Fat Dave

https://faridaily.substack.com/p/putin-always-chooses-escalation
This is well worth reading in the sense that describing how the iceberg and the Titanic met is well worth reading. The inescapable conclusion is that for the war to end, Russia must be clearly seen to have lost and Putin must be dead or gone. Preferably both.
 

Ok, I think that just about wraps up this topic, so glad we could come to rational common ground.  I am pretty sure the Canadian government will find and fleece me in my tax bracket over this, as they have demonstrated so much acumen to do, but so be it.
You guys in the "non-negotiable" camp do you, I hope maybe you found a few things to think about and mull over, I know I did - the entire post-conflict thing is something to unpack, but we need to get there first.
 

As one who has held his tongue reading EVERY SINGLE PAGE thru 1,40freaking2 of this unprecedented and now legendary thread - despite all the numerous assertions with no evidence except (well informed) opinions about the past…and despite the important and profound debates on morality and ethical conduct during and after war…and the demonstrated courage and sacrifice of a nation standing up to one of the all time biggest bullies in history…and the terrific analyses of the ebb and flow of the front lines…and the historical and cultural explanations…all without daring to stick my only neck out - THIS CROSSED THE RED LINE! Loyalty DEMANDS solidarity!
FLY, EAGLES, FLY! COWBOYS, BYE BYE!
 

 
PS forum name is in honor of my first childhood best friend, who refused to abandon a downed severely wounded black ops pilot as time ran out on a mission up North. Cost him dearly the rest of his life - ended too soon. Clear skies, Allen. Never forgotten.

I did!  Are we at the point where we are arguing past each other?  Kind of feels like it.  
Retaking pre-2014 lines is not going to be quick, unless Russia collapses.  In fact I am pretty sure there are a lot of people in this regions who won’t like it so an insurgency in the population is likely.  A long drawn out war for that is what I am talking about.
A year?  Of course the west is going to continue the support for a year.  If the UA can walk the RA back to the border in that time, hey great.
Nuclear war.
That.  We are not going likely going to stay united in the west on the Crimea in the face of that.  If the US responds to a battlefield nuclear weapon by wiping out the Black Sea Fleet we are in an 80s movie.  And in this hypothetical we are doing this for Crimea?  Sorry, I do not see it.
Look, I honestly hope I am wrong.  Again, I am not advocating any of this and clearly touched a nerve; however, I am not about living in an echo chamber either.  This is my assessment.  Disagree, post your own assessment, or go to another forum that tells you what you want to hear.
Find me a war where total cost-less victory happens.  WW2, nope cost a mint to rebuild Europe and Japan, and we got the Cold War as a consolation prize.  Pick anyone, they all end with all sides coming to terms with a reality that does not match the one they went in wanting.  No one ever gets 100 percent perfect endings, in order to do that your are by definition not at war.
Last time. Russia must come to terms with how it is going to lose this war, and Ukraine with how it will win it.  Neither of those end states will be a perfect vision of what either side wanted.
 

Well I am glad you are clear because to be honest, having read this twice I cannot pull out what your thesis is here.
I am not saying we want Russia as a Chinese gas station, in fact that is not aligned with western interests at all.  Cheap energy for China or India, that they can get at bargain prices is not good for us. 
The fact that it is happening as a direct result of this war is a reality.  Why?  Because no one else but China, and India are going to do business with Russia...and they are going grind every concession our of Russia they can.  Hell Putin just got publicly spanked by India, which part of "you are not in the game anymore" does Russia not understand?  They do have nuclear weapons, it is the only reason why we are not doing airstrikes on Moscow, but they do nothing to promote or project Russian power in any meaningful way. 
Let me be absolutely clear, because there is likely a language barrier - I do not care what Russia wants or thinks in this regard, it is happening because any hope they had at projecting themselves as a global power started dying at the gates of Kyiv and pretty much collapsed at Kharkiv.  Russia is currently a joke-state, with nukes...yay and it will be a de facto puppet state of the only global power willing to do business with them when the full bill comes due or become North Korea.
I am really not sure what the point on hybrid warfare is to be honest. Russia used their version of hybrid warfare because they were at a disadvantage.  One employs subversive strategies when one does not have hard power to get things done - about 2000 years of history back me up on that one.  Russia's mistake was thinking it had enough hard power to to the job and get away with it.
Perhaps it is on me.  Let me try to be clearer:
- We, in the west, do not want this war to drag on.  We are bruised and battered from 30 years of cleaning up the worlds crap, more often than not making it worse when we do.  If Ukraine looks like it is going to drag this out past the point it is in our interests we will get off the train.  Not all at once but there will be splits, which will do Ukraine no favors post-war.
- I am saying: We want Russia to remain a functional state within the context of the current global order.  We want normalization with Russia so that it remains out of China's orbit, which is exactly where it is going on this trajectory, and continues to do business with the West (hopefully we are less exposed this time).  We do not want a Russia in freefall - 6000 loose nukes on the dance floor et al.  We do want Russia to 1) pay for this war in a meaningful way, 2) turn over war criminals for full prosecution and 3) a new regime in Russia because Putin is done.  Until we get that then sanctions will very likely remain in place and the fun continues. My bet is that you will say "well that will never happen because, Russia", well then Russia can go to whatever grave it is digging for itself. The Russian people need to re-assert their power and make it happen or they deserve whatever happens next.  We in the western world are the most powerful bloc in the history of humanity - we will deal with the consequences.
- We do need to commit to finish this war to some sort of agreeable end state and then swiftly swing towards national reconstruction and bringing Ukraine into the western sphere (NATO, EU).
- I do not want to accommodate Russia, or whatever.  I definitely do not propose we abandon Ukraine now - sunk costs and all. I want stability and less crazy.  We will keep on directly supporting the killing of Russians until it looks like we can get that, and where that lands with respect to lines on the map is secondary.
I hope this clears thing up a bit.

