G.I. Joe

I will leave these tweets here and note it is in Russia's interest to lay full claim to the Russian language and ethnicity.
Here is a article where Russians in Latvia are shifting to support Ukraine.
https://www.bbc.com/russian/features-62527789
 
 

Bits from Mashkovets regarding Kherson
Vysokopillia and Arkhangelsky are here (date but still relevant map)

But the question remains where is this area South of Vysokopilia and Arkhangelsky?  Time to open FIRMS.  

Here it is!
Today seems there was no fighting in the West There is fighting at Bridgeheads And there is fighting South of Vysokopilia and Arkhangelsky And what do we have there?

Oh, hello UKR push! 
 

In the spirit of the first post in this thread, Japan's new "Top Gun 2" themed F-15 fighters. Almost totally unrelated to the topic I might add:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/japan-unveils-top-gun-2-themed-maverick-f-15-eagle

Ok...STOP.
  I am not a moderator on this forum but I have @BFCElvis on speed dial.  This thread is about the war Ukraine and, yes we have discussed surrounding issues and possible 2nd and 3rd order effects this war could have on the region.  This thread is not about:
- Bafflingly narrow or simply out of date concepts such as solving human cultural overlaps with policy.
- Vilifying the entirely of all Russian peoples as somehow less than human.  No human society, culture or whatever has or ever will be entirely homogeneous, good or bad.  So sweeping ideas of how to solve a "Russian Problem" by a bunch of old guys with too much time on their hands, which they should spend learning more, are not 1) viable or 2) useful here.
- I get we are sore on Russia right now, they earned that one; however, at what point on this incredibly myopic line of thinking do we become worse than that we assign to them?  All in the name of "safety" - a whole lot of atrocity and historic marks of shame lay on the feet of "safety".  I have been to one genocide and trust me none of you know what you are talking about, so stop hijacking the thread.
- FFS, we did not even take the approaches some are proposing here during the Cold War, we went with "contain and attract/entice", and we won that one.  In fact we look back on the occasion of the McCarthy era - which is where this is going- as a dark chapter 
You wanna talk about mass deportations, forced migration, race/ethnic cleansing/purity or any other whack-job nonsense there is literally an entire internet out there, let's try and keep this one small "sane space".    

Overwhelming has a nice ring to it.

I don't know how reliable this information, but author claimed UKR destroyed pontoon bridge through Inhulets near Daryivka
Also about degradation of Russian AD in Kherson. Only on this direction for yesterday UKR aviation conducted 24 sorties (from 70 total). Interesting, that as far as month ago UKR aviation conducted maximum 20 for a day and usually 12-15.

Serves me right for trying to be humourous and snarky when a skull shooting freeking laser beams from its eyes is patrolling the thread.... 
I once had a high concept gourmet dinner (on a client's dime) in Barcelona. One of the 8 courses was rabbit paired with stingray (chased down IIRC with a mellow Tokaj). So I mused aloud whether the rabbit was fed on stingray, or the reverse, or whether they both got starved, tossed into a shallow pool and left to fight it out....
Sorry, where was I again?
Shall I tiktok a few bars of 'Farewell to Nova Scotia' over to you?
... And btw Sir, you really do need to get an avatar. That generic "T" just doesn't cut it any more. Unless you're a Toronto grad, or like yodeling (not that there's anything wrong with either....)
 
Suggestions follow:



And here ends my OT catechism. The Ignore button is over there.

