Zveroboy1

Some pro Russian sources are reporting Russian forces have reached Brovary only 10 kms or so from the eastern side of Kyiv and attacked a checkpoint there. 50.490147, 30.736567 And there is this map showing the Russians deployment, bypassing cities that has been retweeted by OSINTtechnical. Could they have really reached the eastern outskirts of Kyiv? Edit : last confirmed position appears to be around Pryluky which is 100 km away so most likely just guesswork, or just some forward elements.

I also would like to know exactly what happened at the Hostomel airport and wonder if someone has established a clear timeline of the events. Maybe Hayduk knows. The Russian launched an air assault with Mi-8 helicopters, then the Ukrainians claimed they retook it with a counter attack, but the next day the Russians were saying they were still in control of it so it is hard to tell. And the air transport plane(s) that were shot down, was it a second wave to reinforce the first VDV troops there? And in the end were they relieved by ground troops? Seeing as Bucha is just south of the airport, it is clear that there must have been some serious fighting there for sure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/politics/russia-ukraine-war-deaths.html

Hah. Goebbels style propaganda. Yeah the good old trick : accuse the other side of what you are doing yourself. I don't know who can still believe this except the most hardcore Putin supporters.

Regarding the Russian army being perceived as a paper tiger. It appears more obvious every day that the Russian army was overrated and people underestimated the extent of the cronyism, corruption and its low level of readiness (among other things). And I don't want to downplay the difficulties the Russians are encountering here, some of them are looking quite serious even potentially crippling and the litmus test of the war is exposing weaknesses in the Russian army that were not necessarily obvious before. But I feel it is becoming maybe too much of a meme and an hyperbole at times. This is of course fuelled by a justified indignation and understandable but reducing this war to a meme instead of looking at it in a dispassionate clear-headed way is a pitfall that might make it hard to assess the situation and the outcome properly. I'd like to point out for the record that I think Putin made a big mistake here, that I don't see how he can win strategically and that I root for the Ukrainians. If we could get rid of another dictator and stop this resurgence of authoritarian regimes across the world, I for one would be delighted. One thing is clear from this though : the Russians are losing the information warfare side of the conflict quite badly. And this is fairly surprising to me. Not so much the heart-warming global public outcry and backlash Putin is facing, but the quasi absence of a Russian response to steer the narrative. Or if there is one it is inaudible. But what I find a lot less surprising personally is how chaotic and messy this war is and how many mistakes we see from the Russians. I wonder if this prevalent attitude and perception are not caused by two factors: aren't people using the American military as a yardstick and haven't they forgotten what a peer or near-peer conflict looks like? We, as wargamers, should know that modern warfare is brutal, messy, lots of things go wrong etc. This isn't the war on terror. Having the battlefield littered with destroyed or abandoned military equipment perhaps shouldn't be so surprising. Finally the Russians were never going to measure up to the level of proficiency of the US army. They were never going to conduct a clean, bloodless precision war. Maybe Putin deluded himself thinking it was possible. But this has never been the Russian way. Brute force rather than finesse is more in line with the traditional Russian approach. And I aware that the Soviets were able to carry out maskirovka and elaborate offensives in the past but what would be unacceptable losses for a western military is probably just "you don't make an omelette without breaking eggs" for the Russian mindset. Cliff Notes : The Russian army was overrated but this is a near-peer conflict.

Yeah it must be.

Taken near Mariupol allegedly. What's with the weird camo?

Thanks for posting these. Is there a way to download the whole thing instead of each file separately? (I bet there is but I don't see where.)

There is already a mod that does that by Blimey. Edit : Ah never mind, I replied before seeing the other thread.

Latest wiki map : Mariupol appears to be encircled and the situation for the Ukrainian forces north of Luhansk looks precarious. The Russian rate of advance seems rather sluggish but I have come to realize that these maps probably lag 12 hours or even a full day behind the current situation which of course should be expected. In Kyiv it feels like the Russians are going for a wider envelopment, probably because they were encountering too much resistance on the main axis. I don't believe for a second that they are seriously considering a push towards Lviv. This sounds completely unrealistic. I wonder if the small west most thrust in the north in the direction of Zhytomyr could be the Belarus forces.

