Maquisard manqué

UKR position under heavy mortar or artillery fire. Interesting bastion-like position
 
 

Its like getting blood out of a stone.
Or German politicians out of Russian pockets.

No, this is old photo of 2020 from Murmansk oblast

A lot has already been said, but if this was some kind of HQ, and set up like you SHOULD set up an HQ, you might be using the building for "office space", however, all the vehicles would be parked and camouflaged in the woods surrounding, and if there are radios in the building, the antennas SHOULD be scattered about in cover somewhere that is not the building. Also, for a major HQ of some kind, it should be surrounded by some sort of AA capability, even if that's just several crews of MANPADS, also in the woods. 
So that distribution looks "normal".  They hit the building dead on, whether by precision or good data. Pretty good chance they can generate an exact GPS or grid coordinate for a building like that. If not precision a precision round then it would be the number 3 gun firing at that coordinate. #3 is the center of the battery and is SUPPOSED to be your best gun crew. That's the gun you register with, and should have the most proficient crew and gun chief. At least that's how we do it (we being US and what I know of Cdn and UK - I think all NATO is pretty standard that way) And in a normal unadjusted sheaf, with no corrections applied, #3 would land center of the pattern. Unadjusted, the pattern should mimic the distribution of the firing battery guns on the ground (say they are set up at the front of a treeline somewhere, which is an irregular shape). When you have spare time, you figure out Terrain Gun Position Corrections. That's the deviation from a straight, regularly spaced line, to what you have on the ground. Apply those to each gun individually, and then your standard sheaf is a regular spaced even line (within CEP). From THOSE, you can then apply other corrections for different shapes - circular, converging, etc. BUT, if your target is significantly off your center line of fire, then those TGPCs become less accurate and your sheaf different, not the perfect line.
Looks to me like they wanted to cover the likely area of where the antennas, support vehicles, etc could be stashed and not just the building.
Dave

Way ahead of you ...

Had to reorient the map to get the roads to sit better.

The war, following the COVID shock and the effects of Brexit has set the entire world's economy on a knife edge. Cost of living increases here in rightpondia are creating real pressures, but they are nothing to the problems that the lack of UKR and RUS grain and sunflower exports are going to create around the world*. The Chinese economy depends on the US economy and has its own structural problems, on top of the merely short term issues. Worldwide recession is, i feel, more likely than not.
* Or maybe this will be a stimulus to improve distribution networks so that the excess food that's produced can get where it's acutally needed... 

If Russia defaults, bad things happen. How bad is hard to say. If they default once, theyll probably take a permanent hit to their credit rating and, even if they regain access to the world financial market, will find they have to pay higher interest on their new debts. More people will think Russian debt is junk or too risky, so fewer will buy, so Russia will have to pay more to sell its bonds, so ultimately Russia will have to issue more debt to raise the same amount of cash. If were talking a few percentage points that sucks, .1% on $1b is 1mil. Doesnt sound like much, but obv it adds up. Assuming Russia doesn't miss too many bond payments AND assuming it can actually pay for the debt at some point, not so bad. More like if you miss a credit card payment than miss default on your mortgage. 
But if Russia starts to miss lots of bond payments, if it spends its warchest on, well, the war and cannot pay back its creditors once it is able, or if once it gets back on the world credit market it decides that the USD is bull**** and it wants to only pay in Rubles, worse things can happen. An interest rate rise of 1% is rough. Of 10% or more is fatal, it would probably ruin the Russian state's finances for a decade or more. If their credit is seen as too dangerous or too risky they may also run into a lack of willing buyers. The people with the kind of capital a state needs to stay afloat are few and far between. If New York looks at a Russian bond issue and says "too risky for my blood" it doesn't matter what the Russian interest rate is. This is the 'sky is falling' outcome. In 1916 Russia was paying a massive interest on its debts, and of course was kept afloat by this huge and convoluted lending scheme in which money traveled from London banks, to the Treasure, to the French Treasury, to Paris banks, to Russian accounts, to the Russian state. And in 1917 this system broke down. Literally overnight the Tsar's bonds went from real things of financial value to very nice collectable art, and the market never recovered. If you held that bond, your value went from thousands or millions to whatever the going rate of TP was. International creditors will panic if they think this is the case, and screw Russia out of the market until some kind of stability is restored. 
In that case Russia has two solutions (one of which they have available now). First is China. Obviously they can borrow massive sums from China, and China would love to lend. But there are risks in borrowing from China. First the Yuan is a **** currency. Its exchange rate is pegged squarely on what China wants it to be, often keeping it artificially low to benefit exporters. To stave off economic disaster China has, in the past, just unilaterally changed the exchange rate. If you hold large quantities of Yuan, say if youre a sovereign country who is selling their bonds on the Chinese market in exchange for Yuan, well a big and sudden swing in the exchange rate could cost you no joke billions. Second, China is an untrustworthy lender. Their debt is far more expensive than Euro-American debt because London and New York just want cash for cash. But Beijing wants more. Maybe theyll give Russia a sweethart interest rate (cool!) but in exchange demand a portion of Gazprom is sold off to Chinese investors, diverting profits from oligarchs to.... well... Chinese oligarchs. You could see how this would be bad for Putin. And of course if you limit yourself to one source, you run the risk of getting trapped. Maybe today China is your friend. And maybe tomorrow a huge ball of oil is found under Vladivostok. Now China isn't so friendly, but you still need them for your bond issues. This is like the Germany Gas situation but 10 times worse. So the other solution? Go nuclear. Print money. Pay everything in useless Rubles. Default. Go through a massive period of deflation (which is the real killer). Try not to get shot in the prosses. You know just Weimar stuff. 