Lemme clarify a bit here as it looks like we are at the point of the concept being tested.  First off @LongLeftFlank has said he is a Canadian expat; however, it is clear he does not hail from Atlantic Canada or he would know the term by heart - "fog eats the snow"  (in fact I get a whole central-Canada urban vibe off him, for which I may be totally off as we are a country of a rich and diverse cultural tapestry which we get very good at hiding - I, for example, hail from the far North originally but I have buried the hints of my somewhat 'wildling' roots quite well, I even use cutlery on occasion)
So what is this fog-snow thingy?  Not quite as JonS outlines but I kinda like the imagery.  So this idea was one we came up with way back as a possible method for offensive operations given the context of the overall conflict - peer forces, no air superiority, defensive-centric thanks to ubiquitous ISR and smart weapon systems.  It was an attempt to answer the question of: "how the hell is anyone supposed to attack in this environment when the other side can see you form up from space?"
In reality as far as I can tell fog-snow is the third step in an operational approach, which I am sure someone will (or has) turned into a flowchart and checklist:
1.  Establish pre-conditions.  Gain ISR/cognitive superiority - know better and faster than your opponent.  Neutralize enemy air superiority - this whole party is over if they can own the sky.  Logistics - build a system that can be put in place without getting hammered before you can even get into place, here lighter is better than iron mountains.  I am sure there is more here with respect to force generation, psychology and a bunch of higher level stuff but you get the idea.  I think it is fair to say that the UA spent the summer getting these in place over the Kherson area while holding off whatever that leg-humping the RA was doing in the Donbas..."just eating snow" maybe.
2.  Project friction.  This was where the RA completely failed in the Donbas.  They slammed fields and fields with HE -  careless in their affairs and focused on causing stress but not really projecting friction.  "What do you mean by that The_Capt?" - well friction is a Clausewitzian concept (I am pretty sure the Chinese masters also speak to it) that "war is a very large human organizational problem, and once you collect us in a group larger than about four we become horny cats to organization.  So friction is the "badness" that got in the way of order and formation.  Here Uncle C and myself diverge a bit as I do not see friction as the product of order rubbing up against order - an unfortunate byproduct.  I see it as an actual force on the battlefield that can be applied as projected uncertainty, or chaos; those deep strikes into the Crimea are a classic example. 
Regardless, the next operational phase is to project that friction upon your opponents operational system, and here the UA has done a breathtakingly good job over the last two months - on par with what they did during Phase 1 of this war.  They have hit Russian logistics, infrastructure as well as the morale and conative centers of the Russian military thru strikes on leadership and C2.  We have talked a lot about indicators and a big one has been the fact that the RA was never able to get out of that "operational pause" back in Jul.  My theory is this was because the UA hit them so well and created so much friction that the RA was only able to do disconnected symbolic pushes and never really got their operational feet back under themselves.  Hitting the bridges is an example of just how much they stressed the RA system, and now that system is theoretically fragile, or at least not anti-fragile. 
So once the UA had those first two where they needed them - and that is a sign of a military that knows what it is doing btw - they moved onto to step 3.
