The Steppenwulf

I believe you when you say you're from the UK beacuse you have no idea how the EU works

Yeah! Here is the vid
lataus.mp4

Yes, I wasn’t really trying to single you out personally, there has been some obstinate talk on “Ukraine must sue for peace” coming from certain quarters and it needs to be addressed.
The peace you describe sounds a lot like Korea, which I honestly think this is where things will go.  But Korea had to come after nearly two years of stalemate.  Both sides had to agree in good faith to a cessation of warfare that allowed each side to pursue their own agendas.  It was “good enough” to call.
In my opinion, right now, this war is nowhere near this point.  And this is not on Ukraine, it is on Russia.  Had Priggy made the push to Moscow, thrown out Putin and then sued for negotiations…maybe - even if it meant dealing with that nut bar.  But Putin and his regime have clearly signalled this is a make or break fight for them.  With them still in power and actively attacking, there is not room for negotiations as they will be dictated within Putin’s framework.  We are not in a position to dictate terms or even hope to get a rational outcome.  Putin will likely demand Ukrainian neutrality, which is just a thin veil for a vulnerable insecure Ukraine he can retake later.  He will demand Ukrainian demilitarization, which will translate to a withdrawal of western support.  He will also likely demand “de-nazification” which will mean basically whatever enters his pointy little head because it is so poorly defined.
None of this works for us and even opening that door will be taken as a sign of weakness.  My thinking is we need to break Russia’s military hands, retake that strategic corridor and push Russia back to 2022 lines…then we can ask “had enough?”  To do it now is a fools errand.

Seriously and @squatter can look here too.  For anyone advocating Ukraine pursuing peace negotiations or suing for peace - easy to say but no one in this camp has provided a coherent theory of what that would look like right now.
Let’s say “Ok, you guys are right. Ukraine is out of options here. There are no viable way for Ukraine to continue to prosecute this war.”  Ok, so what?  What would peace negotiations look like?  How exactly do you guys see these “peace negotiations” happening.  Every time I ask this question I get some hand waving but no one has yet to unpack just how any peace negotiations could end up in anything but weakened western influence and a more vulnerable Ukraine that Russia is going to exploit.  What peace negotiation, that Russia is going to accept - while, as we are continually reminded, Russia is still capable of waging offensives to take ground?  What possible leverage does the west or Ukraine have in guaranteeing Ukrainian independence and security.  Is Russia going to offer reparations?  How about war crimes prosecution?  Is Russia going to give up an inch of ground it has taken?  Are they going to push for recognition of Crimea and Donbas as Russian provinces.
This is what is so disingenuous about this line of advocacy - at best it is delusional liberal left “let’s give peace a chance”.  At worst is it far right BS designed to program failure into this entire war so that their presidential candidate can be “right all along”.  In both cases the idea of peace negotiations right now is an empty coffin where actual ideas on this war go to die.  We may very well need a negotiated end-state in this war, but suing for peace now, while on the back foot is going to embolden Putin and his regime…and is exactly what they are looking for in order to promote themselves “Look we brought them all to their knees”.
But let’s open the floor.  Please walk us through what a peace process would look like right now.  Let’s stop sideline heckling on won’t work and tell us what you think will work.

I mean these are fair points, and I am not in the "Yay us!" camp.  But frankly it is a small miracle that anything happened at all.  The West was woefully unprepared for this entire thing, and that is on us.
As for Ukraine.  Well if we are dolling out harsh but fair truths, they definitely could have been better prepared as well.  If I were living next door to Russia, I would make damned sure I had security guarantees that matter (oh wait, I do and we did).  I would also be working very hard, like Finland and Sweden just did, to make sure if I needed a quick entry into the western fold that I was ready for that.  Corruption and dithering happened inside the Ukraine government as well.
I think that no one on this side of this war was truly ready for what actually happened.  The West rallied and frankly pulled off the impossible, as did Ukraine - how quickly we forget the miracles of Mar '22.  I do not think it is fair to flush all that down the toilet now with revisionist history and hysteria.
The West continues to support Ukraine.  Billions in aid are still moving.  The US is putting on a shameful display of just how fragile its democracy is right now, and ignorant power hungry politicians are exploiting it for personal gain.  But I remain confident that 1) Ukraine will adapt.  They are leading modern warfare right now and learning incredibly fast, 2) The US and West will eventually get there - democracy does suck at times, but it is the best we have, and 3) Russian decline is occurring as a direct result of #1 and #2.  Their ability to be a threat is declining in the conventional space.
Hopefully this is a "darkest before dawn" situation and not the abyss that some insist it has become. 

