https://twitter.com/ralee85/status/1546598502247145473?s=21&t=uTg1Y6dGoYySYVRNg6NbfA
Certainly seems like an efficient use of rockets but hard to say. It feels like at the very least it could buy significant amounts of time, where Russian troops have to sit with their thumbs up their asses for days at a time instead of advancing, allowing Ukraine to gather more resources.
Everyone knows that the REAL imperialists are the ones who leverage the threat of warmongering nations next door to others to coerce those nations into alliances, not the warmongering nations looking to reestablish imperial territory and ethnically cleanse it.
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Use incognito if you get blocked but he gives a good explanation on why himars makes a difference but in itself is not going to change the war.
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Lol @ Mershemeiemiemeiemererer, now and forever.
Feel for one of my temporary flatmates here in Ankara. Dude’s from Kherson. He escaped from Ukraine early on but not as a refugee (in hindsight he should have). He left for Turkey, got a residence permit here and wants a visa to join his niece in Canada. Another flatmate left Russia at around the same time, disgusted with the war and Putin and all that. He’s trying to get a work visa to Portugal. Both are having a hard time with the embassies of those countries to get shit done.
In the Czech Republic, pro-refugee sentiment is declining because now people are starting to see the impact on their own lives.
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this is a misread. the battle of donbass slowed russia down to a snail’s pace. they took over two months to eventually not reach most of their goals. they never encircled vsu forces, they took luhansk oblast at great cost, and donetsk oblast’ would be even harder. to put it in perspective, it is already a longer battle than the longest tank battle in history (kursk), and the advance is a fraction of that outcome, with a gigantic IF they manage to hold it.
russian personnel advantage is diminishing. it’s much worse than is reported, their current tactic wastes most mobilized infantry from ldnr and elsewhere, as they failed to fully mobilize domestically. now there are reports of prisoners being given reprieve if they agree to serve as cannon fodder. that’s bottom of the barrel, on top of the shear depravity of the tactical plan to advance over ruins from shells and rockets. there appear to be still lots of old and barely moving armored vehicles, at least in numbers necessary for the much diminished invasion force. yet, the soldiers who can drive and shoot it are getting scarce. as well as
the newest strikes on vinnica, (as well as kharkiv, mykolaev, etc), while an obvious retaliatory strike for himars hits on depots, with a bit trolling in the choice of target as well, is very telling. they had to send 7 total Kalibr rockets (3 caught by anti-missile defenses), which even in the basic modification is some of the most expensive weapons russia has. launched from a sub in the black sea no less. even one month ago, the majority of damage would be done by a far cheaper munitions. so what gives? it’s finally a shortage of things to shoot.
meanwhile, ukraine’s mobilization is about to put better trained reinforcements (and weapons) into a counteroffensive. first target appears to be Kherson, which ukraine is approaching very methodically. like, you wouldn’t know it, but for the last month they’ve pushed defenses back, blew up many depots, and waited for local resistance to contribute as well. no dumb assaults, work on attrition of ru forces, munitions, and logistics, re-take neighboring villages. one video showed that vsu entered a mostly empty village which russians just abandoned. simply noone left to hold.
to be honest, of course there are things that can go putin’s way, most of them revolving around some sort of escalation (grain/gas) or wildcard (trmp/lepenn) that whole countries stop arming ukraine. i don’t think ultimately ukraine will stop fighting for territory, but their task would become harder if their coalition ends up being only baltics/poland/etc. many analysts expect that it may come into play, which probably means ukraine needs to plan a counteroffensive before such a political or electoral turnaround can occur. perhaps before oct/nov.
by the way, besides HIMARS which are grabbing all the headlines, which have already appeared to hit further than 80km, CAESARS are very much in the gap between m777 and MRLS, also a dozen already in ukraine. even germany, with all its being unprepared at the beginning of the year, is also finally finding enough inventory to contribute both armored vehicles and howitzers.
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I am very much a representative of the professional class, what many may call my country’s “liberal elite.” My circle of friends and I discuss democracy, accountability, and the rule of law, but we long believed we were a minority in Ukraine, that the majority of our compatriots did not care about these abstract terms. Yet in reporting on Putin’s invasion, in traveling through my country, I have heard fellow Ukrainians, without any prompting, explain these enormous concepts better than many academics.
