TheVulture

I hope this thread gets back more to military analysis. We're better at that.

Trostyanets is in Sumy oblast. NE.
Probably made an error with coords when putting that bomb symbol onto the map

I'm actually Chinese, and my observation of Chinese netizens' reaction is actually very much the opposite.  The great majority of ordinary Chinese citizens seem to buy into Russia's propaganda (b/c that's what they are fed on Chinese media) and many are very pro-Putin.  They lay the blame at Ukraine and the West's doorstep, and feel that Russia is helping China by checking the West's expansionism and disrupting their containment of China's own rise.  The strong nationalist sentiment that Xi Jinping has been cultivating through propaganda and autocratic leadership is very worrying...

This is Bucha. Our troops in previous two days extended own control zone in Irpin' town from 30 % to 70 %. Probably today something happened in Bucha, next to Irpin' and Russian "invincible" VDV ran away, abandoned own vehicles. But I can't confirm this, there is hard to say either this just Russians hide vehicles between houses or they realy abandoned. Though, I doubt civilian could walk and film free Russian troops if they would there. 
PS. Guys, I call for less pollitic and historical flame here. It's very hard to read all this and search things, related to the war

Heard this multiple times here and elsewhere so I think it is time for us to have a Pause talk.  We pretty much know the Russians have pretty much halted operational level offensives and are stalled, that is all over the place and even mainstream media has picked it up.  So the theories on what is happening to the Russian forces now are roughly assembling around 3 possibilities:
- Stopped, cannot start so digging in for a long haul, which will see broad operational defensive operations with limited tactical offensive actions designed to terrorize the population.
- Stopped, will never re-start and are heading towards total collapse.
- Stopped, conducting an operational pause to consolidate/re-org before re-starting the massive offensive to surround major cities and begin the Russian Grind strategy. 
I am going to leave off the first two and focus on that third one.  A military war machine is a really big system built in layers, we do this for both C2/span of control and sustainment reasons.  Normally a modern military will lay itself out in echelons of some shape or size in depth, the Soviets had a really organized system for this, the Wests was a bit more fluid but we all are set up to fight in what are essentially structures waves since the Roman legions (somebody google the opening of the HBO Rome series and you can see it in action).
For arguments sake let's go with the rule of three and say the Russians are setup in three tactical layers (the West kind of does it as well with "2 up, 1 back and the last one as "Reserve", bit more of a pyramid scheme).  The first tactical layer will be given main objectives and then some stretch ones, unless they are using mission-command then it gets a bit more opportunistic, but the concept is the same; whistle blows first wave into the breach. 
That echelon/wave is expected to be able to fight for a certain period of time based on a lot of factors like attrition, distance, logistical consumption; however, the old rule is that in human based systems you can get about 72-96 hours of action (i.e. little to no sleep) before people start to break down ("beware the 5th day" by Moltke (I think)).  So that first wave can theoretically do up to 4 days of intense action before it needs to be relieved by the second wave.  This can change based on conditions but it is important to understand that it can get shorter but not longer because we are still fighting with human beings as the basis of the system.  So no matter how tough the guys might think they are, or how many chin ups they can do, after 4 days without sleep their brains start to shut down (trust me, been there and done it).
Then the second wave is supposed to conduct some sort of passage of lines and process continues for another 72-96, and then the third wave (if you have one).  While the second and third are doing their thing the first wave is supposed to be going through a tactical consolidation which include resupply/reinforcements/replacements and reorganization.  This is also when things like vehicle and weapons systems maintenance happens because vehicles will break down like people.
Now that whole system, which for arguments sake we can call the "operational system" is designed to be able to keep this up for weeks to months.  However after a certain amount of time all the losses and wear & tear start to add up and you need...wait for it...an operational pause.  [Aside: eventually, all these operational pauses add up and you see a strategic pause but that can take much longer].  This pause is basically an entire system overhaul to do all sorts of things that look like refitting a ship.  Replacements, rotations and re-organization of tactical units.  Planning and boring stuff like orders.  A lot of logistical and ISR scene setting for the next phase, and lastly...don't let your opponent know you are doing an operational pause until it is over.  So you will still see tactical action such as feints, tactical offensives but with short small gains - more jabs than actual punches - are often employed to try and make it hard for an opponent to figure out that you are in fact pausing...why?  We will come back to that.
Ok, so how does that apply to the current situation.  Let's accept that this is an operational pause for a moment and the big nasty Russian Bear is just cleaning the blood out of its fur before going back to ravaging Ukrainian bunnies.  Well first off it was not a planned pause, it happened too quickly.  Based on the big maps and overall tempo, it appears like the Russians were really advancing hard for the first 3-4 days.  We did see a likely echelon flip on the next 3-4 days as they pushed depth forward but by about day 10 of this thing everyone was starting to notice that the big red blotches on the map had stopped moving.  So let's give the Russian the benefit of the doubt and say they actually managed to use all three echelons effectively, well what likely did not happen was that 1st wave reloaded while waves 2 and 3 continued.  Remember formations are designed to be able to do this for weeks and out to months if the situation allows. So having the whole operational system come to a stop in 10 days is a very good indication that this was not in the plan.
10 days into this war was 5 March, a week and half ago.  Even the most uninformed journalist (and here I cast a baleful eye at our own CBC because it is harder to find a more uninformed bunch when it comes to warfare) is getting the drift that the Russians are not moving.  Now remember when I said "don't let your opponent know you are pausing"?  The reason for this is that you do not what them to try and grab the operational initiative, it is bad if they do because you are now on the defensive pretty much by definition.  Now if you plan for this, you can do all sorts of clever things like pull you opponent into over reaching etc, not sure I see a masterful design on the Russian side here.  But the UA has shown more offensive actions and c-attacks.  We have all been talking about a big UA operational strike, not sure if it will happen but the Russians are leaving the door open to one because of this pregnant operational pause. 
So to summarize, the Russian operational pause: 1) came much earlier than it should have, why?, 2) has lasted the length of an Old Testament reading in modern warfare timelines, and 3) is handing initiative over to their opponent.
So what?  Well if this is a Russian operational pause (at this rate, and with rumors of those other 40 BTGs it could be strategic) it is not a good one.  The conditions that led to that are very likely really poor pre-planning, ample evidence of that, and systemic failures that happened very quickly.  This speaks to a brittle operational system that they are having to almost re-tool from the ground up.  I have serious doubts that the Russians, who have lost some of their best troops, can come out of this as a new "super-force" able to mass joint effects and cut through the UA in days.  The types of planning and quality organization/preparations, from logistics to C4ISR, that a military force needs to do in order to pull off what the Russians are attempting takes years to prepare and build.
So if this is an operational pause, it is probably a master class in "how not to do this" and I doubt it will solve much for the Russian forces who are now coming up on two weeks of time they have given their opponent to prepare, supply and continue to hit them as they are pausing.

