acrashb

I have wondered if Putin's original plan, circa 2019/2020 or so, was to continue to take smaller bites of Ukraine but realized that the west might only give him one more shot so he decided to make it count and go for the whole enchilada. 

I also have to say that one of the few times I agreed with our former president was when he called for our European partners to live up to their commitment to NATO, it is unfortunate that it took Putin's invasion to make some realize that defense spending is still important.  I do however disagree with Trump's threat to leave NATO like a spoiled child taking his ball and going home.

Like do what about it? I don't have carrier battle group I could park in Black Sea. Nor do I have magical ninja assassins I could sent after Putin or space marines I could deploy from orbit to lay siege to Kremlin.
The US knew, and they did a lot about it. Eastern Europe had other trouble - they were at that time thinking whether NATO will hold or whether the Western Nations will Munich them off to Putin once Ukraine is done. The behavior of France and Germany in the pre- and beginning stages of the war did not inspire confidence in NATO and while it is unthinkable for Biden's US to betray its allies, Trump's / someone like Trump's US is a much less safe bet.
If the Russian plan of saying "do not help Ukraine or we'll nuke you" and West saying "oh well I guess we won't help then, we don't want to risk nuclear war after all" worked, it would very obviously turned into "do not help Baltics or we'll nuke you" and "do not help everything east of Germany or we'll nuke you".
Not sure where you're from, but the beginning stages of war looked very bleak in places that were invaded and occupied by Russia relatively recently (they left here in 1992), probably in comparison to places a continent away or parts of Europe where people never had to live with that horror.
This might be my social bubble, but even around here - where Russia would have to go through at least Ukraine and Slovakia and likely Poland to get here - people somewhat calmly accepted we are next and the West likely won't help and started making preparations. The "active reserves" system of our Army basically collapsed because of too many volunteers. I myself tried to apply for a job in our intelligence because that's where I thought I'd be most useful as a person good at working with large amounts of data (but I gave up when they asked for perfect eyesight and drug-free past).
Eventually it turned out that NATO holds, Ukraine is heroically and effectively defending, Russia sucks at war because they learned nothing since WW2 but new ways of corruption, barbarity and evil, and so on. The world is somewhat normal around here. But that was not always the case.
EDIT: this was possibly too emotional reply, sorry about that, I'll stop posting until I sober up.

Reminds me of this quote by Ronald Reagan. “Surround yourself with great people; delegate authority; get out of the way”
 

Trump signed something and drew down a lot of forces. Final withdrawal was under Biden. I suspect we would derail things for thirty pages trying to hash it out in more detail.

Poland is gearing up to have the second or third strongest land army in the world. Triply so when you consider it will all be new top grade stuff that can hit what it aims at. Although I rather expect half of the first few graduating classes from that shiny new school to be from just a bit further east.

An interview with Podolyak, adviser to Zelenskiy: "Ukraine aiming to create chaos within Russian forces, Zelenskiy adviser says" (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/16/creating-chaos-zelenskiys-adviser-outlines-ukraines-military-strategy)
"The adviser, often described as the country’s third most powerful figure, said Kyiv’s approach ran counter to Moscow’s use of blunt artillery power to gain territory in the Donbas region to the east, which has seen Russian troops destroy cities such as Mariupol and Sievierodonetsk in order to gain territory.
“So Russia has kind of taught everybody that a counteroffensive requires huge amounts of manpower like a giant fist and just go in one direction,” he said, but “a Ukrainian counteroffensive looks very different. We don’t use the tactics of the 60s and 70s, of the last century.”

No one would put two mines that close together.... ooopsie!
No one will ever be able to harass steve about the AI again.
 

That, backed up with deep strike and ISR might just cause the Russian system to buckle under it own weight again.  Fog eating snow until we get systemic failure. Then a modest amount of highly mobile mech/armour might bring the whole rotten house down.  Massed mech/armour before that condition is met could just leave it as vulnerable as the Russian systems were on the offence.
Or at least that is the working theory.  We are talking about a battlefield where a principle of war, “surprise” does not seem to exist, at least for the Russians.  And as we have noted from early on, Mass is also behaving weirdly.  However, it is really hard to determine if both sides are fighting this way because it is all they can do with what they have.  Or is it all they can do because that is how things are now.
It is likely in between those statements but how much is key.  Right now no one knows the answer, the UA and RA are trying to figure it out (Russia is failing badly) and they are closest to the problem.  Its why I really do not listen to pundits, experts and analyst that try and say what the answer is, or is not.  I know enough to know that we are kinda off the map here and it is going to be a bit before things become clear.  The analysts to listen to right now are the ones asking the best questions, in my opinion.
I am not worried about Ukraine because they appear to have the learning advantage here.  They have access to all the western expertise and data.  They have some brilliant leadership, and they have shown they can adapt as fast as we can send them stuff.  
News for Russia not so good.  They were unable to really adapt or learn from Phase 1.  Many pointed to Phase 2 as some sort of Russian brilliant re-think when it was in fact a devolution back to an even older form of warfare.  One that did not produce results anywhere near fast or as far as they would need to.  So here we are entering Phase 3, Russia is in worse shape and Ukraine is starting to dance circles around them.