3.   Add Pressure - "Fog Eating Snow".  A square kilometer of fluffy cloud weighs about a half a million kilograms (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/science/how-much-does-cloud-weigh) which is not a bad analogue for fog.  It is not weightless by any stretch, it is how that weight is distributed and holds/exchanges its energy that makes it different, same goes for warfare...again, theoretically.  Once you have done steps 1 & 2, your opponents system is vulnerable but you have not changed the context enough for traditional manoeuvre warfare, this approach may work.  We saw hints of it on the UA defence at the battle of Kyiv.  Essentially the idea states that one employs highly distributed mass to:
Infiltrate your opponents defensive lines - you have already mapped out where the enemy is in detail as part of Step 1.  Further here it is best that your opponent is employing traditional conventional mass defence, which the Russians appear to be obliging.  ("Fog on fog" is a really interesting concept and could be the future of peer-to-peer warfare but lets leave that one.)  You use your ISR advantage to infiltrate in and around your opponents conventional mass concentrations, essentially filling in the 'gaps and seams'.  We know the RA has lots of these because they simply do not have the force density to create a uniform defensive line.  So UA has made a multi-prong set of advances along broad areas, which are looking "infiltration-y" - fog is not in one place, it is everywhere and gets into everything.
Isolate tactical "bites" - A few maps done by Grigb are showing what suspiciously like tactical isolation of some forward pockets of RA strongpoints.  Isolation means the removal of mutual support between positions.  If you can do that, particularly by eroding artillery support, you are in business.  Further this obviously has a significant psychological effects along with logistical implications. Once the enemies tactical positions are fully isolated....
Finish.  Pretty self explanatory but you want to quickly remove these tactical positions from the field either by surrender or annihilation, preferably by precision weapons systems as they are faster.  Rinse and repeat - Fog eating Snow. 
The whole "Adding Pressure" step is cyclical and the idea is that by repeating this process enough times, fast enough, the entire enemy operational system will collapse - this is the essence of attrition-to-manoeuvre, which is the opposite of what our doctrine says.  Key here is tempo.  This is weird as one is now employing attritional tempo instead of positional, but the rule still applies, one has to Finish faster than an opponents operational system can recover - which is why you did Steps 1 & 2.
And here we come to more questions than answers:
- Will it work on the offensive?
- Can you Finish fast enough, and how does one rationalize the fact that as you advance deeper this gets harder?
- When can traditional manoeuvre/annihilation take over?
- Have you gauged the enemies system correctly?  If it is more resilient than you thought you can bog down very quickly.
- Do you exploit success and go for a spearpoint, or do you keep doing broad system pressure?
I have no idea, these we can only observe and watch for indicators. The UA does look like they are trying a version of the idea, which explains all the "this won't look like a 'normal' offensive" and why we have suspected that the offence actually started back when we saw clear evidence of Step 2 over a month ago.  I suspect if this works that it won't look like much, and even bogging down...until it does.  If they have done this correctly, or if it will even work at all, the RA operational system north of the Dnipro will likely collapse suddenly after continuous pressure - think jiujitsu not boxing.  So I would not get too excited if the UA is not in Sevastopol by the weekend, that is not how this kind of warfare works.  We are way too biased by our western experiences on this one - this is system based warfare and the metrics are different. 
Anyway, sit back and keep eyes and ears open.  If this works like I can envision it, it may break modern military doctrine as we know it.  If it fails, the UA may not get too many more chances and this may turn into frozen conflict because the Left Hand of Mars (Defence) is back in charge...we shall see.
    