I one hundred percent agree with The_Capn that multiple years of High intensity trench warfare are not worth it. I am not talking about taking back Donbass and the Crimea centimeter by centimeter and paying out in blood the same way. I am saying that we owe the Ukrainians one fully supported winter/spring offensive. By fully supported it I mean enough gas, I mean enough ammo, I mean as many NATO weapons as they can physically absorb. Steve's point about being cautious at the very end there's also quite relevant but I just don't think we can afford to leave a total victory off the table if it's there for the taking.
There are two somewhat conflicting long-term goals about managing the end of this conflict. We do want Russia to remain in existence and more or less its current form, simply because it's break up entitles us to who knows how many more unpleasant wars, and that's while we get to chase nukes around like very dangerous marbles. At the same time we really really, really want to crush Russian imperial ambitions forever, and convince them right down to their bones that they are done playing superpower. These goals are somewhat in conflict. So much of the question comes down to does the loss of Crimea get the point across, or does the loss of Crimea either collapse Russia completely or result in an utterly in embittered post Versailles type situation. Does letting Russia keep Crimea make better or worse outcomes more likely? I am not sure our crystal ball is that good. Given the difficulty in predicting longterm outcomes I am strongly inclined for the total the Ukrainian victory scenario if it on the table soonish, and at a reasonable price. To repeat NOTHING is worth three years of grinding trench warfare.
In regards to Ukraine's future, as opposed to Russia's I wrote a post 1000+ pages ago agreeing with everything The Capn just said about quitting at the 2022 lines. At the 2022 lines Ukraine is a unified, relatively easy to run country. If fully incorporated into the EU and NATO it would be a very prosperous one, I just don't think we can get the Ukrainians to realize that easily, not after Russia has turned every square mile they've taken into a badly run concentration camp. But perhaps The Capn is correct and checks with enough zeros on when will work their usual magic.
And as I have also been saying for a 1000 pages, a successful coup/revolution in Belarus that pulls it into the Western camp would be the ultimate, absolute, drop the mic victory in this war. It is worth a lot of money and at least some risk to pursue that. Success in Belarus would be worth 100 times Crimea in terms of long term stability and prosperity, even for Ukraine, never mind the rest of us.
Lastly let me remind everyone how lucky we are that people like Steve and The Capn even talk to us, with as many other things as they must have going on.
 
RAILROAD SABOTAGE!!! It is the only thing that moves the needle. Can somebody do some nice how to videos in Russian and plaster Telegram with them?
 
Shoving the army full of unhappy, unwilling people does seem quite unwise, but wisdom has not made an appearance in Moscow just lately.

Herein lies the central problem - we are living in a post-Afghanistan world.  We are also living in a post-pandemic world - our resolve is shaken and will remain shaken.  The single biggest fear for the West now in Ukraine, is that it becomes another Afghanistan.  You have hit the nail directly on the head why western resolve is shakier.
Hell, we can barely stand each other post-pandemic, let alone bighting off yet another war on the other side of the planet. Let alone one that could escalate into something really bad. This is the reason why a journey into pre-2014 lines, or dragging this out carries so much risk.  The US and the West have been the global police force for 30 years and all it got us was unsolvable ethnic-based messes that we had to pay for and f#cking terrorism in our back yard.  We are tired of doing this but are kind of stuck with it - turned out winning the Cold War meant holding the bag.  China is in the backfield waiting for its moment and we want hands on the pens that re-write things so we are, again, stuck with the job.  However, we do not want any more misadventures - they days of a great new world order and shining city on a hill are over - humanity is crazy and we are tired of managing it, especially when we have our own crazy to deal with.
We need to stay committed and in this fight because it matters; however, the second it looks like it does not you can count on people voting with their...well, votes.  We need to finish the job, but that job likely does not include what you are proposing under the current conditions.  So everyone put on your negotiating shoes.  You do not have to like it, nor does it make it "right", but it is the reality.
I honestly hope I am wrong and either the RA falls, timed perfectly with a soft Russian power vacuum and Ukraine can take back those lines, and magically all those people that live there who prefer to be Russian either leave or change their minds.  Then we can have peace and happiness.  Russia will abandon autocrats and embrace real democracy and we can all link arms as we try and then put China back into a box - I can see the Federation starships from here. 
Just don't try and be too disappointed when that does not happen and we have to settle for bad and not worse.