Javelins are used, it's just that they weren't filmed in any cool cinematic way because they aren't as omnipresent as NLAW and aren't as safe to use as Stugna.
But there is a video that was released just yesterday where two of our guys at the front lines were talking about how on the first day they shot 5 javelin missiles from their position, taking out two tanks and two APCs before finally getting spotted by another tank and getting knocked out by a shock wave... and then escaping hospital after only a week to get back into the fight where they are now - and once again armed with Javelins.
So those are used alright.

Seems like another major general bites the dust. In Mariupol no less.
The second link is more graphic and shows the rank
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2022/03/15/7331504/
https://censor.net/ua/photo_news/3325251/azov_znyschyv_generalmayiora_okupatsiyinyh_viyisk_foto
 
Azov promises to reveal his name later
 
And some more bonus photos from the counter-attack and "let's all bunch up behind a building" russian tactics
https://censor.net/ua/photo_news/3325276/polk_azov_rozbyv_pidrozdil_22yi_brygady_spetsialnogo_pryznachennya_zs_rf_oos_foto

I didn't know The Guardian is now ran by our DoD.
How about checking actual official source?
https://www.mil.gov.ua/news/2022/03/10/vtrati-rosijskih-okupantiv-stanovlyat-ponad-12-000-osib-znishheno-majzhe-2400-odinicz-vorozhogo-ozbroennya-i-vijskovoi-tehniki-–-generalnij-shtab-zs-ukraini/
Втрата translates to loss, not 'death'
Our DoD doesn't calculate dead or wounded because that's impossible. But press is uneducated in milspeak.
So again, check actual sources
 

