Commanderski

Nope, there is always the JohnDeere option...🤣

Already rehearsing it mate - sneak preview image ...

 

Nothing wrong with Ukrainian morale though
 

13th day of war, but our jets still flying. From where? We will know that after the war

Russian BMP-3 and T-72B3 in Snihurivka, Mykolaiv oblast. This is settlement in 53 km to the east from Mykolaiv and 45 km north to Kherson on the road Kherson - Kryvyi Rih
 
  Somewhere in Mykolaiv oblast. Judging on clear sky looks like todays video - shelled and abandoned Russian ammunition supply trucks    

Captured Russians, Mykolaiv oblast
Bogged and abandoned Russian T-72B
 

Now that the US and some European allies are going to ban Russian oil imports not to make light of the situation but this is funny...
 

Now that the US and some European allies are going to ban Russian oil imports not to make light of the situation but this is funny...
 

I need to make a complaint about this forum.  I have a ton of work to do and need to deliver results every day right now.  And the people here are mostly providing thoughtful, insightful, and well reasoned posts which are significantly impeding my productivity.  So if you could all instead make inane posts w worn out cliches, I would greatly appreciate it.  🙃

T-72B3M T-80BVM now in Ukrainian service:

I think the major difference between discussions here and what I have seen from a lot of the "experts" is that they seem to focusing on quantitative assessment, while we are largely focus on qualitative.  We can count up the losses and numbers as well as any right now but when linking that back to qualitative deductions one comes up with different conclusions.
I mean one can see that about 10% of the Russian invasion force of tanks has been attrited.  From a quantitative view that is not great but losses are to be expected in front line capability and it likely matches some other similar military actions.  Then if one takes the remaining 90% versus big red spaces on the map, I can see how people are coming to the conclusions that they are.  What is missing is all the weird stuff, like most of those tanks have been abandoned either out of gas or crews just left.  That is a qualitative observation on how or why those tanks were lost beyond what was lost.  
I am not surprised that a forum of avid wargamers and students of history are taking a broader qualitative system view, and frankly the real experts/analysist who work for government/military are doing the exact same thing (with better data).  In the end events will confirm or deny which viewpoint has been correct and the truth is probably somewhere in between.  What has been interesting is that we here have been about 24-48 hours ahead of mainstream in a lot of ways.  In the first couple of days we noted some odd signals and had pretty much decided that the "quick war" was a loss by the end of the first weekend.  Then experts caught up and complimented "Ukrainian resistance", when it was in fact a pretty convincing military defence, and were stating that Ukraine may hold out for a couple weeks but the end was going to be the same.  As things unfolded it became more apparent here that the Russian war machine had stalled hard - while mainstream media was pointing to the looming 64km convoy North of Kyiv - which turned out to be a parking lot and by now is likely turning into a graveyard.  We began to wonder if the Russians might even get to the siege phase.
Now most experts are still seeing a brutal siege phase and a long term guerilla war.  Here in our little bubble it is looking more likely that the Russians will have to be halting broad offensive action soon and we could see this turn into a stalemate scenario...all largely based on qualitative assessment of 1) Russian inability to establish what should have ben pre-conditions such as information and air superiority, 2) very poor Russian logistical performance, 3) Signs of eroding Russian morale, 4) Baffling Russian C2, and 5) The increasing/acceleration of Ukrainian will and capability to fight.  This is beyond the changes in strategic narrative from Russia, who went from "unconditional surrender" to "conditional surrender" in about 10 days.  As well as the growing impact of what has become the economic equivalent to a nuclear war against Russia. 
We will see how close everyone is as this thing unfolds, we could be wrong or too optimistic based on a steady stream of what may be fairly isolated events but when strung together on social media look like a trend.  The major shift I am looking for right now is signs of Russian defensive operations like minefields, major digging in and the like.  At the strategic level we might start seeing less of Putin and the identification of a new "spokesperson", this may be a sign of a shifting power dynamic at the top. 
I recall back in 2014 the Russian Foreign Minister saying "if Russia wanted to, we could be in Kyiv in two weeks" or words to that effect, well that is Thurs and so far they can't even seem to be able to cordon Kyiv, let alone control it; there are strange rattling and scraping sounds coming out of the Russian War Machine.  All the while Ukraine is waging an information war that is now the Gold Standard and a employing a hybrid operational approach that will be actively studied for a century at least. 
In another reality, if I were on the Russian Military Staff and had a golden Willie Wonka ticket to say whatever I wanted without repercussions, it would be "Get out, now.  They are not surrounded, we are." 