All war is negotiation and sacrifice - all war is negotiation with sacrifice.
So Putin dropped the 'mobilization' boogey man, kinda.  And of course threatened nuclear war without saying it...oh my.
Well I think Phase 2-3 of this war were positioning for endgame - Russia's point "Imma gonna take the Donbas, cause that was what I wanted all along...well that plus Kherson and everything I did not lose in Phase I".  And Ukraine's counter-point "No you are not."  This could have gone on for some time longer but clearly things are coming to a head in Moscow.
So I think this is endgame.  What does a soft-mobilization/slightly-louder-threat-of-nuclear-war-based-on-bizarro -annexation-internal-legalities-that-no-one-else-is-going-to-recognize-for-a-century, really tell us?
- Well first it tells us that Russia is desperate. Putin and the gang are opening themselves up to significant political exposure here.  You average Russian may, or may not, have actually supported this war but they all had the luxury of staying out of it - changing that is a major shift.  We are already hearing rumblings in opposition, who knows how far that will go; however, we do know that Putin would not have pulled on this lever if Russia was winning.  This is a pretty clear sign of losses and the impact it is having on his war machine.
- Next, this is not an escalation, it is desperation.  This is an attempt to preserve military capability in the field and re-assert a status quo, not raise enough forces to re-take Kyiv.  In short, whatever the UA is doing, it is working very well.
- Russia is clearly on the defensive, and likely will stay there until this is over.  Throwing 300,000 conscripts in any variation is not going to create offensive military capability - unable to create positive decision, so at best negative and null (i.e. denial).  This signals a shift into a strategy of exhaustion, annihilation for the Russians has left the building.  This puts Russia a couple rungs above an insurgency as far as military strategy goes.  They are going to try and dig in an hold on to what they have until the other side gets tired.
-  We could be heading towards a nuclear decision point.  The battlefield use of nuclear weapons has always been a grey area in warfare.  It is an escalation but the West and USSR went around and around on whether one could have a limited nuclear war.  I suspect that Putin might be thinking about testing the norms around this by declaring all the territory they have taken as "mother Russia" - we freakin knew that Russian doctrine and law were useless to refer to because autocrats just move the goalposts.  So I suspect the redline is the Crimea, and maybe somewhere in the LNR/DPR.  If the UA push that far, we might actually see Putin try to go that way - I say "try" because he 1) might already be removed from power by then, or 2) someone will put a bullet in his dome before they drag Russia into a doomsday scenario.  If one does go off well it won't be the end of days, tactical nuclear weapons can effect a couple grid squares and were designed for heavy armor concentrations at Fulda - this war is far to spread out.  We will likely lose our minds in the West and the response will be key to what happens next. I suspect conventional escalation or other options to send a strong signal to Russia that they will be the first country in history to lose a strategic nuclear war.  Regardless, if Russia employs a nuclear weapon, we are off the map, beyond the Cuban Missile crisis; however, I also still think this actually happening is a long shot.  For those in Europe and NA, I would not start getting too excited until strange looking Patriot systems start being deployed around major urban areas and/or in the Canadian north.
  So the biggest question on the table is - "what does endgame look like?"  This is in the weird political space as militarily Ukraine has demonstrated that given time they can likely retake everything back to the pre-2014 border - the question is do they want to?  Do they need to?  Putting emotions to one side - I suspect the West will be putting a lot of incentives for Ukraine to push to 2014 borders and then stop.  Why?  Well some possible reasons:
- DNR and LNR are burned out wrecks with large sections of the population that clearly do not want to be Ukrainian, so let em go.  Ukraine gains nothing but a couple Northern Ireland scenarios if they re-occupy, that and a massive reconstruction bill.  Walk away and wish them luck with their sugar daddy.
- Crimea.  Here we could see "neutral and open" tossed around a lot more.  Without Sevastopol Russia is pretty much cut out of the Black Sea, and if they are out of the Black Sea they are out of the Med.  If Russia is going to go nuclear, it will be over Crimea...and to this guy over in NA, it is not worth it.
- Ok, so that is the unthinkable "bad", what is the carrot?  Fast tracked entry in NATO - this entire bullsh#t goes away if Ukraine has Article 5 to lean on, because that is simply too big to fail for the West.  Hell Ukraine is already armed better than most NATO nations, with NATO STANAG equipment.  Their training is US/UK standard and I have no doubt we have already built most of their ISR infrastructure.  Ukraine in NATO next week is a clear win for the west. 
Next, entry into the EU.  Bureaucratic nightmare that it is, this would cement Ukraine into Europe economically and set them up for post-war success.
Last, a reconstruction plan to rival Marshal.  The West commits hundreds of billions to turn Ukraine into a shining example of what our money can do as a counter-point to China's game these last 15 years or so.
As to Russia?  Well it made its bed. Sanctions stay in place until 1) reparation deal is cut and in motion, 2) war crimes of all sorts are investigated and prosecuted and 3) Putin regime is gone enough that we can pretend whoever replaces it is clean...or clean enough. If Russia refuses any of the above, well enjoy being a Chinese satellite with a Cold War Soviet standard of living and we will see you again in 30 years - we will risk manage Russia, we are good at that in the West.
So What War?  Well UA will likely focus on taking bights out of Donbas just to ensure 300,000 Russian conscripts don't feel left out.  They will re-take Kherson and push south over the Dnipro up to the Crimean border.  And Melitopol, cut that stupid land bridge and box the Russians and their cronies back to where they were before this nonsense started.
Anyway, crazy days and keep your head up because it might get crazier.
 