There it is.  This is what Ukraine needs to be very concerned about (and likely are) and Russia is counting on.  Western “change the channel” apathy.  “That’s way over there”, “What about my gas guzzling truck?” “What else is happening on TweeterTocwhateverthef#ckpeoplewatch?”
We are an entitled/spoiled set of generations that have had a fraction of a percentage of its youth who have had to fight and die for it, in small low stakes wars on the other side of the world.
 We have forgotten that defending our way of life isn’t yelling at the other guys, and nor do we understand real threats when they appear….present company on his thread excepted of course.
If we lose the bubble on this one, we deserve what happens next.

I'd say they fire these missiles not in hope of actually hitting something, but to show the command that they are doing anything. 
I'd be interested in delivery times for this contract. I bet RU will get maybe 30 now, and the rest gradualy till  2027 or something. No way Iran has a significant number of these stockpiled and available for sale. 

Mind you, there's probably tons of Russian agents in Ukraine for the same reason as Ukrainians in Russia.

That's a bit unfair, and we don't know enough to determine if it is correct.
If someone does repeated mag dumps, which happens in panicked or semi-panicked or simply incompetent suppressive fire, in an AK-47  the front handguard will eventually smoke and burn.  Do the same thing on an M-16 FOW and the gas tube will melt and explode.  Also, both gun's barrels will be ruined (particularly in the important throat area) and at best will be dramatically inaccurate afterwards.  Does this mean they aren't suited to modern war, or were they used in an unapproved and unreasonable manner?
So the PzH 2000's were either abused or, as you say, inadequately designed (or perhaps manufactured).  But we don't know which.  You can bet the designers know and are either developing modifications right now or pushing additional training recommendations.
 

I (too) can see Ukraine choosing not to attack in strength anywhere as long as Russia has sufficient assets to throw against such an attack - and turn it into a bloody grind. Why would they? Lot's of things been doing 'splodey stuff in Russia's rear lately, making Russians die for their country without Ukrainians joining them. 

Like you say, if you can take out the enemy in a piecemeal fashion why force a decisive engagement?. Especially when the enemy seems to be looking for the latter. Reminds me of 'emptiness and fullness' written by some old Chinese man which features here on a somewhat regular basis ;-).
Of course ending the war sooner has merits of its own, but given the context I'd say 'more haste less speed' applies.

Further analysis of the Amnesty International debacle:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/adam-zivo-amnesty-international-ignores-reality-to-manufacture-ukrainian-war-crimes
"...Rovera arrived in eastern Ukraine not to investigate facts on the ground, but rather to bend them to a preordained conclusion."
At university, when AI was fully and laser-focused on prisoners of conscience, I volunteered and handed out pamphlets.  In the last roughly ten years AI has strayed and adopted an anti-Western bias, now, or again, shown to be simple prejudice.  If anything good comes from this it will be their collapse as a publicly credible organization.
 

Further analysis of the Amnesty International debacle:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/adam-zivo-amnesty-international-ignores-reality-to-manufacture-ukrainian-war-crimes
"...Rovera arrived in eastern Ukraine not to investigate facts on the ground, but rather to bend them to a preordained conclusion."
At university, when AI was fully and laser-focused on prisoners of conscience, I volunteered and handed out pamphlets.  In the last roughly ten years AI has strayed and adopted an anti-Western bias, now, or again, shown to be simple prejudice.  If anything good comes from this it will be their collapse as a publicly credible organization.
 

Wasn't there a girl who could start fires with her mind?
Oh wait, squirrels...what about squirrels?
Seriously - none of these really add up based on the scope and scale of damage done.

Amnesty reminds me of Wikileaks somewhat. They went from being an organization of conscience (one to could argue) to being hijacked and manipulated by people with an agenda. In the end Wikileaks was pretty much a Russian troll farm.

