Combatintman

Beat me to it - the time to invade Ukraine would have been while the US and NATO still had forces in Afghanistan - all that military hardware that is pouring into Ukraine now would have been unthinkable if troops were still on the ground in Afghanistan.  All it would have taken was for a US/NATO soldier to get killed in Afghanistan and someone to unearth a social media post where the soldier said before their death - 'we didn't have enough body amour/MRAPs/fire support because it got sent to Ukraine.'  In fact it wouldn't even take that - the press or an opposition politician would just seize on the fact that equipment and supplies were going to a non-US//NATO country while the former were still engaged in Afghanistan. 
Also, all of those ISR platforms that were able to focus on Ukraine and Russia plus the analytical support behind them which did and still is making a huge difference to Ukraine would likely have been at least half of what they are now.  Also look at the political bandwidth that is being spent in Ukraine right now.  For the latter, I go back to the optics - the calculus would be 'are there any US/NATO troops there?  Nope ... Let's throw Ukraine some bones to keep the press off our backs but we need to focus on where US/NATO troops are in a combat training and advising role.'
US/NATO weakness in Afghanistan was signalled well before August 2021 and the current US President's decision to call it a day earlier that same year.  I can't name an actual year when it was obvious that the US/NATO will was lacking but it was at least a decade ago and probably longer than that.  Or put another way - the 'Biden was weak' theory is ... errrmmm ... weak.  

Beat me to it - the time to invade Ukraine would have been while the US and NATO still had forces in Afghanistan - all that military hardware that is pouring into Ukraine now would have been unthinkable if troops were still on the ground in Afghanistan.  All it would have taken was for a US/NATO soldier to get killed in Afghanistan and someone to unearth a social media post where the soldier said before their death - 'we didn't have enough body amour/MRAPs/fire support because it got sent to Ukraine.'  In fact it wouldn't even take that - the press or an opposition politician would just seize on the fact that equipment and supplies were going to a non-US//NATO country while the former were still engaged in Afghanistan. 
Also, all of those ISR platforms that were able to focus on Ukraine and Russia plus the analytical support behind them which did and still is making a huge difference to Ukraine would likely have been at least half of what they are now.  Also look at the political bandwidth that is being spent in Ukraine right now.  For the latter, I go back to the optics - the calculus would be 'are there any US/NATO troops there?  Nope ... Let's throw Ukraine some bones to keep the press off our backs but we need to focus on where US/NATO troops are in a combat training and advising role.'
US/NATO weakness in Afghanistan was signalled well before August 2021 and the current US President's decision to call it a day earlier that same year.  I can't name an actual year when it was obvious that the US/NATO will was lacking but it was at least a decade ago and probably longer than that.  Or put another way - the 'Biden was weak' theory is ... errrmmm ... weak.  

In a word ... no.  I doubt that in early 2021 Putin had decided that he was going to conduct a 'special military operation.'  Bear in mind that the dust had only just settled on the Nagorno-Karabach conflict of the previous year and Russia is pretty sensitive about Islamic-extremist terrorism landing on Russian soil from Afghanistan via the other 'stans to the North with whom Russia has a security pact, the CSTO.  I am sure there was plenty of bandwidth being spent in the Kremlin about how to ensure that Russia's borders could be secured from that extremist Islamic terrorists in that neck of the woods after the US/NATO left.  Indeed on more than one occasion in the last 12 months Russia has sent troops to shore up its CSTO allies due to that perceived threat plus civil unrest in a couple of those countries.  In the latter case, Russian troops were sent to put down riots in one of the CSTO countries in the region either late last year or very early this year.

Beat me to it - the time to invade Ukraine would have been while the US and NATO still had forces in Afghanistan - all that military hardware that is pouring into Ukraine now would have been unthinkable if troops were still on the ground in Afghanistan.  All it would have taken was for a US/NATO soldier to get killed in Afghanistan and someone to unearth a social media post where the soldier said before their death - 'we didn't have enough body amour/MRAPs/fire support because it got sent to Ukraine.'  In fact it wouldn't even take that - the press or an opposition politician would just seize on the fact that equipment and supplies were going to a non-US//NATO country while the former were still engaged in Afghanistan. 
Also, all of those ISR platforms that were able to focus on Ukraine and Russia plus the analytical support behind them which did and still is making a huge difference to Ukraine would likely have been at least half of what they are now.  Also look at the political bandwidth that is being spent in Ukraine right now.  For the latter, I go back to the optics - the calculus would be 'are there any US/NATO troops there?  Nope ... Let's throw Ukraine some bones to keep the press off our backs but we need to focus on where US/NATO troops are in a combat training and advising role.'
US/NATO weakness in Afghanistan was signalled well before August 2021 and the current US President's decision to call it a day earlier that same year.  I can't name an actual year when it was obvious that the US/NATO will was lacking but it was at least a decade ago and probably longer than that.  Or put another way - the 'Biden was weak' theory is ... errrmmm ... weak.  