Kamil has done a near exhaustive thread on the subject just recently. I will just highlight two points, it is MUCH harder to mobilize after you have gotten your standing army chewed into small bloody pieces, and what is left of it is committed to active operations. And secondly it was units of unhappy draftees who didn't want face German machine guns who actually carried out the Bolshevik Revolution.

Hokay. 
1. Syria is a civil war,  waged by its autocratic government against its own people. 
2. Ukraine is a war of survival, led by the democratic government against an invading fascist regime, and with the overwhelming support of its own people. 
3. The Kharkiv op is not an aberration, it is the harbinger of worse to come. Yup Kharkiv isn't war winning. But it sure as heck is an inflection point. The war is not going to stay the same -  Russia no longer has the momentum, men, political coherence or operational adaptability to determine the course of events. 
4. Ukraine already went through an interminable, never ending warfare since 2014 -  in fact this is still that war but its now in the decisive phase, and its very much the Ukrainians making the decisions that matter. 
5. Two "past their prime" superpowers? Ehhh... Wut. 
Ok, Russia is one. Check. 
Who's the other, exactly? The one with the amazing weapons and wherewithal to send them halfway across the world? The one with the insanely accurate and immediate  ISR capabilities?  The one actively engaged in a long term project to build a moon base?  
Or maybe the other one,  which however rancorous its decision process has managed to provide billions of dollars in direct aid to Ukraine,  absorbed 5,000,000 refugees in 3 months without raising a sweat,  has weathered all of Russia's  gas threats and is set to get through the winter regardless, has vastly greater military power than Russia and,  as part of an alliance with that other power,  admitted two new,  heavily armed and highly  strategically placed nations, and which the prospect of Ukraine joining it was what set off this whole awful mess in the first place? 
That author is a political hack,  not an original  thought in his head and, at bedrock level,  a twit. 

"They need a numerical superiority of at least 3 to 1."
 
Yes. Locally, you dumb arse. Even a certain corporal had better military sense then this uni(n)formed clown.
 
 

