BletchleyGeek

Our AD already intercepted dozen of missiles, especially over Kyiv, which most protected with AD. Probaby our comamnd reduced AD of other cities to hold sky over the capital.  Russians many times tried to hit critical HQ buildings and imlitary facilities in Kyiv, but thanks God anf our guys in S-300, all missiles were destroyed. But I afraid 30 missiles salvo at Kyiv can be hard to repell...

Some folks figured out that you can get a reasonably good idea of military activity in Ukraine using NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System
On the thread a link is provided to the NASA web app, so you guys can take a look too.
 

Just saying, George Kennan was one of the smartest, most sensitive thinkers of the early Cold War RE: Russian intentions. His problem is, once he realized he was right, he completely ****ing lost it. Absolute madman. He disagreed with nearly every president, despite most trying in good faith to implement strategies he helped design! Total loon. You know he genuinely opposed NATO expansion, because the rational for it is something Kennan himself! laid out in the X Article. He argues there the the USSR is just a continuation of the old Russian state and that its would be just as expansionist as the Tsar had been. This, Kennan argued, was the result of Russian historical experiences not the policy of any one government. But I guess the 1990s Kennan no longer agreed with the 1940s Kennan on that point. 
Regardless, for once I think @kraze has it right. NATO expansion wasn't a Western European project foisted on to a vulnerable Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe demanded to cover themselves in the security guarantee so that the Russian Bear wouldn't come back and eat them again when it was stronger. That is, NATO expansion is as much a result of historical tensions in Eastern Europe as NATO's creation in 1949 was a result of, as Kennan argued, a historical pattern of Russian expansion.
That being said, Stephen "Stalin was just waiting for Hitler" Kotkin is also a huge idiot. His older works arnt so bad, though he has an unusual love of Stalin, but his recent works are just chaotic and unreasonable. 

Seriously   ....  think maybe a little bit before you post . There is clear evidence out there  freely available that these "Bioweapon" labs are actually remnants form the Soviet era which the Americans are helping the Ukrainians to clean up .
https://theparadise.ng/fact-check-the-russian-army-is-destroying-u-s-controlled-biolabs/ 
"While biolabs exist in Ukraine, it is misleading at best to call them “U.S. biolabs.” Laboratories that store and study dangerous pathogens are present throughout the former Soviet bloc, with many dating back to the Cold War. The U.S. did not build any of these facilities. That said, in 2005, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine entered into a mutual agreement to work together to safeguard the labs as part of a broader effort to prevent bioterrorism. The installations are run by the Ukrainian government, with some funding for upgrades and repairs provided by the U.S."
As a fellow New Zealander  - although one out of the country for a very long while now - please try to show our education system in a little more of a positive light .
 

The analysis is off in regards to the firing points ... here's something I posted elsewhere
The analysis of the firing points is a bit off and possibly because the Google Earth imagery is dated and possibly because they're not old school trained imagery analysts.  As can be seen from the video clip, the pedestrian crossings on Google Earth have gone and a pedestrian underpass has been put in.  The bus stop or whatever it was on the right hand side of the highway has been moved closer to the T junction opposite the garage but the central strip of the highway seems consistent with the Google Earth Imagery.  I had to plot the first obvious NLAW firing point and then measure that to the impact point to give me a scale to work with in order to confirm that the bus stop on the right had moved.  This allowed me then to confirm the position of the second targeted tank.  Anyway ... enough of that, you want to see pictures obviously ...






With regard to your definition of spitting distance further upthread then if you can spit 40m John then yes it is spitting distance.

Yes, I'm here. I doub't they are all Russian SOF or army recons. Most of them are our 5th column.

Hers a link to uncut version with analysis. 
 