So we are probably overdue on a discussion on what is going on at the tactical level.  I have held off trying to do an analysis because things were simply too turbulent to draw any real conclusions, still are in fact.  However, I  will offer a hypothesis of what I think is occurring and we can try and go from there.
In the west we have been watching these "Russian wars" with a lot of interest over the last 8 years. The reason for this is that we are all very paranoid of becoming a 21st century version of the WW1 generals - discovering on the battlefield that our doctrine has become completely obsolete.  In WWI at the tactical level it was machine guns and fast firing artillery at long ranges, at the operational and strategic it was railways, telegraph wires and canned food preservation.  They all added up to totally different war than anyone was expecting that included the end of some pretty major stuff like cavalry.
So in this war we have all been watching and scratching our heads as to "what just happened?"  At the tactical level back in 2014, and was confirmed in the short Azer-Armenian war, that something had changed.  The Russians had linked UAVs and massed fires at the tactical level, the Azerbaijanians mimicked this in 2020, and the effect was to be able to crush massed enemy armor formations over the horizon and then move in mechanized forces for what was essentially a "sweep up" close battle.  Everyone was expecting the same for this war.
The Ukrainians, being at the receiving end in 2014 have likely figured out that playing by the old rulebook will not work.  So my hypothesis is 1) the Russians have been trying to follow their doctrine of long range Find, Mass Fires Fix/Attrit and Heavy Close clean up to Finish, but 2) The Ukrainians have adopted tactics that negate #1.
The evidence for #1 is the fact that the Russians have appeared to stick with the BTG which is a concept with massed fires at the tactical level baked-in:
  
(https://www.globalsecurity.org/jhtml/jframe.html#https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/images/btg-image01.jpg|||Battalion Tactical Group)
In western doctrine a BG will have integral mortars and likely a Arty Bn in close support.  The Russians added 6 x MLRS to this mix and if you look at Soviet doctrine, MLRS are normally at Regimental/Div level.  This matched what we saw in the field in 2014 and 2020 very closely.
The evidence for #2 is all over social media.  The Ukrainians, learning quickly from 2014, look like they have dis-aggregated. More importantly and to the point, they have largely abandoned defensive mass but have not lost lethality.  I think the Ukrainians are still forming mass for offensive actions but the defensive is a lot of small units dispersed all over the place with weapon systems that are light, portable and have really extended range and reach; they have become the swarm the Russians are trying to hit with a shotgun.  Further, by dis-aggregating the Ukrainians look like they have turned some ideas about maneuver on its head.  Rear areas are not not "rear" anymore, it is all FEBA because small units with next gen ATGMs are cutting Russian logistics to pieces, making all the Russian mass heavily dislocated (or perhaps contributing to Russian mess ups).
We spend a lot of time slagging Russian failures, and there are quite a few and well earned, but we should also keep an eye on Ukrainian victories, because they might very well be happening on their own merits and not all on Russian screw ups.  For example, we may be seeing a lot of abandoned Russian MBTs because there are no refueling or recovery assets left due to Ukrainians adopting a new path very effectively.
So what?  Well the question is, "are we seeing an anomaly or trend?"  As we look over at our own heavy steel, we have to ask ourselves "what if our next opponent looks and fights like the Ukrainians and not the Russians?"   The answer to that question may be a blip in military force development but is also may be a signpost much in the same way 1914 was because the technology that enables the Ukrainian tactics is accelerating - smart, very long range autonomous systems that can overwhelm current mechanized protection/shield at a system level.  
Personally, I think it is too soon to call it.  There may be times ahead where mass demonstrates it merits and they may be decisive; however, it is all worth watching closely because none of us want to the a "horse cavalry commander" in the next war. 

