Centurian52

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-12
Quote;  'Russian forces should, in principle, be seeking to seize the bridges rather than destroy them, since Russian troops have struggled to cross the Siverskyi Donetsk River. They could hope to trap Ukrainian defenders in Severodonetsk by cutting off their retreat, but it seems unlikely that the benefit of catching a relatively small number of defenders would be worth the cost of imposing a contested river crossing on Russian troops. The Russians likely expect instead to be able to break out of their positions either around Toshkivka or from Popasna to the north and then encircle Lysychansk or attack it from the west bank of the Siverskyi Donets, thereby obviating the need to seize the bridges or conduct an opposed crossing. Russian troops conducted another unsuccessful attack on Toshkivka, which is likely an effort to renew their drive north toward Lysychansk on the west bank'.
Time to move out. Nichts wie raus. The defenders of Severodonetsk have done  their duty. Risking their loss may be heroic and serve a purpose, but it will also damage morale in the long run. Apart from that retreat will prevent the Russians from having another couple of thousand POW's to show for propaganda purposes, while Ukraine can claim an intelligent way of defending, without too much losses.

Ukrainian defense outlet Defense Express on the artillery situation:
https://en.defence-ua.com/analysis/how_much_the_russian_artillery_outnumbers_ukraines_in_density_and_amount_of_systems-3260.html

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

New video up by Perun, interesting as always:
I wonder what the morale is like in the ”new republics” after watching this. Is their Russian nationalism waning?

So that is a good question.  My guess is:
For Ukraine - to create opportunity to kill more Russians and expensive gear they cannot replace.  The UA has not been perfect (no military under stress is) but they have been far too good that this is some sort of error.  Unless there is some deep cultural symbolism I am missing here, this looks like a honeypot play.
For Russia - To Quote Schwarzkopf "Bovine Scatology".  Create drama to have drama.  They can take this town and call it a great victory, much like Mariupol.  And then Putin can try and stay in power for another month. 

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I really don't think it's good to whitewash our past. We probably shouldn't pretend that the British Empire were the good guys (you don't conquer a quarter of the globe by being nice). On the other hand, it isn't relevant to any discussion of who the good guys are today. No reasonable person should have any concern that the British will get up to their old habits.

Are there any finished mods that provide these markings? I'm playing a scenario set in the Kharkiv area, so I believe the 'z in a box' marking is appropriate for that region.

Heh China has a couple aircraft carriers they are still learning how to use.  Japan had 6 fleet carriers and the most experience using them of any Navy.  To counter them the US had 5 fleet carriers and now has 11 and over 75 years of experience.  
Taking Taiwan would make the Normandy landings look like child's play.  The channel from Portsmouth to Normandy is 100 miles.  The Germans were restricted to pretty much the mk 1 eyeball and were mislead as to where a landing might take place.  The US had experience doing multiple amphibious landings.  China has never done one.  The moment a fleet even starts organizing we'll know and Taiwan can reach pretty far out into that strait. 
Militarily it is a suicide mission.

I don't see the US sending weapons to Ukraine to be very problematic for Taiwan. The stuff that Taiwan will need in an invasion is very different from the stuff Ukraine needs right now, for the most part.