Liked

[From "elsewhere", apologize for repeat of some terms - I only have some many clever turns of phrase in the bank]
Can Russia win a war of attrition?  I think that is the question the Russians are asking themselves right now.  My assessment is "probably not" based on a couple dimensions:
- Quantitative - Russia is quickly coming up on 20% of declared invasion forces lost. As of this morning, Oryx is reporting 18 BTGs worth of tanks gone from the Russian side, they cannot sustain that indefinitely.  On paper Russia has 12500 tanks but some serious questions as to how much of that fleet is actually in any state of readiness need to be asked. Russian assessment is 200 BTGs in total or there abouts,  so they likely have between 2-3000 actual battle ready tanks or 25% of their total fleet.  I would think they may have another 2-3000 they can spool up, but from what we have seen about corruption I am willing to bet half that 12500 are basically wrecks maintainer-wise or museum pieces and will not be seen in this fight.  This extends well beyond tanks obviously and the Russian logistics losses are even worse, in what was already recognized as a weak system. 
   In the end it comes down to loss ratios, right now assessments are somewhere between 3:1 and 4:1 with Ukrainians being the "1".  In infantry numbers the Russians and Ukrainians are near parity in trained troops and Russia is upside down in manpower numbers once you take into account Ukraine has conducted general mobilization (listed as high as  900,000) while Russia has not.  Equipment wise, Russia has the recognized advantage but that is rapidly diminishing.  At those loss ratios Russia will likely lose it advantage as an offensive force (e.g. trying to keep 3:1 in their favour) fairly soon, the may already have.  Either way they need to reduce that loss ratio substantially to quantitatively have a hope of attriting the UA to the point of collapse. 
  Further if you look at the Oryx page an even more disturbing trend appears to have occurred, the Ukrainians have made a "net gain" in MBTs since this war started.  They have lost "46" tanks (and here we only have social media which is likely tightly skewed) while having captured "83".  So even if the Ukrainians have lost double what is being reported they are still at something like 9 tanks as a net loss.  This skews the loss ratios into crazy directions.  This is not just for MBTs, it carries over to just about every vehicle system.
- Qualitative - the Russians need to learn and "get better" faster than the Ukrainians and there is very little evidenced of this.  They will learn and adapt, war is Darwinian that way, however, the Ukrainians are producing veterans and evolving as well.  The question is what is the competitive equation?  The Ukrainians came in with a serious advantage (e.g. home ground, western backing) and appear to be learning very fast as we see integration of UAVs with ambushes etc.  Russia may be learning but it is much slower.  As late as yesterday we see complete cluster-f#$*s in Russian columns as they get hit, best thing for that one Russian unit on CNN was the commander getting killed.  In the logistics battle the Russians need to learn faster and better than the Ukrainians are learning how to kill Russian logistics, again not seeing it. 
Looking at those two pieces together, it is not looking good.  I mean Russia can keep conducting zombie muscle twitches for some time but tying those into some operational gains is a long shot.  As to "grinding", I think this is actually going the other way, Russian will can only be sustained off the power of one man for so long, especially one that does not have an ideology on his side.  Everyone keep wondering if Russia is willing to "double down" or "go all in", when in reality the Ukrainians are already there.  So when we get to attrition of will, the thing that really matters, time is also not on the Russian side.  Things are in balance, but I go by "follow the options" and right now Russian spaces are compressing while Ukraine is sustaining theirs, and in some places expanding.   The real battle of attrition is in that space and one of "how long can the Russians last?"

Well the first thing to remember when looking at UKR forces is that there are layers here.  Unlike the Russian forces who, for the most part, try to control where they are with LOCs back to Belarus or Russia, these are horizontal forces and relationships.
The Ukrainians have vertical forces and relationships in addition to horizontal ones.  So take any map of the conflict:

