gnarly

I can see a BS map and scenario..... 😜

The intact bridge is actually two and possibly three crossings.  Nonetheless, that is a nasty fight if the Ukrainians choose to make it so.
Location:
Intact Bridges.kmz
Satellite View:

Oblique view looking SW-NE

I thought so at first.  But if you look at the orange-painted tow ring, it's attached to the hitch on the truck and nothing else is. 

And the M777 is not unique in this regard; here's the D-30 being towed:

URAN-9 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uran-9
Here is the marketing video. https://youtu.be/b_qMMZqlByg

Fair enough, Cap'n!  I just blew a gasket when everything on here for pages on end seemed to be going onto a dumbell between Putin's favourite colour (macro) and which 'grave for seven brothers sux worse' (micro).
Oh, and never forget: Russians = orcs.
I'll confess to being overly fond of maps (at an echelon+ down from the Big Maps with the Big Arrows). But after being drawn into closer scrutiny of the meandering (and boggy as hell) topography of the Seversky Donets, I stumbled across those photos of Svyatohirsk and the massif behind it. And the caves.
And then I had a Holy (Gregorian) Sh*te moment... terrain-wise, for the Russians, up to now this has been the EASY bit!!!!!
EDIT: Oh, and here's another map.  All those river valleys cut up the steppe, quite significantly in spots (in other words, besides obstacles there's elevation, and elevation means overwatch, as we CMers have all learnt the hard way).

 

Ok, everyone note, this is where Tha Capt and Steve disagree, was bound to happen.  First off, show respect for the venerable "lunch-box war" as it has seen more action that just about any other carrier (I know, the BTR, blah blah).  She still has legs and can still get some jobs done.
I would not take her directly into battle as all those chain guns will cut her up but lets not forget the more elegant features of this grand dame:
- Simple, simple, simple.  You can literally teach a junior officer to drive one in an afternoon, from experience.
- Relatively easy maintenance.  Not as easy as wheeled but very simple analog systems onboard that can be done by driver and crew.
- Modular.  You can literally stick anything on this thing, so it can fulfill a lot of different roles.
- Mobile.  People would not believe where this thing can go but this little beetle has great battlefield mobility.
- Elegance.  You can't stop staring at those elegant lines.  She is built like a German milk maid...seriously I need a minute. 
So poo-poo all you want Steve, the M113 is one of the finest vehicles to ever grace the battlefield - to know her is to love her. 

I was just reading an account of what was happening in Rubizhne from the Russian perspective. The comments about the fatigue related to manpower drain are of particular interest. The ability of the Ukrainian forces to utilize the local terrain with expertise when the enemy can't coordinate attacks effectively is nicely illustrated here:
 

Zooming down from 30k feet to about ten feet: apparently CCTV footage of the attack on the Transnistrian Ministry of State Security building (or whatever it's called).

https://www.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/uddy8q/the_footage_of_the_shelling_of_the_building_of/

Doesn't exactly look professional: maybe it's not supposed to, maybe whoever it is is just crap.

I for one can't help but hear Benny Hill music when I watch the first guy trying to dodge the other two backblasts... and failing.
 

Russian soldier uses GSR 1L111M Fara-VR. This is company level device, but judging of captured personnel lists in many cases the duty of radar operator in company HQ is vacant. 
On the video soldier detects with this device a group of Ukrainain soldiers and some vehicle in 1000 m - this is current fights on Azovstal and looks like UKR forces even still keeping some armor. 
He spots marks on display. 
Fara-VR is upgraded version of SBR-5 (Fara-1) with increased range and lower emission and modernized display. In its turn SBR-5 is modernization of Soviet SBR-3 (and PSNR-5 in vehicle variant), which received display, transforming object signatures to corresponding them marks. 