In general, the situation is quite tense, food and fuel prices are constantly rising. In the first months of the war, our government kept the value of the national currency against the US dollar. But in the last month, the hryvnia was released into free fall and declared that the old prices for the dollar would no longer exist. Prices for literally all groups of goods began to rise noticeably.
Despite all this, the mood of the people is quite calm. I expected that during the war it would be much harder in the rear. So thanks to our Western allies for economic assistance

That's a bit unfair, and we don't know enough to determine if it is correct.
If someone does repeated mag dumps, which happens in panicked or semi-panicked or simply incompetent suppressive fire, in an AK-47  the front handguard will eventually smoke and burn.  Do the same thing on an M-16 FOW and the gas tube will melt and explode.  Also, both gun's barrels will be ruined (particularly in the important throat area) and at best will be dramatically inaccurate afterwards.  Does this mean they aren't suited to modern war, or were they used in an unapproved and unreasonable manner?
So the PzH 2000's were either abused or, as you say, inadequately designed (or perhaps manufactured).  But we don't know which.  You can bet the designers know and are either developing modifications right now or pushing additional training recommendations.
 

There is German article
 

So, I've been reading Ian Toll's Pacific Trilogy, and in "Twilight of the Gods", he writes this:
By contrast, according to Wylie, a cumulative operational strategy does not involve territorial offensives and pitched battles, but a "less perceptible minute accumulation of little items piling one on top of the other, until at some unknown point, the mass of calculated actions may be large enough to be critical". It weaponizes the logic of "death by a thousand cuts." In the Pacific, cumulative strategies chipped away at the economic and political foundations of Japan's imperial empire. It struck me that the Russians appear to have adopted what Toll calls a "sequentialist" strategy: "we will march to Kiev 100 yards of dirt at a time", while the Ukranians appear to have adopted a cumulativist strategy: "we will degrade the Russian ability to make war until it collapses".
I think that analysis broadly harmonizes with The_Capt's description of warfare as decision space shaping. A sequentialist attack changes the decision space (the US capture of Saipan, for example, or the Japanese capture of Borneo), but cumulativist strategies (building a metric crapton of escort carriers; destroying the Japanese merchant marine) lead to breakthroughs and shorten the overall war by undeciding things and forcing bad decisions on the part of the adversary.
In many ways it feels like the Russians are duplicating Japan's WWII playbook while the Ukrainians are duplicating that of the Allies.

I am moving slowly but surely. Here is a map for Maryinka battle. Maryinka settlement is located on another end of RU offensive. You undoubtedly heard many claims about it like 2/3 are captured or almost captured and so on. Well, let's look closer. This time I will use Google Earth. It is less pleasing for my eyes, but it does show terrain and in the case of Maryinka it is important.

The red line is the approximate border before the war. Yellow dashed line is the contested area where major fighting is happening. As far as I understand assault groups of both sides infiltrate contested area and engage each other often with arty. But to define what is generally happening we can use several notable features.
On the right just in front of the border line there is farm fully under RU control from 6-Aug. There are just several hundred meters between the farm and RU forward positions and 10 days between start of offensive and statement of full control. The dominant feature that controls the eastern part of the village is the landfill of the former Shchurovo Mine.
According to RU sources the landfill was always in UKR hands. So, nobody really knows how RU almost captured Maryinka without capturing the landfill. Well, possibly they infiltrated several assault groups in to several places in contested area, declared Maryinka is almost captured and then got killed (see insert from sample video).
However, we have an interesting development. Yesterday, two weeks after start of the offensive RU stated they captured position at the landfill and were moving toward the center. But I need a definite statement that the landfill is captured because I know how RU propaganda works. Let's wait and see.
Last is checkpoint Maryinka. There is no any information about it. So, we can assume RU did not reach it at all.  This should give you an idea how RU is progressing at both ends of the offensive. 

I think they may have to update those warning labels on cigarettes.

Ukraine has a very good reason to lie... and you stated it yourself... keeping RU uncertain about what hit Novofederovka. As long as they don't know they don't know how to react or where it might be safe. I wish the countries sending stuff would be more discrete about what they're sending - it would be much more effective if RU didn't know what might be coming.
About Novofedorivka, earlier today CNN said something about a railroad station hit near there, on a critical rail line RU had recently put back in service. So many another ammo train? Surprised we haven't seen any photos from that one yet.

To see Anzio and Sothampton dock with such heart rending clarity, yet fail so miserably when children and partners now, again, face the same bottomless agony. 
 
Sic transit gloria mundi…