Bit confusing because there appears to be two shopping malls with the same name : Ekvator or «Екватор» And They're 8 kilometers away. It seems unlikely they're targeting both. I think this is the one that was hit : https://www.google.com/maps/dir/49°56′N+36°25′E/Shopping+Mall+Ekvator,+Moskovs'kyi+Ave,+256б,+Kharkiv,+Kharkiv+Oblast,+Ukraine,+61000/@50.0308349,36.356561,17.11z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x0:0xa31058afefcc63a9!2m2!1d36.4161197!2d49.9331351!1m5!1m1!1s0x41270bbf25cb4e4d:0x5038f9e7192e96e2!2m2!1d36.3619766!2d49.9563432!3e0 Here is a google earth picture : You can see the mall in the centre with the red billboard and recognise the building from the twitter vid with the small triangular roof which must be a fire station. So they must have hit the vacant lot and garages towards the left side?

Yeah I will do no such thing. You got scammed period. And not only that but you willingly paid someone to infect your poor head with this mind rot. And now you're poisoning the collective well by repeating and spreading it. I know how it must make you feel smart, enlightened and stroke your ego to have the illusion that you "get it" while everybody else is oblivious to the truth. But what's really going on is that you have reached a stage where you have been fed so much lies that you can't tell what's real or not anymore. Congratulation you are a victim of disinformation and you're enabling online snake oil salesmen and grifters. I don't even know why I am replying to you because I have dealt with people like you who have objectively lost it in the past and it is completely pointless. I am guessing most people here either have you on ignore or feel sorry for you and give you a pass but I have no such qualms and you are due for a good reality check because this is both really painful to read and derailing a very interesting thread.

Please tell me you didn't actually pay to get access to this nonsense?

I am a bit reluctant to post this because really this is mostly idle amateur conjecture but while everybody seems to be focused on the capital and Kharkiv there are some interesting developments elsewhere. The wiki map while probably only a rough approximation at best looks a lot more realistic than the pro Russian maps that are circulating. At first sight no major changes if you compare it to yesterday's situation. However a closer look could indicate that the Russians might achieve something in the south east along the coast of the sea of Azov, if they took or isolated Berdyansk as I have seen reported because it is only 60 kms or so from Mariupol and they might have already reached the south side of the Dnieper opposite Nikopol. It is all unconfirmed now however. But together with the Tokmak spearhead it would secure the northern flank of the push along the coast to some extent. I think this is a lot more likely to be the goal rather than a full encirclement of the the Ukrainian Donbas grouping. But the Ukrainian army is probably heavily dug in around Mariupol so it could be a tough nut to crack. What's maybe strange is how the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists don't seem to participate much. Maybe they do but aren't achieving anything besides tying down Ukrainian forces? And in the north east sector Russians are maybe making some significant progress too. It doesn't sound too far fetched that the two thrusts on each side of Kronotop might eventually link up with the new prong driving from the north toward Kyiv on the east side of the Dnieper. But I don't see how Russians could take Kyiv and Kharkiv without some heavy shelling, something it appears they have been reluctant to do so far, in built up areas at least? Most likely because photos of building rubble wouldn't match too well with the narrative of a limited operation they have been spinning at home for internal Russian audience. Simply bypassing Kharkiv would make sense really.

Dude.... Keep this conspiracy brain rot to yourself please.

Pretty sure they took the phones of Russian soldiers before the invasion, this is why 90% of the footage you're seeing is from the Ukrainian perspective. Both sides follow rather strict opsec it feels like. And as a result almost all the footage is taken by civilians who are understandably not inclined to show images of dead fellow countrymen. And even if Russians appear to be performing rather poorly, this is probably painting a slightly distorted picture of the reality too.

This could also just be some forward recon elements though, hard to tell. Not exactly a by the book tactic but we're only getting partial info.