It would indeed be an incredibly stupid move for Ji to pull the trigger on an invasion of Taiwan. But there are several reasons to think he might do it anyway.
1. The rhetoric supports it: China has claimed Taiwan as an integral part of its territory for decades. But the intensity of that rhetoric has been stepped up in intensity in recent years. It is likely that the purpose of this rhetoric is to appease an increasingly nationalistic population, more than to justify a premeditated war. But it creates a positive feedback loop, because the rhetoric feeds the nationalism of the population, and the increasing nationalism of the population demands increasingly intense rhetoric. If the loop isn't broken, it is possible that at some point the rhetoric alone may no longer be enough to appease the population.
2. The demographics support it: This one is more statistical in nature than it is based on the specific facts on the ground in China. But historically, countries with an overinflated male population are more likely to go to war than countries with a balanced ratio between males and females. I'm not sure that the cause of this tendency has been nailed down (they could both be caused by a third factor, rather than having a direct causal relationship), and it doesn't guarantee war by any stretch, but it does seem to nudge up the probability by a non-negligible margin (there is a correlation). China currently has an overinflated male population thanks to decades of the One Child Policy. 
3. The timing supports it: China's economy and military are still growing more powerful every year. But that boon time is coming to an end very soon. Demographic realities will catch up with China sometime this decade, and their economy will begin shrinking (and inevitably, their military strength will begin shrinking with it). The mid-2020s will represent their peak power relative to the United States, and therefor their best chance of successfully taking Taiwan. I believe the 2020s represent a "now or never" moment for China. If they do not attack Taiwan in the 2020s, they will lose their chance forever. This sort of "now or never" mentality may have echoes throughout history, with it being a possible motivating factor for the aggressing side in WW1, WW2, and even the current war in Ukraine.
4. China's military structure and spending supports it: China's military hasn't had equal growth in all areas. Growth has been disproportionally concentrated in the PLA Navy and PLA amphibious capabilities. Particularly capabilities that have no use but to invade Taiwan.
5. Xi's parallels to Putin support it: Xi may not understand just how stupid it would be to invade Taiwan, because he isn't being fed good intel about how difficult it would be, because he is every bit as isolated as Putin. Both Putin and Xi have surrounded themselves with yes-men who tell them what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear, because the most important quality of an advisor in an autocracy is loyalty, not competence.
None of this guarantees war, but the probability of war is definitely way above normal "background" levels.

It would indeed be an incredibly stupid move for Ji to pull the trigger on an invasion of Taiwan. But there are several reasons to think he might do it anyway.
1. The rhetoric supports it: China has claimed Taiwan as an integral part of its territory for decades. But the intensity of that rhetoric has been stepped up in intensity in recent years. It is likely that the purpose of this rhetoric is to appease an increasingly nationalistic population, more than to justify a premeditated war. But it creates a positive feedback loop, because the rhetoric feeds the nationalism of the population, and the increasing nationalism of the population demands increasingly intense rhetoric. If the loop isn't broken, it is possible that at some point the rhetoric alone may no longer be enough to appease the population.
2. The demographics support it: This one is more statistical in nature than it is based on the specific facts on the ground in China. But historically, countries with an overinflated male population are more likely to go to war than countries with a balanced ratio between males and females. I'm not sure that the cause of this tendency has been nailed down (they could both be caused by a third factor, rather than having a direct causal relationship), and it doesn't guarantee war by any stretch, but it does seem to nudge up the probability by a non-negligible margin (there is a correlation). China currently has an overinflated male population thanks to decades of the One Child Policy. 
3. The timing supports it: China's economy and military are still growing more powerful every year. But that boon time is coming to an end very soon. Demographic realities will catch up with China sometime this decade, and their economy will begin shrinking (and inevitably, their military strength will begin shrinking with it). The mid-2020s will represent their peak power relative to the United States, and therefor their best chance of successfully taking Taiwan. I believe the 2020s represent a "now or never" moment for China. If they do not attack Taiwan in the 2020s, they will lose their chance forever. This sort of "now or never" mentality may have echoes throughout history, with it being a possible motivating factor for the aggressing side in WW1, WW2, and even the current war in Ukraine.
4. China's military structure and spending supports it: China's military hasn't had equal growth in all areas. Growth has been disproportionally concentrated in the PLA Navy and PLA amphibious capabilities. Particularly capabilities that have no use but to invade Taiwan.
5. Xi's parallels to Putin support it: Xi may not understand just how stupid it would be to invade Taiwan, because he isn't being fed good intel about how difficult it would be, because he is every bit as isolated as Putin. Both Putin and Xi have surrounded themselves with yes-men who tell them what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear, because the most important quality of an advisor in an autocracy is loyalty, not competence.
None of this guarantees war, but the probability of war is definitely way above normal "background" levels.

We really need the ability to like your comments Steve

I think the main problem with Trumpism is that the idea that people can be subhuman comes packaged with it.