Visiting some defensive positions in the east.  First, older positions along the LOC:
New defenses and units digging in around Barvinkove:
 

New update from northern direction of Kharkiv. After liberation of Kutuzivka and Rus'ka Lozova, UKR troops libarated Momotove village next to Kutuzivka. Looks like next step should be big operation for destroying of strong Russian group in Tsyrkuny and around. Reportedly, HQ of this group located in Rus'ki Tyshky village. So minimal objective can be Tsyrkuny, maximum - complete cut off enemy group on the road section Tsyrkuny - Rus'ki Tyshky
Our soldier writes, Russians have fortified positions in Tsyrkuny, their tanks have positions in houses or dugged in hull down position. Tsyrkuny area since March is a headache for Kharkiv - exactly from this place Russians still have opportunity to shell the city with artillery, causing damage and casualties among civilians. 
 

Bayonet lug.

More seriously, the bit in the middle looks like a muzzle reference device. On tanks, it collects data about the gun barrel (like, how much it's bending due to heat expansion on the sunward side) to feed back to the fire control system to maintain accuracy, I'd imagine it's the same sort of thing.

Some news from Kharkiv/Izium areas
UKR forces after yesteraday's attack pushed off Russian troops from Rus'ka Lozova north from Kharkiv. Decisive role in seizeng of this large village played SOF units. 
The map corresponds to yesterday's news that UKR forces in proces of libaration of this village. Now it already cleaned up. 

On Izium axis Russians today didn't condut active offensive actions, but they actively used recon units and shelled our positions with artilery
Our soldier has written from there: we have a madhouse for third day. Russians are jamming GSM comms. There were more rockets for these three days than for all days before. Artilley works endlessly. Orcs rod from all slits, they are being driven to slaugter, but we are also losing good boys.... 
Several videos from Izium axis from Roman Donik:
UKR artillery struck Russian armor near Topolske village 
UKR Grad hit rear control post of Russian BTGnear Zabavne village (6 km north from Izium). Rear control post is a second control post in battalion's rear, where places all logistic, supply and maintenance units as well as part of battalion HQ, respondining for theese units
  
   

Yes, this is a textbook example of how casualties are to be treated and evacuated under fire - drag the casualty out of the danger zone and provide as much cover as possible, through the form of covering fire, smoke grenades, etc. Videos like this show that this unit isn't your typical group of cannon fodder shoved into the line with insufficient training - it's pretty much the same way a US military unit would perform a battlefield evacuation.