In the artillery system I'm used to (towed guns, computer fire control system, voice comms, manual survey transitioning to semi-automated survey) there are a range of jobs from simple to hard to complex to artisanal.
Being a forward observer is physically demanding, takes a lot of training. The process of adjusting rounds onto a target to get to FFE is fairly straightforward and can be rote learnt for most mission types and conditions with a few weeks of intensive training and a large ammo budget. But integrating the effects of fires with the maneuver arms commander's intent (ie, the whole point of having an FO at all) is more art and black magic than it is science, and takes a lot of time, experience, reflection, and mutual trust to develop. But, the good news is that all of this paragraph is largely independent of the gun used - a well trained FO party will be able to adapt to an entirely new gun with a just a few key pieces of info specific to the gun.
Command post procedures for turning orders from the FO into orders for the guns are similar; the drills don't really change just because the gun has changed. But, that does assumes that the technical data for the particular gun is loaded into the fire control system. It also assumes that the fire discipline that informed the design of the gun is compatible with the fire control system (FCS) that's being used. With modern FCSs the role of the CP has largely transitioned from a place were a bunch of smart people do a lot of maths under pressure in a poor working conditions, into a place where gross error checks are conducted to make sure some numpty hasn't fat fingered a number on the data entry keyboard. Knowing the steps and process is still important, but again the good news is that all of that is largely independent of the specific gun being used.
It's on the gun line and along the log chain that the differences really start to become apparent. Can the ammunition movement and handling system be utilised with the 'new' gun's ammo - if not, how long will it take to train personnel to employ the specific kit? How is survey for the new gun achieved, and is the output of that compatible with the FCS being used? And, finally, how many personnel are required to man each gun, what are their roles, and how do they execute them. Someone above also pointed out seemingly simple things like making sure that instruments are annotated in the language being used. Also to be considered is whether the vehicle fleet will be changing with the guns - can the old tractor tow the new gun? If not, you'll also have to factor in driver courses. The gun and vehicle maintainers will also need to be trained and equipped to service the new fleet.
All of this trainable, but training does take time. The time taken also depends on who and what you're training - if it is a fully ready battery transitioning to a new gun with a partially new vehicle fleet, but retaining their old FCS, you could probably get up to speed in 2-4 weeks, with most effort allocated to the maintainers, then to ensuring that the gun crews get the new drills really squared away. But if they also have to learn an entirely new FCS, you'll probably need to add at least another month to get the command post up to speed. All of this has the underlying assumption that the battery has no other tasks during this time, and is fully and completely oriented to learning the new gun and systems. If you're just grabbing folks off the street, with no prior knowledge ... yeesh ... then you're probably talking about 6 months before they're ready to go, since you're effectively creating an entirely new unit from scratch and while for them the specific gun doesn't matter (learning one gun is much the same as pretty much the same as any other if you're doing it all from scratch) there are a whole bunch of other soldier skills that can't be taken as given.
Preceding that training - or re-training - is the courses required to get the trainers up to speed; training the trainers. We've already seen hints of what seems to be a lot of that going on in various parts of Europe and the US.

UKR soldier tells about how changed the war, what matches with Dvorikov's conception
Translation:
Heavy fights is continuing. Occupants is jamming comms constatntly. Exactly because of this there are no videos [means form his axis] with killed or captured Russians and even more - the situation is canged in waging of war. 
Taking huge losses, occupants moved on what they do the best - the typical Soviet f...ing matter. F...ing alot of preliminary bombardments (and 100% they have advantage in artillery and this is a fact) and after this crawling advance - the village by village. Now we will have more losses, and some more of our captured.
Because having continuous front, somewhere we retreat, somewhere we beat up them. But now in whole the objective of AFU is to hold itself about two months. Because during this time many heavy wepons will come to us. And our light motorized infantry brigades will turn out to mech.brigades.
You get the gist. Bad news will  be, it will be mixed with good. In addition, it plays a role, that we can't  conduct rotations, alas, it is so. One roatation = one months of battleworthy, fresh and extremaly motivated unit. The situation in such, that guys can't be rotated so far from the autumn. They have to be rotated in March, but by fact they are on positions to this time. 
About stupidity of Russians. Yes, they stupid, in strategic layer they fight worse, but on tactical layer we have almost parity. A partity, because we fight for our families, our land, our country, our freedom. I'l clarify, because of morale of our troops we are in winning position. Not to mention that to defend on own land always easier, than advancing. But that doesn't mean that is's too easy for our lads.

Interesting few threads in the Boardgame geek forums for the "NextWar"  series from GMT .
"NextWar-Poland" from GMT was a pretty recent release  ( 2017 ? ) but based a lot of its counter values off  previous ideas/prejudices about Russian unit effectiveness . Folks working through whats is happening right now versus whats in game  .
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2848231/possible-lessons-war-ukraine
 

This is the video game ARMA, as stated in the title of the video.

Izium axis, Stugna-P crew hit 4 targets for 3 minutes like on the firing range. Russan spotting capabilities = 0. though, it seemed to me one BMP (?) made several shots "somewhere"
It's noteworhy, the operator commands in pure Russian language
PS. Flight time is about 11 second - the range to the targets is about 2200 m
 
 

Question to all - but what is the thinking behind this being used in this way. Is it just being used in a quasi mortar role, as it does not seem to be taking advantage of the actual line clearance, nor being placed down a linear feature ?
thanks 
P

Some FSB agent misinterpreted the instructions to include SIM cards in the captured saboteur / assassin group material:
Also read his directives a bit too literally:
(This is so ridiculous that I would assume it to be an act of resistance within the scope of not disobeying orders.)