Theoretical concepts such as the rule of law, human rights, and electoral accountability are being exercised on the ground, with people’s lives at risk. This, then, is also what makes Ukrainians disappointed by international players and institutions who are cynical about the strength of these values, and our belief in them.
We are also showing that democracy isn’t simply important for an elite minority, but for entire populations. Our experience illustrates that democracy is worth defending not only because it is better for its people, but because democracies are more resilient in the long run, and offer greater hope for the future.
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If you want an optimistic take:
https://nadinbrzezinski.medium.com/logistics-collapse-945984f5d48e
Hard to know how much I believe everything here, but the article cites a lot of sources if you want to dig deeper.
One interesting thing here that is almost certainly true:
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Hertling tweeted that article if that means anything. He’s been pretty optimistic but a good source of info since the start.
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https://twitter.com/bognar_p/status/1549191123456901120
https://twitter.com/shotwithspirit/status/1549208796664406018
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https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam/status/1549487286966009858?s=20&t=Lr2NnkhZWxq8YAEoIMMNDg
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1549461215721783296?s=20&t=Lr2NnkhZWxq8YAEoIMMNDg
Pilot survived.
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1549149631493332992?s=20&t=Lr2NnkhZWxq8YAEoIMMNDg
Strategy is to cut off and blockade Russian troops in Kherson with Russia unable to send support without giving up the initiative in the Donbas. Sounds simple. Can they do it?
“It’s a problem,” said CIT’s Mikhailov.
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Sounds like we could be in for another round of Putin threats.
Putin could leverage nuclear threats to deter a Ukrainian counteroffensive into annexed Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts.[11] After annexation, Putin may state, directly or obliquely, that Russian doctrine permitting the use of nuclear weapons to defend Russian territory applies to newly annexed territories. Such actions would threaten Ukraine and its partners with nuclear attack if Ukrainian counteroffensives to liberate Russian-occupied territory continue. Putin may believe that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would restore Russian deterrence after his disastrous invasion shattered Russia’s conventional deterrent capabilities, although previous Russian hints at Moscow’s willingness to use nuclear weapons have proven hollow. Ukraine and its Western partners may have a narrowing window of opportunity to support a Ukrainian counteroffensive into occupied Ukrainian territory before the Kremlin annexes that territory.[12]
I’m really curious what all this stuff means for the future of War.
Before 9/11, I was certain American military might was unsurpassed. Nobody had the planes, aircraft carriers, and morale that we did…. And there was even this new unmanned flying drones programs that looked promising.
Now it looks like the future of wars are in counterinsurgency (which is a sucker play) and urban warfare. This conflict in Ukraine is showing the importance of artillery and precision long range munitions.
I guess my point in all this is that there’s more parity in a world of Turkish or Iranian drones and NATO artillery. We are not light years ahead in a theoretical total war that doesn’t go nuclear.
Hopefully, out of that pesky 700B budget, we have smart military people thinking about this stuff.
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I disagree pretty strongly about what this war has shown about parity amongst the world powers. Ukraine has managed parity with Russia with our leftovers on equipment they received crash training in months into the war.
While drones are a problem, I don’t think they’d completely change the battlefield and I’m guessing the NATO military has some electronic countermeasures up their sleeve as well.
Russia’s navy and airforce is clearly shit. NATO would achieve air superiority and pin down huge groups of Russians. You can’t win an artillery war if you can’t maintain a neutral sky.
Most importantly, Russia’s army is shit at logistics compared to NATO/US. They can barely maintain vehicles through Belarus, much less move material like modern western militaries can.
None of this matters much obviously, because nukes come into play at that level.
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The US can win wars if it just decides to flatten cities and not worry about urban warfare and insurgencies.
Cyber is a front a lot of people don’t think about that Russia does extremely well on and our nation lags far behind pretty much all the other major powers, except possibly Europe.
I think that will continue to be a growing front.
I find it hard to believe USA lags in cyber warfare capabilities, they just use more restraint to minimize knowledge of what they could do. I know we get hacked but this is an area where offense is much easier than defense
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