Beat me to it - the time to invade Ukraine would have been while the US and NATO still had forces in Afghanistan - all that military hardware that is pouring into Ukraine now would have been unthinkable if troops were still on the ground in Afghanistan.  All it would have taken was for a US/NATO soldier to get killed in Afghanistan and someone to unearth a social media post where the soldier said before their death - 'we didn't have enough body amour/MRAPs/fire support because it got sent to Ukraine.'  In fact it wouldn't even take that - the press or an opposition politician would just seize on the fact that equipment and supplies were going to a non-US//NATO country while the former were still engaged in Afghanistan. 
Also, all of those ISR platforms that were able to focus on Ukraine and Russia plus the analytical support behind them which did and still is making a huge difference to Ukraine would likely have been at least half of what they are now.  Also look at the political bandwidth that is being spent in Ukraine right now.  For the latter, I go back to the optics - the calculus would be 'are there any US/NATO troops there?  Nope ... Let's throw Ukraine some bones to keep the press off our backs but we need to focus on where US/NATO troops are in a combat training and advising role.'
US/NATO weakness in Afghanistan was signalled well before August 2021 and the current US President's decision to call it a day earlier that same year.  I can't name an actual year when it was obvious that the US/NATO will was lacking but it was at least a decade ago and probably longer than that.  Or put another way - the 'Biden was weak' theory is ... errrmmm ... weak.  

I can't find my original post about 400 pages or so back but its essentially what @Huba said.  My comment was something like 'an anti-radiation missile and a jamming pod strapped to a fast jet does not a SEAD capability make.'  The US pioneered SEAD through hard-won experience in Vietnam and even then lost something north of 200 fixed wing aircraft to some fairly rudimentary SAMs/MANPADs - SA2 and SA7 in the main.
According to Wikipedia - usual caveats apply - Germany and Italy are the only two NATO nations that deploy a specialist aircraft (Tornado ECR).  The former acquired 35 and the latter acquired 16 at a slightly lower spec.  It appears that as of February last year the Germans could only field 20 while the Italians could field 15.
Looking at a more authoritative source - the Royal United Services Institute - the linked article below lays the lack of NATO capability, excepting of course the US, bare:
Getting Serious About SEAD: European Air Forces Must Learn from the Failure of the Russian Air Force over Ukraine | Royal United Services Institute (rusi.org)
 

I can't find my original post about 400 pages or so back but its essentially what @Huba said.  My comment was something like 'an anti-radiation missile and a jamming pod strapped to a fast jet does not a SEAD capability make.'  The US pioneered SEAD through hard-won experience in Vietnam and even then lost something north of 200 fixed wing aircraft to some fairly rudimentary SAMs/MANPADs - SA2 and SA7 in the main.
According to Wikipedia - usual caveats apply - Germany and Italy are the only two NATO nations that deploy a specialist aircraft (Tornado ECR).  The former acquired 35 and the latter acquired 16 at a slightly lower spec.  It appears that as of February last year the Germans could only field 20 while the Italians could field 15.
Looking at a more authoritative source - the Royal United Services Institute - the linked article below lays the lack of NATO capability, excepting of course the US, bare:
Getting Serious About SEAD: European Air Forces Must Learn from the Failure of the Russian Air Force over Ukraine | Royal United Services Institute (rusi.org)
 

I can't find my original post about 400 pages or so back but its essentially what @Huba said.  My comment was something like 'an anti-radiation missile and a jamming pod strapped to a fast jet does not a SEAD capability make.'  The US pioneered SEAD through hard-won experience in Vietnam and even then lost something north of 200 fixed wing aircraft to some fairly rudimentary SAMs/MANPADs - SA2 and SA7 in the main.
According to Wikipedia - usual caveats apply - Germany and Italy are the only two NATO nations that deploy a specialist aircraft (Tornado ECR).  The former acquired 35 and the latter acquired 16 at a slightly lower spec.  It appears that as of February last year the Germans could only field 20 while the Italians could field 15.
Looking at a more authoritative source - the Royal United Services Institute - the linked article below lays the lack of NATO capability, excepting of course the US, bare:
Getting Serious About SEAD: European Air Forces Must Learn from the Failure of the Russian Air Force over Ukraine | Royal United Services Institute (rusi.org)
 

It should be at Klintzi (Клинцы) town, next to village Zaimishche (Займище) in Bryansk Oblast. 

