TheVulture
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Posts posted by TheVulture
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Parking accident near Ruska Lozova north of Karhkiv. As per the twitter thread, the van and BMP numbered '571' were photographed there on 27th Feb in the snow, but no-one has apparently bothered to recover them in the 2+ months since then. The second BMP appears to be a new addition...
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More progress by the Ukrainian counterattack announced today - north of Staryi Saltiv towards Starytsia and the important logistical routes through Vovchansk.
https://t.me/truexanewsua/46028
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7 minutes ago, Markus86 said:
I just read this on the german "Zeit" news ticker (https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2022-05/ukraine-russland-krieg-news-liveblog#event_id=ekQ7HPyGcDZHtkAVM88r
Has anyone read something about a ukrainian attempt to land on snake island? And these casualties numbers, 30 drones???
Pretty sure it's rubbish. There were several Ukrainian drone / aircraft attacks on the Russians on snake island, the videos of which were in this thread. But a Ukrainian attempt to actually land forces to recapture the island, aside from making absolutely no sense given Russian air and naval superiority (there's no way they expect to hold the island) - there's no evidence that such an attack was attempted. Nothing from the Ukrainian side about it. No video or anything else from the Russians. And competely implausible claims of numbers from the Russian side.
Unless Russia manage to come up with some actual evidence, I'd ignore it as "total b$*%@ocks"
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The question is, how exactly is using nukes going to give Putin a win though? It's not like there are massed formations where a well placed tactical nuke or two could take out a large chunk of the Ukrainian military. Its hard to see how battlefield nukes could have a big military effect, unless used on such a scale that reprisals would be forthcoming.
And don't forget that this war isn't a game fought in isolation. The aim isn't to 'win' be beating the enemy, getting the game over screen, and going to get some lunch. The war was started by Russia in an attempt to achieve certain political aims. That's probably shifted somewhat since plan A (Ukraine turned into another Belarus) failed spectacularly. The there are still real-world aims that Russia is intending to achieve through the use of force, and the question is whether using nuclear weapons (along with all the chain of consequent side effects and reactions) enable Russia to achieve those aims, or at least get closer to them.
And again, its hard to see a scenario where Russia's aims are advanced by the use of nuclear weapons.
That's leaving aside the issue of stated Russian doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons, which also rules out there use in Ukraine, barring the long off and extremely unlikely event of Ukraine posing a threat to the existence of the Russian state.
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20 minutes ago, Kraft said:
I am unsure if part one of the artillery attack on Russian vehicle depot? has been posted, but here is part 2
They were obviously expecting shelling as half the vehicles were dug in. One might still wonder why you'd park those in artillery range in the first place. And I always thought those collections of defenseless vehicles parked in some field were unrealistic in DCS & IL-2 Simulator
I'm 90% sure that's the exact same location as in the video last week of the MLRS strike that nearly got Gerasimov and killed one of the Russian generals with a direct hit on the farmhouse. At least we can see here what the 'ground clutter' that was kind of visible in the first video is.
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20 minutes ago, G.I. Joe said:
Since monuments came up again, this has got to be the best response to a Lenin statue ever...
Or my favourite Soviet war monument from Bulgaria:
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3 minutes ago, Huba said:
That's quite bizarre, there was nothing suggesting any offensive operations in the south up to this point. I'd love to have some confirmation on it, sounds too good to be
I think that this is one of those areas where despite the simplified front lines on the map, neither side 100% controls the area. There have been previous reports of Ukraine forces in supposed 'Russian' areas for short times. So this might be a temporary probe, a simple patrol, or even just partisans or civilians reporting on the presence of a Russian medical facility there. Or maybe they've actually captured the place.
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6 hours ago, sross112 said:
Me too!!! This is just killing me!! The Kherson area map from ISW starting about 3 or so days ago show a UA drive along the Dnepr down to the first bridge. It's been hanging there and no information coming out about it at all. Killing me!! Are the UA unhinging the Kherson defense and the Kharkiv defense simultaneously? I've just been dying to hear that they have.
I think you are misreading the map. ISW for some reason changed the colour they were using for the river/resevoir north of the dam. Previously they had coloured it grey. As of early May they started colouring it light blue : very similar to the colour used to indicate Ukrainian offensives, but slightly different. Go back to some of the late April maps to compare. So I'm pretty sure that's just the river, not an actual advance. Which is consistent with the reported fighting in the Kherson area, which is mostly both sides trying to move the perimeter around the city by a village here or there, but mostly static for a month.
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3 minutes ago, Kinophile said:
Man, snake island is the Bermuda Triangle for the Black Sea Fleet.
If twitter is true.
Not much better for Russian artillery either - here's a TOR system apparently taken out by TB2 on Snake Island - scroll down a bit. (Disclaimer - I remember something very similar from a week or two ago, so not sure if this is a repost of old information or a separate incident).
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44 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Everyone in the mainstream seems worried that China will take this as an opportunity to invade Taiwan; however, I think it will be far more subtle and smart than an open invasion (please god, we have had enough).
This is more your area of expertise than mine, but I was under the impression that China isn't close (yet) to having the capability to invade Taiwan at the moment. They have neither the navy, the air force or the operational experience to pull off an opposed landing across the 100+ miles Taiwan strait against a modern force equipped with plenty of land and ship based anti-ship missiles, never mind the issue of logistical support for a extended operation over that strait. Even assuming the US doesn't chose to get involved.
As I understand it, until about 2010 the Chinese air force's mission was pretty much exclusively a land-based defence of Chinese territory, and it wasn't until circa 2010 that any effort was made to being developing the capability to project force over water (and Chinese military pilots weren't allowed to fly over water until some time after that, but I can't remember when).
