Monty's Mighty Moustache

Not if you want to maintain any kind of C2 they aren't. Unless it's a recon team with a radio (i.e. a specialist) then the smallest unit that should be assigned a task, IMHO, is the platoon. Of course the Red Army did things a bit differently as you allude to but if you send a fireteam or squad off on their own then they can and will suffer from not being effectively led.
MMM

Not if you want to maintain any kind of C2 they aren't. Unless it's a recon team with a radio (i.e. a specialist) then the smallest unit that should be assigned a task, IMHO, is the platoon. Of course the Red Army did things a bit differently as you allude to but if you send a fireteam or squad off on their own then they can and will suffer from not being effectively led.
MMM

The panzergrenadier squad has three elements, not two, and understanding how best to use that is critical.
They consist of two symmetric fireteams, and the halftrack, each with an MG42. All three elements need to work in concert for them to function well.
The advantage of mechanised infantry isn't in how "elite" or "top-notch" they are, it's in mobility. It means that they can cross open ground rapidly, attack from unusual positions, be an effective reserve for a larger proportion of the battlefield, and (crucially), minimise the time between when an artillery bombardment lifts and when the infantry assault.
The trade-offs for this are that you have smaller squad sizes, and they therefore cannot take as much attrition. The halftrack is also as vulnerable as it is powerful, and they are significantly more difficult to use effectively.
The propaganda-fuelled naked halftrack assaults aren't the way to do anything. Instead you need to focus on a good position for the halftrack, and how best to use their mobility to shape the engagement into your favour.
In CM QB terms, accepting how warped an environment that is, I've rarely found much used for massed mounted panzergrenadiers. What's often been extremely useful is having perhaps a single platoon or two, which will increase the available options significantly. Obviously there's operational tempo concerns that CM won't care about here.

Can we please lay off beating on our brother Erwin at this point? I think people made their points on the merits, let's turn down the ad homs.
...For those who forgot life before Feb 2022, he's put a *gigantic* amount of effort into this community.

What ticks me off is that he is going to go off and sulk now, muttering about how we are all “high on copium” and “smother alternative views.”  I resent the echo chamber accusation immensely.  Many people have put in a lot of time and effort to keep up with this war.  We are definitely pro-Ukraine but we also try to avoid the blinders as best we can. If they do not want to get beat up, come in with stronger arguments…and maybe some actual facts.
Is Russia still in this thing?  Definitely.  I am not sure exactly how but it is undeniable that they are still holding and even capable of tactical advances.  However as many from this individual’s camp are prone to do, there is a double standard against Ukraine in just about all things. I am willing to bet Russia winds up taking about as much as Ukraine re-took last summer.  To them this is a clear sign “Russia can never be beaten!”  Meanwhile when Ukraine did it last summer, “see they will never push Russia out!”  It really doesn’t matter what happens the conclusions are always the same.
Ukraine is holding on just as well, if not better than Russia.  The UA is undergoing reforms.  The West is slowly getting its act together - this NATO collective mechanism for support is a good idea, if it doesn’t get weighed down in bureaucratic sludge.  Russia is not “getting better” by any stretch.  Advances come at horrendous costs.  Losses continue to stack.  They do appear to have some concerning glimmers of C4ISR daylight but they never really coalesce.  Ukraine continues to demonstrate significant strategic strike acumen.
As to the finish line…who knows?  Could Russia operationally collapse…sure, they have twice before.  Can the full on strategic collapse…definitely.  They did in 1917 and 1991, they can do it again.  Hell Priggy’s wild ride had real potential.  Will they?  Again, we do not know.  The second anyone from either side of this goes “this is how this war will end”, I for one, stop listening.  All we can do is hold on and hold fast.

Interesting episode of repelling of Russian armored attack on Terny on 2nd of April. I posted this video and you may pay attantion on the tank with pile of boxes on the turret. As became knowingly this was Tsar-EW-tank, inteded to supress all possible frequencies of UKR FPVs.
 

Next the story about this:
It's Russian armored column has came. Our FPVs were falling down like flies on all frequencies, because on leading tank the EW-monster drove. Mad Max is relaxing here. On the pallet Russians assembled monsterous construction from everything equipment that they had. Three panels of patch-antennas 800/900/2.4/5.8 around and to all this were added blocks on 700-1000 ranges. Upper on some planks and around. All this was tied with ropes. On the armor also was mounted generator and batteries. There was too hard for our pilots, but quess if it kept EW the tank? No. Our brave pilots from the row of units hit them. Further with other armor became much easier.

