panzermartin

For the record, the commissar comment wasn't for anyone else but Grigb exclusively for his strict suggestion to Butschi to stop supporting his "friend" his "lie" and his bold points with phrases like "end of story", meaning he had absolutely the last word. I'm sorry I have been annoying and contrarian, it's not from a caprice but out of my desire for "justice" and "balance". I would do the same in a pro russian forum, I think one of the most dangerous things in society is being collectively in agreement or sometimes fixation to a certain point, even when there is not enough evidence to prove us 100% right. And how could that be, given the fog of war and the propaganda from both sides? I've been here since the Iraq war and I had some familiar experiences. There was a trigger happy board full of testosterone and we know what happened. God knows how many personal attacks I received. In the real world, WMDs were never found, half a million of people died, Middle East is still a mess, refugees are getting drown in the Mediterranean as we speak... and US was led to discredit and isolation, and that even might have played a role in the rise of Trump, the current mess In Ukraine etc... I feel our Europe is in deep trouble with this war, and constantly undermining Russia is a dangerous habit I won't support here, but point taken I will try to be more constructive in the future.

Honestly you are one of the last persons I could have issues in this forum. I respect your professional input , you almost by accident got in the crosshairs. Apologies for that. The commissar comment was totally not for you btw. For the rest, we will have to wait I guess. Russia practically is against a coalition of 40 countries, is getting hit from unlimited state of the art weaponry, we saw how they lost 5 Mstas in a short time with precision strikes. They are really with their backs on the wall so chances are that at some point their arty might succumb.

Will the report of the russian commander that "our artillery was engaged in counter battery operations during the early stages of the attack" offer a small alternative hint? If we can trust the russian commander...that is. But makes some sense there could be busy in a heavy CB duel that we just couldnt realize from the short video. For what is worth, some of their guns could have been even out of action or supressed by the time of the video as well.

Hahah, no need to be so dramatic to the risk of injury Look, we are probably the only corner in the internet right now, that from all that incident, and from all the 67 things that went wrong for UA and right for RU, we focused mainly on the arty. But lets go again. RU lies a lot, but probably less than they used to,simply because you can't hide everything from today's all seeing eye. Moskva was so shockingly embarrassing loss that I nearly understand the cope effort. Lying about artillery support in a *successful * mission (to lie to the public, to your commander, to the enemy) while the whole battle is filmed by your drones, makes 0% sense, I won't lie to you.

There you said it. I dont want to participate in another echo chamber, there are lots out there. Its understandable that given the composition of this board, that we might be turning into a North Atlantic war room and less of a discussion board, which might raise morale but isnt interesting, productive or even helpful for UA in the long run, if thats what most are interested about. @Grigb I never said that russian arty as a whole isnt' affected by a year's and a half campaign. I only pointed out that the specific 47th incident was not enough for a conclusion in that sector. You even said that this failed breach was a success in revealing the arty positions of RU arty reserves, the same that The_Capt said that they dont exist. I also don't think other posters here need lecturing like we are part of a military unit and we are briefed by the comissar. Thanks.

I don't see any point in them lying particularly about the use of artillery here...The whole battle was very much put forward on all media from the RU side, videos from helos, videos from the ground. They seem pretty eager to expose all the bits of their success. And we indeed saw some guns firing. But it was a few seconds long fragment of video. The new info here is that some of their artillery were commited in CB that we couldn't conclude from the videos. Thats interesting. I'm sure you know better if a battery is assigned only CB or it can switch missions on the fly depending on the situation. So if a battery had to do both CB and fire support might be a sign that there werent so many available guns around. But lets wait for a more detailed report from the UA on the receiving side, if there is any coming. That would be informative.

So the author doesn't agree with the suggestions here that RU got lucky and their arty was problematic in that particular sector. Instead he describes an excellent defensive action in many layers.

