danfrodo

World record for largest nautical flash mob.

Yesterday I was wondering whether Balaklia was a raid or probe or something more serious. I assumed probe and then wondered if UKR could shift forces & focus based on what the probe ran into. Answer seems to be either was planned attack or is attack of opportunity w forces shifted from nearby. Then I looked and the distance to Volokhiv Yar, ~15km, and said no one goes that far in a day in this war. Such a joy to be wrong sometimes. Now it looks like even Kupyansk might be play!!!! This is getting out of control! Imagine the RU reserves being moved in panic by 2nd or 3rd rate command structures (since so many commanders dead). And now, probably fully realizing the utter futility, RU begins building yet another pontoon bridge which everyone on earth can see. And UKR will, like usual and mentioned above, let it get mostly done and blast it. Along w the big line of trucks on the south side queueing up. And the RU folks all know this yet are forced into this stupidity by the supreme commander. If I read it in a war novel I'd be "no one is this stupid, this book sucks". Most of all, THANKS TO ALL OF YOU FOR THE GREAT INFORMATIVE (and funny) POSTS

Let's assume this is a diversionary or probing attack with a small force. If so, I wonder if UKR has sufficient mobile forces & logistics in the area and are flexible enough to exploit this faster than RU can plug what looks like a hole. Yeah, taking Kupyansk unhinges RU defenses in HUGE sector of the front. Maybe won't take Kupyansk to avoid city fight but just cut the lines running SW from there. Supplies would need re-routing, the huge amount of supplies around there taken, large numbers of units cut off for long period(week? more?) while supplies are re-configured. Yeah, I like it.

Yeah, Girkin, how you like Ukraine now you murderous POS. We can only hope that somehow you get caught up in the collapse. Could get very very ugly for the warmongers.

above, meant to actually say something. Assuming our beliefs about RU manpower are correct, and assuming Putin keeps moving soldiers to his Donbas 'offensives' and to the west, it's easy to see how UKR diversionary attacks could find almost nothing in their way, leading to significant gains. And imagine the panic as RU mobile units are thrown around all over the place, back and forth, trying to plug the holes. Yeah, this is getting good.

exactly!! Say Steve's estimate of ~5000 fighting soldiers in the pocket. That's 30 per km for the ~170km front. But if only half are in the first line, that's 15 rifles/km. So we'd expect to see basically squad or fireteam sized units all over the place, w hundreds of meters between them. Even if the higher numbers of ~20k troops, w 10k of those being 'rifles', it's a platoon per km. Isolated w irregular supply and perhaps poor communication, lacking proper NCOs and officers, this sounds like a front ready to collapse.

yeah, gonna be fun to watch what happens if Putler's Pocket is as big a disaster as we expect. It's obvious to everyone on earth this was a doomed choice and he even put more units inside it!! And it's all Putin, he chose this, 100%, and probably over objections from at least some of his military commanders. They might not have said it more than once that it was doomed, but I suspect some of them said it at least once.

Looks to be around 17km NE from Balakalia to cut the E40 main N-S road to Izyum at Volokhiv Yar. Still a long way to go. Or 25km to Vesele directly east to cut E40 and junction w a secondary supply road. Mostly open fields, but these are enormous distances in this war. Not sure what this means.

Yeah, definitely can't hit the stuff until it's "in theater". That would be huge escalation. This does show desperation for those of us in the "Putin is desperate on multiple levels" camp. The "Russia is mighty" camp gets smaller and smaller but still some holdouts there. Looks like the 'corrosive offensive' strategy is working in Kherson. And now we have reports of increased UKR activity in Kharkiv & Izyum directions. Force RU to choose losing territory or trying to reinforce, spreading its forces all over the place, back & forth to each new hot spot. UKR is dictating the action while RU is forced to react. Putler's Pocket is currently on trajectory to be one of the most mocked events in military history. Completely predictable and completely self-inflicted disaster via dictator. Like the original Kherson pocket, where Hitler wouldn't pull out of the obviously vulnerable salient because he wanted to keep the resources and also viewed it has jumping off point for later counter offensive. Hitler did love those "jumping off points for later offensive"' which after July 1943 always led to disaster. History rhyming, once again. Putler wants to hold Kherson for prestige and for his fantasy of later attacking toward Odessa.

As sectors of the front are unhinged via cuts to LOC and attacks, it brings up not only the question of whether the secondary lines of defense are any good (as per Steve), but who is manning those lines? Reports indicate much of the better RU units were put into Putler's Pocket, but were those unit placed in the first lines? Who is defending further back? If it's a bunch of poor quality troops, then UKR advantages will increase and things will move faster. The width of the pocket is 15-25km, so losing even 10km is a very serious issue since even heavy mortars are now banging away well into your contracted rear areas. UKR can locally lose 10km in Kherson front and it's no big deal; it's a disaster for RU. This is getting good. I am hoping collapse in the NE sectors starts a stampede in the rear of the western half of the pocket.

Beyond being a corrupt organization, the huge attrition of officers has to be having an effect, all the way down to fieldworks. If they're losing majors & lt colonels at such a rate, it must be much worse for captains & lieutenants. No one w any knowledge going around and correcting the company's defenses, latrines, camoflage, etc. Yet another seemingly small item that can cause a snowball to roll faster down the hill, gathering speed & mass, instead of being stopped by friction.

