LongLeftFlank

ChrisO has just published a lengthy thread on the crucial battles for Dovhenke, the stubborn 'cork in the bottle' that from Apr - Aug stymied all Russian attempts to advance from Izium and take Sloviansk-Kramatorsk from the north. With no major rivers and (seemingly) good tank country, this direction was Russia's best chance to secure the northern Donbass and perhaps Dnepro as well, before the Western long range guns and HIMARS came in strength and altered the game. Dovhenke should definitely be the subject of a future CM campaign series! @Combatintman's synthesis from April. Dovhenke is that green patch just to the west of arrow AA2, about a quarter way along. P.S. It has its own Wikipedia entry now.

Exactly! This is vastly better analysis than Kofman's anxious 'oh, don't provoke the Russians or they'll get *really angry*' hand-wringing. ...Like the kids who once bullied him, they're totally inside his head. They own him. Meanwhile the Ukies are inside Moscow's, more every week, totally undercutting the bully's sense of superiority. And eventually, he starts avoiding them, seeking easier prey. ...I don't always agree with you on here mate, but I sense playing cards with you would get quite expens ive. [duplicate quote bubble, I can't get rid of it so gonna repurpose it, it isn't an actual FC quote....]

Which in spite of a lifetime of distinguished scholarship and analysis, is advertising him as pants at any actual kind of negotiation. Kofman just keeps insisting on playing the game Putin has set up. Meanwhile, UA just keeps setting fire to various squares across the (now divided) Red half of the board. (OK, have I burned that metaphor to the waterline yet?)

Chuck Pfarrer pushing a SpecOps theory. Surprise. I don't share Steve's missile theory but I agree with him that a blast from below (abutments) would (a) show more damage to the piers (b) show more damage to the other road bridge but little to none to the rail bridge above. Yes, while most tiny bits of truck would be underwater now, I agree with some observers that you'd be finding at least some bits of it on the undestroyed roadways. That may still happen of course.

....But why missile the (duplicate) roadway instead of the (irreplaceable) railway?

Barring further forensic evidence, it seems like this blast was intended to take out the northbound lane of the road bridge on this particular day, which it did, spectacularly. The spectactular train fire seems like to have been hoped for, but not relied upon. So it seems the Kerch rail link is not out permanently.... yet. And it will be more heavily guarded than ever. But the UA GenStaff is inside Stavka's head now. ... Should they shove as much kit and supplies across today as they have on hand, depriving other hard pressed fronts? Materiel, especially artillery ammo and rockets, can't be everywhere at once. This is another massive stressor for the Russians, and another genius strategic move for the UA, levering their much shorter interior lines.

Götsill mit uns!

The Ukes are inside Vova's head, which is probably why they executed the operation they knew they could pull off, on this particular day. Illia P's Twitter comments have jumped the s̶h̶a̶r̶k̶ dolphin at this point....

'Tis but a scratch....

Yeah, at this point I feel like the burden is on the 'boat' or 'missile' advocates to show evidence for their implements of destruction, not just point out holes in the truck bomb theory. Look, other than being a WW2/milhist geek since age 7, I know even less than you do about demolitions, but it seems like if you can SOMEHOW bring charges on a boat, your target is the bridge pier, not the bridge section (gravity takes care of that bit). And you don't want a thermite 'blowtorch', you want something with maximum, preferably confined, blast that shatters the reinforced cement into a gazillion fragments. HE grogs, please chime in. ....And no matter what kind of charge you use, you get a giant fountain of water in addition to the cloud of debris, cuz, well, half your blast goes DOWN, barring a shaped charge. And I never heard of those used in structural demolition work, but then I've led a sheltered life. And then you kind of well, expect to see half of a jagged and shattered piling standing there, with skeletal rebar sticking out the top. Anyone got photos of that? ...At dawn, you also expect to see a bunch of soaking wet rail cars and adjacent bridge sections, covered with rubble or dust, not twisted and charred black or burning merrily like Guy Fawkes night.

