throwing so much of russia's offensive capacity at it. Was it seriously just part of factions vying for putin's favor by delivering him a "win" on paper that they got drawn into having to have it? Or are there other more credible ideas about what happened? I don't think most of the Russian staff has better ideas, and it's kind of arguable that it's working as an attritional battle with minor gains. So inertia, basically.
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Mar 6, 2023 17:58
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I think the real loser of that inertia is wagner. It gets stuck having to provide the win, as part of the politics of it. Then, once stuck, it deals with poor supply from its own side, exhausts a lot of its utility to the kremlin. By the time it becomes a huge rift, they've potentially used so much of themselves up that it doesn't matter and that's that.
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Mar 6, 2023 18:05
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I was a betting man, I would guess that mythologization of Bakhmut has caught up with the government of Ukraine a little bit, and this is Austin massaging a potential out. https://www.ft.com/content/b972701d-4165-48bc-8d7f-e737a3831ac0
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Mar 6, 2023 18:14
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I was a betting man, I would guess that mythologization of Bakhmut has caught up with the government of Ukraine a little bit, Maybe. But if they leave Bakhmut the attacks will probably just shift somewhere else - some other town or city. Unless that other place offers better defensive positions you might as well soak up the attacks in Bakhmut and not have another town turned into a hellscape.
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Mar 6, 2023 18:21
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so if you had to bet on it, you feel like the lengths Ukraine was going to to hold out in that particular city had become or was going to become detrimental, and they were sticking it out because of irrational symbolic value of some kind, or really hoping to deny russia a symbolic win? I guess if I were in Ukraine's shoes, holding Bakhmut indefinitely would be too big a benefit, you wouldn't want to pass it up. potentially so strongly that it would be easy to miss when getting out is the better option
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Mar 6, 2023 18:22
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What I'm saying is that the relatively concerted effort to brand Bakhmut as “Fortress Bakhmut” through the preceding months may now be a PR consideration in domestic politics for Zelenskyy's administration, were they to make plans to actually retreat. If this ultimately proves to have been a correct assumption, Austin might be commenting with a goal (importantly, not the goal) to help them with building a popular case for retreating from Bakhmut.Owling Howl posted:Maybe. But if they leave Bakhmut the attacks will probably just shift somewhere else - some other town or city. Unless that other place offers better defensive positions you might as well soak up the attacks in Bakhmut and not have another town turned into a hellscape. As someone said a bit earlier, we're getting into point in time where Russia's diminished artillery stature has still fired enough total shells to pulverize buildings and other obstacles. We may very well be at a point where “better defensive positions” is a comparatively low bar. However, I do not have any more insight in the condition of Ukrainian fortifications or battle plans in Bakhmut than anyone else online, and merely speculate whether if there's something to read into regarding the timing of these comments. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 18:27
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As long as they don't get cut off from behind and routed to cause extreme losses, might as well keep Russian forces pinned down exhausting themselves against prepared defenses. I don't think it's idiotic bravery patriotism causing errors, I think it's just the brutal calculus of industrialized murder that is modern warfare. Russia's going to be breaking poo poo and killing people somewhere. Might as well have them keep doing it over and over to one city that's already rubble and with losses as minimized as possible by prepared defenses. The failure state of cut off and encircled forces in Bakhmut getting totally obliterated would be what I would consider an error. Until then it's bleeding the enemy dry as much as possible.
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Mar 6, 2023 18:35
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Some recent reports suggest that the salient is narrow enough that defending is exceedingly difficult.
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Mar 6, 2023 18:51
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Just watched a horrible Twitter video of an unarmed Ukrainian soldier in a ditch say "slava Ukraini" and then get shot to death  edit: via @wartranslated on Twitter  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 6, 2023 19:06
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Kavros posted:so if you had to bet on it, you feel like the lengths Ukraine was going to to hold out in that particular city had become or was going to become detrimental, and they were sticking it out because of irrational symbolic value of some kind, or really hoping to deny russia a symbolic win? Remember that there is a real world tactical value for not retreating: Russian forces will follow Ukrainians when they pull, and they will try to take more of Ukrainian terrain further west. Then the next city will be the new Bakhmut that gets devastated and will eventually need to be liberated. Plus Bakhmut is still only a small piece in the puzzle, the details of which we don't know well. Both sides have been setting aside troops and resources to throw around after the rasputitsa ends. If UA has been able to pull out reserves while having Russians commit more men to Bakhmut, then that gives them a relative advantage for later operations.
