dan/california

At the moment I agree with you, but it will be a very different circumstance if Russia has been run completely out of Ukraine. It would be even more obvious they are launching missiles out of pure spite. And the production really is a solvable problem. I mean the Iranians did it, and they are under massive sanctions.

You may be giving them too much credit. The Russian army in Ukraine is like a tire with a slow leak. In the end it will inevitably be very flat, in the mean time it just pushes back anywhere it can. If I may torture this analogy further, it gets very expensive very quickly to try and drive on the flat.

The Russian army has so little cohesion it can't figure out how bad off it actually is. In a very strange, unbelievably costly way, this sort of works.

At least a hard fake at the Donestk hook then, if the fake becomes the main effort, AND actually works, it is as close to war winner as the Ukrainians could hope for. Looking for excitement at the Kerch bridge very soon. It would cut the Russians off from both sides if the Ukrainians could get behind Donestk. We have seen a coup in favor fighting the war better. The next guy might read his Lenin better and offer "peace , land, and bread" in return for installing him in the Kremlin.

Well they have hammering various bits of it the last two weeks.

Accuse your enemies of what you are guilty of. It is the iron rule of Russian Propaganda, from the very top to the very bottom

Near as I can tell, If Estonia has it, they have given two thirds of it too Ukraine. I can't think of a reason these would be any different. And Ukraine is using something to do some artful remote mining around Oleshky.

The_Capt did warn us this was coming.

The first trick is making it and end, and not just another interregnum.

For Okinawa, 640 square miles. Vast casualties on the Japanese side as well. Edit: Just for readability U.S. Casualties on Okinawa were 12520 KIA or MIA, and 36.631 WIA So in the absence of the bomb it is a question of at what point in the process Japan's will to fight would have given out, and these ratios stopped holding. All evidence is that it if spared them being occupied by the Soviets the Japanese were better off with how it worked out. And if they were trying not to get occupied, well that just wasn't going to work.

Russia putting in three brigades of better, at least by Russian standards of better, troops will certainly slow down Ukraine's progress around Bakmuht. It might speed it up considerably somewhere else.

I admitted up front it was unlikely to happen, and I freely admit I think the entire upper layer of the Russian government deserves it. You made an entirely correct historical analogy about the end of the second world war, and so did I. The casualty estimates for the invasion of Japan were ~one million allied soldiers, and well north of five million for the Japanese. Truman looked at the numbers and dropped the atomic bomb.

And we responded to the casualty estimates for the invasion of Japan how, again?

Well they have resisted the urge to hit Russian airbases that were launching planes and missies against Kyiv, so I doubt they will shoot at these guys with a real provocation. Although my favorite little day dream is that the AFU will thank the Russians for tying up their entire army in the south and go take Minsk.

Ukraine is already building kamikaze drones that can reach Moscow. It is simply necessary to explain to the Russians that they can start showing up by the several hundred per day, instead of a couple per week.

I am more interested in how restrained the POLISH government will feel if the Wagnerites start bleeping around on the Polish/Lithuanian border.

This is the big news of the day, at least so far. It will make life infinitely harder for the Ukrainian troops around Bakmuht, But it might create the conditions for a real breakthrough elsewhere, getting the Russian reserves committed before Ukraine has to commit the majority of its assault troops seems to have been the point of the entire operation so far.

Really cut up tape, but something put a shell on the bulls eye.

Any more questions why Ukraine wants ATACMS?

The next time Steve tells you the game works the way it does because you cannot see ANYTHING out of a Russian tank, he is going to show you this video as proof.

The war in the marshes moves ever closer to Olsehky. This particular boat full of Russians lost rather badly BTW.

I realize it is unlikely, but I would like it to end EXACTLY like WW2, with Russia surrendering unconditionally, and some very nice hangings, after scrupulously fair trials of course. It isn't complicated to convict people who confess on video all day, every day, and then on Telegram after dinner.

I think we know the Balts opinion on getting Ukraine in NATO soonest.

I generally agree, but until the weather ends the summer fighting season, the single biggest metric is which side has had to commit more of its reserves. As long as 75% or more of the units Ukraine has held back for the offensive are uncommitted we just don't know much. As Wagner has just proven, you can go a VERY long way, very quickly, when the fight goes out f the other side.