Working out what's going on is the straight bat answer to your question - seen as how cricket cropped up earlier 😉.  Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kabul, Kapisa, Kunar, Kunduz, Nangarhar, Panjshir, Parwan and Takhar are consuming most of my bandwidth right now.  Some interesting dynamics in Badghis, Bamyan, Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul as well which I've also got my eye on.

The meta data says Bryansk but that appears to have been user defined because the ground at the grid plot looks nothing like what we're seeing in the video and seems to be the default setting for anything tagged Bryansk.  The imagery, according to the metadata, was captured on 13 June so it is definitely recent.

Who, perhaps appropriately, is sat in Kabul typing this 😏

I've just had a quick hunt.  The only easy identifier is the fact that this was 40 Artillery Brigade - a Southern Command Unit according to Wikipedia - so probably Kherson or points east of it which doesn't narrow it down much.  I've not had a decent pick into this but this video doesn't appear to have any geolocation data in its metadata so it will be tough to pin down without more context.
For those that have the time to hunt around for videos - this is a great tool for finding geo-tagged videos:
Location Search - Discover Geo-tagged Videos - YouTube Geofind (mattw.io)

Easy peasy to use - click location search - drag the green pin to where you want to look, add filters as required such as date-time ranges, search radius etc, scroll down a bit and click submit.
The link below is a search I did around Sieverodonetsk for the last seven days
https://mattw.io/youtube-geofind/location?location=48.90486748996277,38.316726806640645&timeframe=day-7&doSearch=true
Have a look at ones that interest you - click the Open in Map option or View Metadata and go to geo location and copy and past the geo coords in the box to your mapping application of choice.
 

Obvs I did - the clue's in the username 😉.  I must say I am surprised that Dovhenke brought things pretty much to a juddering halt.  I seem to recall saying that it would consume at least a BTG but there are plenty of images and videos of the place getting malleted or having been malleted by assorted gunnery which should have got the Russians over the line.  That said, that is also when the shenanigans started on AAs 3 and 4 on my original schematic and manoeuvre stopped on AAs 1 and 2 ... well to be honest not a whole lot happened on AA 1.
I am disappointed that I haven't been able to track this as closely as I was in April but unfortunately the day job has intervened ... it is an interesting summer in Afghanistan.  Regrettably I now only have time to check in and keep up with stuff on this thread.  Your coverage and links are particularly helpful in that regard.

Working out what's going on is the straight bat answer to your question - seen as how cricket cropped up earlier 😉.  Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kabul, Kapisa, Kunar, Kunduz, Nangarhar, Panjshir, Parwan and Takhar are consuming most of my bandwidth right now.  Some interesting dynamics in Badghis, Bamyan, Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul as well which I've also got my eye on.

Obvs I did - the clue's in the username 😉.  I must say I am surprised that Dovhenke brought things pretty much to a juddering halt.  I seem to recall saying that it would consume at least a BTG but there are plenty of images and videos of the place getting malleted or having been malleted by assorted gunnery which should have got the Russians over the line.  That said, that is also when the shenanigans started on AAs 3 and 4 on my original schematic and manoeuvre stopped on AAs 1 and 2 ... well to be honest not a whole lot happened on AA 1.
I am disappointed that I haven't been able to track this as closely as I was in April but unfortunately the day job has intervened ... it is an interesting summer in Afghanistan.  Regrettably I now only have time to check in and keep up with stuff on this thread.  Your coverage and links are particularly helpful in that regard.

Obvs I did - the clue's in the username 😉.  I must say I am surprised that Dovhenke brought things pretty much to a juddering halt.  I seem to recall saying that it would consume at least a BTG but there are plenty of images and videos of the place getting malleted or having been malleted by assorted gunnery which should have got the Russians over the line.  That said, that is also when the shenanigans started on AAs 3 and 4 on my original schematic and manoeuvre stopped on AAs 1 and 2 ... well to be honest not a whole lot happened on AA 1.
I am disappointed that I haven't been able to track this as closely as I was in April but unfortunately the day job has intervened ... it is an interesting summer in Afghanistan.  Regrettably I now only have time to check in and keep up with stuff on this thread.  Your coverage and links are particularly helpful in that regard.