Yep, we can see the signs of strain and the stability of Putin's rule is shaky but the thing about falling dictators is everything seems fine until you wake up one morning and it isn't.
Predicting Putin's fall is more a matter of seeing the precursors of problems and assessing the increased risks to his leadership rather than picking the day he's going to fall.
I like the thoughts that have been expressed in this discussion.
 
I rather like Mark Twain 's observation that history doesn't repeat itself it rhymes. 
There sure seems to be alot of poetry being thrown down at the moment.

Amazed nobody's posted any Bairnsfather yet in this thread....

 

My personal favourite....

 

After 6 months of this I believe RU sources about as much as I believed this guy in 2003. 😀

Well, we do know that Ukrainian MiG-29s have (ahem) HARMed Russian air defenses a bit lately...

A bit of people power confronting Russians abroad. 
 
 
 

Well, we do know that Ukrainian MiG-29s have (ahem) HARMed Russian air defenses a bit lately...

Well, we do know that Ukrainian MiG-29s have (ahem) HARMed Russian air defenses a bit lately...

Well, we do know that Ukrainian MiG-29s have (ahem) HARMed Russian air defenses a bit lately...

Well, we do know that Ukrainian MiG-29s have (ahem) HARMed Russian air defenses a bit lately...

So, after yesterday flood of news from Kherson offensive today we have full quiet, likely after yesterday statement of General Staff and President's Administration - "To all. Shut up. Please"
I collected some videos:
More interesting is this - soldier tells about yestersay assault:
Translation:
...Well, friends, we made an assault. I lay in blidage now. The assault was in "Rzhev offensive operation style". Well, I will not say about this like that... But... In short - we have been moved with tanks across the field in battle lines, amicably attacked their positions... I was a little shell-shocked - some f...g s..t flew down, dropped from the drone. Although from beginning of attack we were in the middle of field and about half of hour passed - through this half of hour they already had a drone, loaded with ammunition. It dropped three or four charges. The first impacted in three meters from me, the second in about five meters - miraculously it didn't hurt, but shell-shocked. Fighters were fu...g amazed that I intact. Then a tank shelled us, artyllery, mortar shells... Well, this was tough... But our guys also kicked their ass good. This is bad, we hadn't good liason [either EW interference, or poorly organized interaction between units, I think]. Because of that wasn't proper coordination. This is, at whole, a single crucial problem. And the second problem - we had to assault enemy positions, moving through mined field, like in "Shtrafbat" movie [popular 10 years ago Russian series "Shtrafbat  - eng."Penal battalion", where soldiers were deliberately sent in attack on minefield]. But never mind... We need to liberate Ukraine in different ways. All will be good, we will win. Glory to Ukraine!

My reflection here does not really effect your line of argument but I think it could be important to highlight, as this very moment in time and space is one which we constantly return to.
I would argue that the capitalists and right-wing politicians did not support Hitler because the wanted something, as much as they feared loosing something. At the time there was a strongly felt fear of a leftist, russian style, revolution and since the right did not want to cooperate with even liberal/moderat left-wing political forces, the Nazis provided an alternative with the muscle mass able to oppose “the proletariat”. The fact that the nazis themselves had stoked much of the social tension they were now asked to quench, is just par of the course for fascist development. 
 
Robert O. Paxton does a great jobb illuminating these processes in his book the Anatomy of Fascism. A text that is painfully relevant in todays political climate.

Reznikov is now a NAFO fella:
 

The plot thickens.  And hopefully the game is afoot, for real this time.  A significant increase in partisan activity would be expected if this is an operation that is designed to take all of Kherson.  Activating them for only some small pushes would leave most of RU forces available to hunt partisans, while for a bigger offensive those forces would be busy dealing w the breakthroughs.  
It looks like UKR might have finally hit the ferries.  RU liked to show videos of ferries back w civilian vehicles, which may be why UKR has held off for so long.  
RU nats sound like any other belief-driven knuckleheads.  They have a religion and their own identity built around russian superiority and destiny.  Whenever these kinds of folks are forced to make a choice between reality and belief, they will always choose belief, bending (or ignoring) 'reality' however is required to keep their identity intact.  

UA Mig-29 carrying HARM:
From this video:
And today is  the farewell to Slovakian MiGs. Poland and Czechia will pick up Slovakian air-policing duties for now. One of the Polish journos mentioned that at times only 2 of 11 Slovakian MiGs were in flying condition, it looks like they managed to get 4 airborne. Hopefully in wartime conditions without all the red tape more can be flown:
 

The Sino-Vietnamese War is a classic case of a better run autocracy. The Chinese made a bad little gamble on a short victorious war, it spectacularly didn't work. They just quit, went home, offered the Vietnamese a return to the pre war state of affairs, and memory holed the whole thing. This is EXACTLY what Putin should have done about March 15. He has endlessly doubled down on a losing hand instead.