Even when they've built the navy to be able to do this kind of landing, I believe it was you who said earlier in the thread that having equipment isn't the same as having a capability...
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Welcome to page 666 of the discussion, thus making this the thread of the beast.
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2 minutes ago, Huba said:
Something burning in Russia again. I don't know how to precisely compare it, but I'm under the impression that outside of the front zone, Russia has suffered more infrastructure damage then Ukraine in last week.
Even non-military stuff in Russia keeps catching fire. At least this one probably isn't Ukraine, and is probably just an accident (or crazy anarchists)
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EU discussing military support for Moldova.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-says-considering-more-military-support-moldova-2022-05-04/
QuoteThe European Union is considering additional military support to Moldova, EU Council President Charles Michel said on a visit to Chisinau on Wednesday.
The 27-nation bloc is looking into how it can provide more military support to Moldova, including more help in building up the country's forces, Michel told a joint news conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu.
He said this would come on top of help in the fields of logistics and cyber defence that the EU had already agreed. Michel refused to give any details but said it was extremely important to avoid any escalation.
On the Moldovan front, the Ukraine General Staff says that the Russian Army is making preparations for evacuating officers families from transnistria
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1 hour ago, JonS said:
Between autoplaying videos, and disallowing hotlinks, reddit is the ****ing worst. I mean, /maybe/ if they had paid writers creating content, but this treatment of someone else's words provided for free is bs.
Reddit is indeed the cesspit of the internt (if you stay away from 4chan, and never wandered in to the Peng threads here). But with the rate at which companies and groups are shifting to using Discord as their primary communication, it won't be long until you are pining for the comparative usability and friendliness of reddit.
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12 minutes ago, akd said:
The “before” image:
Holy **** that's a lot of trucks to stick right next to each other when you don't have to. You'd think they'd have learned of the potential downsides of doing this by now.
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Here's how the estimated front lines around Karkhiv have moved in the last 7 days (diagonal lined area shows territory regained by Ukraine).
For added info, I've added in various exploding things in Russian controlled areas in the same time (one supply convoy, 2 military warehouses (1 of which is slighly off the north of the map - too lazy to go and re-crop everything), 2 claims by Russians of shelling of border villages).
Not included is a claimed shot down TB2 drone and 10 or so incidents of Russian air defences (mostly in Belgorod) firing at unknown stuff / reckless geese. And a few claims of shell fragments landing in random places.
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Russian supply column a few km NE of Karkhiv got whacked. It's not going well for the Russians in this part of Ukraine. (And quite a lot of the things randomly blowing up near Belgorod are only just over the border in this area too).
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14 minutes ago, dan/california said:
Were they TRYING to be confusing? Hardest place to keep straight in the history of mankind!
Yeah, you'd never find that sort of confusion in the US with a mere 91 towns called Wahington. And 35 called Lebanon, for crying out loud.
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Good, but long (50 minutes) video by Perun on Russian nuclear doctrine and why he thinks it's a bluff. (Perun is the guy who had some good videos linked here on Russian logistics a few weeks back).
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16 minutes ago, womble said:
I think the British media might be a bit optimistic on this one. Or at least "shading" the news. While the 56th AC might be equipped in the future (so "will be equipped" isn't quite a fib) with Dark Eagle, it seems unlikely they are currently equipped with it. Static testing of the rocket booster was only commenced in October last year... and according to Wikipedia, the Army "hopes" to begin live fire testing this year.
Now, maybe they're gonna live fire test it on a live combat range... but I kinda doubt it...
And it'd be a miracle delivery, so far ahead of schedule, for a high tech system that, IIRC, was suffering quite a lot from development issues.
I've not actually seen any British media reporting this, so it might just be Russian hyperbole for domestic consumption with people who aren't going to know (or care) what British media have actually said. Or it might just be one fringe fruitloop somewhere with as much credibility as the claims that Russia is going to drown the UK with a 500m radioactive tidal wave. There's bound to be at least some idiots publishing stuff that could be classed as "British media" (even ignoring Russia trolls).
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4 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
So some advances toward Slovyansk by RU. But as pointed out above, the terrain gets increasingly bad beyond Lyman, so would be even harder to keep going there.
Meanwhile, there's report of big UKR advances NE of Kharkiv. Any of you have any thoughts on what could be achieved NE/E of kharkiv to unhinge RU forces from Izyum and the Lyman fronts? I am of course hoping for full Romanian collapse (ooops, donetz milita, not romanian collapse -- weird I keep making that mistake......)
NE of Kharkiv is sort of isolated from the rest of the Russian forces in that area. The Siversky Donets river is about 10-15km east of Kharkiv, and there's one major bridge and a few smaller ones there under Russian control inside the Ukrainian border. The big one is at Staryi Saltiv, which is where it was being reported that the Russians took heavy casualties yesterday (or was it the day before). I don't know of any corroboration of that report though, so it might just be RUMINT.
In the north of the region between Karkhiv and the Siversky Donest, one of the two main supply routes from Russia to Izyum runs within 2km of the river for a distance. I.e. a considerably stretch of it is within artillery range from the other side of the river, which could allow Ukraine to largely stop the Russians using one of the two supply lines for their main force concentration.
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And just to keep the record going, here's today's explosion from the vicinity of Kherson airport.
https://t.me/truexanewsua/44736
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Ternova is already just about within 20km of the rail lines and major road through Vovchans'k. That's getting towards effective artillery range.