Ukrainian reservists shift from civilian life to war zone battlefields (msn.com)

Ya, whatever this thing is, it aint working.  It feels like an unholy compromise to be honest.  I mean if one beefed it up, layered a next-gen unmanned system and hooked into a integrated C4ISR system, one could make an argument for a more self-contained tactical organization.  One that when employed on concert with others could see daylight in the whole dispersed and distributed operations idea that the west has been toying around with.  Not sure how one solves for logistics as that is the tether that never goes away but you might be onto something.
As built the BTG looks more like a "medium weight" institutional cop out.  Looks good on a power point as one could argue it can swing heavy or light but without the formation-level enablers light is going to be tepid and heavy too slow and vulnerable.  It looks like the Russians experimented with distributed mass and did not land on it at all, in fact they managed to invent distributed-weak-dim-mass.  The UA on the other hand, at least in the defence, has clearly locked onto something with distributed-smart-sharp mass; however, we have not seen them able to translate that into large offensive operations either.  
Let's face it, this has been a Defence war.  Defence has had primacy pretty much the entire course of it so far, which kinda throws things for a bit of a loop.  I may even go further and say that this has been a Denial War, with most of the denial being inflicted on the Russians; a lot of null and negative decisions being forced on the Russians as they seem unable to solve some riddles here, while bleeding on everything.  This is ironic as hell considering a major political objective of Putin's was to undecide the outcome of the Cold War...insert ironic "wah, wah, waaaah" sound here.

Azov fighters brought some food to children, hiding in underground shelters of Azovstal. You can see systems of passages. Most of civilains say they came here as far as ater 20th of March, but some sit here from behinning of March. Kids say they want to see a sky and sun again - they didn't see it so far two months. 
 

Now we look on east to Rubizhne-Kreminna-Lyman area
Despite the rumors of Russians after capturing Kreminna reached to Zarichchia they actully stood in Dibrova and Tors'ke. There is no confirmation they in Zarichchia. There is unknown either some defense line in this village or Russians didn't advance forward by other reason.
Today this video was issued, when our soldiers on position near Lyman watch how some incendiary ammunition falls probably on Zarichchia area
Russians traditionally started own action against Lyman with rocket shelling of town. The town hospital was hit with Uragan MLRS cluster ammunition 


Russians also launched Tochka-U at other important town on their way to Sloviansk - at the Siversk. The missile was intercepted, but it fragment fell on the town, causing some destructions. 
Situation in Rubizhne still hard, about 2/3 of the city already over Russian and separs control, many buildings of the city is ruined, but elements of 4th fast reaction brigade of National Guard and other units still fight tough. Here they hit Russian armor, hide in the yard of building
Also need to say about Pryvilne area. This is a place, which dominates over Siverskyi Donets river, standing on chalk cliffs. During WWII Germans about half year hold this so-called "Privilne bridgehead" foiling all attempts of Soviet army to take Lysychansk. So this place also can be anothe rstronghold and in our times...
  

Summary about last two days  of most hot place - Izium area.
Many of Russian BTGs, concentrated on spearhead are BTG, based on tank battalions. But instead one "big steam roller push", Russians each day are attacking with several "small steam rollers" in different directions, trying to penetrate our defense. Sometime our troops conduct own counter-attacks, so as told in twitter one soldier, terrain in many places covered with knoked out and abandoned vehicles of both sides. Russians also, understanding hazard of UKR mobile AT-teams, inolved more SOF and recon forces for hunting on them. Especially Russians actively conduct own search in night time. 
Most fierce fights were on eastern bank of Oskil river. Three days ago Russians captured Lozove village and attacked our troops in neighbour villages Rubtsi and Yatskivka. Russians use own standart tactic of "burned earth". They just hammered villages with artillery and MLRS, then tanks attack and shot out remained houses, if they encountered strong resistance, they withdraw and artillery strike the village again. So, the same procedure Russians used on latter two villages. As result they could push off our troops from ruines of Rubtsi, Yatskivka also burns, but situation there still unclear.
Also Russian conducted attacks on Dovhen'ke village - the key to Izium - Sloviansk road, but without success
Ukrainian civil volunteer Roman Donik, which supply 92ns and 93rd brigades wrote about clashes in area south from Izium. He pointed Russian aviation increased quantity of sorties, though for yesterday this also increased their losses. Donik claimed many shot down manned aerial targets, but visually confirmed only two-seats jet. Also he described two clashes - first was probably 2-3 days ago in unpointed place. Russians atatcked with company tactical group of 6 tanks and 10 BMPs after three hours of fight they withdrew having losses 3 tanks and 1 BMP. Today he described Russian attack of presumably 64th motor-rifle brigade on positions of 93rd brigade near Virnopillia village with the same force - comany tactical groop - 10 light armor and tanks. Result - enemy repelled, 3 tanks hit/abandoned, 3 light armor destroyed (I think, 1 BTR and 2 trucks more correctly if his photos corresponded to this episode) - akd alredy posted these photos
Also some of OSINT source issued photos of Russian losses in Brazhivka next to east from Virmopillia - about dozen of armor for small village. But our says Russians are throw new and new tanks in the battle instead burned, so UKR troops forced to withdraw from village to willage after 1-2 days of fight, despite Russians pay high price for own achievments
  
 

I'd love for this topic to be about the war and not a coffee house academic discussion about the differences between the political Left and Right. 

Good one of a Ukrainian ATGM team in action:
Handful of guys, ATGM, pre-prepared ambush site.