dan/california

Tolkien would have known exactly who was playing Sauron in the current production.

Can i point out that tanks don't usually burn for two days? Of course it is entirely possible he is so concussed he thinks Nicholas II is still the czar. And the Russian army sux at war. Unless you consider leaving virtually unarmed vehicle crews in a hole until exposure or Ukrainian mortars put them out of their misery is being good at it?

Exactly right! and he isn't my my favorite writer on a lot of things, but this is 100%

100% agree. Ukraine should be very actively trying to find out exactly what the blown up and abandoned stuff outside of Marinka and Vuhledar was equipped with. Seems reasonable to assume the stuff defending Melitipol won't be better. But i woud try hard to verify.

Annoyingly cut up, but stuff went boom. The harder question is how does Ukraine do it better. I mean they will do it better, but they have to advance over the same pan flat fields. Against people that might occasionally be minimally competent, they will almost certainly be numerous, with artillery and ATGMs. The Russians sure as bleep lay mines by the hundreds of metric tons. The Ukrainians are going to have to do real breaching operations. Bleep me. I sound like LLF...

I don't know, but somebody ought to be trying to find out. If the answer is not many, move heaven and esrth to get everybody in the lead brigades latest generation stuff, an do this in the dark. The Bradleys and the PT-91s are good on this obviously. Can the Ukrainians train up to do this in the dark? FAST ENOUGH? I am as ra ra on them s it is possible to be, but it is harder, and it does take more practice.

So, taking The_Capt's excellent advice about step one, these are bunch of zoomed in maps and street view photos along the road that Jomni's map calls the m18, and Googe seems to call the E-105. Because nothing could ever be easy. Free terrain analysis, what worth you paid. It is unbelievably flat, the distance between meaningful tree lines seems on the order of one kilometer +/- and the single densest tree lines seem to be on both sides of the E105 itself. So lets say you have a couple of what I assume Ukraines better mechaized brigades are going to look like for the spring offensive. Each brigade has a battalion of bradley's, and a battalion of PT-91s filled out with Ukraines usual mix of post soviet stuff MRAPS, and HUMVEEs. The Russians are dug similarly to what they were were in Kherson, but with a much lower average troop quality. Because the better troops they got out of Kherson are dying in Kreminna and Bakmuht as I type. How do you cross a kilometer wide pan flat field with the lowest casualties, so that you can cross the one behind that tree line too. The one thing I keep coming up with is something we have seen very little of in this war. Heavy and effective use of artillery delivered smoke. Put the Bradleys on overwatch, and roll out what ever you are clearing mines with, followed by the PT-91s, with MRAPS closing up behind, as soon as you you have lanes cleared close enough to defenses for the infantry to be useful. Tell me where I have it wrong? Not that you gentlemen are ever shy about that. Yes I am assuming they wait until the ground is really dry, can't figure out how to even attempt this otherwise.

He gets it!

Step A of step one, and it is a necessity for everything that comes after, is to put the Kerch bridge in the water. Multiple spans worth of all three component bridges. NATO should have given Ukraine the missiles to do this nine months ago, and we should surely do it next week. That announces to the Russians, the Chinese, and everybody else we are serious about this. Multiple reports Rasaputitsa has begun, At least from Bakmuht south, we are probably waiting at least another month before next big and visible movement .

The fascinating question is would Putin still be leading the Russian government that suddenly wanted to negotiate. at SOME point the rest of the silovki are going to realize that every day the war continues there is less to steal.

This is probably more accurate than firing them from a helicopter, and takes a twentieth of the resources.

Also interesting.

One of The_Capt's better lines " When you get them shooting at each other, you are winning"

If you want the tankie surrender monkey line, this is it.

I think Kraze just made The_Capt happy?! I might faint...

Russia may yet manage to bury Bakmuht in their own dead. I don't think there is going to be much of an exploitation phase though.

Very slowly, then all at once....

100% agree, Russian forces in Moldova are just this side of a joke. NATO/EU would rather not deal with the mess, but if Russia pushed it over the edge Ukraine would deal with the actual Russian forces in week. I suspect the following week they would withdraw, and Romanian "peacekeeping troops" would move in. Oddly enough that huge ammos dump would be mysteriosly empty. After that it would merely be question on how many years it took for the diplomatic process to digest that Romania had a new province. Edit: Cross posted, Hcrof said it better.

Very difficult, not impossible. The right wing nuts that year wanted to let the Export_import bank go away. There were many billions of dollars and many thousands of jobs at stake, in lot of different districts. It got done. Given that the Ds only need to peel five votes in districts that don't like McCarthy, and can't bear to think about MTG, it should be doable after enough shouting. Fingers crossed!

Good article. Makes a case that the CIA chiefs meeting with the Russians in Turkey was a decisive point in the war. NATO finally realized Putin was not going to have an attack of common sense. The Russian army was just going to have to be beaten. I think most of the board realized that in July...or earlier.

The House of Representatives has a bunch of screwy rules. One of which is that the Speaker, and a committee controlled by the majority party, controls what comes up for a vote. The current speaker gave some of the people who like him the least seats on that committee to get elected. So the people who control what comes up for a vote may not be Ukraines biggest fans. The work around is called a discharge petition, which requires Approximately four to six Republicans to sign it, assuming all democrats are on board, and then vote for it more than once on the house floor. This would almost guarantee them a well funded primary challenge from the right wing of the Republican party. Hopefully Biden's team has already asked the ten most likely people what very nice country they would like to be the ambassador too. So yes it will probably get done, but it is fifty times harder than it ought to be.

It has the best rundown of the state of Russia's forces, and force generation efforts that I have seen. I think the best way to watch it would be with Jomni's latest set of maps in another window. Thet seem to generally agree, and Jomini has lot more detail on the map. They are also in full agreement with my ongoing rant that Ukraine needs more help, and faster to win this thing this summer, instead of giving Putin eighteen months to find and train some semblance of a competent army.

The ISW presentation billindc just put up went over this in GREAT detail. still going by the way. Hopefully the recording will be available, it is solid gold.

This seems to be most/all of the people who do the daily update. Worth your time, thanks for posting. Are you in the room...?