Is there some Putler negotiation request going on? I have not heard about this. 'course, threatening to invade or nuke every country in europe doesn't make it easy to get one a sympathetic ear from those that would need to stop helping Urkaine. And Biden sure aint backing down, nor it seems is US congress. I suppose he is just desperately trying to flip over the chess table now that he's down to two pawns and a king. I am starting to feel optimistic though, as Aragorn has rightfully noted quite often, our optimism is typically quite premature. But the whole eastern section of Putler's Pocket is looking very very vulnerable right now. If the DavidyBrid salient gets wide/deep enough for artillery it'll be a turkey shoot on the supplies for the eastern section. And on an earlier post, I am rather surprised that an 'expert' thinks fuel pipes will save the day. Just follow the ants (fuel trucks) to & from the nest where the fuel is collected into storage/trucks. Since we know it's on the bank somewhere there's only so may places that have to be scouted w satellite/drones. Those sites will make some nice explosions for our viewing pleasure I am sure. And that's only for fuel. They need a lot more than just fuel and their artillery response already seems to be severely degraded.

I think you had a typo, perhaps you mean to say "So yeah - nazis, antivaxxers, commies, traitors -- Idiots.

Maybe he can join a consulting firm w Mike Flynn?

unregulated free markets would quickly evolve to trusts and monopolies. Free market requires competition, which companies all hate, of course, and would smash if they had the market power and capital to do so. Free market capitalism, like democracy, is the best system humans have. But it's not a magic rainbow pony and requires some amount of regulation. Too much and you stifle innovation. Too little and the free market has no competition and consumers get fleeced w/o recourse. People love to think they are 100% free market proponent -- until they need health care at age 65, where there is no free market solution simply because old people are so expensive to insure that no one could afford it except the very rich. Then they wants that awful socialism. None of this stuff is black & white, it's all a balance that is constantly being adjusted. The big picture is that gov'ts intervene when for whatever reason the market gets wrecked in a way that hurts the people too much -- like now, w Putler. The market will adjust to Putler's extortion racket but it can't do it instantly. Meanwhile the gov't can't have thousands of old & children freezing to death because they can't afford heat. So might be subsidy, might be price control, or any of a number of tricks, all of which would hopefully be temporary until a functioning market can return. For this Ukraine discussion, what matters is that gov'ts do what they can to soften the economic damage so that support for Ukraine continues and we don't get pro-Putin demagogues elected due to angry populace. Having said all that, I must now leave for religious obligations. The Ohio State Buckeyes Football Team, most beloved in The Creator's eyes, is on the telly!

Do these fools have any idea what they are actually protesting for? They are protesting for a change in gov't that would, of course, outlaw protesting. What kind of Czechs think Russian domination is a good idea? Who are these dingbats?

This is mostly on-topic, since it's about war in Ukraine. I just got email from Slitherine showing CM Black Sea 30% off at $42. So if you've been on the fence it's time to get into the fight. Oh, and shock force2 + its bundles all 30% off. Dang, them's good deals. I'm fighting in Italy this week but I think I might need to return to the modern world ASAP

some really really good humor, thx

and just what is that supposed to mean? Perhaps he wants to attack Poland? Or launch offensive from Byelarus? Nuclear dirty bomb via power plant? What measures does this clown have in mind??? The right measure was pull out of Kherson to shore up the rest of the stolen territory. That was the only measure they had.

so bottom picture indicates road to Vysokopilia is cut? That would be a big development since RU seems to have put a lot of troops there.

That should improve Aragorn's mood today . But the main point is that we are now seeing donated armor in the fight! And ChuckDyke is native Dutch?? I thought he was expatriot american. I'll be danged.

Yeah, I just had one of those moments -- "is that a spotting round? I better move my guys." 'cept the spotting round was in wrong place and the real barrage was where I moved my guys. Ouch. I know three Russians here in my town. All excellent, brilliant actually. Super nice. Steve makes excellent points above about what UKR should do militarily. The only thing I'd add is that UKR may choose to be more agressive than they would prefer because they have dozens of thousands of civilians who's food will be stolen by RU troops. Thousands of Ukrainians starving and freezing in Kherson region would not be a good look. In the longer run, I think UKR very very much needs prisoners by the thousands. They need their mothers putting pressure on Moscow so that UKR can trade prisoners for all the kidnapped civilians.

well done, Fireship4. By the way y'all, if you've never read the Conan books you really are missing out on a treasure trove of literature. Really, they are great. Above being another thing today that made me laugh out loud. I think NAFOs & UKR needs to borrow stuff from this forum. So many spit-your-beer lines mocking RU. So, as per Steve's/ISW post above. We actually know almost nothing about level of UKR success, including feints & deceptions. I've been thinking for a while that shaping the battlefield is very much req'd for UKR, but sooner or later they have to force RU to fight. Where RU fights to hard, they can simply back off. But where RU breaks, there's opportunities. And as this RU bridgehead thins, it's going to get worse & worse as great portion of RU rear areas comes into range of cheap ordnance (mortars, guns less than 155, etc).

Not to be snarky, but if a Kherson falls in Ukraine and no one in Russia hears it, does it make a sound? I've been wondering for a while whether the majority of Russians will even know if Kherson falls? What if it's an epic disaster w ~10,000+ prisoners and giant haul of war booty? How much will they actually know? Can Putin sell it as part of the plan, like the Kyiv disaster? Given the astonishing amount of complete and utterly delusional politically-based beliefs in an open society like the US, how much worse is that in Russia and what does that mean for turning or not turning the public against Putin?