All war is a collision of certainties - which of course means it produces uncertainty.  And we as humans abhor uncertainty - as demonstrated here.
Most people have been in a physical fight at some point in their lives - schoolyard, bar, or whatever.  Thing is, very few have been in a lethal fight and they are a very different species.  A regular, "two guys having at it" is going to end with injury of some scale - bruises, knocked out teeth, maybe even a few broken bones.  A fight to the death is unique as neither party really knows how it will end; we have no real idea what lies beyond the veil.  That uncertainty alone makes deadly fights unique, having a different texture - parties know that one of you is not going home, one of you is going somewhere "else".  Now that is the uncertainty that those who do war must live with every day - worse, you live it long enough and you realize that everyday, even in peace, is lethal - means you never really go home again, but that is a separate conversation.
Unfortunately I cannot help you here.  I have no idea how this is going to unfold - how long Ukraine can hold out, how long and how much western resolve, or how long Russia can continue - no one does.  The Russian front could collapse tomorrow, or the UA could have a major setback - these are simply symptoms of a deeper deadly contest.
 This is the reality of war...all stop.  Now that we have got that out of the way.
Are things at a decision point?  Do we need to adopt new strategies because what we have "ain't working"?
Well for Russia, I expect the answer is "yes", while for Ukraine I would say "no".  Based on the progress of the collision, Ukraine has traded terrain (and lives) for time.  Time to force generate.  Which is not only getting all the sexy western kit, it is training people on how to employ it.  This is a lot more than crew training, this runs the full gambit all the way up to training people to be staff and plan complex joint integrated operations.  It takes 1-2 years in the west to train up a major, a senior tactical officer, to be able to function and wage operational level warfare - and Ukraine has a lot of operational level warfare going on right now. 
Russia on the other hand appears to be panicking.  They are simply sticking uniforms on people and pushing them at the front a la Enemy at the Gates. I highly doubt they are able, or willing, to churn out the full gambit of professional fighters they are going to need to sustain this war, while I know Ukraine is - we are training some of them right now. 
Russia has culminated at least strategically, possible operationally.  They never came out of the "pause" of last summer.  The fact that we are talking about them "freezing the front" is a sign of this.  We have gone over at length the challenges they are going to face holding onto an 850km frontage, and entire depth now in range of Ukrainian weapons and ISR.  Can Russia freeze this thing and drag it out for years - sure, the Donbass lines were a conflict region that lasted 8 years before this war.  I think it much less likely given the conditions they are facing now; however, it is always a possibility.
Ukraine has adopted a strategy of "hold, nibble and deep strike".  Holding everywhere they need to, nibbling to sustain the initiative and force Russia to react to them and deep strike to hammer stuff Russia cannot easily get back.  It seems to be working, so I am not sure if Ukraine needs to dramatically shift strategies right now.  And definitely not ones that come with too much political risk.
So where from here...running in the darkness? Well time is actually not on Russia's side, more so than Ukraine.  Ukraine has a couple years at least.  As I posted elsewhere, the US alone spent $2.3 trillion (I would love to see the total NATO bill) in a landlocked hole with zero larger scale geopolitical repurcutions.  I do not think they are out of runway yet.  Even the staunchest pro-Russian politician is going to have trouble turning things off in a couple years.  And then there is Europe - notoriously fickly bunch but when they do get their act together that have an economy that is in the same league as the US.  For them Ukraine is "too big to fail" now - so my point is we have some time here, like probably 18-24 months of continued support.
Russia, not so much. Its loss rates are too high.  It economy is going to start to buckle, signs are already there.  Worse, they are going to run out of excess human capital they can throw at this thing, then force generation will start to hit organs and bone.  Putin knows this, hence the incredible machinations to avoid general mobilization.  My point being that politically and strategically Russia has no escalation room left.  There is no "other gear" that won't risk completely blowing the engine, in my opinion.  It would be a different story if Ukraine were at the gates of Moscow but to Russia this is a foreign adventure and no amount of pundit quacking is going to change that.  Russia has pretty much broken its professional force in being, and its ability to force generate more forces, based on what we have seen, is questionable. 
So what?  Well, I am of a "stay the course" mind on this whole thing.  The Russian war machines has some really weird rattles and popping sounds in this thing and they are getting louder.  In my experience, these are symptoms of a machine that is not well.  Ukraine on the other hand is getting better, able to hit deeper and harder everyday.  Will they solve for the offence, no idea but I like to think so.  I am not sure we in the west could solve for the offence given these conditions; however, Ukraine is highly motivated and more importantly they are learning, fast.
So what have learned - war is hell, darkest before dawn, keep calm and carry on - kinda weird but all those platitudes kinda ring true, don't they?