Ok so this is better how?  Are you telling me they picked up on the UA planning a Kharkiv offensive weeks ahead of time...and did sweet FA to stop it?!  Aaand we are back to broken operational military system.  Look I am sure these RU Nat volunteers are true believers and really cagey tough guys; however, if they have been part of this debacle then I am a little less than concerned about them walking out of a phonebooth and becoming a super army.
If they can surprise...they had better start doing it.  If this clown show picks a fight with the EU, it will escalate to NATO and frankly from what I have seen we could cut thru what is left of the RA - RU Nat volunteers included like **** through a short goose in a long weekend.
The references you are making are making it look worse for them.  They saw but were unable to do anything about the UA taking back what is now being reported 6000 sq kms, in a week.  I don't care if these guys are each super-soldiers who can do one handed chin-ups with no hands - their operational level ISR, C2 and logistics suck well beyond repair in the timeframes of this war.  They are going to be living proof that dedication and belief comes second to hot steel in the right place and right time.
And what if they are really in league with the mole people and conduct a sub-terrainian flanking?!  Like I said these a$$hats are well positioned to pull of a nasty insurgency/guerilla war in the LNR-DPR - maybe, if local support holds.  Beyond that they are living in fragmented...and getting more fragmented by the day, military organization.  What is likely to stop the UA at this point...is the UA.  They are going to need to re-set logistical lines and consolidate but so far from what I have seen the RA is not part of this equation.
In reality these clowns have the making of a VEO network that will go underground and make everyone miserable once this thing is over.  Good thing we have about 20 years worth of experience hunting humans in this context.
I gotta be honest, I am really tired of the freakin "boogy man of the week" right now.  We are jumping out of our seats because everything is really dangerous and really scary:
- The Russian Army with all that hardware
- The Black Sea Fleet & the Russian Air Force
- Spetznaz and Wagner clowns
- Russian cruise and hypersonic missiles
- Russian cyber Pearl Harbour 
- Some General Jack-in-the-Box who was a jerk in Syria.
- Russians parked around a nuclear power plant.
- Nukes!!
- the Russian 3rd Corp
- Russian mobilization!! - the other hand coming out.
- Russian escalation dominance.
- RU Nats - whoever the hell they really are
- Ukraine is going to fall
- Ukraine is going to hold on but the war will still be on when my grandkids graduate from college
- Ukraine can't possible take in all this kit and hold on.
- Ukraine can defend but could never pull off an attack
I have to be missing something.  Every week in this war we find something be be scared of, and it has all turned out to be complete and utter BS.  How about we look at the situation, as it unfolded for what it is - a historic military debacle that is likely to break the current Russian regime.  It was doomed from the start, and has only gotten worse.  Sure things could still swing and will likely get uglier but the RA in Ukraine is in death throws - it is keeling over to die, not coiling like a steel spring.  All war is negotiation and right now the Russians are negotiation just how ugly this loss is going to be.
Unless these RU Nats come with an entirely revitalized equipment fleet and logistics backbone to support it, a competitive integrated ISR system, and a completely new military doctrine...you will excuse me if I am not worried.   
 
 

I am not really sure why anyone believes that "mobilization" is some sort of magic spell that will solve this war for Russia....on either side of this equation.  We have covered this before but a review may be in order.
Key here is the term "peer-conflict".  That means a relative symmetry between military capability and architectures to the point that numbers start to matter in determining outcome.  In this situation theoretically the side with the higher force ratios will have a better chance of winning.  At this point this conflict is nowhere near a level of qualitative parity.
Beyond the morale issues, which are legion, a loose measure of military quality is DETO - Doctrine, Equipment, Training and Organization.  (Before anyone weighs in, yes there are about a half dozen national variations on this that take into account everything from policy to infrastructure, but lets keep it simple).
So, yes, Russia has a big scary population base - we are probably talking 30+ million fighting age males, assuming you could tap even 10 percent of that - excess and fit-ish - that is 3+ million troops Russia could throw at this war.  Assuming mass conscription doesn't trigger a major political upheaval; the first problem is you have to turn those 3+ million civilians into combat capable military formations - something the Russian have demonstrated problems with before the war. 
Second major problem is that one has to turn them into military fighting formations of the same or better quality than the UA.  And remember the UA is already force generating and will continue to do so long after this war is over...because Russia.  So Russia has to go from zero to hero faster than the UA are already doing.  Now before someone spouts of "mass has a quality all its own" - a truism which has died an ignoble death in this conflict - in modern warfare one still needs relative parity for quantity to matter.  I welcome any nation to try low quality human wave attacks on the modern battlefield.  In fact the UA is demonstrating the exact opposite right now - high quality empowered small is kicking dumb-large to death.  So now in order to mobilize Russia needs to meet a bar it did not have on 23 Feb, let alone in time to get out in front of things now.
Third major problem, Russia does not even have the essential skillsets to create a peer military.  And I am talking everywhere.  For example, in order to create an ISR architecture on par with the West they need an entire military ISR complex that does not exist anywhere near that level.  It took the US decades - dating back to AirLand Battle (hey go check out CMCW while you are at it!) - to construct the ISR architecture they are pumping into Ukraine right now.  Further Ukraine has a home grown system they 1) have training and technical support for from the west, 2) have a 6 month head start, and 3) are not living under crippling sanctions.  Some Iranian drones do not make an ISR architecture, it is what you plug those drones into.
So Russia can "mobilize" all it wants; however, it will be mobilizing a Cold War era military, one worse than it had before this war.  They will be nowhere near DETO parity with the UA for maybe a couple decades.  With their new drones they can watch all those columns of T55s, driven by conscripts with a months training, supported by a rickety logistics corp get hammered by HIMARs and next-gen drone swarms.  
I will give the Russians points for stubborn, they have that in spades.  This war is clearly at the "cut your losses" point.  The RA has left as much hardware on the battlefield as the Iraqi Army did in the Gulf War - when you are in that league, get out!  Mobilization will not save them, this is not 1941, it is 1905.