Yuuup. I think sending T-series of various flavors was definitely the right decision from a logistics perspective; I’m not convinced Abrams were a good choice ever based on the maintenance burden and fuel consumption. Similar to the argument “Send Apaches”. People don’t realize how much maintenance and specialized parts these things require. They don’t just operate by the grace of god!
Bradleys in mass quantities, however, was a giant missed opportunity; same with all the luxury F150s Americans were no longer buying. Pure stupidity and no good excuses.

For the record, the only Abrams in Afghanistan were with the USMC and they were about as useful as a 63 ton doorstop. 

These are probably to few and to expensive to be used for front line air defense, but if they could park fifty kilometers back and start swatting Russian Orlan and Zala class UAVs they would make a difference, maybe a big difference. Especially say just to the safe side of the Dnipro. in support of the amphibious operation we have been discussing at length.
In regards to the the overall state of the war, we started with  a positive loop in terms of attention, foreign assistance, and morale in both Ukraine and Western capitals, that lasted about eighteen months. Now that feedback loop has mostly gone negative. So we have Western politicians pointing to declining Ukrainian morale and recruitment as a reason to send less aid, and that becomes one of the major factors driving Ukrainian morale and recruitment lower.
The obvious way to break this doom loop is to pass the U.S. aid package and carefully coordinate it with a revised recruiting campaign by the Ukrainians. I suspect that there is no more effective way to recruit more Ukrainian recruits than announcing more Bradley equipped brigades are being stood up. If a couple of more A-50s were to have unpleasant experiences with long range drones, and the F-16s made their first public sorties at the same time maybe we can get this whole thing headed back in a positive direction.

Could have been worse than where we are now as Ukraine would have had to take more troops off the front line to learn and integrate an influx of equipment.
You clearly forget the discussions at the time that we needed to send soviet era kit as easily used by Ukraine.
We could not just dump modern kit into Ukraine and expect it to be used effectively.
People want easy answers. This war isn't easy and there is no magic wand. Sure we need to better upgrade Ukrainian military forces, but that ain't easy...
 

FFS, this is just an extension of "it is all the West's fault", a modern Ukrainian "stab in the back" myth in the making.  Could support have been better coordinated?  Could it have been better overall...definitely.  But the poor weak West managed to send in over support greater than the entire Ukrainian pre-war GDP...but that clearly was weak tea.
Now you snap your fingers because we did not send enough Abrams and Bradley's and were cowering under the glare of Putin?
The first rule of warfare is "know the war you are in."  The first rule of coalition/partnership warfare is "do not turn on each other."  But the sentiments you are pushing here are sorely testing my resolve.  

Just stop it.  This war would be over in a day if the US and West fully slammed down...and then we would be dealing with the next war right behind it.  In what universe do you imagine Russia quietly skulking back over the border, avoiding all eye contact and gracefully accepting defeat if the West rolled in all the dice?
Should we support Ukraine, absolutely.  Should we fight this war for you, no freakin way.  Don't believe me?  Ok, let's take a look at the last time two nuclear powers got involved in a conventional war...oh wait, there really have not been any.
Closest we ever came was here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_wars_and_conflicts
And this skirmish was within a year of Pakistan becoming a nuclear power (maybe).  So in human experience we have gone to incredible lengths to keep nuclear powers out of direct conventional wars...why do you suppose this is? 
Cut the "West is to cowardly" and "nukes are not a thing" BS because it clearly is an underlying calculation in this war and just because "you think so" is not going to change that.  