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Mar 6, 2023 19:12
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The Battle of Bakhmut has gone on longer than the Battle of Stalingrad. Not surprising attrition is finally taking its toll.
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Mar 6, 2023 19:13
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OddObserver posted:Some recent reports suggest that the salient is narrow enough that defending is exceedingly difficult. Yeah, at some point everything has to move through such a narrow corridor that it becomes easy to keep it under constant surveillance and fire. Although I can't imagine it being fun in one of the Russian pincers either, they are obvious targets for Ukrainian artillery and lack fortified positions.
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Mar 6, 2023 19:18
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Yeah, setting the specifics of Bakhmut aside, I don't think I buy "they'll just move the battle to somewhere else, so might as well keep fighting here." Prepared defences get reduced to rubble, positions get outflanked, and the advantage the defender enjoyed when the battle began gradually erodes. If the Russians were just walking into a killbox over and over that'd be one thing, but those incremental gains on the map probably represents the degredation of the Ukrainians' advantage. Even setting aside the real risk of getting encircled and annihilated, pulling back to another set of defensive positions that haven't been flanked and reduced yet would be an improvement. If a defender has space to fall back and create defence in depth rather than being pinned in one place, that's generally a good thing. The problem is there's still tradeoffs, including intangibles like momentum, morale, politics, etc. I think that's where a lot of the worry is coming from, that this battle has reached a point where the better tactical move would be falling back but higher-level considerations are keeping them engaged, and whether those considerations are actually worth the price.
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Mar 6, 2023 19:28
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 armored stuff getting hit, bodies too.https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1632501636273774594 So this tweet is interesting because I had suspected this was the cause, it seems to be a bit of a pattern. Some less filtered pro UA accounts get wind of a counter offensive and announce it before the results and then it gets forgotten when the counter was a failure. Bashez fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Mar 6, 2023 |
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Mar 6, 2023 20:34
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Bashez posted:
Based on geolocation and latest from Prigozhin, these are Ukrainian tanks retreating from Berkhovka, a village North of Bakhmut that Russia claimed to have captured two weeks ago.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:47
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Looking at topo maps and OSINT maps of positions, my intuition is that Ukraine should have withdrawn about 2 weeks ago. It's always easier looking in retrospect, of course. I'm fairly sure Ukraine could keep Russia out of whatever structures remain on the western part of Bakhmut for another couple weeks, but I don't believe they could do so for favorable trade in combat power. If I were the operational commander, I'd probably mine the poo poo out of the remaining structures and launch limited counterattacks on the shoulders to give forces inside enough time to move west, ideally under cover of artillery hitting the east side of Bakhmut. Time to get back to the better defenses further west.
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Mar 6, 2023 20:56
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Dolash posted:Yeah, setting the specifics of Bakhmut aside, I don't think I buy "they'll just move the battle to somewhere else, so might as well keep fighting here." No but see when Russia inches forward anywhere their War Score ticks up. Just a few more years of that and Ukraine will have to accept a White Peace!
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Mar 6, 2023 21:11
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Arte Time again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLTlVgQpSoA Russia: A Year of War A young Russian filmmaker, opposed to the war in Ukraine, films in secret from inside Russia. Her film provides a rarely seen picture of small-town Russia and how ordinary citizens view the war in Ukraine and the current situation in Russia.
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Mar 6, 2023 21:29
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Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why?
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Mar 6, 2023 21:30
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FMguru posted:Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why? Mostly they seem to have run out of long-range missiles. They've been using them much faster than they could make/acquire them for a long time. Their intent was to bring Ukraine to its knees by destroying its energy infrastructure during the winter and making them freeze to death. It didn't work and now they're trying to figure out a plan B.
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Mar 6, 2023 21:33
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FMguru posted:Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why? They launched 15 shaheds and some missiles yesterday, so they haven't quite stopped yet.