Today I hope it will be last day I am away and with the phone only.
Sh*t just got very serious - major RU counter - offensive is imminent. RU tick tokers troops don wil recapture don all lost cities don. They are don ready don to do it don! 

You're underestimating the degree to which the IDF had been built up by the French, the UK, and the US between 1956 and 1967. On the ground both sides were roughly at technological parity, with the Arabs being inferior in the air.

Then you look at the Ukrainians, who are basically using mostly Cold War era Soviet T-64BV and T-72 tanks against in general more modern Russian T-90s/T-80s/T-72B3s. The vast majority of the Ukrainian tanks don't even have thermal optics, which is standard on the T-72B3 (and alone already outnumbers the modernised T-64BV 2017s some two to three-fold).

Their air force still uses vintage late 80s/early 90s MiG-29s and Su-34s against Russian Su-35s. They don't even have active radar-homing AAMs. They are also outnumbered too. No, they were operating at VPAF vs. USAF levels of technological disparity.
  
There's no real good modern comparison.

NATO generals command UA forces according to USSR doctrine? 🤔

Pontoon guy....

 
 

Russia had one shot at this sort of approach and they blew it in about 72 hours back in Feb.  They had enough horsepower to attempt 5 major axis of advance that got very good penetration, just went nowhere meaningful.  They did not figure on this weird dispersed hybrid omni-defence Ukraine put up, which eroded their axis in about a month.  I think estimates of just how broken the RA was after Ph I were low-balling significantly because the RA never was capable of more than single a axis mass pressure after that down in the Donbas.  My guess is that they got so badly mauled in Ph I that single axis 100m at a time was all they could do...while some in the west freaked out and treated like some sort of "turning point".
Now in Ph III, I would not get too focused on where the main effort is, or is not, at this point because the main effort is likely wherever things are working.  This is brilliant stuff the UA is doing, really professional work.  I was impressed at Kherson as they had linked deep strike with a tactical attrition approach (fog v snow) that is clearly making gains.  Then they had enough in the tank to do a simultaneous attack back at Kharkov all the way on the other side of the line.  Both attacks threaten to bag/cut off large quantities of RA and have possibly gripped the Russians in what I refer to as a null decision space.  The RA has a dilemma that it cannot likely solve - its capabilities are too shot up, its logistics hammered, its C2 is divided and uncoordinated, and its ISR is last gen.  So how does the RA solve a two front attack?  It likely doesn't and just digs in and holds on and does local flailing - no decision is a decision.
This means the UA can shift the main effort based on conditions it has set.  It has all the ISR and can see the RA stress in high resolution so it can bounce between the two poles with transportation infrastructure that still works (another complete Russian strategic failure in pre-conditions setting) and hit the RA where it "ain't good" to largest effect.  If they do this right they may bagging both operational objectives.  Tempo and timing on this are brilliant, they have some real talent in the planning backfield on this one.  The RA is getting bounced around like a ball between cat paws, which causes enormous stress to their entire system, which was not world class to start with.  The fact that the UA had the depth to even try a competent double simultaneous operation is a clear sign they are damned healthy.
Mud starts in Oct-Nov?  So they have at least a month to play this game out, I expect that the RA system will buckle somewhere by then.  I swear to gawd if the UA now pulls another rabbit out of the hat and drives right up the middle and takes Melitopol this thing might be "over by Xmas" - but I really try to avoid saying that phrase as it has a lot of bad historical baggage.  My guess is that they will not, but will continue to hit lateral LOCs as the RA flails around trying to play Dutch Boy to stop the bleeding.
I can only hope this shuts up the "Ukraine is doomed" crowd for a good long time.  Broken, barely holding on militaries do not wage operations like this - they behave much more like the RA in response to them.     

Some Ukrainian women are real bombshells...
 
 

You haven't been reading to the end of the ISW daily reports then... 
While there's defo some sympathetic citizens (as far as I, non-Ukrainian speaking western viewer can tell), the Ivan is using passportification to control access to basic services and aid.
You Need a water supply? Show us your Russian passport. You don't have one?  Well you're in Russia now, little brother  (no, no thank us later), Ukraine was a bad dream so here tick this box - and that box, give your name/address of  everyone in your extended family...
Ok done?... Right  sign here, congratulations you're a Russian citizen, Heil Putler, here's your permit for water.  Oh you want Electricity?  Got your Russian Passport? You need disability aid? Ok, show your Russian passport.  Need a parking spot?  Russian passport, please. Need a driver's licence?  Passport. Need a prescription?  Passport.  Need a library card?  Passport.  Need food aid?  Passport. Want to go to another city?  Passport.  No,  your Russian one, citizen. Oh and really you should help defend the Motherland from those child eating Nazis across the river,  so lucky you,  here's your papers,  Mobik, now you can thank us for liberating you -  with your life. 
You get the idea. 