GODDAMMIT SBURKE STFU!  yes, Kettler double posts.  he is older and in ill health.  WTF is your excuse for posting about every double post he does?  Do you see how that immediately doubles the wasted space?  then kettler responds, tripling the pointlessness.   Do you not have a the ability to ignore or skim past something you've already see?  Jeebus, get a f-ing grip.  (And then I respond here, adding to the wasted space ) 
How about if someone double posts we all just ignore because we've already seen it?  Instead of adding more useless BS to what is otherwise the best source of UKR war info around.  And remember that folks are in different time zones and might have 5 pages to skim through from the night before.  So folks might miss stuff.

That's not a drone - that's a Klingon bird of Prey model.

Here's my analysis:
Wikipedia lists the following details
Taking that speed and those timings, that's about 35km through Romanian airspace, 470km through Hungarian and 80km through Croatia, ending at Zagreb. The Tu-141 has a range of around 1000km, although that looks rounded off and is also going to depend on weather conditions etc.
Taking all that at face value, 1000km in a straight line doesn't put it anywhere inside Ukraine that Russia could have launched it. Vinnytsia is about as far into Ukraine. Since it is essentially a cruise-missile it doesn't have to travel in a straight line though, but obviously that gives it the furthest range. Transnistria might just about be a possibility if you definitely want it to be a Russian launch, but it looks far more likely that it was Ukrainian.

That's not a drone - that's a Klingon bird of Prey model.

you need to read the interview dude. You appear to be responding to the question, not the answer.

Interesting interview in the New Yorker with Russian history scholar Stephen Kotkin:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin
In twit form if you get paywalled:
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1502451539591454723
 

Did you even read that New York Times article ?  It clearly describes how all these wild theories you and John K are so enthusiastically promoting are  essentially null and void . The labs as they currently exist  are still in use by the Ukrainian Government do things like ...study Covid and other actual risks  . Practical Civilian based  activities .

So conspiracy mongering folks, LOTS of places have bio labs that study deadly pathogens.  Where the F do you think vaccines come from?  Do you think all the world's disease fighters just sit around and wait to be attacked by the next mutation of something.  WTF does this have to do w anything?  Please just stop.  No one gives a F about this.  It's not any excuse for this invasion and you are just feeding propaganda. 
Did any of you see the post from a couple days ago about idiots chasing shiny objects?  Look in mirror.
I guess I have a vacation coming but someone has to say STFU.  GO SOMEWHERE ELSE W YOUR IRRELEVANT BS.

Here's my analysis:
Wikipedia lists the following details
Taking that speed and those timings, that's about 35km through Romanian airspace, 470km through Hungarian and 80km through Croatia, ending at Zagreb. The Tu-141 has a range of around 1000km, although that looks rounded off and is also going to depend on weather conditions etc.
Taking all that at face value, 1000km in a straight line doesn't put it anywhere inside Ukraine that Russia could have launched it. Vinnytsia is about as far into Ukraine. Since it is essentially a cruise-missile it doesn't have to travel in a straight line though, but obviously that gives it the furthest range. Transnistria might just about be a possibility if you definitely want it to be a Russian launch, but it looks far more likely that it was Ukrainian.

Nope - they're sat in holes that have been dug by engineers.  If you look at the truck to the left of the vehicle that gets struck, you should be able to make out that it is at a lower level than the three vehicles to its left and you should be able to see the incline into the hole that it is sat in.  Of course they should have camouflage nets up but there's no evidence of that in the imagery and it is consistent with the whole pi$$ pooredness of Russian forces seemingly making little effort to conceal and disperse soft-skin vehicles at the halt throughout this conflict.

Sanctions aren't going anywhere for a long time because they are not now just about getting Putin to withdraw from Ukraine...they are also intended to make it difficult for Russia to play this game again. There's been a revolution in geopolitical thinking and immense political capital spent to service it. Nobody is going to want to run for office in 10 years against "Why did you let the Russians come back...*again*".

Maybe not quite as close to Brest as first suggested

Isn’t it a little weird that this number is the exact same as the number of volunteers for the Ukrainian foreign legion? Sounds more like a "well you might have that, but I have that too" propaganda ploy to me. Not that I doubt Syrians will enter the fight too, but matching the number of Ukrainian volunteers sounds like a bit too much of a coincidink.

"Drainage channels" or "drainage ditches" sounds like it would fit as a translation,  although there might be a more technical term.