Unity isn't really an Afghan thing but unpleasantness has been happening in many of the areas I mentioned and the pace has picked up around Baghlan and Panjshir in particular.  New groups are popping up to the tune of about one a fortnight now - but many don't seem to be doing much.  Some of the shenanigans are Talibs vs Talibs - there was a reasonable bust up in Taluqan today between two factions so plenty of interesting dynamics here.

Working out what's going on is the straight bat answer to your question - seen as how cricket cropped up earlier 😉.  Badakhshan, Baghlan, Kabul, Kapisa, Kunar, Kunduz, Nangarhar, Panjshir, Parwan and Takhar are consuming most of my bandwidth right now.  Some interesting dynamics in Badghis, Bamyan, Jawzjan and Sar-e Pul as well which I've also got my eye on.

At this point, I want to ask for a moment of silence (looking at you, Eurosquabblers!) for the heroic defenders of Dovehnke.
And yet another kudos to our own @Combatintman who flagged this innocuous looking (to we lesser mortals) bit of ground as a key barrier to the RA advance from their hard won Izyum bridgehead to Sloviansk.
....On that same note, I'd like to revisit another astute post of CIMan in mid April, where he ID'ed various attack axes for the Russian 'pincer, and then predicted the Russians would end up getting forced onto the hardest, bloodiest paths.

Nailed it, mate.
1.  AA1 promptly bogged down in the open country, and that sector now seems increasingly dominated by UA artillery. No blitzkrieg for you, Popov!
2. AA3 worked ok at first, up until it hit Lyman and then it took 3-4 further weeks of costly fighting to clear that town and the forests behind it, and secure the S-D River line.
3. AA2 hit a dead stop at Dovhenke, as noted and has had to take the hard way around.
4.  AA4? has basically stopped on the start line at Sieverodonetsk.  Ivan is beating his head against a stone wall and getting counterpunched.

Count the ANZACs out of the above - they look at different parts of the globe where a less than benign regime is chucking its weight around ...
Five Eyes Countries 2022 (worldpopulationreview.com)
 

Count the ANZACs out of the above - they look at different parts of the globe where a less than benign regime is chucking its weight around ...
Five Eyes Countries 2022 (worldpopulationreview.com)
 

Join the British Army 😉

It is an interesting discussion piece for sure.
I recall my Introduction to Maritime Warfare Course at HMS Dryad in 2002ish where the training audience (predictably) was mostly naval types and the exercise scenario involved resolving some unpleasantness in Libya.  Off the top of my head there were three Task Groups (TGs) - the amphib force, the carrier group (UK version so Invincible class rather than a proper one) and a logistics TG.  The discussion over the verbiage of the set of orders to be issued to the logisticians took something like 30 minutes to resolve.  In essence the intent was for both of the fighty TGs (amphib and carrier) to be resupplied to allow them maximum 'poise' (an in vogue phrase then) off the coast of Libya to execute the shaping and amphib operation outside the most likely enemy engagement envelopes.  My suggestion that rather than discuss it at length to come up with some arcane phraseology and to avoid any chance of misinterpretation by the TGs it would be easier to make 'conduct a RAS (replenishment at sea)' a specified task in a designated ops box was dismissively responded by the statement that I was limiting the freedom of action of the TGs.  Such are the joys of open discussion from a group of cleverish (not me obviously) people brought up in a system that encourages debate which certainly can be the enemy of tempo during a planning process.
It was a thoroughly amusing course after that as I decided that I should act as the scribe during planning from that moment on ... until we did course of action (COA) selection where I had a robust discussion with a naval OF4 that by the group's own deductions and scoring, the COA he decided on was not the most favourable.  An argument I didn't win inevitably in that forum but clearly I did if the scoring was robust (which it was) - anyway - I digress.
The point; therefore, is that there is certainly merit in a more command directed and automated approach to planning in order to increase tempo but, it relies on a commander that knows what they're doing, good situational awareness and competent subordinates to execute the orders.  From what we're seeing all three are absent.  Additionally, the glacial pace of Russian advances shows that the approach taken is not working if the intent is tempo.  My sense is that it is not happening at all - pretty much every tactical operation that we've been analysing and picking apart since about day two of this 'special military operation' has uncovered issues in both planning and execution.  If the goal is to compress/beat an eight hour planning cycle and arrive at a six-hour cycle - why are we seeing so many bite and hold advances with three to four day gaps between the next iteration of bite and hold?  At that rate, perhaps sitting down and taking more time, because it clearly is available, to plan in detail might pay a dividend or two.

Yep - one of mine, Probing Around Poteau (or something like that).