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Mar 6, 2023 21:38
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Antigravitas posted:Arte Time again. What country is that video viewable in? Is there any way in YouTube to figure it out without trying like the US and France in VPN? It just tells me "the uploader has not made the video available in your country". Most other videos on that channel do work for me.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:14
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Saladman posted:What country is that video viewable in? Is there any way in YouTube to figure it out without trying like the US and France in VPN? It just tells me "the uploader has not made the video available in your country". Most other videos on that channel do work for me. It works for me (Finland).
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Mar 6, 2023 22:17
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Saladman posted:What country is that video viewable in? Is there any way in YouTube to figure it out without trying like the US and France in VPN? It just tells me "the uploader has not made the video available in your country". Most other videos on that channel do work for me. If you use a VPN, try France or Germany, since ARTE is a French-German channel. It should work in most places in Europe, but I don't know the exact details. What I've seen of the video so far is quite interesting. And depressing.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:21
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FMguru posted:Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why? That was very much Surovikin's strategy, to cripple Ukraine with infrastructure strikes like he barrel bombed the Syrian opposition. It didn't work and he was canned. Plan B was probably a major offensive that fizzled out after the spearhead was mangled at Vuhledar. Plan C is tbd
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Mar 6, 2023 22:29
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Saladman posted:What country is that video viewable in? Is there any way in YouTube to figure it out without trying like the US and France in VPN? It just tells me "the uploader has not made the video available in your country". Most other videos on that channel do work for me. Works just fine in the UK. https://watannetwork.com/tools/blocked/#url=NLTlVgQpSoA shows it should work nearly anywhere in Europe.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:33
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Saladman posted:What country is that video viewable in? Is there any way in YouTube to figure it out without trying like the US and France in VPN? It just tells me "the uploader has not made the video available in your country". Most other videos on that channel do work for me. This kind of thing is really inconsistent with Arte, and sometimes videos are available globally, and sometimes not. I suspect it has to do with licensing and production deals and whatnot, but it's infuriating. Anything in the EU should work, usually. And it's honestly a shame. Arte produces a ton of extremely interesting content. See also, Tracks East: https://www.arte.tv/en/videos/111083-008-A/tracks-east/ Translated Description from the French version posted:Children at the heart of the war
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Mar 6, 2023 22:33
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FMguru posted:Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why? They haven't stopped, but they're down to single-digit connecting hits per launch, often less than 5 seemingly. Coincidentally, the power grid of Ukraine is looking healthier and healthier.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:38
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cinci zoo sniper posted:They haven't stopped, but they're down to single-digit connecting hits per launch, often less than 5 seemingly. Coincidentally, the power grid of Ukraine is looking healthier and healthier. It's also like +10°C forecasted for most days this week in Kyiv. As spring progresses the need of electricity for heating goes down dramatically.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:46
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Nenonen posted:It's also like +10°C forecasted for most days this week in Kyiv. As spring progresses the need of electricity for heating goes down dramatically. I mean, it's been looking up for a month now.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:55
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Antigravitas posted:Arte Time again. Thanks for the link. It's a hard watch, though. In other news: Is Rheinmetall really gonna build a factory in Ukraine to build the KF51? Or is this a a way to tell the German government to hurry up and/or be more lenient with all the permits and red tape?
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Mar 6, 2023 23:06
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mrfart posted:In other news: Is Rheinmetall really gonna build a factory in Ukraine to build the KF51? Or is this a a way to tell the German government to hurry up and/or be more lenient with all the permits and red tape? While KF51 may not necessarily be the model number that ends up going there, their MIC needs to rebuild, both in general and to a standard that isn't dependent on Russia. Consequently, you're basically guaranteed to see Rheinmetall (in talks) and everyone else securing the necessary permits opening factories there.
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Mar 6, 2023 23:10
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Russia is firing about as many missiles per month as they can produce per month. They are likely maintaining some kind of contingency stock, but seem to have reached the point where they won't expend faster than they can manufacture.
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Mar 6, 2023 23:54
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Missiles are really expensive, shells are cheap. There are plenty of situations where missiles are going to be useful, such as targeting key infrastructure that you can't normally reach, but you don't want to spend half a million dollars per missile when you could spend a few hundred bucks for a few shells. My guess is that they've already hit all the precision/long range targets that they need. Edit: although the Russians have already made the mistake of withholding reserve forces so who knows if this will work out for them. Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Mar 7, 2023 |
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