Oh military field pipelines exist and I am sure the Russians even have them (assuming someone maintained them).  In NATO we have them, the French are the experts apparently.  Problems with Kherson:
- Still need a lot of trucks and engineers to lay them, hard to miss on modern battlefield.  And crossing the Dnipro - an area they would have had  a lot of eyes on would have been damned hard.
- They are designed to be laid well back in the Corp/Div rear areas, outside of enemy artillery range and well protected from air strikes. Normally a fuel farm is constructed that is linked to civilian infrastructure or they bring fuel in bulk via trains.  One does not run an operational pipeline that close to the frontlines because once it is seen it is hit.
- To lay it across the Dnipro to a fuel point (again very hard to hide), in range of UA guns and missiles, they would have to dig the thing in in order for it to have any survivability.  And we are back to very hard to hide.
-  The fuel farm would have to be out of HIMARs range, and impossible to hide but also target #1 for whoever has been blowing up airfields.
So technically possible but I would be shocked if they could pull it off and not get smacked by UA arty or some such.
As to deep penetration as Plan A, we have seen no evidence of this on the UA side.  They have been pretty tight but sending a formation 20-30kms deep takes a lot of logistics build up and mass, which even the Russian could have seen.  From what I can see a broad front attrition-to-manoeuvre was the most likely plan, after they had already stressed the RA support system.
Real question is not “how well can the RA resupply?” Because unless we missed something big it won’t be enough without working bridges.  The question is “how much did the RA stockpile that did not get got by UA deep strike?”  That is the long pole in the tent as to how long that they can hold out….physically, moral is a different beast.

You said this perfectly. Ukraine is collapsing the Russian air defence/ISR/artillery bubble, notably a large part of the pressure on the artillery is actually pressure on the ammo supply. Once the bubbles gone the ground forces have no choice but to leave. We just have to hope the AFU can maintain the pressure long enough. Brave men are dying every hour to get that done.

