dan/california

I think the Russians next move is to push Belarus to the failure point, as discussed for several pages it is 99% chance of epic flop. It feels like Putins is determined to get some Value out of Lukashenko or get him evicted trying. Hopefully Lukashenko has his date with a rope and a lamp post, and the Russian's logistics just dissolve into goo. It has a tiny bit of logic from Putin's perspective, he losing now rather badly.

Why haven'y you ALREADY done that?

He is 100% on board with Steve, and the Captain.

And flipping Belarus to the West would be an utterly un-spinnable loss for Putin.

Rebellion/insurrection/coup in Belarus THE way to end this quickly, and with minimum casualties. If Belarossian military just thoroughly wrecked the railway system and the ran for the Polish border for asylum/surrender the Russians would be bleeped beyond all recognition. It would be a total logistical collapse. Lukashenko getting the full Mussolini treatment would be a nice bonus. Truly large amounts of money, effort, and extravagant promises to the critical players need to devoted to this.

We know the next piece of the Russian military to experience the joys of Chinese quality control.

Usual cautions apply, truth is the first casualty, ect., But given confirmed Russian vehicle losses, epic incompetence at every level, and complete disregard for their own troops welfare, I find it credible.

A couple of hundred Nato cruise missile could end Putin's rolling atrocity in Ukraine in an afternoon. NATO ISR assets have tracked virtually everything from the beginning. We know where the critical logistics nodes and the most critical artillery assets are.

If Putin can wave is magical nuclear stick, and get to wreck and conquer Ukraine, why does anyone think Poland, or the Baltics won't be next?

You forgot the three paragraphs of profanity about the Russians. Mariupol justifies the risk of NATO intervention, by any calculus you want to use.

One very large difference is that the Ukrainians are bending over backwards to treat POWs well. WW2 eastern front the two best scenarios were fighting to the death, or being shot immediately, not joking. I think a few HUNDRED of the tens of thousands of Germans that surrendered at Stalingrad lived to return to Germany. The Germans were just as bad. The Ukrainians are trying encourage surrenders, so you get a cup of tea and a chance to call mom, might be the best deal in human history all things considered.

Putin has been trying to drag Belarus the rest of the way in since the beginning. Belarus military does NOT want to come out and play. Still crossing my fingers they will revolt instead. Which would wreck the Russian logistics around Kyiv, utterly.

https://belarusdigest.com/story/how-many-divisions-does-lukashenka-have/ supporting info on Belarus.

The Lukashenko's army doesn't have any underpinnings, they haven't bought a new piece of equipment since 1989. I doubt their maintenance practices are much better than the Russians either. To the extent the have done, or been trained for anything it was as backup riot police. They don't like Lukashenko because he let the Russians in and made them second class citizens, among many other reasons. If they make make it over the border, which I would not by any means guarantee, I predict the biggest problem they cause the Ukrainians is having to build a bunch of POW camps, and then keeping them from sneaking into Poland. Since it would be an unambiguous act of war it would also let the Ukrainian special forces go after the road and rail network in Belarus like they mean it. It manages the considerable feat of being a worse idea than the rest of this so called campaign.

Speaking of VKontakte, apparently people with connections to the Russian military are connecting the dots about what the parade of funerals foe senior officers means for the rest of their units. Thread above has translated comments.

The prime minister of Poland wants to be the Prime minister of the soon to be announced Polish-Ukrainian Federation, instead of Zelensky, Or at least the prime minister of the federation AFTER Zelensky. And yes I am kidding, but only sort of, kind of, barely. I also wouldn't rule out that entire units of the Polish military are threatening to join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, and the Government is just trying to get in front of a parade that leaving regardless. To be clear, all of the above is speculation ob my part, but isn't crazy in my humble opinion.

So how much do the Poles have? They are clearly the ones driving this.

First and foremost it put Lukashenko on notice that if he tried to cut the Ukrainians off from the Polish border the POLISH army was going to hand them their heads.

The Eastern Europeans clearly can't sit and watch the siege of Mariupol anymore!

I am not even sure the Russians have enough superiority of fire to go static in the first place. I realize we are only seeing the successes mostly. But I am not sure you can dig in deep enough to withstand accurate, drone directed 152mm fire. If the Russians are static the Ukrainians can just keep maneuvering for local superiority of fires until the Russian line is more wrecked than their supply convoys

It really is WW1 level stupid, "Lets charge the ATGMs again, the Czar swore it would work this time". Or not.

It is one thing to have your fire base mortared occasionally. Being MRLed by people who can shoot straight is a totally different thing.

Safer outside with the bullets without APS.

Ukraine, UNTIL NOW, has been plagued by weak governments that NATO didn't really trust. But Zelensky was doing his best to clean it up before the war. He obviously succeeded beyond all reason in cleaning up the military and intelligence services or we would be two weeks out from Putin's Parade in Kyiv. Post war, If Zelensky is still there and has a country to speak of, he is going to have both the political support at home, and the economic support from abroad to attempt a complete reset. He will be the second coming of George Washington, but with bottomless access to EU money, and technical expertise. It will just be a completely different country two years from now if it exits at all.

Assume a 2500 meter effective range for multiple Ukrainian ATGM systems which is actually pretty conservative. You have to maintain a 5km wide band of territory for every single supply rout. So that is basically a max size CMBS map wide. How many troops does it take to find and fix one hostile platoon on a full sized CMBS map with moderate terrain complications. Remember the platoons isn't trying to fight, just hide until a supply truck, or trucks wander thru. Your entire supply line is just one full sized CMBS map after another from fire base "We're ^###*%$# mommy" to the Russian border. Maybe a lot longer if Belarus wobbles even a little bit. Would one company of decent infantry be enough to even attempt it? DO the Russians have ANY infantry that can be described as decent? Or at least any left ? The Russian math does NOT add.