There is this page about Russian vehicle markings but it is a few days old. https://militaryland.net/ukraine/vehicle-marking-of-russian-forces-near-the-border/ It claims vehicles with O symbols were spotted near Belgorod. No really conclusive evidence though.

Regarding Belarus, it must have caused a bit of a headache for Ukrainian military planners. I imagine that border wasn't left undefended before and the Russian troop build up and military exercises there gave them ample warning, yet that made their task more complicated for sure. And it doesn't sound too far fetched that Ukraine had to divert and redeploy troops as a result. Could it have weakened the defenses elsewhere in a significant way?

If you haven't already had a look, the wikipedia maps of the conflict are quite interesting. They get updated often and you're able to see the direction, size and width of the penetrations a lot more clearly than lieveuamaps for example. I don't know how accurate this is of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.svg I get Glantz's flashbacks poring over these. Looking away from Kyiv at what appears to be secondary thrusts, it is hard to tell obviously how deep some of these are going to go, whether they are going to stall or not. They very well might go nowhere or not deep enough to achieve anything. But I have looked at enough operational east front wwii map to know that sometimes an offensive appeared to be going nowhere the first couple of days, only to develop much faster suddenly. Different conflict and era of course.

Honest question here : how can Russia not achieve air superiority with the disparity in the numbers of planes on each side?

Putin being some sort of chess mastermind and genius, I don't buy it personally. He is obviously not stupid, but hasn't it been one of Russia's main goals to undermine Nato and weaken Europe with the financing of European far right parties, mass disinformation and so on? It can be argued that Nato was running the risk of becoming a dormant alliance and maybe that's overstating my case a little bit but perhaps becoming less relevant. I am trying to be optimistic in the face of adversity here and it is entirely possible that this is just wishful thinking, but the whole thing could end up being counter productive for Russia if it results in the strengthening of Nato. Countries which were on the fence before might see the writing on the wall more clearly and faced with a growing Russian menace, European nations are likely to increase their military spending. Far from weakening Nato, in the long term this might just rekindle it. Besides how is Ukraine going to become a docile and compliant puppet buffer state, assuming he succeeds which isn't even guaranteed at this point and that this is the goal in the first place, now with hatred and resentment for Russia in the population higher than ever before? Then you have the crippling economic sanctions he is likely to be subjected to and the issues with the Russian public opinion and internal turmoil that might erode his grip on power. The whole thing feels like a risky gamble and more of an opportunistic, ruthless and desperate move than the work of a strategic genius. Probably like most dictators he is betting on Western democracies being too weak and divided. And while it might appear to be that way, these same dictators in the past have often been proven wrong in the end.

Yeah I have this problem too with CMRT, normal Battlefront install, not steam. I heard somewhere that running the exe as administrator would solve this issue but it doesn't. It is a bit annoying.

Win or lose, they are likely to be treated as a pariah state by the international community for the next twenty years. And what's disturbing is that they probably took this into account and still went for it in the end.

Jesus. I never imagined they would be actually going for Kyiv. This is really bad. All this affair and the military exercises and force buildup at first sounded like some sort of negotiation attempt where you create a problem yourself then offer to fix it in exchange for something. Or some plain bullying and intimidating. When it began I thought they would try to perhaps cripple the Ukrainian military, maybe create a land bridge to Crimea, even just score a minor tactical victory for domestic purposes in order for Putin to claim he didn't back down and stood up to the west. But this is scary. You don't send VDV forces to take an airport if you don't intend to later relieve them with ground forces and the thrusts around the capital shown on these graphics speak for themselves. Was this all planned from the start or did Putin consider backing down would make him appear weak? As much as it is tempting to think of Putin as a madman, this sounds more like some cold and cynical calculated risk. What's worrying is that can Putin even stop now? If the whole thing ended now, then it sounds likely that strategically it would just make NATO's resolve stronger and Ukraine more likely to join than before which sounds precisely what Moscow wants to avoid.