 
And describing of the same episode from DeepState.
Before the column moved at 14:00, Russian TOS-1A has driven forward for preliminary bombarding of our positions, but was timely spotted and hit. 
At 16:00 we spotted th ecolumn of 6 tanks, coming from Zhytlivka direction. It's interesting that Tsar-EW tank moved in the head of column. It was destroyed later, you can see photos in Flash's TG. This Frankenstain was destroyed by the drone of 60th mech.brigade with additional homing (meant "machine eye"?). Two more tanks were hit by FPVs of 63rd mech.brigade. 
The moment of Tsar-EW was hit bt drone
In parallel way, the movement of column turned out in shooting range. 12th NGU regiment "Azov", 95th air-assault brigade, 21st mech.brigade, 60th mech.brigade, 63rd mech.brigade started to heap on Russians with everything what was possible. As result from 6 armors only 1 could flee. 
Since some time katsap box arrived to embark scattered infantrym bvut was destroyed too. 
Next day, 3rd of April next TOS-1A came forward, but again was destroyed by "Azov"
On 4th of April one more tank was destroyed here. 
 
 

It's a form of greeting the spring for them. Russian soldiers leave their holes they lived all winter and simply cannot resists sending several own mechanized battalions into flames during these futile attacks. Some unconcious form of celebrating life rising everywhere around them probably. We have Eggs and Easter bunnies, they have crispy  tanks. I didn't read him lately, but I am sure Dugin has entire theory already of suicide attacks as expression of uniquely Russian unharnessed elaine vital.
Check mate, cold-hearted Anglo-Saxons. You will never get it.

Real-time, for me, is nigh on unplayable once you get above a certain size of force involved as it's far too easy to miss things. Combat Mission has always been a turn-based game, We-Go was their USP when CMBO came out, and the real-time mode was added later but it's fundamentally designed to be played in turn-based mode and I never play it any other way.
The only way I could imagine playing in real-time might work, for me - others probably have better ways to manage it, would be to watch from a high level overview and then pause and zoom in whenever something interesting happens. But then there is no ability to rewind and find out why it happened. I re-watch turns multiple times to make sure I catch everything I want to see.

Consider that the USA is not the only country in the world. No matter how little you trust your own government how about the governments of most of Europe? 
Even the French and Germans (Evan neutral Switzerland!!), who were very critical of the war in Iraq are fully onboard supporting Ukraine, supplying more aid per capita than the USA. 
That suggests that the war is real and Ukraine is a partner who can be worked with. Remember the Dutch and Germans complaining about corruption during the eurozone crisis? Not so much with Ukraine (although realistically it does exist)

Putin's invasion plans were formulated on Hunter Biden's laptop.  They were created while he and George Soros were vacationing at Jeffery Epstein's place at the same time that Hilary Clinton was discussing a marketing plan with Epstein to use a Pizza place as a front for child trafficking.  I seem to remember this was close to the same time Jewish Space lasers were lighting up California forests because we hadn't properly raked them like they do in Finland.  I remember all this because right about then I was sticking light bulbs up my anus to kill Covid.
See it all makes sense now right?

You may insist on that rule for your own opponents. I, and I expect many others, will never abide by it. 

Well, I have to disagree with this and @Artkin. What you describe is *exactly* what I'd do in real life. 
But, hey, make any rules you want in agreement with your opponent.
Taking away that capability, to me, would remove a perfectly valid tactic. I'd do that even without the TOW firing from the woods. Ooh, look, treeline ahead. Blast it with whatever we've got to keep their heads down, while I have maneuver elements close in. Is it really that much different than putting a smoke screen in front of the treeline even if you haven't spotted anything? Pretty much accomplishes the same thing.

Dave

I think I've mentioned before that I strongly disagree with this one. You can't implement realistic tactics without area fire. Without area target you can't maintain suppression on enemy positions when the enemy takes cover and your own troops lose the spot, you can't conduct recon by fire, you can't use speculative fire on suspected enemy positions, and you can't use fire to deny an area that you think the enemy might want to go. Fire is a tool with a lot of uses. Only one of those uses is aimed destructive fire against clearly identified enemy units. If you disallow realistic tactics then what's even the point of playing the game?

