fry30

That is a helluva theory.  “A force capable of dislodging him from Rostov”.  That is an urban area of 1.1 million.  If he decided to dig in even with a few thousand he could have Fallujah-ed it likely for weeks.  He had enough troops to insurgency things for months while controlling the freakin RA logistical backfield.  Wagner not only had the means, they had the position…they were dominating the RAs interior lines largely unopposed. 
I do not think it was threat of military force that backed him down, he already crossed that threshold when they started shooting down RUAF assets.  The guy had the southern theatre HQ and likely the critical node in the RA C4ISR backbone - even threatening to blow that all to hell would get people thinking twice.
Whelp, I guess in ten years we can have a Hot Thread reunion and all go “remember that weekend in Jun 23?”

Somewhat ironic that a group called Wagner is trying to pull a operation Valkyrie

Really glad I went out drinking last night. This is getting fascinating. 

Result of this night strike. 13 launched from 4 Tu-95, 13 shot down. Most of missiles were intercepted over Khmelnytskyi obblast. Probably Russians tried to hit Starokostiantyniv airfield, the base of Su-24, carriers of SS. 

If The_Capt gets deployed we need to pass the hat to get him every ultralight carbon fiber and titanium piece of gear there is. It is the least we can do for a free staff college education. 
Edit: We didn't even have to take the class on logistics forms...

Cannot believe I missed it but Dutch state broadcaster NOS had an article claiming War Gonzo was possibly killed.
Sauce:
https://nos.nl/artikel/2479807-belangrijke-russische-oorlogspropagandist-wargonzo-mogelijk-gesneuveld-in-loopgraaf
DeepL-ed excerpt:
While NOS is usually bit short on inside sources in conflicts, they don't usually publish any old wild rumour.
 
EDIT
Some Russian channels say he is in hospital, braindead. I'd call that a pre-existing condition.

more gems:
 

I'm really surprised...Said no one! 😁
But seriously, really happy to hear this. 🇵🇱

She's such an embarrassment. Generally we don't care too much about the EU elections, so it's a low threshold for any complete gobsh*te to get elected, by fellow traveller dipsh*ts. 

https://warontherocks.com/2023/06/ukraines-multiple-axes-of-attack/
UKRAINE’S MULTIPLE AXES OF ATTACK
NICK DANFORTH AND MICHAEL KOFMANJUNE 14, 2023
PODCASTS - PODCASTS - WAR ON THE ROCKS
my summary: 
very incomplete and delayed image with competing claims. the offensive has been going on for a week two main axes of advance, Tokmak and Velyka Novosilka another shoe might very well drop as a new axis Luhansk is likely to see some action Separate axis in Bakmut, incremental gains secondary priority grinding fight So far operation is closer to Kherson than Harkiv. Still doesn't mean it won't transform into something else. Ukraine has not committed its main forces and has not reached the main defensive lines Defensives are clearly a significant factor and mechanized mobile warfare against them has proven challenging in this war Success/failure too early to tell Traditionally starting days are decisive but this is not always the case. Seems not in this case here The key question is where Ukrainians are now in relation to where they were planning to be at this point and how is are force commitments going on both sides. It is clear that the rosiest predictions of this operation were incorrect. These people might believe they are helping by inflating expectations but they are not At this point, it is clear that the main advantage of Western equipment is survivability and night operation capacity. No wunderwaffe In the big picture, Mike thinks the technical tactical level capabilities are just one piece of a big puzzle. Names this is his biased opinion.  It comes down to force employment  We have only seen only a couple of the new brigades in operations in limited scope so the capacity of the new formations is still largely unknown. Ukraine seems to have enough ammo and probably has an advantage in artillery in the south. No longer "she'll hunger" of the beginning of the year. Ukraine military Ukraine's military has one foot in the Soviet past and one foot in "NATO". Wide variety between units in culture, skill, and experience  The prewar military was nothing like many in the West described it as NATO trained ext. No widespread Western training, no NCO core... The prewar UKR military does not exist anymore Mobilization and coming of old Soviet reserve officers  It is remarkable how much Ukraine's military has done given its challenges What happens after a Ukrainian breakthrough? logistics? Enablers? sustaining momentum? how much of the Ukrainian force is left at the moment of breakthrough? How will Russia be able to react? Russian ability to recover? challenges Ukraine has Limited amounts of engineering equipment. Breaching equipment is also often lost at first Ukraine has a challenge with a lack of short-range AA with the formations minefields challenges with enablers  challenges with force employment units are green Ukraine is attaching more experienced units to these green units Russia has significant force density and reserves in the south not easy the do offensive operations when you have always been a defensive force

Well, one thing I was going to expand on was my comment about RBMK reactor designs being as they were partly (or maybe mostly) to be used not only for power but for weapons material. I started to but then stopped.
RBMKs have low U enrichment, easy access to swap out fuel, and therefore fuel is removed for reprocessing after short burn-up time. All of these things are necessary for Pu weapons fuel, and RBMKs have it all.
Pu-239 is created in fission, as a decay product from neutron absorption, and so is Pu-240 (absorbs another neutron from Pu-239). Pu-240 is not suitable for weapons warheads - too much spontaneous fission. So you want (ideally) pure Pu-239. This is not possible, because Pu, unlike U, cannot be enriched. It's physically impossible. It can't be chemically separated because it's all Pu. So your only choice is to NOT create much Pu-240. Short burn-up times accomplish this.
All of this is the reason that "normal" light water power reactors are not proliferation concerns. There was a lot of talk about Iran's Bushehr reactor in regards to proliferation. It's a LWR, with fuel provided by Russia and spent fuel given back to Russia. Even if Iran somehow reneged and kept the spent fuel, it would do no good. 1) they have no Pu reprocessing capability - it's a complex process and few countries have it, and 2) too much Pu-240 to make it useful and weapons material. Iran's Arak reactor was reconfigured to no longer be a possible source of Pu as part of the JCPOA.
Oh, wait. We stupidly withdrew from that agreement freeing Iran to do what they want. (I guess I'm diverging from my diverging here)
The US has and has in the past, specialized reactors run by the DOE for weapons production. No civilian power plant is involved in that in any way.
So there - geek out all you want. 
I love physics and especially nuclear physics. It's the way the universe works, and it's kind of cool that we can observe and determine it all not because we can see the particles and waves, but because we can detect the effects they have and determine the characteristics from that. Some of it is really mind-bending.  Like pair production in gamma radiation - direct conversion of waves into matter and back again. My favorite phenomena. Just hard to wrap your head around.
Dave
 

