chrisl

She was stunned first seconds 😀  Laptop has tough battery - I turned it on and battery showed 40% of charge after several months

Well guys, at last I got this!  Symbolically in the day of Kherson liberation ) 
Thank you @Kinophile for this initiative and enough "family diplomacy" in resolving of sudden obstacle on "last mile" 😀
Thank you @Battlefront.com - Steve, your "bribe" ) will be worked out ))))
Thank you all, who donated anonymously
Thank you, all other, who just have been reading and support our country - first two months were some nervous and psychologically hard, so this my 24/7 "marathone" here was giving me some emotional relief. 
 

It was part of the latest US aid package, sending underemployed crisis actors from Hollywood.

I can see Ukraine choosing to let the RA slip out the back rather than destroying Kherson.  
Post US election Russia isn't going to be getting much, if any relief from western aid to Ukraine, so they needed to bug out before winter.
The UA could have plastered the shores at the ferry crossings to destroy retreating RA units, but that would have stopped the retreat and pinned them in the city.  Then the choice would be for the UA to go in (bloody) or to drag out the siege into winter (brutal for civilians). All those Russians who slipped out can be HIMARSed later in open, or at least less dense areas, where a major city won't be destroyed in the process.  Or not.  How Ukraine did this is also a message to us in the west: "The UA is about retaking Ukraine, not vengeance, and if Russians leave quietly we can let them live."
Now if Ukraine can finish off the Kerch bridge and get at least fire control over the land bridge, Russia might give up on Crimea.

I can see Ukraine choosing to let the RA slip out the back rather than destroying Kherson.  
Post US election Russia isn't going to be getting much, if any relief from western aid to Ukraine, so they needed to bug out before winter.
The UA could have plastered the shores at the ferry crossings to destroy retreating RA units, but that would have stopped the retreat and pinned them in the city.  Then the choice would be for the UA to go in (bloody) or to drag out the siege into winter (brutal for civilians). All those Russians who slipped out can be HIMARSed later in open, or at least less dense areas, where a major city won't be destroyed in the process.  Or not.  How Ukraine did this is also a message to us in the west: "The UA is about retaking Ukraine, not vengeance, and if Russians leave quietly we can let them live."
Now if Ukraine can finish off the Kerch bridge and get at least fire control over the land bridge, Russia might give up on Crimea.

It was part of the latest US aid package, sending underemployed crisis actors from Hollywood.

I don't know art, but I know what I like 😀

Russians must be in awe of UKR organizational talent. Not only did they manage to capture a city that voted 99.99% to be annexed by Russia without a fight, they even managed to bring along hundreds of civilian crisis actors to cheer them on while they strut around in the place.

At risk of bringing US politics in: there's little enough change in the makeup of the US government that Vlad realizes he can count on Ukraine getting two more years of essentially the same support they've been getting.  And there's no way the RA can survive that.  For maybe the 3rd time since Feb 24 they're recognizing the reality of a macro situation.

It should be clear that Russia can only end this war on favorable terms if it either can militarily compel Ukraine to favorable terms or if it has something Ukraine needs badly enough in exchange for same. Under neither one of these scenarios is a retreat from Kherson remotely a positive thing for the Kremlin. It puts them farther away from either of the conditions above, it stimulates Ukrainian morale, it hurts Russian morale and it shows Ukraine's backers that their aid is working. I'm sure the Kremlin will spin it and the usual suspects will swallow that spin...but the likes of Glenn Greenwald don't win your wars for you. 

At risk of bringing US politics in: there's little enough change in the makeup of the US government that Vlad realizes he can count on Ukraine getting two more years of essentially the same support they've been getting.  And there's no way the RA can survive that.  For maybe the 3rd time since Feb 24 they're recognizing the reality of a macro situation.

Interesting hypothesis.  However, I am not sure there is a forcing function on the UA in all this.  Why pound your own city to rubble when you can just isolate it?  A bunch of tunnel rats hiding in holes in Kherson do not have any real range outside the city.  Once the UA closes in they can isolate the city further from the other side of the river, so leave em in place.
Once they secure the North bank of the Dnipro the UA has options, a lot of options.  They can try to bounce the Dnipro in about 5 locations by my count or maybe they just secure it and pound RA positions from a distance and open up an offensive elsewhere, like down from Zaporizhya towards Melitopol.  From there they can push south toward the Crimea and/or west to cut off Kherson from the south.  All these positions are viable and support advantage in the continued erosion of the RA in that sector.  
Feeding good troops into a cauldron of Kherson really is playing by Russia’s rules and to their strengths and I don’t see the UA falling for it.
If the RA manages an orderly withdrawal it isn’t great but they are withdrawing for a reason, namely that their position is untenable.  Finally, this withdrawal is going to be one way.  Without a major - and I am talking biblical - strategic shift, the RA is pretty much on the defence and will not be on the north bank of the Dnipro again.  They will have left a lot of hardware and people behind for nearly zero gain and that is a good news story in any war.

my  guess - it is still good for foot traffic or perceived to be.  If you drop it whatever forces are still on the other side are gonna panic.

I see what you're saying but looking at the big picture it's still a masterpiece.  A huge portion of UKR territory liberated without high cost to UKR.  A lot of RU losses along the way in men and especially material.  A lot of RU resources spent on a lost cause for many months.  A political humiliation for Putin.  UKR will be able to redeploy its fully equipped units elsewhere.  RU will have an unarmed, demoralized rabble to redeploy.  A huge victory via an opportunity created by interdiction of supply.
Catching all those men in kessel would be extra icing on the cake.  But it's still a huge and delicious cake.  

