LongLeftFlank

Noted, and ISTR there was video posted of the explosions, though no way of proving that was what they hit. And it would also be easy for the UA to disprove by showing it in action. Which leads me to believe this particular claim is legit. The Kalibrs have gotten some painful shots in; it's not all terror bombing.

I think the S400 system the Slovaks sent with much hoopla in May got destroyed by Kalibrs in its containers at Dnipro Airport (that's from RU sources, but seems credible).

Because they can, is my best guess; it's close to the frontier and they can launch some attacks, engage with UA forces and then bombard them to ratchet up the casualties. I continue to believe the RU is going to try to 'freeze' this war soon and killing and maiming Ukrainian kids at high rates is one of the few chips they have. Also, the sad realities of the mine warfare that is ramping up.

Suyi notices the RA continuing to pull units from all its frontiers and feed them in. Notice crap medical care too, supporting my contention of much higher KIA ratios than we Westerners are used to. ....I wonder whether Kim will send over some North Koreans 'volunteers' as mercs; Russia might be desperate enough for infantry and it does have a Korean minority so they're deniable. Ever since the Gulag closed down, a lot of the logging and mining work in Siberia has been done by Norks, working at slave wages to earn forex for the Hermit Kingdom.

1. The artillery war intensifies, and it looks like it's expanding to new sectors, e.g. Lyman and Sumy, by launching probes and then bombarding the UA reaction forces. My read is that RU recognises artillery is still in their favour and are trying to raise the Ukrainian casualties levels still further. And it seems they are, although this feed also touts the UA standard line, which remains Send Guns Now! 2. Fighting around Sieverodonetsk city continues, as separ troops try to cut off the river crossings from the north, since it seems they haven't been able to get there from the south and the city fight is a death trap. Reports conflict; a lot of prop on both sides, but once more it appears the UA are using limited forces to tie up much larger RU forces in tough terrain, and will withdraw them once they have extracted a suitable toll. 3. Below is the only significant new attack reported. OSINTAg, while editorially pro has a pattern of overcrediting RU advances, so salt as always.... 4. The UA has continued to launch multiple attacks along the Kherson front, but their opsec is pretty strict and since the scale is modest there aren't big victories (or losses) to report either. The UA seems to be trying to find ways to mount combined arms attacks that can achieve serious penetrations and destroy Russian formations; so far they aren't doing much better than Ivan at that. Happy to be proven wrong.... That's my quick scan anyway. You know my usual sources, feel free to check them.

How much does the Soviet Union weigh? -- I.V. Stalin

Agreed! the Russian army doesn't collapse, or yield significant territory, unless it is given a very hard shove, or several. Given the intensity of this war and the firepower being employed by both sides, I actually have no trouble believing Russian dead are in the mid 20,000s, That includes separ militias whose medevac is likely near nonexistent. ...So if I apply 24k/40% mortality rate, I get 60k total casualties (KIA/WIA), which is in line with US DoD estimates. And is enough to explain the huge amount of anecdata showing the Russians frantically scraping up manpower from wherever to employ as frontline infantry. That's the core arm where everyone including Strelkov agrees they are cripplingly short, as amply documented here: Note that in time though, Russia will find the replacements if its forces do not start being attacked and physically destroyed. And if it meanwhile stops losing men at the rate of 200 dead a day, its forces will be able to resume a higher tempo of attack. I'll quote Stuffy Dowding again: ...the fact remains that our young men must shoot down their young men at a rate of 4 to 1 if we are to keep pace at all. Probably more like 2 to 1 here, but still quite a task and one not accomplished by M777s and Caesars alone.

Nice topo of the Bohorodychne-Krasnopillya area, next block on RA 36th CAA's painfully slow and costly road to Sloviansk. They can't go around (or not without a major river crossing op). OSINTAgg do love him some Giant Red Arrows of Doom. Dolyna is not captured though, and Bohorodychne remains fiercely contested. Map is shown for context (terrain)

Interesting.

Nova Kakhovka viaduct....

1. From a pro-RU feed, separs using recoilless guns (what's the Soviet calibre of these? 76mm?) and a DP28. Dense woodlands, looks a lot like Western Europe. 2. And yup, the Russians are using the infamous 'butterfly' mines. 3. Kornet team.

Outstanding summary, both of the all-important artillery war and of the war in general. Never mind the site's politics.

Yeah, and some of those beautiful girls in camo are dying for their country as well.

Izyum-Sloviansk update View of the ground.

More good to know stuff on the artillery war. It isn't just range and ROF. No doubt many here know this, but there are also others like me who don't, and this is absolutely one of the fundamentals of the war right now.... Oh, and just because.....

1. Well pretty much all hedge fund strategies eventually seem to boil down to 'find a greater fool.' An easy (profitable) out for them, maybe, but someone still holds the bag at the end. Often taxpayers. Kind of subverting your point lol, but I have small love for financial engineers of all stripes.... 2. Tooze actually ends his essay on a similar note: ... it is a fatal trap to align different notions of individuality and freedom. It may well be true that success in intense modern combat requires not just courage but a certain sort of initiative, a certain kind of freedom. But let us not confuse those expressions of agency, and initiative, with other broader notions of freedom that we employ in political or cultural thought. The battlefield is a zone of absolute and violent constraint. As Clausewitz says the enemy gives me the law. To prevail may require a sense of super human strength or extreme self-sacrifice. Furthermore it requires one to regard the enemy as a counterpart not to be reasoned or bargained with, but to be outwitted, crushed and if necessary incapacitated or killed. @Beleg85, I used 'Western Way of War' deliberately and you picked up on the Hanson reference nicely, full marks. I found his thesis interesting, if underdocumented as you say (fine, him and Gladwell and a bunch of other popularisers too -- he doesn't write for academics or wonks). Sadly, I have found Hanson himself (like Paul Krugman on the other team) a disappointingly dull reciter of partisan talking points.