This may be cynically, but Krynky and recently Antonovskyi bridge bridgeheads are just a bites for attrition of Russian troops on left bank, creating of tense here to prevent Russian troops to be moved as reservers in other place. 
We have no enough manpower in brigades (if companies have 50 % of personnel this considers as good result) to establish more crosses simultainously and we havn't enough artillery ammunitions to cover these bridgeheads as we cover Krynky (and tnen, big part of fire support are from various drones attack). So Krynky holds a force in about 2 dispersed companies equivalent, continously rotating personnel. No sence to land there more troops under endless artillery fire and gliding bomb strikes. For Russian generals lost village is a like red rag for a bull. Higher chiefs fu..k them very tough for lost settlements, so they have no choice except to drive soldiers to assault UKR positions and to lose company by company from UKR artillery and FPVs. 
UKR bridgehead slowly growing up but I doubt we will increasing troops number there more that this require this growing. Probably until F-16 appear in the sky or additional long range AD assets to protect bridgehead and probable crossing ways from aircraft and missile attacks.  

Does anyone have a source for what current Russian arty usage looks like…as in for the last three months leading up to the last few days? I’m hearing that stockpiles of DPRK and Iranian rounds available to Russia are now depleted and I would like to see some actual evidence of such. If correct, we could be seeing a more general shell famine than public expectations of inevitable Russian offensives expect. 