At risk of bringing US politics in: there's little enough change in the makeup of the US government that Vlad realizes he can count on Ukraine getting two more years of essentially the same support they've been getting.  And there's no way the RA can survive that.  For maybe the 3rd time since Feb 24 they're recognizing the reality of a macro situation.

At risk of bringing US politics in: there's little enough change in the makeup of the US government that Vlad realizes he can count on Ukraine getting two more years of essentially the same support they've been getting.  And there's no way the RA can survive that.  For maybe the 3rd time since Feb 24 they're recognizing the reality of a macro situation.

At risk of bringing US politics in: there's little enough change in the makeup of the US government that Vlad realizes he can count on Ukraine getting two more years of essentially the same support they've been getting.  And there's no way the RA can survive that.  For maybe the 3rd time since Feb 24 they're recognizing the reality of a macro situation.

If you're a country that has rapid electronics development capability, you have a couple years where you can do SEAV with anti-radiation drones.  Right now all the ISR drones are being joysticked, so both they and their operators are transmitting and giving away their locations.  Russia has no effective capability to triangulate on those and hit them.  There are people in Russia who know how to do that, but RU as a country doesn't have the resources to implement it, let alone have conscripts operate it.  Ukraine could receive equipment that would let them do it, and their operators are showing a really good understanding of how their AVs work, so they could probably take AV suppression equipment and a couple weeks training and use it effectively.
But that's only good for a few years, because the reality right now is that the ISR drones aren't autonomous - they're being joysticked.  If you're up against an opponent that can give their drones a true autonomous mode it gets much harder because they don't have to transmit very often, and neither do their controllers.  But one of the easiest things to make fully autonomous would be drones that just go and detect the transmissions of the enemy drones and their operators and bring fire on them, either with something organic to the drone or with a request to a missile from a few km back.
It will get a lot harder when the drones get fancier and have to transmit less data (e.g a few bits with coordinates and an ID rather than continuous video).  If they aren't transmitting, they're going to be hard to detect.
And I'm not sure what you're going to do about the guys with ATGMs around the perimeter.  Especially when the SEAV/ATGM owner has defined a geofenced area for the drones so that inside is a free fire zone for the drones and the guys on the perimeter are blowing up anybody who tries to drive.

And there are about 2000 faces on the length of that wall.

The hard part is really detection/sensing - if you don't know where it is you can't target it, whether with a servo or a kid playing a computer game.  You sort of need layers of detection - a coarse network far out that gets rough paths and then more precise sensors as they get closer to your higher value targets.  If you have its location/route early enough it's a cruising duck.

That's like an extreme version of the claw game.  So you need your military to have kids who played mechanical arcade games, too, not just video games.

Your point on UA capacity accepted but we have seen the ISR/PGM/light infantry tirade too many times in the last 8 months to be able to ignore it - this last video is just a repeat of that theme.  We have heard opposite reports on ATGMs - the Javelin doing 80%+ percent shot/kill etc.  Without an operational AAR we cannot know how widespread the phenomenon really is but I have seen enough to come to the conclusion that something fundamental is afoot in the evolution of warfare.
To your points, I would pushback on ISR.  I think that for this war the ISR asymmetry between the UA and RA has been a definitive factor.  It has been widely reported that it is not only the mass use of tactical UAS but a layered western architecture going all the way to space plugged into the UA at multiple levels.  We are seeing a smaller, lighter force destroying a large heavy one largely due to that ISR dynamic - the UA can see the RA likely better than RA commanders are able to see themselves.

I do not think it is crackpot at all.  In fact it is one of the few solutions that makes sense - up-armoured dispersed “light” infantry in powered suits.  You gain survivability, mobility and firepower where you need it, directly on the operator.  But you also can keep a lower battlefield profile and dispersion.  
The biggest issue is power.  If you want armoured infantry battle suits like Starship Troopers (book not movie) or The Expanse, one needs very high density but low weight power generation and I do not thin’ we are there yet.

If you're a country that has rapid electronics development capability, you have a couple years where you can do SEAV with anti-radiation drones.  Right now all the ISR drones are being joysticked, so both they and their operators are transmitting and giving away their locations.  Russia has no effective capability to triangulate on those and hit them.  There are people in Russia who know how to do that, but RU as a country doesn't have the resources to implement it, let alone have conscripts operate it.  Ukraine could receive equipment that would let them do it, and their operators are showing a really good understanding of how their AVs work, so they could probably take AV suppression equipment and a couple weeks training and use it effectively.
But that's only good for a few years, because the reality right now is that the ISR drones aren't autonomous - they're being joysticked.  If you're up against an opponent that can give their drones a true autonomous mode it gets much harder because they don't have to transmit very often, and neither do their controllers.  But one of the easiest things to make fully autonomous would be drones that just go and detect the transmissions of the enemy drones and their operators and bring fire on them, either with something organic to the drone or with a request to a missile from a few km back.
It will get a lot harder when the drones get fancier and have to transmit less data (e.g a few bits with coordinates and an ID rather than continuous video).  If they aren't transmitting, they're going to be hard to detect.
And I'm not sure what you're going to do about the guys with ATGMs around the perimeter.  Especially when the SEAV/ATGM owner has defined a geofenced area for the drones so that inside is a free fire zone for the drones and the guys on the perimeter are blowing up anybody who tries to drive.

Against Russia a 500m digital link would be great.  Against a technologically advanced military maybe less so.  A military that has sensors looking for radio signals that could indicate presence of an enemy position (e.g. for suppressing joysticked AVs) will be putting them on ground vehicles for similar purposes.  They may not detect the operator, who will be mostly in receive mode except when the "fire" signal is being sent, but it will detect the launcher.  A wired connection leaks a lot less signal for someone to detect.