Can you explain more? I don't get this one. If you are on offense, you would call fire along a treeline, hammer a village you plan to assault, etc. On defense you'd target areas where the enemy could be assembling for an assault. Can't hit a whole patch of woods because you can't get a LOS to the middle of it. I suppose you could target the open in front of the woods and overlap into it. 
I see nothing wrong with targeting an open area the enemy has to cross to attack you with everything I've got, and hoping that that timing of the FFE works with the enemy crossing that area. Catching enemy in the open with artillery is a goal, not something that should be eliminated. 
Maybe I'm missing your point or objection (certainly possible - it's early, I'm wet from walking the dogs and need coffee 🙂 )
Dave

<areas of COIN involved cerebral cortex begin to spin up, blinking lights, whirring and puffs of dust ensue>
It's pretty clear that ISIS-K wants to recruit more members of ISIS-K in Russia at this stage of the game by committing acts of terrorism that inflame an already quite hostile Russian cultural reaction to Muslims from the Southern fringe of the imperium which then alienates and radicalizes yet more potential recruits. To this end, an attack like that at Crocus also provides a clear signal that Moscow isn't just nasty...but weak, preoccupied completely by the losing war in Ukraine and not prepared to handle what ISIS-K can dish out. 
Russia did actually lean into pretty much what ISIS-K could have hoped for with televised tortures, ear lopping and the like...which is precisely the worst way to equalize both sides in the minds of fence sitters and videos of Russians assaulting random Tajiks are all over the Stans as we speak. What meh there was involved the messaging from the top...which underlined the how out of of touch the Kremlin is. 
All in all, ISIS-K has to feel pretty good about this round. 
 

The beeb has done its verify thing on the narrative coming from the Kremlin: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68657383

This is so frankly bafflingly short sighted and stupid…but of course it is Putin, the same strategist that came up with a quick invasion of Ukraine. US Intelligence - a nation whose weapons, ammo and data are actively killing Russian citizens - actually handed off actionable intel on this attack before it happened.  What does this say?  Well first off, US Intelligence has penetrated ISIS-K and was willing to risk assets in order to stop a terror attack…even against Russia.  This demonstrates that the US was still willing to prioritize terrorism over its current beef with Russia, and was willing to take significant risks in doing so.
Russia’s grand plan was to 1) ignore the intelligence, and then 2) poop all over the sponsor of said intel.  The reality is that Russia’s pants are down in all this and its @ss is showing.  The Stans are clearly hot and bothered at some level and ISIS-K is exploiting that.  This is the tip of a much larger issue.  So Putin’s grand plan is to burn any cooperation with the US…who are trying and solve his own problem.  And then wire some ridonculous narrative about Ukrainian NAZIs now in league with Islamic extremism, all backed by the CIA.  I am pretty sure those in Russia soft on this whole thing are not suddenly going to be galvanized by a cloudwork that Saddam’s ministry of propaganda could have done better on a cold start Tuesday.
Putins is not a mastermind, he is plate spinning.  At this point the world’s second largest nuclear power is being held together like a bad I Love Lucy skit.  And no one even bother to try and pull the “poor westerner…you simply do not understand the Russian mindset” card…this was about as dumb a damage control play as could have been made.  And no mystical Russian voodoo/goat hypnosis is going to change that.

The beeb has done its verify thing on the narrative coming from the Kremlin: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68657383

This is basically at the point that anyone in Russia who actually believes this is going to believe whatever the Kremlin says anyway.  The credibility of this sounds so hollow that I will be surprised if it shifts actual Russian sentiment in any real way.
Further, this has risk of blowing up in Putin’s face: after two years of “victory” by the Russian army, Ukraine can now string together a ISIS-K/Tajik plot for a terror attack in Moscow?  And worse, Russian intelligence and security failed to pick this threat up when it was coming out of a country they currently have in a choke hold?

Damn! What a huge BOOMs I heard! At least three. Russians launched something fast from Crimea and this something tried to hit center of the city and probably Kyiv hydro energy plant north from the city. My wife has seen SAM launches. This couldn't be Iskander -  too far for Crimea, either N.Korean sh...t or Onix-M (800 km). Reportedly all missiles were intercepted, debrises of onе of them fell down in central part of Kyiv. 