Oh good, you are back.  So I posted links to two estimates of RA force lay down south of Kherson.  From OS we have at least a decent idea that there is roughly a division down there.  I then did a force to space analysis that would show roughly 100 RA troops per km.  That is roughly 1/3 of the average troops density elsewhere and much less than RA offensive concentrations.  But, again, you simply ignore it.
I am not sure what a discussion in Kherson sector has to do with the larger strategic force comparison; however the argument was never that the “RUS are outnumbered and outgunned in Ukraine”, it was: the RA is thin at Kherson and Ukraine has on opportunity to exploit that.
Well at the CFC we also do not assume the enemy is “superior in every way so every option is too hard…so let’s just quit” either.  I have no doubt the RA has hard points along that obstacle but they do not have enough forces to create an effective “wall”, they have likely no depth and they definitely do not have air superiority.  I mean, seriously, how much more do you need?
So first off “difficult” does not automatically translate into “impossible” - that is not a good military rule of thumb.  So how “beleaguered” is that force at Krynky?  How much has it cost the UA to hold that bridgehead.  How hard have been the RA c-attacks.  You basically “have seen pictures of tired Ukrainian Marines” and translate that into “impossible mission”.  So who is demonstrating bias here, in order to fit a foregone conclusion?  Krynky shows that a small light force one the other side of the Dnipro can be sustained and resist RA attempts to push them out.  It demonstrates that the RA do not have decisive force at Krynky and I suspect the bridgehead is acting as a patrolling base.  The fact that they have held on for months reinforces this deduction.
Now the real question is, can the UA do 6-10 Krynkys?  Upscaling is a completely different issue.  It depends on availability of trained troops, water crossing equipment, stores and intelligence.  It is a complete complex operation.  Is it guaranteed?  Absolutely not - war is not a menu with items you can simply return to the kitchen because you don’t like them - this will be a very hard and dangerous operation.  However, it is 1) possible and plausible and  2) likely one of the better operational offensive options on the table.  You appear to write off any offensive operation for your own reasons, however, here is one professional military analysts who is telling you that there is an option space here given the proper resources.  The risks are high, however, the payoff may be high enough to warrant the risk.  Further the other options are all pretty much worse unless the UA has solved for minefields in this war.
(This is your queue to get huffy again and argue with the kitchen btw)
Your state position has been, and is (unless you wish to retract) - “Ukraine is out of options and as such we should be pursuing peace negotiations.”  If you can provide a single post where you do not reinforce this central premise then I think we can re-assess your position.  You have worked incredibly hard to remove the southern light operational option - to the point that Steve also called you out for ignoring evidence being presented in favour of your underlying position.  You have also dismissed any and all other options - again to reinforce your position.  You have side-stepped historical references as “out of date”, you have side-stepped force-space analysis and you have downplayed Ukrainian successes.  
Now, you are correct.  This could all be quite innocent and you do not have a conscious ulterior motive.  But now you might want to take a look at your own biases because you are definitely projecting a sub-conscious motive here.  You can get all huffy and demand to see the manager, but I still smell and suspect you of political motivations that align with other posters who have come through here who employ pretty much the exact same MO on the discussion of future Ukrainian military success - ignore or downplay any analysis or assessment that would give Ukraine any chance of success; over subscribe Russian capabilities and capacity: land back at “Ukraine is done…we must sue for peace”.
No argument on the transformative impact ISR has had on the battlefield.  And no one is saying a water crossing operation is going to be easy.  Like minefields, it will require pre-conditions which include a level of c-ISR.  However, we have a proof of concept that it can be done, which is a helluva lot more than we have with respect to minefields and RA forces elsewhere.  That is one large obstacle to try and cover in detail - 85-100kms.  And the UA has freedom of movement along most of that obstacle (I.e. unlike a minefield they can cross at multiple locations).  So what?  Well if one can keep the logistical demand low, one could sustain light operations through over the water and air resupply (see: heavy drones)…you know, like in other times in history.
A light force water crossing is damned hard and comes with significant risk, no getting past that.  However, compared to other options it may be the best of the bunch.  And it may very well work…and by “work” I mean draw RA forces away from other sectors to deal with it, which may open up other opportunities.
As to “Russian stooge” and “f#cking idiot”…you realize you are the only one to make these statements in this debate?  I still suspect you of ulterior motives but of course that will need proof otherwise.  No, I suspect you are a guy who is entirely enamoured in your own opinion and is always pushing to be the smartest guy in the room.  Now which rooms?  In the end, I really do not care.
Now who is throwing around “you are all f#cking idiots and Pro-Ukrainian bots”?  So if your purpose was to highlight how challenging future offensive operations will be for the UA…well, ok, got it. Contribution noted.  But it really appears you are working very hard to convince everyone that Ukraine has no offensive options left, and its defensive ones are nearly as hopeless…and therefore Ukraine should “sue for peace”.  
This will have been at least the 2nd, possible 3rd time someone has come out of the woodwork after Adiivka to push this perspective.  Your approach of 1) being entirely in love with your own opinion and 2) ignoring any and all evidence or counter analysis, and 3) becoming very offended when called out, matches those previous poster profiles.  Could all be innocent coincidence and you honestly believe this is the situation despite also hoping for a better outcome, but I remain suspicious.
Why?  Because like those other posters, you are not promoting actual discourse.  You are pushing a single position without room for anything else.  I am more than willing to admit a water crossing operation south of Kherson may very well fail, it is no guaranteed success.  I am also very willing to publicly admit that Ukraine is definitely facing some tough decisions this year.  I do not believe we are at the “beg Russia for peace” stage though and see still possible opportunities but windows may be closing.  You on the other hand dismiss any and all ideas that run counter to your position.  You are preaching, not discussing.  Could be just who you are, but you picked a really crappy time to come out and self-actualize.