So for the record, calling Jomini a "little conservative" is akin to calling Billy Graham "a little religious" - the man tried to create a deterministic theory of warfare based on geometry, and Clausewitz called him on it...and frankly I think Uncle Carl was extremely conservative by modern standards.
That said, I am not sure what the story is around Severodonetsk to be honest.  I completely disagree with J of the West assessment that Severodonetsk is a "strategic decisive point for the RAF" and by taking it they gain "a pivot for operations" and a "pivot for manoeuvre".  If we look at wiki for the latest situation:

And then a G-Earth shot (I will try and do an MFSF flight later):

None of what J of W is stating as "importance" makes sense.  If this was a break out battle over the river and to take Lysynchansk, maybe.  But his argument that the "undefendable terrain of the western Donetsk Oblast" on the other side of this river, also make no sense as we know the RA advances out of Popasna have stalled.  As have the attempts coming down from the North out of Izyum...this is all the same type of rolling terrain spotty with water features.  The idea that if the RAF somehow takes the far bank town of Severodonetsk it is set up for a rolling breakout manoeuvre battle is sensationalism at best, and applying metrics from the Gulf War to this one at worst.  If the RA takes Severodonetsk, they still have a major water obstacle dominated by a very long ridge line to try and assault, then more urban area, and then rolling terrain which the UA has stopped them on along other axis.  So seriously, WTF "Jomini of the West"?
This battle is likely more along the lines of Verdun albeit what I suspect are for different reasons (I am not sure of the historical angle but Haiduk did mention this was a big fight in WW2).  This is a "I want that" and "you can't have it...jerk" type fight.  The UA is there because it is a spot they can make the RA's life miserable an pull in forces. The RA wants it...well why does the RA want anything?  Likely because Putin has been briefed and figures it is also "really important" for reasons.
This battle is interesting in 1) it is definitely attritional, and 2) it looks like it may be the one spot where the Russians have managed to create information parity (but I have a major caveat to this).  The noise about guns and UA casualties is just that "noise".  The UA is not stupid, that is one thing they have proven in this war.  They would not be holding onto a far bank defence - one they really do not need - unless there was some serious advantage attached to it.  My bet is that it comes down to two things: the concentration of arty and EW.
Lets leverage Jomini for a second and lay it out (in some ways he was not wrong):

I am going to be extremely generous here and say the RA has its guns positioned within 30km of Severodonetsk based on ranges (D-20s do about 18 and the Pions can reach out at about 37, so for arguments sake).  That is a slice of a pizza that is 188 km around.  The Russians can realistically put their guns in about 1/3 of that circle - so about a 63 km arc, which translates into about 942 sq kms.  At "900 guns" that is a density of a gun per sq km.  That is a pretty high density of gun positions - not WWI - but likely the highest of this war.  Further you have all the logistics to support all them guns.  
Finally, the RA has concentrated a lot of EW to try and make this op box go dark for the UA: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-technology-90d760f01105b9aaf1886427dbfba917  All these emitters are pumping out an ungodly amount of EM and easily visible.
So what?  Well there is a lot of talk of Ukrainian losses in this fight, and I believe them.  But war is negotiation and sacrifice.  Those lives are not being spent for the far bank town the UA really does not need.  They are likely being spent to pull in the concentration of arty and EM...so the UA can hit them - attrition, like tracers, cuts both ways.  What is missing from all this is the RA losses on key arty, EM and logistics because  they are concentrating them around and on top of this operationally near-worthless town, that when successfully taken will bring all the joy of a colicky baby because you still have to take that brutal set of ridges...on the other side of a freakin river.
We have no idea how bad the Russians are taking it right now, because "dark box"...but you know who does...the UA.   The one thing all that EW cannot turn off are the space-based ISR assets that the West (primarily the US) are beaming directly to the UA.  All those RA assets are very visible to multi-spectral space-based ISR and I have every faith are being hit regularly in this fight; it is the only thing that makes any sense - the UA are trading infantry for RA arty, EW and logistics right now.  If they wanted to trade infantry-for-infantry they would be doing it from all those ridges, which is the the obvious fallback position.
The Russians on the other hand are trading their own critical resources so that Putin can declare a "great victory" of very little military value - just like they have done throughout this war.

It did create some alarm in the US that Orange Putin was alienating our allies though.

And your preference is well noted as well. But at this point the facts-free opinionating is starting to drown out the substance.
 

In fact I do anticipate that we'll be needing to ship a lot of equipment to Taiwan sometime soon. But I anticipate that a war over Taiwan is still a few years out, and we will have time to replace stocks we send to Ukraine. Ukraine is the more urgent need. But I do think we should take a few lessons from how difficult it is to hastily ship off equipment to Ukraine only when it's needed, and start ramping up shipments to Taiwan right now before they are needed. But I also don't think Europe needs to spare anything for Taiwan. Europe should give all it can to Ukraine. The US has plenty of equipment in it's inventory to supply its fair share to Ukraine and have plenty left over to start ramping up shipments to Taiwan as well.

