dan/california

Haven't seen one these in use before.

Haven't seen one these in use before.

What's interesting to note is that the publicly announced US intelligence assessments weren't a one time thing. They were copious, changed over time and were updated. They also were issued pretty frequently. That's *not* the kind of product you have if you are working off of a few highly placed sources (if you want them to live through the next week). Bottom line, the US was demonstrating that we had thoroughly penetrated the Russian decision cycle in every way possible. A similar thing happened a week or so ago when the NSA simply disconnected the GRU hacking team from a broad swathe of software they were about to use for a larger cyber attack. 
There's a purpose to all of this, of course. It's a demonstration of dominance and so a method by which one nation can coerce another from escalation. Putin has to consider not just the down stream effects of (for example) a strike on a Polish arms depot or a limited nuclear strike...he now has to think about what happens between when he orders it and when it can actually be carried out. He has to assume that we know pretty much as soon as he decides. It cannot be a comfortable position.

Sending the family a picture of the body, and a picture of the ID card does make the point rather thoroughly. The Russians can go home anytime. The only thing waiting for them in Ukraine is a zinc coffin, if there is enough left to bury, and the Russians bother to recover their dead.
No but the Russians more or less systematically try to make every single problem worse. From Le Pen, to Assad, to who knows how many African dictators, they pick the worst actor on a given stage and back them. Sometime they back them a lot, sometimes jus enough to keep them from sinking. But there goal is alway more chaos, more disruption of the rules based order, and hey if there is some money to be made in blood diamonds or whatever, that's cool too.

This offensive has nothing to do with resources and never did. Or at least not literal resources. For example russians couldn't care less if occupied Crimea ever gets drinking water - even if everybody died there of starvation - "those are just khokhol traitors anyway". Their military base was getting enough and that's the only thing that ever mattered.
And you know why? If russians ever cared about their economics - they wouldn't still be so critically dependent on black stuff from a hole in the ground.
Russia has only one single, unchangeable goal: destruction of Ukraine, complete elimination and enslavement of ukrainians - nothing else. Because if ukrainians exist and resist - this makes a huge plothole in their empire-building mythology and this is why you see putin spewing absolute insanity.
 

I can see this being great ground for a Russian offensive in say late June. The current weather forecast though it isn't going to dry out enough to mechanized operations fun for at least a month. Do we have any feel for the Ukrainians' ability to induce localized flooding in some convenient spots?

I don't know to be honest.  A lot of the longer range stuff uses IR and thermals, I am not sure what fog/hazy does for that.  I do think that the Javelin is made for this country as it locks quickly and then takes off above tree lines until it goes for the terminal attack.
I would save the swtichblades for deep strike on engineering stuff and enemy artillery and then own arty and UAV strike for logistics.  This plus Javelin/NLAW in this country will again create enormous friction along the entire Russian axis - attrit, slow, stall and then roll in your own conventional mass to completely crush.
As Steve points out the Russians do not have anywhere enough "fast" infantry to be able to sustain momentum and their tanks will become coffins without that.  They need recon pull, highly linked in as well.  This is highwater mark combined arms type stuff.  But even before all that, how about pre-strikes on Ukrainian information infrastructure?  The UA can still use irregulars seasoned with SOF up front to make life miserable but they have been using cell infra (allegedly); however, the UA SOF may very well have satellite backbone via the west by now, so Russia is screwed unless they can deny LEO and geosynchronous, which is a laughable idea.
Nope my bet is the Russians are going to try more "dim-mass", now very brittle because their expertise is looking at the map and going "tank country...yay".  However, they have not read the fine print, nor really figured out the implications.  If they had they would not have given the UA nearly a month to prepare, maybe.
I get the sneaking sense that Russia is doing this war like a scene from Tenet - backwards.  They should have started in the south with much narrower operations, with their best troops, in this country before the UA could prep and then expanded once they broke the back of the UA.  They had surprise at the very beginning as well.   By trying to play this war in reverse it is all sorts of messed up...just like that freakin movie.

The tone is such that the upcoming even larger refugee crisis is already fueled in large part by stubbornly keeping on feeding the beast.
Without oil and gas money (which account for about 70% of their income) Russia would quickly collapse within just a few months saving millions from suffering. Even middle eastern troubles are mostly because of Russia feeding every single terrorist organization it can find - from Hesbollah to Taliban.
There is a strong connection between refusing to let go even of coal until August and Africa being threatened by famine.

Steve said
To put this into perspective, a full strength BTG has about 225 infantry available to it.  300 if you're talking about a BTG that is infantry centric.  Let's call the minimum force requirement 5000 dismounted infantry.  That's the equivalent of 17-22 BTGs.  Russia has something like 80 or so in the fight right now and they are all fully committed, so they don't count.  It has probably another 30 or so reconstituting behind the lines with another 40 or so probably too shattered to even think about.
Me
From me, 5000 seems too low, 5000 seems WAY too low. Tre Russians have to attack on a front SEVERAL kilometers wide, just keep ATGMs from being able to shoot clear across the width of the breakthrough the are trying to create. Then they have to hold the flank of every kilometer they  advance. Even if you assume they could get by with 50 men per linear kilometer, and I think that is totally in adequate, that only buys you a a hundred kilometers of infantry coverage, You have to cover both sides of your salient, and you SURELY need more than 50 men per linear kilometer to actual front of the attack. So 5000 men might get you a five or ten kilometer front 25 kilometers deep. I don't see that accomplishing anything except a great many dead Russians. 
If the game has taught me anything it is that a company of infantry can only handle so much contested ground, and trying to exceed that goes rather poorly.