Ok, I really have read enough of this. You are having serious problems with proper assessment of what polish society is and what is not.
First of all I don’t like farmers, just as Beleg85 said, they are not likable in overall polish society. I guess that it might be something with millions of donations from EU, retirement system where they effectively have it granted for free and a couple of other things. When farmers across EU started their protests by blocking centers of big cities with farming equipment worth in excess of 1 million euros each, it also was not very understandable by people in traffic jams worrying that they will be late to their, oh so well, paid job. But overall this is actually nothing compared to how „likable” are agro-oligarchs in Ukraine. You are now standing in their defense and I would love to see how much of the money they earn is supporting the war. They basically try to abuse unfair competition on EU markets in order to make money, but looking at the financial statements, I don’t see anything like „war tax” in defense of their country, soil that have given them free money, could you please explain me this? How does that compare to billions in direct financial and material support from western countries?
After 2014, when immigration to Poland from Ukraine has increased tenfold, the overall sentiment for Ukrainian people was not perfect in Poland during the start of the war in 2022. Especially among low paid workers, additional competition on job market with low wage expectations were seen as danger. Situation was similar to our US friends, who can elaborate more on overall sentiment toward Mexicans and South American people. Invasion started on 24th of February, my wife spent entire weekend starting 26th on the border, serving hot meals and distributing blankets to the wave of people in need. Week later we went for the local train station, looked around and took home a mother with a child, who have not even spoken a word in Polish/English. She stayed with us for half a year, when she found suitable job and shelter. My then-boss took a family of 8 and even took care of one girl, who was in the middle of chemotherapy, so she could finish it in Poland without problems. This is just a small part of what happened at that time, no one asked questions, no one was whining, because these were people in dire need. Do you think I liked to have a stranger mother with spoiled child in my home? I didn’t, but this is not the point in helping other people to like that. It is to do that effectively and provide whatever is needed despite your feelings or likening. If you will ever work with people like that, you will learn that this is no simple, nor nice task.
Now you are telling me that polish people have showed that they don’t give a **** about Ukraine because they don’t want to give billions of Euro to your corrupted oligarchs, who are most likely closely connected with Russia. Not to mention some of their perfidious actions, which are gaining better coverage in Poland, which directly hit polish stock holders(so effectively all polish people due to retirement system). You must understand that Ukraine has a long way to go before it will be normal country and I am not even saying about the war. Believe me, Poland was on the same track 35 years ago, but it serves as an example that even if things are not perfect, it is doable. At the moment Ukraine is corrupted as were all post Soviet countries, but it is not that important as long as the war goes. This WILL be important, when the war finally ends to continue normal cooperation with the western countries and their business. Hopefully Ukraine will join EU, but it has so much work to do.
And just as a reminder, borders were open to Ukrainian grain, which is not up to EU standards due to blocked export channel through the Black Sea. Now, thanks to marvelous work of Ukrainian drone fleet, this is not an issue anymore, so what exactly are we talking about? No military/humanitarian or other aid was ever blocked, save for some mistakes, nor will be. This is all about bunch of bastards, who want to profit from the blood of your countryman.

I am going to need to see a lot more than Adiivka to buy into this assessment.  The RA would have to actually translate tactical (very costly) success into something else.  Something we simply have not seen.  As to the condition of the Ukrainian defence forces...I mean what do we really know.  Challenges and suffering but you seem to portray an organization on the edge of collapse.
In a lot of ways I do feel sorry for Ukraine.  I really don't think you (they) fully understand what is going on here.  You are the proxy in a western proxy war - pure and simple.  Proxy war means we are only so invested and your pain and suffering carries only so much weight.  The West has become adept at ignoring pain and suffering.
No one is going to risk the larger game on Ukraine.  So no NATO formations, no deep strikes on Russia itself, and no, no-fly zones.  Unless we get pushed into by Russia, those options are off the table for the foreseeable future.  Better to hope for Russian collapse.
So here we are.  Ukraine is between the Devil and Deep Blue.  The West will cobble together support as best it can.  In reality money and data are the two most important resources and both are flowing.  The RA is no shape for major operational movements.  They will likely continue this "death by inches" to sap morale.  So Ukraine can wither change the game, shift narratives, which is what I suspect a lot of this deep action is all about.  Or give up...but that really is not an option either.
 

Not me man, they got their pints of blood out of this old warhorse years ago (f#ck, that really sounds like a statement that could come back to haunt me.) 
Seriously, I saw some noise about "western boots on the ground in Ukraine".  Guys it has already happened.  We are moving from covert to overt.  Hell, someone I know very well turned down a tour in a J7 shop in Kyiv just last month.  They have positions posted for in-country tours up and are trying to pull people in.  This is all part of that slow boil strategy the West appears to be pursuing.  We will put in staff and supports into HQ first.  Then some sort of in country support mission on the western border.
By the time this is over we might have a freakin multi-national division in country.

