womble

Nah. Russia definitely has the expertise to put a dive team or a submersible on the line anyplace they want to. They could even have installed a destruct mechanism when they dropped the pipe into the Baltic in the first place. Using a pig has quite a big risk of identifiable debris being found by whomever comes in to investigate; a demolition charge would have less material extraneous to the explosion to remain to be found by a forensic examination. I'd say the possibilities are of a similar order of magnitude, at least

Russia owns the pipeline, or at least has full scale technical access to it. They could easily have inserted a maintenance pig into the line with the requisute quantiy of explosives on board and sent it downstream until just outside national territory. Piece of the proverbial cake.

Does the RU "middle class apathy" extend deep enough into the psyche that the dragooned involunteers will actually march like sheep to their deaths (and unfortunately kill a few Ukrainians on their journey) rather than desert/rebel/plain surrender-en-masse at the first opportunity?

I've seen bridges go in WW2 titles, too. A detonating Sherman 105 on the bridge will do it.

How much Putin has to lose is not particularly relevant to how allowing the threat of nukes to be an automatic argument-winner is a bad idea for everyone else. Ukraine won't back down, because letting the Russians win "because nukes" means that, in the long run, Ukraine the Nation is dead anyway. Doesn't matter what their allies threaten to withdraw, in the way of support, they can't afford to let Russia off the hook; it's existential. It'd be the end of NATO because the nuclear trump card would make NATO's existence pointless unless they were willing to answer nuke with nuke. China has too much to lose to even start thinking seriously about jumping the Taiwan Strait in the first place, let alone threatening nukes. All that noise is for internal consumption. North Korea can still eradicate millions of people (if it can do *anything* nuclear-weapon-wise, and even if it just opens up with its conventional weapons; Seoul is *right there*. Its threat, if nuclear-armed, is comparable to the threat of tac-nukes in UKR. At least. Kashmir. Pakistan and India both have nukes, I gather. Does that need any precedent of nuclear threats being the argument-ender in aggressive wars?

The war would also end with the threat of nuclear weapon use having been legitimised as a means to back up aggressive, atrocity-laden imperialism. This is not a desirable outcome. I think the West will react differently to how you imagine.

Blowing bridges up is a staple of military stories. They're valuable assets and the tension their potential destruction brings to the "table" when telling a battlefield story (which is a large element of what CM lets us do) is attractive. But that tension doesn't actually require the "sFx" of blowing the bridge up, since the detonation and demolition is generally the end of the story, one way or another. The tension can be thoroughly adequately supplied by making the bridge an overwhelmingly important objective, maybe Touch for one side and Occupy for the other, depending on the story you want to tell.

Well they've already annonunced they're building 300000 extra Ladas to give to the bereaved families, so they are accounting for 100% losses from that first tranche... "Untrained"? Needs a -3 Leadership and worse-than-Poor Motivation as well. "Decrepit" for Fitness? There are a few stages below "nuke" and above the political and supply means you mentioned: (in no particular order of significance) elision of the BSF and or other surface assets (boomers are a no-go, it seems due to Russia's rules on nuke use); no-fly-zone (applicable to RU Air Force only) over Ukraine; cruise missiles deleting identified RU AD, arty and logistical assets in Ukraine; escalated and transitory sanctions (which would be widely backed by currently inactive players if Putin tosses a nuke).

Wot? Like this? I wonder if there are any left anywhere other than Peru's 20...

If RuNats turn out to be the winners in the succession contest (without actually tipping the RUF over into full-blown civil war), Ukraine's options for negotiation through superior firepower become reduced compared to "other options". With the Nats' level of ideological commitment to preserving the trappings of Empire, just turning Sevastopol naval base into cratered rubble won't persuade them there's no point trying to hang on to it, whereas a more lucre-focused "new Kleptoczar" might prefer to walk away from the devastaion. As ever, Ukraine's options are going to depend at least to some extent on what future mischief the kleptocrats and nazis manage to inflict on Mother Russia.

Someone upthread mentioned that the "old-looking" ones must be the ones with the leadership and maybe combat experience. I think that's a mistaken assessment, in most cases; they're just the ones who did their square-bashing and grass-painting-green the longest-ago.

"Logically", they'd be "Porcs", wouldn't they? Think the French would've had an easier time in '70 if that had truly been the case.

No, but it could well be considered to put a crimp in their nuclear forces' response actions: the BSF has ships that can fire missiles that could be nuclear-tipped, no? Now, for me that line has already been crossed and ignored with the attacks on that airbase in Crimea, since it is a potential base for nuclear assets, but that wouldn't stop Putin if he wanted to legalise his way to the Big Red Button, I think (which is sorta fair enough; there's a difference between an airbase and a boomer pen). Not once HIMARS is in range or Hrim gets into serial production, it's not. At least not a credible one, any more than the threat of a northern hook out of Belarus is, today. Hmmm. I think this bears re-evaluating. Ukraine-not-in-NATO has beaten back the invading super-army. If they maintain good relations with NATO, including non-NATO mutual defense pacts with the likes of Poland and Romania and the Baltics, their supply of HIMARS rockets will remain flowing, they'll have options to purchase heavy gear from Rheinmetal or General Dynamics (I mean Abrams, not Ajax - I'm not a monster ), at their choice, and they'll know they have to maintain their guard against the feral bear to their east, which will not have any of those options, nor even the options they started this war with for another 30 years. I think they might be confident they can do this as many times as they need to, and that their friends will continue to back them with supplies and sanctions against the aggressor state. I think that the reactions of the "West" so far has largely demonstrated that this "international regime" does, actually, still work. I don't even see a need for UKR to sign a peace treaty with RUS. RoK seems to be doing just fine in the "sane family" while having an unresolved border dispute with their northern relatives. Freeze the conflict at the start '22 borders for now, and next time Russia has a paroxysm of self-destruction, or when the Donbas finally discard their Soviet-tinted spectacles and realise their future is so much brighter as part of a "Black Sea Tiger" nation, welcome their wayward kin back into the fold. And while I've been typing, there have been 11 new replies, so sorry if I'm repeating anything