One main difference between the 73' Sinai Front and Donbas is that Egyptians lacked any strategic depth east of the Suez Canal, which forced them into a more or less static battle against Israelis. Ukrainians could fall back 50 km on the way of armored pincers and still not have their main forces in ATO surrounded.

This isn't something I had considered until just now, but the choice of the 'Harpoonski' could be interesting. Similar body, similar flight patter to the western missile. Perhaps the Moskva was sank by one of those ASMs I heard we were shipping Ukraine, but then somebody decided that Moscow (the unsinkable one) might not take to kindly to an American missile sinking the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. Anyway, just a thought. Dont want to take anything away from the UA domestic industry and its own missile programs, which seem quite good. 
Also regarding Russian threats to escalate pressure against the west, the Baltics have seemed to stand strong. Germany on the other hand.....
Wouldn't want Germany to become the next target, its bad for business. 

This is just too funny not to post...😀

There's already been a lot of talk over the last month about the possibly disastrous state of Egypt's economy and political systems as a consequence of the war - Egypt depended heavily on Russia and Ukraine for both wheat and cooking oil (see charts), so prices have gone up drastically there with Russia basically stopping exports and Ukraine being unable to either.
In Egypt it was already the case that ~65% of child mortality was linked to malnutrition, and one of the countries in the world in the higher overall malnutrition brackets, and it's probably getting a lot worse in the immediate future.

I'm not thinking about Russian internal narrative, nothing they do will impact that. But internationally it will worsen their stance even more, support for supplying Ukraine with arms will rise even more. As horrible as Bucha is, for many it's just some few hundred ppl, nothing to worry about, maybe it's staged etc. Going after merchant ships Kriegsmarine style is a different pair of socks altogether. Think Lusitania in WW2. This might be especially important vis a vis countries outside of the collective West.

Night falls again in Ukraine and another day has passed without the great Russian offensive.  Getting to be a pattern. 
Sinking the Moskva is great fun, of course, but the most telling news for me today was a bunch more arrests of various officers, including a naval officer.  Yessirree, this warms my heart.  Keep eating your own, Putin.  So he's either paranoid or there's actually people out to get him.  One doesn't jail this many just to take the blame for failure, only need a couple high up scapegoats for that.
 

I wouldn't rule out that any other significant Russian ships just ran as fast as they could, in case the Ukrainians had more missiles. It is getting ever harder to think of the Russians as functioning military, as opposed to particularly well armed mob.

This was the first statement they put out at midday and was in contradiction to reports from UKR that it had already sunk. Then there was a MoD update later in the afternoon admitting it had finally sunk.

The earlier statement if untrue was probably put out with intention to not cause panic amongst members of public with relatives and friends on board, it's not yet sunk gives the impression that there was time to evacuate, all was not lost.

Remember that the media is trying to do its best to hide the true number of casualties in this conflict. "It went down in 7 minutes" is not in keeping with this media strategy.    

wow we are back to Stalin's days.  Every bad thing that occurs must be due to sabotage, because the state (Putin) is infallible.  This is great!!!!  Yeah, keep purging Putler (Putlin?).  Keep making folks think they might have greater survival chance through a coup then through service to the state.  What could go wrong?

I wouldn't rule out that any other significant Russian ships just ran as fast as they could, in case the Ukrainians had more missiles. It is getting ever harder to think of the Russians as functioning military, as opposed to particularly well armed mob.

I wouldn't rule out that any other significant Russian ships just ran as fast as they could, in case the Ukrainians had more missiles. It is getting ever harder to think of the Russians as functioning military, as opposed to particularly well armed mob.

I wouldn't rule out that any other significant Russian ships just ran as fast as they could, in case the Ukrainians had more missiles. It is getting ever harder to think of the Russians as functioning military, as opposed to particularly well armed mob.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/index.php/jrnl/art/why-russias-navy-ukraine-war-doomed-or-irrelevant 
This guy is in Steve's and the captn's league for getting it just exactly right.

It was sunk by our own drunk, idiotic, and undisciplined sailors is perhaps the worst excuse in human history. At least have the sense to claim it hit a mine.
I think the fifty were rescued by a Turkish ship of some description, it is too early to assume that is all the survivors. There were seevral ships flitting around the sinking wreck. I am laughing at the tidal wave of reasons the rescued sailors are spouting for why the should just dropped in Istanbul with a little pocket money, instead of fed back into the Ukrainian meat grinder as the worlds least competent, least happy infantry.

They are going to need Scuba gear.💪💪💪💪💪 Glory to Ukraine!

They are going to need Scuba gear.💪💪💪💪💪 Glory to Ukraine!