danfrodo

From your keyboard to god's ears. If UKR can take out those two crimea supply routes and then at least interdict the one coming from the east via tokmak, then it's gonna be very hard for RU to hold out against any sustained UKR pressure in the left bank land bridge region.

I think this discussion is somewhat irrelevant outside of how it affects the war. It's about whether it hurts support for UKR. This episode is a tragedy however it happened: a bunch of RU guys wanted to surrender, some idiot fires on & wounds UKR soldier, the RU guys then all killed by the UKR soldiers. The dead are dead and the wounded are wounded, tragically. But all that matters now is the how this affects the war. Are we so naive to think that this kind of thing doesn't happen in war? -- no, we all get it. This was filmed and is being seen in the west, and in RU, and that can affect the war. So it doesn't matter about WW2 or vietnam or whatever or whether I think or y'all think is a crime or not. It's cynical to say it but now this is all an ongoing PR situation for RU to exploit and UKR to try to mitigate. No point in holding endless and pointless court proceedings here on the forum, arguing about legality, etc. 'course, y'all can if you want. But it's pointless. I am hoping some big (and good) news comes along to get this off the media radar, and soon, but the mud is locking up the fronts. Maybe a nice coup in moscow? One can dream.

Option B is that Putin is planting all this to frame these guys. Whichever way it really is, it is certainly some very high stakes poker for all involved. If only all three could end up assassinated by each other's hit squads, that would be hilarious.

Very very interesting. I've been wondering if UKR has sabotage teams in RU. Given that there are huge numbers of ukrainians who speak perfect russian, it's not that hard to have teams posing as RU citizens doing bad things. And the culture of corruption might make it easy to have a security guard look the other way at an opportune time. We don't know for sure this was an attack but I've been hoping for SOF teams to start knocking out RU electrical grid to help even the playing field.

well well well. Something interesting indeed. It's almost as if UKR is trying to get RU to move troops to lower left bank. This has feint written all over. Hopefully Putin will drag units away from other sectors (melitopol area) to counter this and when ground freezes RU will find its rail line cut. Which can be done not too far from front at Tokmak.

Well, that certainly explains the lack of news from the fronts. Everyone waiting for the ground to freeze. Soooooo weird to see this, 80 years later, for us WW2 fans. Thanks much for sharing these vids.

I am weaving between "this could be really good" and "what kind of Putin trick is this?"

Dan/CA you need to avoid post things like this, it's dangerous. I laughed so hard I nearly passed out

So you are saying I am a natural for the russian army since I made the worst choice possible in the given tactical situation? Complement accepted

What would a well trained soldier do? I am thinking they'd go flat. These guys stayed upright or crouched. If they don't know where shot came from they can't do effective return fire so getting down as low as possible seems like best response.

I am guessing friendly fire & accidents go up quite dramatically w untrained soldiers and lack of proper officers. And RU has both of these conditions on the increase. That was pretty terrifying episode though I don't feel sorry for them.

I purchased. I've got a multiple weeks off work in december and looking forward to some sessions on this, but until then all gaming hours will be on CMRT -- some really big battles ahead. Too bad they don't have Flashpoint Ost Front August 1944 version that would couple nicely w the new battlepack. One of our forum members worked play tested this game and had input on how artillery functions.

I'm starting Rakow scenario. 4km end to end, lots of terrain, lots of choices. Should be easy. Unless there's Russians.

WHOA! wants to live in an evidence-based reality??? and willing to change his beliefs based on evidence? Excellent example to those who live in a belief-based reality, where when evidence/reality conflicts w belief one simply denies reality.

I suspect that in a week this will be nearly forgotten. Except for the two dead & their families, tragically. These Poles died because RU launched terror attacks via missile on civilians & civilian infrastructure and UKR tried to shoot those missiles down in self defense. Doesn't change anything. A couple days good PR for RU, which sucks because headlines should've been "RU conducts mass terror attacks". Any news from the fronts?

My two cents: Putin does NOT want fight w NATO, that's suicide for his war and probably his regime (meaning his life) Poland gov't first priority is public relations IMO Poland gov't probably has lots of contingency plans, but maybe this one falls in between the plans, like stray missile plan maybe didn't have loss of life, and loss of life plan assumed targeted missile. I think what Poland now needs to do is think about 'outcome-based' response. What is there that Poland would like to do but could really only justify to partners with some kind of pretext? Poland sends some long range missiles to UKR? I just don't see Poland doing anything that would actually kill russians at this point, whether that is knocking out a bridge or hitting an ammo depot or any other attack.

Installed, activating and working. First scenario (alphabetically) loaded -- wait, noooooooooooooooooooo, stupid day job expects actual results and work, nooooooooooooooooo. Foiled again!

OMFG. what will Poland do? If no dead or wounded Poland could mostly ignore it, but RU just murdered two Polish citizens. Oh my oh my. And what can Poland (reasonably) do?

I'll call your manager and say you have been kidnapped by bandits and won't be at work for a while. You do the same for me. Deal? I just got email also.

I wish UKR could find some ways to start attacking RU electricity. Would be great to have Moscow's power grid sabotaged and folks there w/o power for a few days at a time.

Summary from Markos Markolitas (aka Kos) for today: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/14/2136080/-Ukraine-update-No-winter-pause-as-Ukraine-pushes-hard-on-multiple-fronts He's as baffled as many of us by what is happening on the left bank, but we'll see how that plays out. RU evacuating its own + collaborators from Kremmina & nearby cities. That's lovely . If the weather behaves maybe there will be more RU collapse/pullout, this time in Kremmina area. But the weather says showers this week, lows just below freezing.

Maybe the left bank UKR operations are traps? They realized there were no RU nearby, so landed some units. RU would hopefully respond by sending mechanized units along the one or two roads that could reach the incursion, which would be hit in pre-sited artillery ambushes. If they took Oleshky that would not fit this model. But the other alleged landings would.

My brain just cannot process this. In a good way. But this is blowing my mind. What if UKR sees such RU disarray in the area that it actually can build sustainable bridgeheads on the left bank. This is madness. In a good way. But again could be UKR feints to keep RU from shifting forces to some other, real breakthrough area?

this whole thing is still a mystery to me, but it's a fun mystery. And hopefully is causing overreaction from Putin, who I suspect is micromanaging often.

Didn't that Churchill guy classify Dunkirk as a defeat? I recall he said something like we don't win by evacuations or some such. But Dunkirk was on some level quite a victory, relative to what could've/should've happened. ~335k men that would come back to fight later. Kherson is nothing like Dunkirk. It's a disaster for Putin. sure it could've been a bigger one. But it was only a disaster at all because he kept pushing more stuff into the pocket. He could've pulled out a few months ago, saying the territory was not worth holding, taking the smaller PR hit. Instead he tells everyone it's Russia Forever then has to slink away in the night just weeks later, losing a mountain of valuable gear in the process. We'll be mocking this for decades.