China is looking at all that empty in the Russian far east, looking hard.

Zhukov would have every officer above the level of captain shot for screwing something up this badly. 

I wonder what the Chineses threatened Putin with for him to hold off. He had to know about the weather conditions and what would happen when the ground thaws out.

For some odd reason I am drawn to the Russian Generals who must be hearing something similar about their battle groups.
"General, I have no division..." -Major General George Edward Pickett to General Lee at Gettysburg July 3, 1863

If it snows lightly, then the temperature rises enought for the snow to melt, then the cicle repeats again and again and again, you get a nice and looooooong Rasputitsa.
I remember a pal asked me in mid february if I thought the Russians wpuld invade (he likes havingsome small stock exchange inversions) . I repplied that they wouldn't because the best time had been january/early february, so Russian would have to wait until may/june. The reason was Rasputitsa. I never thought the Russians would be dumb enough to invade during Rasputitsa season.

That touched my heart. Watch till the end.
 
 

Ref V special ops force, imagery I've seen reveals there were other pieces of it not present in that strip of town or village hwhere the local cursed the Russians throughout his video/s. Specifically, military journalist lia Ponomarenko posted a BMD-2 with dead Russians (faces not visible and no gore) sprawled atop it on the hull top near the turret and aft of that. This one was labeled sensitive and blurred out by Twitter, but you can see it by choosing to override the blurring. Here is a tank originally part of V that certainly doesn't seem to be in a village or town. All imagery is directly from Igor Girkin's Twitter.


 
Here is a second V marked tank.

Another V stray. Flubbed IDs corrected by Haiduk info Upper photo is BTR-MDM, lower photo FO vehicle 1V119 Reostat  





Were these originally to hold snatched key Ukrainians, their corpses or both for return to Russia. We know what they're ostensibly doing, but can we trust that?
 
  Petri Mäkelä   @pmakela1   Convoys of Russian ambulances keep hauling wounded Russian soldiers to the hospitals in southern #Belarus from #Ukraine.     6:05 AM · Mar 1, 2022 from Lappeenranta, Suomi·Twitter for Android All in all, what I've dug up, when placed in context, indicates the V force was considerably larger and far more powerful than I first thought. Looks like the column, variously, fell apart, was cut apart or was never a coherent whole to begin with. 

Regards,

John Kettler

🤣 I swear, the Russians are going to be facing "tractor" jibes for decades after this ! 🤣
 

Let´s hope it is genuine:
 
 

The enemy column in Kyiv oblast.
...Before

...And after the strike

Looks like yesrterday Russians threw into the battle some reserves on NW Kyiv direction. Old Russian T-72B tanks were spotted in action. There was sporadic clashes around the towns, but reportedly UKR forces withdrew, because there are many civilians left in these towns and its can be completely ruined during intensive actions. So, Bucha and Hostomel, which were contested area now in enemy's hands. Reportedly Russian murdered several civilians and shot out three civil volunteers, which supply the town with a food. 
Also enemy forces present on Irpin' outskirts, but this town because of demolished bridges not of their interest, so UKR forces are trying to evacuate civilians through Irpin'. Part of citizens were evacuated in previous two days.
Yesterdays photo, civilians hide under the demolished bridge in Irpin' untill enemy fire stop.

Enemy periodically shell the streets of Irpin' and already four civilans were killed. Here the video of hit on Irpin' street, looks like the guy from territorial defense got wounded and civilian hit further on the street  
Irpin' evacuation

Today's morning was heard intensive artillery exchanes far away N and NW of Kyiv. 
Reportedly two missiles were shot down over the city

On eastern direction - our troops hit TOR M1 near Brovary, Kyiv oblast
 
 

No idea of the robustness/valiidity of this source, but it popped up in my feed:
 
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/rusi-defence-systems/russian-air-force-actually-incapable-complex-air-operations