I think this one is far trickier than first glance.  If Putin spins this as somehow a US/Ukrainian operation then he looks weak and incompetent.  This was downtown Moscow, not some outer berg.  This is clearly a security failure so pinning it on a war opponent makes that opponent look competent and effective.  This is counter narratives of “we are winning in Ukraine” which they have been continually pushing.  So while it may drive support into Putin’s arms for the war, it may very well create a lot of doubt as to his ability to protect Russian in this war.  
In fact a terror attack is just about the worst false flag op to run here.  A massive explosion complete with ATACMs debris along with dozens of others “shot down” makes far more sense.  An asymmetric terror attack by a few armed gunman simply looks and feels like bad housekeeping and a massive intel failure, no matter how hard one tries to spin it.
I have no doubt they will link this back to Ukraine, but already here this is a soft link. “Ukraine was providing haven, but did not mastermind the whole thing.”  I am sure the real wingnuts will come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories but in the end Putin cannot lay this entirety at the feet of Ukraine without making Ukraine look much scarier and effective.  So what will be interesting is whether or not he does.  If he does, then things are likely worse internally for Russia than we can see.  He is willing to take the risk of making Ukraine look like they “got in a good one” because support is seriously flagging and he needs to leverage this any way he can.  If they downplay and sidestep, things might be tighter and more stable  because Putin is not entirely backed into a corner.
Putin has already called Ukraine “Nazi-terrorists” it was his entire excuse for the war.  Demonstrating of given credence to just how effective Ukraine still is at being as such, after two years of war, really runs counter to the entire Russian narrative thus far.

It's because the attack was all directed on Kyiv with strongest AD shield in Ukraine. If each city had the same protection, the total result would be like this.
It was at 5:00 I heard two Patriots launches, then heavy boom so windows shaken. It was Kinzhal or Iskander interception - it came from NE direction, were my district is located, so interception of ballistic missiles add some adrenaline %) Then, since 5 minutes one more (aero)ballistic target was destroyed, but slightly further. Then I heard 2-3 distant booms - all other missiles flew from western direction and were intercepted there - it's too far from me. 
 But anyway, several Kh-101 were intercepted over the city and hit the ground in residental areas  - 12 citizens were wounded. Damaged several buildings, one workshop, kindergarden, church, local power substation. Several cars burnt. 
Here fragment of missile impacted on the street not far from one of specific object %) and damaged buildings around - probably warhead detonated. 


Here of course "underground command bunker was destroyed" )))

People of this house were really lucky...

... Because warhead of intercepted Kh-101 fell down directly near the building and didn't explode

Of course, Russian MoD made a statement "the strike, including Kinzhal missiles was performed on decision making centers - all targets were hit". Ok. 390 millions USD to nowhere. Rich country...

Czech Republic already supplied 300 000 artillery shells. This claimed Yan Lipavsky, minister of foreign afafirs of this country.
In own turn Ukrainian representatives says this number will allow to close sharp deficite for next month and we hope further supplies will grow up. Ukraine now produce 122 mm and 152 mm ammunition and from second half of 2024 will launch produce of 155 mm shells
Also WSJ claimed Ukraine month ago launched serial production of unnamed missile with 400 miles range. 
 

Free-Russia fighters of RVC in NE part of Kozinka village. Russian tank got projectille in side, but, alas, too close range, the HEAT hadn't time to activate.
Graivoron district of Belgorod oblast completely out of electricity - power substation was destroyed.

Suddenly - Romanian volunteer unit "Getica" operates in Belgorod oblast (on the video you can hear Romanian language). Tank with LRL flag also has seen as well as Ukrainian tanks
Belgorod is gradually turning out into Kharkiv 2022. Deficite of food in supermarkets is beginning, people either hide in houses or flee from the city. Attack on Belgorod oblast is sensetive blow on Russian economy. Belgorod oblast is one of not many prospering regions of Russia. It gives to country many of meat (especially pork and chicken) - up to 11% of total production, milk, sunflower oil (up to 16 %), 39 % of iron ore, here concentraten many machine-building factories, so this turmoils and "uncertainity" (C) can undermine production, trade and taxes, which Belgorod gives to central budget
    
 
Interesting in Russia, which always was showing how "Kievan junta 8 years have been bombing Donbas" there is alsmost full censorship on what now happening in Belgorod oblast. Russian VKontakte social media started to block and delete posts and comments od Belgorod citizens about shelligs, destructions and hard life in the city. Hordes of bots actively deny any successes of free-Russia forces in border villages

Does Putin have a base of support?
Sure.
So did Saddam and any number of other dictators but it's precisely wrong to imagine the show they just put on reflects what it is. A pre-secured 85% vote isn't a reflection of strength, it's an obvious attempt to tighten the lid on a pressure cooker. I mean seriously folks...if Putin had a large majority of natural voters who would vote for him do you really think he'd pass on the legitimacy that sort of result represents? Of course not. 
I know it's tempting to point and say "See...Russians are intrinsically bad and that's what this vote shows us" but if you do, be aware you are indulging in the kind of thinking that you hate when you see it on the other side.