So a lot of folks here and on tha Twitter are laser focused on interpreting that shower of flaming debris blowing onto the RR bridge in the seconds after the big bang, and using it to support some fairly exotic theories. It's wind, guys! A strong predawn shore breeze blowing south through the Kerch straits took the cloud of white hot flaming debris right across into the train where some of it lodged on the greasy tanks and caught alight. (Take a look at the daylight photos with flames whipping under the RR span). And look at the ferocious ocean current in the daylight photos. No wonder an additional weakened span came down. Also, there's a huge burn patch on the adjacent road section. Don't have the EOD chops to rule thermite but maybe it was selected as likely to take more of the highway section down? The train caught afire in multiple (4-5) places but (sadly) those fires didn't spread much. This all leads me to conclude that damage to the train and RR bridge was hoped for, but that it wasn't really the primary target. Otherwise they would have followed up with missile strikes, etc., while the Russians were still reeling. [yes, parody videos are out already. And memes]

Big, if true. But if this statement is meant to support the Nat notion that Big Bear has been fighting with 'one fist only' to date, it is quite wrongheaded. What it indicates is that RA could only sustain 60k troops in the field, even before its losses began mounting, and UA began landing heavy punches on its LOCs. Also, 'tank riders' allowed on all AFVs in the CM modern warfare games, s.v.p.

That's it, I have the answer: sinister Ukronazi NATO capitalist puppetmasters haz better fish, and make bribe perfidious military dolphins! Так долго и спасибо за все рыбы!

... nice! with a Ouija board channeling Barnes Wallis, Isaac Doolittle and Archimedes. For the record, I am kind of with this guy: the VBIED theory is the *least* problematic of all the theories. And btw, if I was the Russians I'd be auguring drain holes in all those tanker cars right now, damn the environmental consequences.

I'm sure theories will be percolating for some pages, but I'd love to see some of those unexploded tank cars set back merrily alight again. Any antiship missiles handy? Flood the zone, a la Moskva. One if by land, and two if by sea....

Lol, it's "hypersonic crap" all right! We now return you to you Mutha Beautiful Bridge thread....

And Professor O'Brien brings the rail map.... Extreme magnification, Mr. Sulu Next phase: Operation "WAR OF THE RAILS: FALL 2022 EDITION" ? (LLF preens modestly) So the UA doesn't even need to storm the Azov Highlands to effectively split the Russian armies!

You sure about that? The train and the truck were moving the same direction.

...Or the competent ones were all conscripted for 'SMO' Is there a grassy knoll nearby?

Martyrdom operation or self-driving VBIED? Maybe Elon is on the side of the angels after all, in his own twisted way (lol)? Burn baby, burn.....

Good thread here about the prospects for an attack into the 'land bridge', key terrain, etc. ...

I've been digging for a map, but there is a line running west from Rostov along the Azov coast (hint: lots of bridges and embankments crossing marshlands) to Mariupol that isn't in gun range. Retaking Volnovakha, which was a 2014 UA redoubt that fell back in March would seem ideal, but I don't know how strongly the Russians have refortified it since. They could be expected to put up quite a fight though, knowing that it shields their last lifeline. EDIT: I'll leave it to the experts.

The nuns of Bayeux have woven swiftly....

Route all supplies, tenuously, by rail past Donetsk and into Mariupol.... whoopsie! that very line got whacked hard by artillery in at least one spot (Ilovaisk) earlier tonight. No wonder the Ivans keep flinging themselves in waves against the Bakhmut front; they have *GOT* to push the UA back out of artillery range of their rail lines. I'm sure someone will come up with a map soon. Otherwise, they'll need to supply Crimea and the 'land bridge' army by ship and barge from Rostov and Novorossiysk. Keep in mind this is an army that, on top of all its other defects, has not figured out how to palletise cargo. So every offload/reload, from rail to ship and ship to road, adds effort, increases wastage, and presents ever more bottlenecks and single points of failure. Fish in an effing barrel.