Lemme clarify a bit here as it looks like we are at the point of the concept being tested.  First off @LongLeftFlank has said he is a Canadian expat; however, it is clear he does not hail from Atlantic Canada or he would know the term by heart - "fog eats the snow"  (in fact I get a whole central-Canada urban vibe off him, for which I may be totally off as we are a country of a rich and diverse cultural tapestry which we get very good at hiding - I, for example, hail from the far North originally but I have buried the hints of my somewhat 'wildling' roots quite well, I even use cutlery on occasion)
So what is this fog-snow thingy?  Not quite as JonS outlines but I kinda like the imagery.  So this idea was one we came up with way back as a possible method for offensive operations given the context of the overall conflict - peer forces, no air superiority, defensive-centric thanks to ubiquitous ISR and smart weapon systems.  It was an attempt to answer the question of: "how the hell is anyone supposed to attack in this environment when the other side can see you form up from space?"
In reality as far as I can tell fog-snow is the third step in an operational approach, which I am sure someone will (or has) turned into a flowchart and checklist:
1.  Establish pre-conditions.  Gain ISR/cognitive superiority - know better and faster than your opponent.  Neutralize enemy air superiority - this whole party is over if they can own the sky.  Logistics - build a system that can be put in place without getting hammered before you can even get into place, here lighter is better than iron mountains.  I am sure there is more here with respect to force generation, psychology and a bunch of higher level stuff but you get the idea.  I think it is fair to say that the UA spent the summer getting these in place over the Kherson area while holding off whatever that leg-humping the RA was doing in the Donbas..."just eating snow" maybe.
2.  Project friction.  This was where the RA completely failed in the Donbas.  They slammed fields and fields with HE -  careless in their affairs and focused on causing stress but not really projecting friction.  "What do you mean by that The_Capt?" - well friction is a Clausewitzian concept (I am pretty sure the Chinese masters also speak to it) that "war is a very large human organizational problem, and once you collect us in a group larger than about four we become horny cats to organization.  So friction is the "badness" that got in the way of order and formation.  Here Uncle C and myself diverge a bit as I do not see friction as the product of order rubbing up against order - an unfortunate byproduct.  I see it as an actual force on the battlefield that can be applied as projected uncertainty, or chaos; those deep strikes into the Crimea are a classic example. 
Regardless, the next operational phase is to project that friction upon your opponents operational system, and here the UA has done a breathtakingly good job over the last two months - on par with what they did during Phase 1 of this war.  They have hit Russian logistics, infrastructure as well as the morale and conative centers of the Russian military thru strikes on leadership and C2.  We have talked a lot about indicators and a big one has been the fact that the RA was never able to get out of that "operational pause" back in Jul.  My theory is this was because the UA hit them so well and created so much friction that the RA was only able to do disconnected symbolic pushes and never really got their operational feet back under themselves.  Hitting the bridges is an example of just how much they stressed the RA system, and now that system is theoretically fragile, or at least not anti-fragile. 
So once the UA had those first two where they needed them - and that is a sign of a military that knows what it is doing btw - they moved onto to step 3.
3.   Add Pressure - "Fog Eating Snow".  A square kilometer of fluffy cloud weighs about a half a million kilograms (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-cloud-weigh) which is not a bad analogue for fog.  It is not weightless by any stretch, it is how that weight is distributed and holds/exchanges its energy that makes it different, same goes for warfare...again, theoretically.  Once you have done steps 1 & 2, your opponents system is vulnerable but you have not changed the context enough for traditional manoeuvre warfare, this approach may work.  We saw hints of it on the UA defence at the battle of Kyiv.  Essentially the idea states that one employs highly distributed mass to:
Infiltrate your opponents defensive lines - you have already mapped out where the enemy is in detail as part of Step 1.  Further here it is best that your opponent is employing traditional conventional mass defence, which the Russians appear to be obliging.  ("Fog on fog" is a really interesting concept and could be the future of peer-to-peer warfare but lets leave that one.)  You use your ISR advantage to infiltrate in and around your opponents conventional mass concentrations, essentially filling in the 'gaps and seams'.  We know the RA has lots of these because they simply do not have the force density to create a uniform defensive line.  So UA has made a multi-prong set of advances along broad areas, which are looking "infiltration-y" - fog is not in one place, it is everywhere and gets into everything.
Isolate tactical "bites" - A few maps done by Grigb are showing what suspiciously like tactical isolation of some forward pockets of RA strongpoints.  Isolation means the removal of mutual support between positions.  If you can do that, particularly by eroding artillery support, you are in business.  Further this obviously has a significant psychological effects along with logistical implications. Once the enemies tactical positions are fully isolated....
Finish.  Pretty self explanatory but you want to quickly remove these tactical positions from the field either by surrender or annihilation, preferably by precision weapons systems as they are faster.  Rinse and repeat - Fog eating Snow. 
The whole "Adding Pressure" step is cyclical and the idea is that by repeating this process enough times, fast enough, the entire enemy operational system will collapse - this is the essence of attrition-to-manoeuvre, which is the opposite of what our doctrine says.  Key here is tempo.  This is weird as one is now employing attritional tempo instead of positional, but the rule still applies, one has to Finish faster than an opponents operational system can recover - which is why you did Steps 1 & 2.
And here we come to more questions than answers:
- Will it work on the offensive?
- Can you Finish fast enough, and how does one rationalize the fact that as you advance deeper this gets harder?
- When can traditional manoeuvre/annihilation take over?
- Have you gauged the enemies system correctly?  If it is more resilient than you thought you can bog down very quickly.
- Do you exploit success and go for a spearpoint, or do you keep doing broad system pressure?
I have no idea, these we can only observe and watch for indicators. The UA does look like they are trying a version of the idea, which explains all the "this won't look like a 'normal' offensive" and why we have suspected that the offence actually started back when we saw clear evidence of Step 2 over a month ago.  I suspect if this works that it won't look like much, and even bogging down...until it does.  If they have done this correctly, or if it will even work at all, the RA operational system north of the Dnipro will likely collapse suddenly after continuous pressure - think jiujitsu not boxing.  So I would not get too excited if the UA is not in Sevastopol by the weekend, that is not how this kind of warfare works.  We are way too biased by our western experiences on this one - this is system based warfare and the metrics are different. 
Anyway, sit back and keep eyes and ears open.  If this works like I can envision it, it may break modern military doctrine as we know it.  If it fails, the UA may not get too many more chances and this may turn into frozen conflict because the Left Hand of Mars (Defence) is back in charge...we shall see.
    

Nova Kakhovka this night. Cameraman says "this is market area" - detonations and two huge fireballs at the end with powerfull shockwave hit, crashing the windows
Tokmak, Zaporizhzhia oblast. Next ammo dump destroyed
 

The Sino-Vietnamese War is a classic case of a better run autocracy. The Chinese made a bad little gamble on a short victorious war, it spectacularly didn't work. They just quit, went home, offered the Vietnamese a return to the pre war state of affairs, and memory holed the whole thing. This is EXACTLY what Putin should have done about March 15. He has endlessly doubled down on a losing hand instead.