danfrodo

Weather goes above freezing each day in both Kyiv & Kharkiv. Hopefully muddy as hell.

I suppose it's nearly dawn in Ukraine. I am guessing overnight Putin was threatening his generals w death if they don't take these cities ASAP. Probably an ugly day. Hopefully Haiduk is safe and getting some sleep. Kyiv still has supply lines open. Will that be next move for Putin? -- closing the ring? If he could do that, wouldn't he have already done that? Or maybe the new forces are going to try? Not sure about Kharkiv. And have any of the new weapons arrived, I wonder? It's a long one day drive from Poland (in peacetime), then distribution centers, then deliver to front lines or place in depots. Unfortunately I have never hit anything in CMSF2 w a panzerfaust but that was always at a couple hundred meters or more. In urban areas I bet it's a beast.

That's more like it! Comedy F-ing Central! Nice, Gaz!

Dude is on a roll

I don't like this one bit. Belarus might not be The Terminator, but they are still men w weapons and have to be countered. Hopefully it will be a fiasco and will bring down their dictator.

That is some professional level humor, panzermartin. Well played.

I just read that Putin fired his military chief of staff, name Gerasimov. Anyone else heard this?

I'm with beondTheGrave on this, though I am focusing on the logistics side. There's so many simple, straightforward ways to explain this and fit all the facts. A corrupt, incompetent command structure would lead to an inefficient system. Bad higher ups want good news. Lower downs provide it. Higher ups pass the good news up and everyone is happy. But if no audits or checks, systems look one way but are actually another. This is especially true in organizations that punish bearers of bad news. If the logistics system is not actually very good and you have very large numbers deployed into nowheresville for weeks on end, the system might already be failing before you even start. Then war happens. Convoys start getting burned, or bad comms lead to missed connections, things start falling apart. And maybe because everyone assumed fast campaign so no one actually stockpiled enough supplies, or the supplies were slow in arriving and they had to go into battle partially unsupplied already. Picture Case Blau, 1942. In hindsight, tt's easy to see that the germans were woefully under-resourced for that operation relative to its goals. BUT! if the assumption going in was that the enemy would fold up after the first couple punches, then the resources were just fine. So I'd say mix of corrupt/incompetent system plus assumptions of easy victory.

ooops forgot to quote -- previous post about the Putin stuff a few minutes ago

That is some grade A #1 best quality propaganda manure. But interesting that Putin's declaring victory. I think Hitler did that about Stalingrad in october. (He was later shown to be mistaken in his assessment)

OK, now THAT would be really really funny! China makes move into Siberia to capture oil while Putin busy in idiot campaign for Ukraine. And China launches their attack...... wait for it....... right at beginning of the spring thaw!

I agree with you on thinking the belarus forces might be same or worse than russian forces. My worry is what is available to oppose them? And what if they take unexpected routes? There's a lot of very powerful weaponry on the way, but it has to get to the fighters and that is a long way from Poland to Kyiv. And yeah, Putin worries me most also. But hopefully powerful Russians have pictures of their grandkids as their phone screen background.

I hate to spoil the mood...... but I am actually starting to get kinda nervous about Ukraine's chances of holding on. THere's a lot of russian assets not yet in the game. And if Belarus comes down from the north that could really hurt. If I'm the russians I really want to cut the supply pipeline from the west. Maybe the Belarus drive will try to do that before turning east. Hopefully there's lots of ATGM ambush points already manned to degrade and delay any thrusts from Belarus.

Here's to hoping that as Putin threatens w nukes, there's lots of russian oligarchs & ministers & generals thinking "hang on, doggy, I have grandchildren! This is out of control and we need to do something"

Note that Ukraine has called for the world's hacker to attack Russia, providing the links to the places that should be attacked. Supposedly 150k folks have already joined the effort. OUCH. talk about crowdsourcing!

some crazy sounding reports, but hopefully true. 22k going FROM poland TO Ukraine? What is that? And did Russia run out of lend lease trucks already? If that's real they are getting really desperate.