Previous mentions of Russians ignoring their wounded and leaving them behind are obviously not evident here.
The squad (hell, with the casualties they've had, that could a be full company assault), stops to retrieve their guy. Last man (the one who was behind him) tries, but fails, to drag him to cover. 3rd to last guy comes out and also fails.
Someone holds the squad in the doorway (they may or may not have fired back down the street: they definitely took some incoming), and orders (and gets) smoke tossed out.
The smoke was insufficient (maybe they just had the one smoke grenade?), and then they call and get a BTR.
For chaotic, hot, battlefield CASEVEC, not the worst.
 

Sir, I raise you Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

Sir, I raise you Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

Impeccable taste, indeed.
BAT!!
Toast of London, if you need more of the genius that is Matt Berry.
Sorry for the interruption. I thought I was alone in my interests.

It's actually Steve that said this but quoting the quote gets wonky 🙂
There were several times we got on planes and were not told, for security leak reasons, where we were going until we were on the planes and the engines were running. Actually more than several. Some training. A few real. Then the maps came out and planning started while we were in the air. (it was always far enough away for plenty of time)
The only time we ended up in a different place than briefed was on a jump right on Ft Bragg for training. We were supposed to be dropped (my 6 man team) on one of the sandy flights trips in the woods surrounded by tall pine trees. It was totally socked in. I was the first one in the door (only officer so that's what you do). Jumpmaster leans out, looks, leans back in, looks at me, leans out, leans back in "I can't see $h1t, sir"  All I could see was white out the door over his shoulder. (the Jumpmaster is supposed to verify the drop zone). Green light comes on. I tapped him on the shoulder, pointed to the green light and he yells "STANDINTHEDOORGO!!!" So I went. 
About 100 ft above the ground we finally came out of the clouds and I realized we were landing on the biggest drop zone on Fort Bragg - it's like 2.5 miles long and 3/4 mile wide, clear sand with just shrubs. Whew!! Thank God. And then "I hope someone told our driver"  They did.  Pilots didn't bother to let us know we were dropping 10 miles from where we were supposed to. But those flight strips are 500m long and about 50m wide surrounded by telephone pole pine trees. It would have been ugly.
OK. War stories over.
Dave

@16:46, he describes his BMD hitting a concrete block and “going vertical,” but his hand gestures suggest it ran up onto it and got stuck:
Seems a good match for what he describes.
 

Boy, did they ever. 
Same principal was literally how the Irish Republicans were able to infiltrate and negate British military intelligence on the island during our war of independence - plenty of WW1 vets on the Republican side with British military experience. Not harping on again but underlining the point that an enemy who can pass for you, talk like you and knows how you think and is deeply motivated is absolutely your worst nightmare. Pretty much impossible to fully defend against.

Karma is paying back years of crap from Russia let’s hope it's a game changer. 
As for our British Defence minister I do wish he would keep his gob shut on stuff like that, he didn't need to say it, even if I or most folk have no problem with how Ukraine uses the weapons to win the war.
I wish our politicians would take some lessons from the Baltic countries or others keeping what they are upto closer to their chests. No need for propaganda own goals. 

And that would be why we built this little chapel in the middle of all this, to try and navigate as true as course as we can.  So far I gotta say our record is not bad...once we got past the whole Ukrainian Bio Black Sites/the CIA can hear me through my fillings, unpleasantness. 

All that smoke. Nothing like that in footage of NATO SPGs.  Inhaling that crap all day,Jesus.

UKR 2S1 SP-howitzer crew at work
 

Well that's just disappointingly unsportsmanlike. 

Its too easy
On a more serious note, I doubt a substantial amount of Russians will ever truly know the extent of the devastation inflicted on the country they wish to control, or, that any living soul there will plan to poison or murder them if they came. Even if they did, Im sure a little cognitive dissonance will go a long way.
As long as Putin can claim to have captured all this vital wasteland with resources Russia wont be able to sell, then the operation is a victory. Because thats what this humiliated fallen and forgotten empire needs apparently. 
It is very telling when the Moskva sinking caused 10 times the uproar in Russian Telegram than pesky war crimes being reported, as if nobody cared in the first place about civilians getting bombed. But when every other comment goes along the lines of slaughtering all the khokhols regardless of uniform or not, that kind of answers itself.