This one from wikipedia - So the interplay of red and yellow with tac signs is horizontal.  And from this it does look like the Russians are trying to do some operational pinching which would normally point to some trouble for the UA.  The reality is though that the map is really three dimensional.  Vertically there is a foundation of local and regional support and combat power in the form of an ever growing resistance (I hear a lot of western experts say "insurgency", I think I even used the term early once and this is inaccurate, a resistance is really something else from a lot of directions).  Further, for every day that the Russians bog down, that vertical resistance gets better armed, better organized and better prepared. 
So what?  Well from a Russian viewpoint that vertical layer underneath means two very bad things: support and friction.  Ukrainian force will be able to draw support from that layer in the form of manpower and logistics.  This means the Russians are now force to make those "pinches" air tight, which is extremely labour intensive.  For example, locals can push fuel and ammo into a pocket, through all the backroads and farmers fields, which they know very well, and continue to supply fighting power to seemingly cut off troops.  The level of control required for that is extreme, as the US learned in Vietnam.
Second is friction.  Having even low tech resistance everywhere is exhausting in terms of constant attrition and morale.  Every move you make is watched and reported on, every road move is like the freakin Memphis Bell mission over Germany - someone is going to get killed and we are all hoping it isn't us.  Logistical lines need to be iron-cladded.  And this will inevitably lead to over use of force on civilians which does nothing for the information war.   
So in this sense it is really hard to judge where the Ukrainians stand by using the pins on the mapboard.  They have already gone hybrid.  For example, how many major tank battles have we heard about?  There have no doubt been clashes but the Ukrainians are already fighting like Comanches with drones right now offensively and it is working for them.  Defensively, again layers, they can dig in and be very difficult to dig out, and even if you do, you still have a deeper resistance to deal with in the civilian population.
My assessment matches what we have been seeing all over mainstream.  The Russians have stalled...bad.  This was not a consolidation or re-org or clever trap, it was a significant stalling an a systemic level going all the way back through those LOCs.  The Ukrainians have created so much friction on the Russian advance that the war machine looks like it broke.  They are now staging local c-attacks and very visible attrition actions from what I can see. 
The question the remains is "can the Russians re-org/re-boot and somehow regain the operational offensive?" This, particularly around Kyiv.  Or are we going to see what I call "zombie muscle twitches" as formation commanders try and look busy to get the heat off them that is coming from Moscow?  These can even seem dramatic but they do not translate into any real operational gains.  Don't know, a lot of opinions out there for either side.
Few things I do notice:
- Russians are not even talking about Western Ukraine anymore.  If the aim was to take the whole perogy, Kyiv is more symbolic.  In order to do that "entire Ukraine" thing, one has to cut off support from the West.   Which really means that all this prom-night groping in the East - so sweaty but not really going nowhere - is missing the point entirely once we accept that Ukrainians will very likely keep on fighting both conventionally and unconventionally even after Kyiv falls.    Why there was not a very sharp attack from Western Belarus at what it the real strategic Center of Gravity in all this, Lviv, to seal up the western end of Ukraine, including the Carpathians, was the first sign that the Russians did not think this through.
- Operationally, the Russians have still not established pre-conditions and we are over two weeks in.  Air, info, electronic, cognitive/decision and logistical superiority have all been a hard fail.  For example, Russian Air Forces should be hitting logistical resupply from the west 24/7 - an air campaign for the history books- and they are largely tepid and absent.  They need to work on that or this grind is going to be much longer, to the point they very may well not be able to sustain.
- Operationally, the Ukrainians are not showing signs of buckling in all those pre-conditions areas. There is no doubt erosion but they still can find, fix and finish Russians and even do local offensive actions. All the while they coordinate and communicate effectively and are still able to push support in from the West as they get better and better prepared. 
So in summary, keep an eye on that vertical Ukrainian dimension because it is decisive and something needs to demonstrate the Russians are even able to set what should have been initial conditions and I may start to buy in on the "Russian Grind" strategy.  Until then we are at Balkan-No-Step, everyone digs in and tries to influence the negotiation table, or Death March to Moscow as the Russian military simply quits.  I mean the Russians do have the numbers for the Russian Grind but that is on paper and looking at the horizontal dimension only.  This is unfolding like a European version of that anecdote from Afghanistan, "Russians have all the fancy watches but the Ukrainians have all the time".      

Ukrainan troops reportedly recaptured five villages in Chernihiv oblast. For now there was two names are knowinly from social netwoks. Baklanova Murayivka on P67 road in 10 km SE from Chernihiv city limit and Viktorivka, 27 km S from Nizhyn town.
UKR troops in Viktorivka. Destroyed BMP on second video
Some Typhoon 4 x4 MRAP variation captured in Viktorivka. "O" marking presents.

UKR troops near Viktorivka prepare DJI Phantom IV for surveilanse mission. This DJI drone was popular in 2015-2017. Now mostly DJI Mavic 2 and Autel EVO in use. This is not standard unit equipment, these drones are buying by volunteer funds for militaries requests. This small drones widely use on the level of recon platoons, mortar batteries, SOF etc.

Also good to see those Spanish Instalanza C90´s in action.

Hm... But there is English word for this. Floodplain of Irpin' river hystorically was swampy, so in post-war Soviet times with swamp terrains struggled with special meliorative canals, which bypassed the water from the swamps to the rivers. This allowed to dry the terrain at least partilaly. You can find WWII time map of the same place and see the difference.

Looks like this battle is right on top of the first ukrainian campaign mission in CMBS?
 
 

Well quite clearly to my mind at least any statements   about  American/Ukrainian Perfidy  around Bio weapon installations in the Ukraine  coming from The Russian MoD or any Chinese Government source can quite clearly be ignored as propaganda . If that's not clear to you then  so be it .  But I don't for 1 minute buy into any of your paranoia  . The problem right now is open Russian aggression and War crimes in the Ukraine .  Stories from the protagonists  providing some sort of justification for such actions are entirely for  propaganda purposes .