I'm worried about how all the weapons and supplies on the way from the west will get into contested areas. If there's still ways into Kyiv/karkiv/other cities and they get lots more AT assets, that'll help a lot in the defense.

ooops, my post went out before I saw Aragorn's. I could just liked his and saved some typing.

Good points above. My takes: 1. I think this probably makes china much less likely to invade taiwan, especially if it causes Putin to fall. Besides, they could just lop cruise missiles until Taiwan negotiates away some chunk of what China wants. Then repeat in ~10 years and get even more. 2. I am going to optimistically hope that for the first time in modern Russian history they could have a new gov't that is not built on jingoistic, nationalist zealotry pushed by thuggish mass murdering monsters. A govt that actually works to make the economy work for everyone. And can actually be a trusted partner for trade. If that could happen and last for a while, just think how different the world could be. If Russia wants to lessen percieved NATO, long lasting peace is the cheap and easy way to do it.

Greetings from west coast USA. It took me over an hour just to go through what you all have posted since I went to bed last night. Great stuff. I was worried that I'd find out that the Russians had thrown in their reserves and Ukraine resistance was crumbling. I was worried they'd be too degraded and dispersed to use all the weapons on the way. Instead I see lots of pictures of Ukrainians w powerful AT weapons. I see Ukrainian air forces still intact to some level. I see more & more & more evidence of destroyed russian columns -- On saturday I was worried that this was just anecdotal, but it doesn't look that way any more. And Steve now makes quite the case that Putin's war has nearly reached the level of disaster, and that Putin himself might not survive the repercussions. Meanwhile, Putin keeps talking about nukes, which I should hope would make the oligarchs or military act. That is simply well beyond anything that anyone should be talking about. We all wonder about about the sanctions, some folks mock them, but it's one of the tools in the tool chest. but seeing Putin threaten nukes over sanctions kinda says he feels very threatened by them. Good luck to all you in Ukraine. And my heart goes out to all the victims of this atrocity, including skinny 18 yr old russian kids who should be home playing video games and chasing girls instead of shaking w fear as POWs.

It's certainly got risk. But I am really just looking for a way for the west to hold part of Ukraine w/o attacking. If you don't like Poland idea we can always have it be the French or Germans or the Dutch I suppose (little shout out for my bud Aragorn), and maybe the Danes and Baltic would send some folks. The goal is about getting western forces in-country by someone not named NATO by some countries acting on their own to declare and mantain a safe zone. Putin obsessed w NATO so I like this better.

Yes, Arkangelsk, I agree w what you said except for co-belligerent. They are a peacekeeping force invited in by a sovereign nation and would fight only in defense of the stated safe zone and its occupants. And the huge refugee crisis is a nice excuse to keep some portion of western ukraine out of Putin's control. While also provide a place to stage refugees that is not inside Poland. It draws a line, a military line, that Putin may not cross. Hopefully other countries would volunteer to provide some refugee or military support services. Why Poland? Because they are right there, have a good military, are bearing the refugee crisis, and could do it. This is simply my wish list for what I'd like to see from the west. Aragorn had one also. You can have one too.

Unilateral relative to NATO, not to Ukraine

Oh, forgot to say that zelensky would have to approve

So need to charge Putin as war criminal in international court, immediately, based on the indiscriminate shelling of civilian population. And here's my current idea for how the west can help out in a more direct way, as per Aragorn earlier. Poland is bearing brunt of huge refugee crisis, which is overwhelming, and so they want to keep the refugees in Ukraine while still helping them. So they unilaterally declare 'safe zone' in western Ukraine, based around Lviv. In safe zone they send in Polish forces to block all main roads in. They declare they are only protecting refugees and their own state interests. In safe zone they begin to setup refugee camps. Poland declares that any land or air military violation of the safe zone perimeter will be met with force. Poland presents this as a mix of self interest and humanitarian concern, and says not a NATO sanctioned operation, though lots of help could flow in from NATO countries. Also helps keep supply line from the west open. If Russia complains about that they are welcome to come fight the Polish army.