My point to you here is to throw in the bin all your examples of amphibious crossings from previous wars, because what the last two years have shown is that war has changed immensely (as you of all people know). You may as well dig out examples of fall of France and Barbarossa to try justifying an argument for massive armoured schwerpunkts as a viable strategy in the current environment
It's not called 'a fortress of opinion', it's called drawing conclusions from what we are seeing play out on the battlefield. You on the other hand are bringing obsolete examples as evidence to the table.
At risk of boring everyone else with constant back and fourth, I've got no doubt what light forces can achieve against an overextended poorly organised attacker (Kyiv) or a depleted, unprepared, unentrenched defender (Kharkiv). Again, I say these are poorly selected examples for the discussion at hand. 
Sorrywhatpardon?! I must be fantasising this discussion then! 
 
That is close to my position, yes. I do believe the time to close down hostilities has arrived. If anything I am concerned that Ukraine's position will only deteriorate from here (unless Western supply delivery ramps up massively, which doesn't seem likely currently). I think the West will continue to do enough to keep Ukraine in the war, but will not supply enough to kick the Russians out. 
But arriving at this position is the product of drawing conclusions from observing how this war is playing out, not the other way round. 
 
 
 
I've been an admirer of a great many of your posts as a long time lurker here, but you do have a propensity to go ad-hominem with people who don't agree with your opinions. But going below the belt in an argument is not a good look for your position. You seem to believe anyone who disagrees with you is either a f*cking idiot, or a Russian stooge. 
I reject both accusations - I am a very stable genius! 

Yeah, no, I'm gonna have to stop you right there because politically there's simply no such possibility that a majority of Polish population supports these protests.
The 'expanded significantly' protest groups include farmers and miners, both of which have really bad rep among about half the voting population. You know, the half that just a couple of months ago had the biggest election turnout in the history of the country to reject PiS government.
Farmers are often viewed by the so-called centre as anti-EU PiS or Konfederacja supporters (hard right), their retirement program is widely hated among them and there's a sentiment that they are no 'ordinary farmers' in the traditional sense but more akin to entrepreneurs/bussinessmen who happen to have a company dealing in agriculture.
Miners are hated due to high salaries, their retirement program viewed as privilage and being effective labour group working in it's interest.
Both groups are widely hated for historically organising any kind of protest in cities or blocking highways.
Then the liberal left often hates both because they are seen as an obstacle to a more green and eco-friendly future.
We're talking about people with political identity who just overturned a government that was viewed by them as too reliant on farmers and miners. In recent months the anti-ukrainian tendencies might show stronger but believe me when I say so, people I'm talking about will rather support Ukrainians than farmers or miners in any such border 'conflict'.
 
 

I don't disagree about the 1916 analogy but how do you think the warring sides would have made peace in 1916? Under what terms? And who would enforce them?
Edit: and wasn't the war being fought in french and russian territory in 1916 due to rapid early advances by the central powers? And who won in the end?

Does someone have a good statistic of Russias missile camping? There were only a couple big strikes this winter. Not like last year with a strike every half a week. So maybe Ukraine doesn't need to have all their air defense assets around Kiev right now. That might also explain why the shoot downs only started now

Russian planes are no longer afraid to fly as close as possible to Ukrainian positions to drop controlled air bombs. It looks like a well-planned operation, with lancets destroying long-range air defenses and planes dropping bombs from high altitude to avoid SHORAD. This tactic is becoming more and more effective. I laugh when people here claim that the F-16 won't make a difference on the battlefield. After all, the F-16 is capable of carrying a wide variety of guided bombs. 50 F-16s is about the same as the Russians have SU34s on the southern sector of the front

ISW has. a ton of details and analysis of the situation in Moldova. the short version is that that the Kremlin is making as. much trouble as it possibly can considering it has no way get more military forces there. Whether or not the ~battalion that has been rotting there. for decades has any meaningful capability seems rather doubtful.
They also detail various small gains the Russians may or may not have made up and down the L/DPR front. Small is the operative word, but they aren't quitting

Bulgarian defense minister: Bulgaria to send 100 armored vehicles to Ukraine 'in few days'(KyivIndependent)