dan/california

That was my question, Caesar? Or maybe the Czech truck mounted 152/155 that was discussed much earlier. Photo quality is not the best.

I don't have any deep insight into the Ukr logistics system, but I am quite sure the Ukr General Staff does. So if they are launching counter attacks round Kharkiv, and into the shoulder of the Izyum salient they believe they can supply those efforts. Given that they ARE counterattacking in the Donbass, as opposed to say trying desperately to establish a defensive line somewhere just east of Lviv, I think we have to assume they know what they are doing.

The Syrians were nicer, might among the most DA@$$%%ing of a very great many true and DA$&&@@ing things said about the Russians in the last however many pages. It also implies most of them took their chances on sneaking into the EU and either claiming asylum, or working off the books at some distant relatives restaurant.

40 logistics vehicles! I am moving quickly to a view that the Russians fold within a week. Lukanhesko seems to agree, he is laying awake at night pondering his date with a lamp post, and a rope. And wondering if he can safely flee to Russia,?or if Putin will have him tortured to death for not fully committing Belarus to the war. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy...

Someone posted this several pages back, but I couldn't find it easily, so I am just reposting it. Some really good thinking, and historical analysis on the risks Putin would run with mass mobilization. It is worth your time to read all of it.

Maybe not ending, but certainly another un-spinnable sign the Russians are losing, and rather badly. Putin seems determined to push his army to complete failure. I can't quite decide if he is doing due to delusion, or to punsh the military for not giving him the "short victorious war" he had planned on.

I don't think the Russians are gaining around Kherson, in fact I think they are probably losing ground...

Hey Steve, you could interrupt our attempts to run the Ukr general staff, and the world food program, with some information about the next iteration of the game.......

First, I fully agree with the several people who said any shortage in the U.S. is some random regional trucking snafu, if the shortage is anything other than cable news hype. It is also worth considering the chaos that ~15 billion in agricultural exports being taken off the world market is causing. That is a rounding error in the world economy, it might not even qualify as a rounding error. For absolutely basic commodities where it is a bleeping bleep deal when a shortage hits, the world need to figure out how to run with a little more slack in the system. Paying a hundred or a thousand times more to clean up the mess later just doesn't make any sense. This not an ANY way a lack of support for Ukraine on my part. As anyone who has been paying attention is aware, I think NATO planes should have been obliterating Russian tanks and logistics six weeks ago. Short of that we need to pump training and equipment into Ukraine until they can credibly threaten to march on Moscow if the Russians don't quit and go home. The Russians deserve to lose this war utterly, and maintaining any semblance of a workable international system demands that they do. I am just making a general observation about the value of keeping some more reserve capacity in the world food system. The next crisis is just as likely to be crop disease.

So many of the failures between 2014 and 2/24/2022 were due to profound misjudgments about both the Ukrainian and Russian governments/states. Pre 2/24 the EU and Nato really did not believe the Ukrainian government was a dependable partner, and that if they were admitted to the various Western clubs the best case scenario would have been a less functional, but more expensive Hungary. Like wise pre 2/24 everyone thought the people running Russia were sane, and had some grasp on objective reality, and what we think of as their long term national interests. Both of these delusions have been shattered utterly. The coherence of the Ukrainian state and nation has been tested and found match the very best quality super alloy made. Russia has proven itself to be profoundly dangerous and untrustworthy. Given the limitations of Nato/EU decision making processes we have done a mostly decent job of reacting to this new reality once we were slapped in the face with, at least SO FAR. There is great deal that can yet go wrong, but so far so good.

Spare a microscopic bit of sympathy for every corporal, and and quartermaster in the Chinese army. Can you imagine the inspections and audits Xi has ordered to be sure how much of a military he ACTUALLY has.

Regardless of whether or not the Ukr are playing some photoshop games with with OSINT photo analyst, the thing I keep coming back too is how much a of a difference 155 airburst will make vs 152 point detonation, which seems to be all either side is using to this point. It will just take a LOT less rounds to deal with this type of target. Which means more rounds for the next target, and that much sooner you can displace ahead of the counter-battery if the Russians can even do that at their apparent level of technical expertise.

Were they TRYING to be confusing? Hardest place to keep straight in the history of mankind! Fingers crossed Ukr has found a weak spot protected by unhappy conscripts. Sort of amazing the Russians would be that stupid given that Stalingrad is their national myth. But then they have been stupid the entire war...

The Russians just seem to folding up and going away everywhere between Kharkiv and the wider part of the Severtsky-Dontesk river. How much of that can they give up before artillery and other threats to their supply lines in Izyum becomes intolerable, and this wholes offensive just evaporates

Going to be a fast parsing of every university in the western world for some Buryat speakers who would like green cards or equivalent, and to continue their educations at government expense if they just take this little sabbatical to Warsaw...

If true this brings a small piece of one of the GLOCs Izyum into artillery range. The Russians might have to divert forces to try and take that back. If they have any to divert.

I think they wait until their shiny new gun line is ready to use. They get it all set up south of Kharkiv, where they are energetically prepping the ground. When all the ducks are in a row they systematically smash their way all the way to Kup'yans'k, and then make the Russians dig them out or quit and go home. Those DPR conscripts holding the Russian flank, and calling them conscripts overstates their military utility, won't like 155 airburst much at all.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Melitopol',+Zaporizhia+Oblast,+Ukraine,+72300/@46.9283725,35.2438086,1271m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x40c2b1e224ede523:0xa1e1e16ff3a2914a!8m2!3d46.8550216!4d35.3586996 Zaporizhiiia to Melitipol is just about the hardest place for the Ukr too operate with their current AA set up. It is pancake flat and very little cover. Pushing the Russians back out of artillery range of Kharkiv, and then leaning on the supply lines to Izyum might just be a lot more doable

I was going to bring that up, literally tens of thousands of casualties later, and they still park nose to tail. Is it that they are literally afraid to let people out of sight of the company commander?

Best wordo ever!

It is a particularly creative way to make the point that attacking Ukraine at the beginning of the spring mud season with an armor heavy army is one the dumber moves in military history. A clueless, effectively untrained, armor heavy army, who apparently have never done a vehicle recovery drill in their lives. And alas for that poor fool, he will now be the subject of the what NOT to do video in every safety briefing ever done on the subject, forevermore.

Rifles from the Great Patriotic War, to go with the propaganda from the Great Patriotic War. Wait until the find out about the rations.....

Gerasimov is the one guy I wouldn't kill. Even the abysmal median Russian standard general officer would be vastly more competent.

Wasn't great construction to start with. There ought to be some pretty substantial metals bits where those concrete beams come together, well, used to come together. It looks like the expansion joint, it isn't really worthy of the term, was concrete sliding on concrete.

The Russians seem to have a compulsive desire to die trying to take the most defensible spot on the Ukrainian lines. Because this is the exact spot Combatintman referenced above as the place no sane army would attack. Hopefully the will be very, VERY sorry.