Pretty standard pathogens that you could see in analytical testing labs serving hospitals or pharmaceutical manufacture.
The geobacillus stearothermophilus for instance is used as a reference organism (Biological Indicator)  in the validation of sterilization cycles  in pharmaceutical applications (primarily those manufacturing sterile dosage forms) since its spores are extremely hardy.
 

You can find some videos about Russian VDV and SOF breakthrew in Kharkiv several days ago. There was a street fights and the seizing of school building, where they withdrew and held it until our tank arrived. In most cases we hit Russians on their way, we ambush them, our mobile AT-group on military and civil pick-ups with NLAW, Javelins, RPGs constantly in search&destroy tasks. So, there are not so much "classical" fightings, but they, of course, take place too, but we will know about them later.
There are heavy urban combats now in Mariupol and Volnovakha. But I think our soldiers havn't much time to film....
About Kadyrov's fighters. They just mostly have been looting occupied villages and towns nearby and film boastful videos. If you will see a dead body with silver tape on the arm - this is Kadyrov's trooper.    

Writing over the tweet in Ukrainian "Master of the storm" - localized name of "The hurt locker" movie
Several days ago Russian Su-34 was shot down over Chernihiv and fell in the village nearby with all payload, which didn't expolode. These sappers of State Emergency Service pull the fuse from the FAB-500 bomb
The water is for to preventing a sparkles or heating because of metal tension.
 

Time to take a vacation JK?

That is a tank kill of a functional crewed tank.  If you watch the video, the tank is just forward of the T intersection and is moving retrograd (backing up) when it got hit, so it ends up nearly on the other side of the intersection when it stops moving.    And the drone was probably being the spotter for the Javelin team to initially spot the tank, move the Javelin team to a place they can get eyes on to do the engagement.

I find really weird that these kind of incursions keep happening. Seems like a rather risky way of trying to infiltrate, piecemeal, platoon sized units.

13th day of war, but our jets still flying. From where? We will know that after the war

I think mistakes were made, to say the least.  In reality this is going to likely go down as a massive Russian strategic failure, possibly nation breaking but we would be remiss not to look in that mirror and recognize that it is also a western failure writ large.  We collectively run the planet (casting nervous glance at China) and as such this mess that took 20+ years to happen has to come home to roost on our decision making.
As to the NATO argument, I guess what sticks is that every former eastern bloc nation who has joined NATO did so of their own free will and for very good reasons.  What happened is akin to watching a man with three wives he abused for years beating the one who stayed behind and blaming the other two who left.  Yes, technically he might have just spread the abuse more equitably but how on earth does that equation get right?!  The US was using the same strategy that won the Cold War, enticement and Russian response with a strategy of bombing or threats of bombing, followed by more bombing cannot compete, and that is not on us.  
I think we in the West do need to take a long hard look at how we basically went past "letting it happen" to "enabling because we like cheap gas and were to busy with our own crap".  I am Canadian and frankly the lines we fed ourselves for over 30 years of a utopian liberal humanistic new world order, and kept smoking right up until Feb 24th meant we lost sight of just how nasty the world was really getting and failed to do anything about it.
I hope that some lines are re-drawn as a result of this and we try and realize that things like freedom and democracy come at costs that every generation must pay, not just the ones in the movies. 

Most of the EU is very dependent, but not all of it is. 
IIRC about 9-10% of the gas comes to Spain from Russia, but most of the gas (45%) comes from Algeria via a pipeline across the Mediterranean sea coming from that country and another one from Morocco. IIRC Spain has 6 plants for gasifying Liquefied Natural Gas and nine ports able to load LNG. The Spanish merchant fleet seems to have enough LNG ships to cover at least the Spanish needings with ease.
Spain could be used as a bridge to send gas to the rest of Europe from north Africa, butt he main problem is that there is not pipelines able to send enough gas to the rest of Europe. Perhaps LNG could be send, but some EU countries have no plants for regasifying it. For example I think that Germany has no regasifying plants, so they can not get LNG until they build some of them. I think two regasifying plants are scheduled, but it will take some time to be built. Our german friends may confirm whether it is true or not.
In short, I don't think the EU might be able to take that decision for a  time, and the Russians knew it.