I've just passed to this page and read THIS. Guys, I though this was just a joke, but now my heart is melted down and I can't reject this gift. Though, I feel myself awkward... and also huge gratitude to all of you and Kinophile personally for idea     

I think the main problem with Trumpism is that the idea that people can be subhuman comes packaged with it.

I think the main problem with Trumpism is that the idea that people can be subhuman comes packaged with it.

I think the main problem with Trumpism is that the idea that people can be subhuman comes packaged with it.

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I really don't think it's good to whitewash our past. We probably shouldn't pretend that the British Empire were the good guys (you don't conquer a quarter of the globe by being nice). On the other hand, it isn't relevant to any discussion of who the good guys are today. No reasonable person should have any concern that the British will get up to their old habits.

So we COULD admit that the only likely opponent for a land war in Europe is currently wrecking itself in eastern Ukraine, and send Ukrainians everything they actually need, so they can finish wrecking it without losing a whole generation of fighting age men. What they need is about a third of the hardware in Europe. If the Russians leave Ukraine just beaten they are not coming back for a while. So unless you anticipate shipping most of your army to Taiwan sometime soon, The only real limit on how much hardware you can send them is how much you have. And if the Russians do completely lose their minds and attack Poland or the Baltics, it is Pretty clear their air force wouldn't last a day, and the rest of their army wouldn't last two more when GBUs started raining down in quantity. There is just no rational reason not send the Ukrainians everything they can physically use. Starting with the entire artillery park.

So Kosovo and Libya have been brought up a couple times now as examples of “NATO aggression” and some weird theories on the US somehow “using NATO” to do its bidding.  This is not how things worked, nor how things work.  Both Kosovo and Libya were conducted under UNSC resolutions as Chapter VII missions, not by an edict from the White House. In fact every NATO intervention over the last 30 years has had the backing of the UN Security Council, of which both Russia and China are permanent members.  (the only exception may be immediately after 9/11 when the US invoked article 5).  
In fact NATO as an alliance is not supporting the Ukraine (technically) it’s member states are bilaterally.
NATO is a massive military alliance, trying to make it to do anything is very hard and the idea that the US can “order NATO” is laughable.  NATO having a history of unilaterally invading nations and so Russia is somehow justifiably pushing back is nonsense.  As to NATO expansion, it has been 1) bureaucratic and 2) driven by Russian aggressiveness to its neighbours.  Narratives to the contrary are misinformed at best.

For full granularity the Russian forces would need 16 different tanks (T64BV, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72B Obr. 1989, T72BA, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80BV, T80U, T80UK, T80UE-1, T80UM2, T80BVM, T90A, and T90M), while Ukraine would need 14 different tanks (T64A, T64B, T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T64B1M, T64BM, T64BM2, T72 Ural, T72M1, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72AMT, and T80BV).
But if you just want to represent 90% of the Russian tanks you just need the 8 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, T80BV, T80BVM, and T64BV). And if you are fine with getting 80% of the Russian tanks than you only need the 6 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, and T80BV).
For the Ukrainians if you just want to represent 90% of their tanks you only need the 5 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T80BV, T72B, and T72AMT). And if you are fine with 80% of the Ukrainian tanks then you just need the 3 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, and T80BV).

For full granularity the Russian forces would need 16 different tanks (T64BV, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72B Obr. 1989, T72BA, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80BV, T80U, T80UK, T80UE-1, T80UM2, T80BVM, T90A, and T90M), while Ukraine would need 14 different tanks (T64A, T64B, T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T64B1M, T64BM, T64BM2, T72 Ural, T72M1, T72A, T72AV, T72B, T72AMT, and T80BV).
But if you just want to represent 90% of the Russian tanks you just need the 8 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, T80BV, T80BVM, and T64BV). And if you are fine with getting 80% of the Russian tanks than you only need the 6 most common tanks (T72B, T72B3, T72B3 Obr. 2016, T80U, T72B Obr. 1989, and T80BV).
For the Ukrainians if you just want to represent 90% of their tanks you only need the 5 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, T80BV, T72B, and T72AMT). And if you are fine with 80% of the Ukrainian tanks then you just need the 3 most common tanks (T64BV, T64BV model 2017, and T80BV).