danfrodo

just looked up that town -- it is WAY inside 'russian' territory. Kinda worried about over extension but hopefullly there's enough well armed infantry to ambush any counterattacks. OK to give some ground in exchange for smashing RU mobile columns.

what town? province?

I've always thought of the end of Putin as some kind of coup. But maybe it doesn't look like that. Maybe that vote by the council in St Petersburg means something. What if regional gov'ts decide on their own to stop taking orders from Putin. Putin's power stems from men w guns ready to make people follow orders. What if regional govts are able to muster enough rifles & men to just say 'no!' when a dozen FSB men show up? Maybe Putin's fall is just from various entities around Russia simply refusing to take his orders, condemning him, and having enough local firepower to back it up since the army is rather busy being destroyed.

Hopefully these troops came from the Lyman sector. Therefore they'd be trying to save a city whose use as supply hub is already destroyed by removing troops that would keep open the retreat corridor out of the Izyum pocket. If so, I'll take that trade.

Corrupt, lesser wizard thinks he can make rings of power. Gets all his corrupt cronies together to build the rings. Ends up w Russian army instead. So is what is happening now not military collapse on an entire sector? Seems like it is at or close to the definition. UKR w ~2000 square kilometers of territory in a few days? Territory that cuts main supply hub of entire Izyum front and part of Donbas front? and now Haiduck adds that the main cities have also possibly fallen! Collapse.

If UKR is claiming this then it probably is true, they've been conservative about reporting gains. And now we here that the pile of ruins formerly known as Lyman is being contested????? this is madness!

So who was it that predicted this a while ago? Was it SBurke, or DanCA or Beleg85? There was someone saying UKR would strike east near Kharkiv while Putin was busy being obsessed w Kherson. Stand up and take a bow, it's was many, many forum pages ago so not sure how to find it.

Aragorn letting Russian in K-grad stay if they choose to live in freedom -- you've gone soft you lefty .

The fallout in Russia hasn't even started yet. If Kherson falls w massive losses of men & equipment, followed by big losses in Izyum, it sets stage for next set of disasters as RU would have lost ~10 or 15% of it's effective fighting force. Then there's even more holes in the line than there were already. RU starts shedding territory like crazy then. So what happens at home when the disasters become known? And I think right now the vast majority of Russians have no idea how close things are to disaster, so it'll be quite a shock should disasters come to pass.

Gonna have some 'splaining to to do

You are defeatist, General Artkin. We will not cede one meter of our sacred soil. This will be reported to kremlin authorities. Anyone else tear up watching the video Beleg posted, where the old ladies are crying w joy over the heroes who showed up at their door?

that's a great big F U to Putin from the US. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ah. Shouldn't kick you when you're down you say? Not a rule when dealing w Putin nowadays.

Again, the key to all this is taking players off the chess board. If RU just leaves Kherson, it can redeploy those resources, just as UKR can. If those troops are bagged, then only UKR gets the benefit of the shorter lines. Same thing in Izyum. If all goes well, UKR repeats the process. The find weakly defended sector and attack there, after lots of feints & probes all over the place to keep RU guessing.

I'd say it's about bagging lots of RU men & gear. RU already stretched very thin. And there's always the collapse possible due to two massive RU pockets being smashed -- both political and military collapse possible. As Steve always says it's about killing Russians. I'd prefer they all surrendered (because I'm nice and need them for trading later) plus all that gear UKR gets.

Ah, yes, here we go. The old 'stab in the back' myth is being invoked to explain why your stupid senseless incompetent war of choice is failing.

another summary of the latest w some video I hadn't seen yet here. URK ambush destroys RU supply column in Kherson region. Also note that 50 countries gathered at Rammstein AFB for 5th meeting of Ukraine Defense Contact Group. I wonder how many countries RU could get to come (willingly) to such a meeting. I thought Rammstein was just a crazy german metal band, but turns out it's more than that. LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/8/2121532/-Ukraine-update-Balakliya-and-Shevchenkove-liberated-on-the-incredible-drive-to-Kupyansk

I think the #1 objective now is to bag the RU units in the Izyum pocket. Which means must hold the northern side of the UKR salient, w the eastern side protected by the wide river. UKR salient will face attacks from RU Izyum forces from the south but this can be mitigated by UKR forces from outside attacking into the southern side of the RU pocket (Dovhenke-to-Izyum direction). This attack from the south already appears to be happening. But it has to go through woods and then Izyum, so could be advantageous for the defender. Hopefully the RU counterattacks will be piecemeal and easily ambushed. For RU to do normal RU kind of attack would take a week as they gather arty, ammo, forces, etc. In a week the Izyum folks will be very short supply. Looks like one bridge going from east to west side of river still under RU control, but quite a messy route to get there.

out of likes, but this is great. Multiple laugh out loud posts, when I'm not busy hyperventilating and repeat OMG OMG over & over

Right, Kerch bridge. Good call. So some escalation but not tit for tat, actually punching back in serious ways that are less than what RU did. Not bad. I suspect that RU has been warned not to go WMD or face things Putin doesn't want to face, w/o being too specific.

Dawn in Ukraine is not a lot of hours away, really looking forward to reports when it's morning my time. This it turning into quite a wild ride.

so what would we do? I asked this a few pages ago. I think increased sanctions, maybe some blockades. Also this should turn china and india and maybe even iran away. Would NATO intervene then in some way? And if Putin already is turning to nukes would he just keep escalating? I suppose NATO intervention would be mostly by air, but what would they attack? Hopefully someone would shoot Putin if he tried to do this.

And in case you want another look at the good news for today, a summary of eastern progress up at DailyKos. As is pointed out at this summary, question starts to come about how far can UKR push while maintaining LOC. As Steve mentioned, UKR probably using TD or other lower quality troops to protect the LOC, but this is already a long way, it's 40km, with enemies on both sides of the salient. RU will probably throw everything its got locally in piecemeal attacks, which is good for weakening other sectors while hopefully not overwhelming the UKR forces in the salient. LIBERAL SITE, ENTER AT YOUR OWN PERIL https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/7/2121408/-Ukraine-Update-Ukraine-rushes-toward-Kupiansk-Russia-s-logistical-hub

As the great Logan Ninefingers (AKA The Bloody Nine) always said "you have to be realistic". Good advice to live by.

Reports coming in from all over the globe that sunflowers are standing significantly taller and shining much brighter today. Evidence from my yard verifies. Wonder what this means?

OMG . This is what a sector collapse looks like, perhaps?