Steve was right about coming back to this thread with 4 new pages over the last day. 

Well since technically this is a video game forum, I will leave this news here.
 

There would be blood in the streets?

Regardless if terror bombing works (nuclear does😉)..
I dont think any target, even if purely military, makes it worth to risk goodwill and clear perceived moral high ground in the supporting nations. 
With debris and such, its just bad luck until a drone wreck crashes into a family car/.. there are hardly targets worth risking that image damage.
Im sure those drones could have hit another oil depot somewhere in Russia and done more

omfg  a parking garage grog... I should have expected that on this forum.

I half expected to see "grain elevator" and "tractor factory" indicated on the map

As we sit and wait for the Ukrainians to kick off their offensive, I am reminded of how Miyomoto Musashi handled a couple duels... he would arrive very late, letting his opponent stew and really mess with their heads.  Could this be what is happening here? I don't think you can discount it, the Russians have to be pissing themselves with anticipation right now.
Bil

I'll get the second round...

You know there is only so much good news a person can ingest on a weekend morning without cracking a beverage early.

Your sniping is exasperating. Take an L. 

I thought the possibility of solving war by single combat is why Ukraine invested in Klitchko?

LOL a fake plebiscite would be most galling. Many in the west are pretty upset about the 2014 invasion of Crimea and the following faked plebiscite results. So, it is pretty rich listening to you imply the results of that faked plebiscite mean that Ukraine taking Crimea back would via a "war to compel" the inhabitants under the Ukrainian government. If there wasn't so many people dying I would find it funny.
 
Again seriously. I am fully aware there have been issues of governance in parts of Ukraine but come on you cannot seriously think that people following this thread believe that the plebiscite you refer to is legitimate.
We don't know how the people living in Crimea would like to be governed. I would be fine with them getting to decide but before a fair plebiscite can be conducted you have to get the occupiers out of there and then you have to decide if the imported people should really get a say or sent home - tricky question. Not to mention the people displaced by the occupying Russians need to have the choice to return. Only then could you have a free vote. Honestly I'm not sure how that should look and I would leave that up to the Ukrainians and the citizens living in Crimea to decide. None of that can happen while its under Russian occupation.

You raise some very good points there and I have every sympathy towards the argument against design-you-own as well. You explained very clearly why there is no mystery in a mission you made yourself (although by using multiple, useful AI plans, you can mitigate that somewhat but that won't help with you knowing what the AI has in its inventory). I also agree that there are far fewer campaigns than there are scenarios to play and if they're not to your taste and campaigns are where it's at for you, well, that's not helping. However, I'm not sure what other game gives you what you are looking for. Surely that will be a problem for them all?
As for the editor, well, I'm going to have to stand up for that as it's by far the biggest draw of this engine for me.  I've played with quite a few editors in my time away from CMx2 and some do one aspect better while they suck at others. I find the CMx2 scenario editor very easy to work with. Sure, the UI is a bit old-fashioned and doesn't look exciting or communicate information to you efficiently but what other editor allows you to take a photo of a real-world location and import it into the editor so that you can trace around it? It's really easy to 'paint' the map with different vegetation and to set elevations etc. It's not fun work, that's for sure (which is why I tend to listen to some prog rock album or Bach while I'm doing so) and a large map takes a lot of time to do. But it's not HARD to use.
Maps don't need to be the best ever either. I've had a lot of fun playing campaigns and missions where the map work is <cough> not perfect but who cares if the scenarios and the stories are good. TBH, I probably fart about too much making my maps look as good as possible and would probably churn out the content at twice the rate if I simplified the maps. (Not going to happen, ever.) I think we need to encourage more folks to make campaigns with these huge master maps that folks have been drawing in the last few years.
Now the AI, that's a really tricky one. AI scripting is not hard to do with this editor but it's fiddly. To contrast, I've played some games which use a reactive AI opponent that will use the forces you give it according to the changing situation without the need for scripting and guess what? Once you've sussed out the system, you know exactly what the AI is going to do and this is particularly obvious when it comes to the AI attacking when the attacks are juvenile and borderline unplayable. It's hard to pull off a good AI attack in the CM editor but the end result is usually far superior to anything that a dynamic AI could ever pull off with the same forces. Even when the AI is on the defence, I think scripting makes the AI opponent far more challenging than with a dynamic one. The price of this is that the AI needs to be directed and with no AI plans, there is no AI and even a dynamic AI is superior there.
I think CMx3, if this is ever a thing, will go with scripted AI as well. And that's why you're not going to see randomly generated campaigns any time soon. They would basically by Quick Campaigns and all the issues with QBs described by the OP and yourself would exacerbate the existing frustrations with them no end.