https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-128-mission-command-natos?s=r Worthy piece from Adam Tooze tracing the diffusion of Auftragstaktik from the Wehrmacht via the Bundeswehr to the US Army and its subsequent adoption by the Ukrainians and, as Tooze does well, ruminating on the wider implications: e.g., is there a 'Western Way of War?' I knew about Mellinthin and Halder but didn't know about Balck's involvement with de Puy. Auftragstaktik, mission command, was the gothic scissors that cut through the threads that suspended the American fighting-man like a puppet from the dead hand of Mcnamara’s Pentagon.... If Ukraine’s forces really are influenced by the “mission command” model they have learned from NATO this is in fact the first time it is being put to the test against the original intended enemy and in the kind of life-or-death battle that NATO envisioned in the 1970s and 1980s.

There's a lot more there than just coal. Essential to Ukraine's future prosperity, and worth many thousands of additional Ukrainians dead to secure? Perhaps not, but that's not our call. But from a purely military perspective, I'd sooner hold as much of the Azov coasline as possible, for the next decade at least....

The presumption is that UA will achieve superiority in 2 of those 3 areas (air hasn't showed itself as decisive in this war) as it builds up and the battered and undermanned Russian army declines. So far though, they haven't yet conducted a successful combined arms attack above a 2-3 day 2 battalion scale attack achieving local penetrations only and still leg infantry heavy. They have tried and failed at least once. Hoping we will see an example soon, perhaps west of Izium, although that seems to be forest fighting, yet again. In open country, combined arms is essential to break in to a defensive line, break up and destroy a regular enemy formation. P.S. I continue to insist on the 'rapid' (or 'early') part because as the Russians dig in and sow millions of mines, it will be terribly costly to achieve those break ins. The Verdun shoe will be on the other foot then, I fear. Western military thinkers love their big systematic OVERLORD buildups, but there is such a thing as waiting too long.

Perhaps. Looking ahead, I suppose once whole Russian regiments are being destroyed, with the rest scrambling to vacate large chunks of territory, and that disaster can no longer be hidden, then Russia itself falls into disorder. ...Especially since Belarus also likely goes wobbly on Moscow (Lukashenko is a thug but he also isn't as dumb as he looks, he could well flip!). So who the heck knows what happens then? But I feel this is counting our chickens a bit....

My two cents on restoring the 2002 borders is as follows: Ukraine MUST find a way to defeat the Russian army decisively in a general offensive and rapidly retake the following strategically key occupied territories, in order of criticality, but ALL critical: a. Everything north of the Dnieper (Kherson) b. Kharkiv east + Izyum at least as far as Oskil reservoir. c. The entire 'land bridge' area and Azov coastline, from Perekop isthmus to Melitopol and Berdinansk. Mariupol is symbolic, but no strategic IMHO. If the war 'freezes' with any of these territories still in Russian hands, I think a rematch (by which I mean an eventual reinvasion by Russia) is inevitable. Which is a Russian win, unfortunately, by the deranged logic of fascist Russia. 2. I don't believe Russia or Putin's clique 'collapses' unless its army is decisively defeated in the field. By which I mean frontline CA formations actually destroyed, others retreating in disorder, and thousands of new prisoners calling their mums. Killing more militiamen and Ossetians doesn't cut it. 3. So assuming the UA can do what is required to accomplish points 1 and 2, they can pretty much walk into Donetsk city. Lukhansk, surrounded by Russia on 3 sides could be a lot tougher; a siege would possibly be required. ... I just can't see the UA retaking Crimea though, barring a very large and visible popular uprising in their favour, which seems very doubtful to me. I believe most Crimean residents (Tatars are only a small minority now) preferred to rejoin Russia in 2014. They may be less keen on it postwar, but not to the point of fighting to join Ukraine. A large ethnic cleansing would occur, and that would create its own scars and badly tarnish the Ukrainian victory.

Time lapse. It's been a long 6 weeks. And as a number of folks have observed here, while the artillery crapstorm intensifies, all the actual Russian advances seem to be petering out, including the Popasna break-in. The only meaningful advance is halfway between Izyum and Sloviansk, at least 5 weeks behind schedule now thanks to the Dovhenke hedgehog. And even that doesn't seem to be curdling much Ukrainian beer. So shelling seems to be all they've got at this point? hence my focus on it today (educating myself though I hope others find it interesting).

How Hawt is Ukraine Gonna Get? Pt. 3

Handy info here on comparative weapon ranges, as well as 155mm systems delivered, for those amateurs like me who haven't been following closely up to now: https://kyivindependent.com/national/how-western-heavy-weaponry-can-make-a-difference-in-the-war-in-ukraine/ Max ranges, kms: (R = reg. E = special round) 1. Bloc -> 152mm 2S3 Akatsiya: 18(R)/24(E) km -> 152mm towed 2А65 Msta-B: 24(R)/28(E) km -> 152mm 2S5 Giatsint-S SP: 28(R)/33(E) km -> 203mm 2S7 Pion: 40(R)/47(E) km -> 220mm BM27 Uragan: 28 km -> 300mm BM30 Smerch: 70-90 km 2. NATO M777 towed: -> 155mm M795: 22 km -> 155mm M549A1: 32 km -> 155mm M982 Excalibur: 40 km CAESAR: -> 155mm ERFB: 41 km -> 155mm Excalibur: 49 km PzH 2000: -> 155mm DM121 30 km -> 155mm RAP 67 km -> HIMARS M142 227mm M31/32: 80 km -> M270 227mm M31: 80 km