BTW this is one of the videos I was talking about, from what I can tell it's the same sector and incident, different timing. There is some heavy artillery firing no doubt

If were actually commited in doing so, I would be exhausted by now, after the many fiascos Russians particapated. But long distance cycling taught me some lessons how to maintain my stamina I guess

The observation could probably be correct, I will provide the first video we saw here that it had definitely at least sparse heavy shelling when I find it. It's the conclusion one could object. Here some russian "copium" points 1.Of course we are not talking about Bakhmut right now, it's a very large defense line that's spanning across all the south. One would expect the defender to not being able to cover all lengths and depths of this, even if it had thousands of tubes. 2. It was a probing, first contact away from the main defense lines of RU. 3. Artillery of the sector could be positioned deeper to avoid detection or getting wasted before the main weight of UA offensive force is committed. Or even deeper , if there is a fear of arty units being overrun from fast moving UA advanced elements. 4. It was deemed that the minefield, the atgms(?) and the gunships were enough to stop this armored column. And it probably proved correct. I agree that given the russian artillery mentality it might seem strange they didn't resort to panicky massed volleys like we are used to see all the time. We can't exclude they have indeed lost/worn out a lot of tubes/shells in the last year, but before that there other explanations worth examining...

In all respect, you yourself among others objected the claims of posters here that photos were fake, like: As for the artillery, I don't object that it could be from previous strikes but we still have some footage as the battle was unfolding. Plus it makes sense that they had enough firepower to halt the advance with mines, helicopters atgms etc and artillery remained largely in reserve, possibly not positioned to counter probing attacks and stay protected for the later stages. But it seems a premature conclusion that there is a lack of indirect RU fire, from a couple of short videos. Lastly, I'm not here to judge others. I think I made an observation on the way we process info, that probably every outsider that's not passionate about one side or the other, would find obvious.

Sometimes I'm surprised by the amount of copium in this forum. First we didn't even accept the authenticity of the photos published(!)Then came the videos. Then we supposed that the lack of indirect fire is an indication of insufficient artillery coverage by the RU (despite there videos and photos of the same sector with 1. Leopards slaloming between 152mm explosions and 2. Myriads of dense craters in the aftermath photos , only artillery could have caused.) Then we said, ruskies have nothing else to show for days, apart from this column. They probably suck again in all other areas. But after a week of fighting, we are thrilled with the liberation of one small village with small RU forward guard in the buffer zone, that is filmed in the usual multi - cam hollywood quality. Truth remains russians wiped out a big unit, with very pricey and rare toys and the RU did this with relative ease and no significant documented losses. Shooting vikhrs from a safe distance like it was Apaches shooting T-72s in Medina Ridge. For a start they seem to have at least figured out how to use their gunships, they deserve this minimum credit I guess.

Russians don't have the means to recover a 64 ton Leopard 2 tank right? Or combined engineer vehicles can do the job.

Russian drones are having a field day. Losses must be much higher than the footage we've witnessed. I don't get the complete lack of AA umbrella of UA offensive

I know I shoudlnt think about scale modelling right now, but the ammount of options we've seen so far is never ending

There is shadow of the signpost on the vehicle though , this could be real photo

Thanks, I had guessed that maybe they would be useful closer to the offensive? Edit :Although I see the Ka52 using the maximum range permitted, and gepard has only 5.5 km effective range

Where are the geppards btw? Chasing Shakheeds in Kiev?

Interesting the extensive and effective use of jammers by the Russians.

This destroyed column was one of the multiple spearheads in the area I suspect? . Wonder what happened to the rest, Russians keep repeating videos from this sector. Undoubtedly though, so far their finest battlefield moment since Feb24.

I had guessed some months earlier, RuAF will play a bigger role this time in trying to bog down UA offensive. I think particulalry helicopters are quite effective in a more fluid environment where the mobile short ranged AA assets are lagging behind the advanced exposed elements. Apart from the tractors, Ka52s and Mi-28s seem to have destroyed quite a few enemy armored vehicles so far with no own casualties reported. Contrast this with the early days of the war where they were falling like flies even hit from ATGMS when flying deep in UA lines... And that brings us to the question. When was the last time an offensive succeeded without air support, if not air superiority? Napoleonic wars? (Not counting the summer UA one, as it was just chasing a rattled retreating and regrouping army, that was only prepared for a short offensive ) Maybe we'll have to wait for the F16s to really see UA making big gains to the South.

Yes, this reminded me of your posts that some older UA commanders cannot adapt to newer western doctrine. This had some Soviet mindset, from the little we've seen. But maybe I make a broader conclusion from a small sample of info

I'm sorry but it seems miracles are expected from green crews straight from the NATO training centers in Europe, that probably haven't experienced combat before

Are these Leo2s smoking? Can't really tell from the always low res russian videos.

Yes I remember, but this is bit more fresh and all over the place: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/