The General Staff numbers do seem to be broadly reliable; the larger number* was their count, too, back in the beginning of "Phase 2". On the whole, the UKR General Staff seem to have an (understandable, sensible) aversion to being outed as propagandising hyperbolists, and recognise that they would probably get found out by "them as matter" if they told porky pies**, and this would hurt their cause. So they tend to stick fairly closely to the facts as they can discern them. Or so it seems. They have admitted error, in the past, too, which adds credibility. Haiduk has confidence in their assertions, anyway, and his assessments carry some weight of prior accuracy. * Which has been misused by people with agendas, recently. ** Cockney rhyming slang: pork pie - lie.

The biggest thing in Crimea of material/military worth to the Russians is the military port of Sevastopol. The rest of its resources are "notional" (offshore, strategic-positional, psychological etc) or there largely in support/defence of the port (airbases and other ancilliary installations). Once the land corridor goes away, the water gets shut down to 3l/pax (Ukraine aren't monsters, and there are some potential UKR citizens living there that they don't want to kill anyway; they won't start off by killing the inhabitants with thirst) a day, and the Kerch rail link goes away and stays down, HIMARS will be in easy range of all port facilities. So they can be wrecked beyond utility and kept that way (or quickly reduced if they're allowed to be restored under some peace deal but later become a threat). Any vessels attempting to use Crimean port facilities will be vulnerable to similar interdiction. Will Russia really want to keep it, and will anyone actually want to stay who isn't culturally tied to that land? The road bridge can stay...

Well done. Misunderstandinatin' 9/10. Nice work.

I think you're misunderstanding Haiduk's point. The 150-200/day KIA number is from "way back" in May-June, when Russia was gnawing away in the Donbas. The reference to lack of ammo for the most common artillery piece is because the lack of ammo for the guns meant the Russian attacks couldn't be squelched by the King of the Battlefield, and the Queen (Poor Bloody Infantry) had to do the job up close and personal, in the face of Russian artillery supremacy, which meant a lot of the ground pounders had to pay the blood price to keep Russia's rate of advance glacial. The cause of the lack was the immense expenditure earlier in the war which meant that, at that time, supplies overall were badly depleted. The NATO-supplied 155s were only just coming on line, and the other-nation supplies of Soviet calibres were only just, IIRC, being arranged/implemented. It has nothing to do with offensive operations by the UKR armed forces; they've been undertaking those with adequate-to-overwhelming indirect fire support.

Orban can go "whistle". Up a rope. In the dark with a torch and a map... And other mixed metaphors to avoid expletion.

Another thing he mentioned (not a direct quote) : people are hanging on to patriotism rather than fighting for their squadmates. A much more brittle motivation to remain "in the fight".

It would also leave a way out for lighter elements/panicking potential future civilian issues that could be interdicted if the RU tried evacuating their heavy gear.

This must be true, since we have evidence that they have used BFC product for official purposes in the past, so are aware of the knowledge and effort that hangs about here.

Especially when a significant proportion of those "men of action" started out as either wannabe or actual felons. I mean, I know the armies of the West have a few wrong'uns sent there as a potential way of avoiding judicial action, but at least those guys get the benefit of an effective system of discipline before their term of service is up, rather than just being hazed and bullied and initiated in a dysfunctional structure of institutional corruption and brutality. Though I guess that was also the case in the '90s after Afghanistan...

Those were mostly stolen by standard RUAF dogfaces (short and/or coerced contract "regulars"). Wagner contractors get paid regularly and highly enough to not need such mundane loot from the conflict zone (which is the point the putative arch-Nat is making about how PMCs can be more efficient than State troops). ISTR that mercenary organisations are actually illegal under Russian law. Wagner is literally allowed to break the law, and granted impunity because Putin says so. Same will presumably apply to any PMCs raised under the auspices of other RUS institutions. Convenient for those in power to be able to simply (assuming they have the throw weight) act upon the law in the case of any PMC that does anything at all that they do not like.

PMCs are basically mercenaries. Most mercenaries have a price. In treasure. The West is better placed to outbid Putin than vice-versa. Devolving the defense of the Realm onto the shoulders of Condottieri wasn't a sustainable approach for the Italian city states at the beginning othe Renaissance; it doesn't seem likely to be any more effective in the C21st.

It has also been asserted that it's not so much a capability of "western" air forces as it is restricted in the main to USAF elements who train specifically and extensively with specialist equipment in order to prosecute the mission, and even then it's dicey against integrated RU-style AD networks. Russia doesn't possess enough of the specialist equipment (and the Russian versions have some pretty big flaws), and certainly doesn't maintain sufficient training tempo to develop such a capability. I got the impression that those rumours were at least as much from the UKR side as from the RUS... Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick. Since those times, though, the UKR troops have had longer to figure out how to ensure MANPAD coverage on the offensive, and Gepard have arrived to provide some mobile AAA. Also, the sheer velocity of the Kharkiv advance will have thoroughly wigged out the RUS target-acquisition loop for CAS.